Daniel C. Edelson
Bio
Executive Director and President
Daniel Edelson has served as Executive Director of BSCS since 2015. He brings substantial experience as a curriculum developer, software designer, educational researcher, and advocate for educational reform to this role.
Edelson has overseen a period of rapid growth in both revenue and impact. He established the consortium of developers that have created the OpenSciEd comprehensive science programs spanning elementary, middle, and high school. He led the development of the first OpenSciEd program, for middle school, which was released in 2022. He also oversaw the creation of BSCS’s first new high school biology program in more than two decades, BSCS Biology: Understanding for Life, published in 2022. During his tenure, BSCS has created new programs for teacher learning and leadership development, as well as extending or revising existing programs, including STeLLA® (Science Teachers Learning through Lesson Analysis) and the NACL (National Academy for Curriculum Leadership). BSCS’s research enterprise has also grown during his tenure, building on its strengths in conducting large-scale trials and expanding to include assessment. In 2022, Edelson launched a reorganization that elevated the goals of equitable impact and learning for a just and sustainable future alongside BSCS’s longstanding commitment to scientific literacy.
Before coming to BSCS, Edelson was Vice President for Education at National Geographic Society and Executive Director of the National Geographic Education Foundation from 2007 to 2014. In these roles, he led National Geographic’s nonprofit educational outreach and geography education reform efforts. At National Geographic, Edelson oversaw the creation of the Society’s award-winning NatGeoEd.org education portal, the launch of educational citizen science and interactive mapping initiatives, and the establishment of an innovative online professional development program for teachers. He also led a 5-year capacity and leadership development initiative for the 54 members of the National Geographic Network of Alliances for Geographic Education, and he served as the principal investigator for an NSF-funded national consensus project that created a road map for improving geography education over the next decade.
From 1993 to 2007, Edelson was a faculty member at Northwestern University with a joint appointment in the School of Education and Social Policy (Learning Sciences) and the School of Engineering (Computer Science). At Northwestern, he conducted a program of integrated research and development focused on improving earth and environmental science education. In this work, he developed innovative curriculum materials and software, as well as professional development programs, for middle and high school science. He also participated in several district-level efforts to implement instructional reform in Chicago Public Schools and elsewhere. In the context of these development and implementation efforts, Edelson conducted research on instructional design, student motivation and learning, and teacher professional development.
As a curriculum and software developer, Edelson is the lead author of The OpenSciEd Middle School Science Program and Investigations in Environmental Science: A Case-Based Approach to the Study of Environmental Systems, a textbook for high school environmental science. He contributed to the development units for two comprehensive middle school science programs, Project-Based Inquiry Science and Investigating and Questioning our World through Science and Technology (IQWST). He also led the development of educational software applications for visualizing and analyzing geographic data, National Geographic FieldScope, My World GIS, and WorldWatcher. All these works are the products of NSF R&D grants.
As a researcher and advocate, Edelson has written extensively on science, geography, and environmental education, motivation, instructional design, educational technology, and teacher professional development. He is an author or co-author on more than 50 papers in academic journals, books, and conference proceedings, including The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, The International Handbook on Science Education, the Journal of the Learning Sciences, the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, and The Journal of Science Teacher Education. In 2014, a collection of his essays was compiled into a book entitled GeoLearning: Thoughts on Geography and Education.
Edelson received his PhD in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) from Northwestern University and his BS in Engineering Sciences from Yale University. In 2013, he received the Presidential Award from the National Council for Geographic Education.