Member Name:

Michael Bentley

Member Since:

September 26, 2007

Last Logged in:

May 18, 2010

Hometown:

Salem, VA

High Schools Attended:

Roanoke Catholic High School (Virginia)

Colleges/Universities Attended:

University of Virginia, University of Pennsylvania, Kings College, University of Leeds (England)

A few words about me...

Michael Bentley, Ed.D. retired in 2006 from the science and environmental education faculty of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His formal education includes degrees from King’s College (biology), the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia (science and environmental education). His 38-year career has included teaching at the elementary, middle school and high school levels as well as work in science museum education, school administration, and state-level curriculum supervision. As a teacher educator he also worked at Virginia Tech and National-Louis University in Chicago. He has authored numerous books, curriculum materials, and journal articles in science and environmental education with his latest book being _Teaching Constructivist Science, K–8: Nurturing Natural Investigators in the Standards-Based Classroom_ (2007, Corwin Press). Dr. Bentley’s areas of interest include international education, curriculum and instruction in science and environmental education, informal (museum) education, human development, and the nature of science (history, philosophy, sociology) as applied to science education.



Dr. Bentley lives in Salem, Virginia with his wife, the Rev. Susan Emmons Bentley (Rector of St. James Episcopal Church, Roanoke), daughter, Sarah and sons Alex and Matthew, as well as Luke, a golden retriever and a menagerie that includes lop-earred bunnies, several snakes, turtles, lizards, and frogs.



Dr. Bentley has directed numerous funded projects in Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia directed at teacher professional development. Several of these were through the Dwight D. Eisenhower Program and the successor program, Improving Teacher Quality. He has also been an evaluation consultant and the lead investigtor on several research-related grants.



Dr. Bentley has taught students at all levels. In addition to eight years experience teaching K-12, Dr. Bentley has taught graduate and undergraduate science and science education courses. He has served as an educational consultant to school districts, higher education institutions, museums and other agencies and has served on numerous master's thesis and doctoral dissertation committees.  He has been a museum educator and administrator (Science Museum of Western Virginia), and has served as supervisor of K-12 science for the Virginia Department of Education. He has had a major role in the creation of two schools - The Southwestern Virginia Governor's School, a magnet high school for science and technology (http://swvgs.k12.va.us/); and Community High School, Roanoke, VA (http://www.communityhigh.net).



Dr. Bentley's introduction to the field of education occurred in1968 in a training at Yale University's Gesell Institute of Human Development and Connecticut College for service as a preschool teacher's aide in one of the nation's first Head Start projects.   From 1969 to1976 Bentley taught at Yeadon High School in Pennsylvania (bordering west Philadelphia), and at two Virginia schools (Parry McCluer High School in Buena Vista and Wasena School in Roanoke).  He has taught all subjects as a 5th grade teacher, middle school life science and physical science, high school biology and physics.



In the late 1970s, Dr. Bentley began doing educational consulting and evaluation work for schools and other organizations.  Since that time he has provided services to numerous schools, educational agencies and publishers, including the Virginia Department of Education, the Science Museum of Western Virginia, the Academy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Quantico, VA), Maymont Foundation (Richmond, VA), the Mathematics and Science Center (Henrico Co., VA), Ivy Creek Foundation (Charlottesville, VA), Maryland Public Television, Kaplan College, IA, the Roanoke (VA) Higher Education Center, and Norfolk State University (VA), Mimosa Publications (Hawthorne, Australia), Shortlands Publications (Auckland, NZ), Rigby Education, and numerous schools and school districts, including Greenville, SC, Chicago, Des Plaines, IL, Oak Park, IL, Elgin, IL, Waukegan, IL, Miami Country Day School, Miami, FL, and several districts in Virginia. Dr. Bentley also has conducted program evaluation services for the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden (Coral Gables, FL), the Virginia Department of Education, Loyola University of Chicago, Sweet Briar College, and the Virginia Tech Institute for Connecting Science Research to the Classroom.



Dr. Bentley was awarded his doctorate in science education by the University of Virginia in 1985. His dissertation was a study of children's wilderness experiences. His life long interest in international education and multicultural education began with his undergraduate experience at Leeds and continued through comparative education studies at Penn and a sabbatical in Melbourne, Australia.



From 1987 to 1996, Dr. Bentley coordinated the undergraduate and graduate science education programs at National-Louis University in Evanston, IL, where he also directed several urban educational reform initiatives in Chicago and Waukegan, IL, funded by state, federal, and Annenberg Foundation grants.  These projects were characterized by themes such as learning by inquiry, constructivism, cooperative learning, curriculum integration, appropriate use of technology, using the local community as a curriculum resource, and building school-parent-community relationships.



For eight years (1985-87, 1996-01) Dr. Bentley served on the teacher education faculty of Virginia Tech. While at Virginia Tech, he co-directed the Geological and Biological Change and the Nature of Science Institute, a summer program for high school science teachers focusing on evolution and earth history and sponsored by the State Council for Higher Education throught the Dwight D. Eisenhower Program. He taught at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville from 2001-2006 where he received several awards for research and professional development projects, including the Inquiry, Integration and Differentiation Project, a professional development institute for Appalachian Educators.



Since retiring in 2006, Dr. Bentley has continued to write and participate in professional activities. A bibliography of his work and sample papers can be viewed at http://web.utk.edu/~mbentle1 .  His memberships include the Association of Teacher Educators, the Association for Science Teacher Education, the National Science Teachers Association, the North American Association for Environmental Education, the School Science and Mathematics Association, the American Educational Studies Association, the National Education Association (Life Member since 1971), and Phi Delta Kappa.