Staff
Patrick Sean Smith
Patrick Sean Smith, Senior Research Associate at Horizon Research, Inc. (HRI), received a Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry, a Master's Degree in Science Teaching, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Prior to joining HRI in 1991, Dr. Smith taught high school chemistry and physics. In addition, he was a member of the Education Studies Department at Berea College, where he taught courses in elementary science methods and the philosophical foundations of education.
Dr. Smith worked extensively on materials development for Project Earth Science, a middle-grades earth science project. He also worked on the evaluation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Statewide Systemic Initiative for North and South Carolina. Dr. Smith was involved in the design of the core evaluation for the Local Systemic Change through Teacher Enhancement project, and was the project manager for the 2000 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education.
He was the principal investigator of ATLAST (Assessing Teacher Learning About Science Teaching), a project that created instruments to measure teacher and student science content knowledge, as well as teacher and student opportunity to learn. He is currently a co-Principal Investigator on the 2012 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education, leading the data collection phase of the study.