Michael L. Bentley, EdD

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Current position: Associate Professor of Science Education, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Michael's interests include science and environmental education, curriculum studies, teacher education, the teaching-learning process and human development, and international education. He is especially intersted in the social studies of science as applied to science education. He lives in Salem, Virginia with his wife, the Rev. Susan Emmons Bentley (Rector of St. James Episcopal Church, Roanoke) and sons Alex and Matthew, as well as Luke, a golden retriever and Alex's menagerie that includes snakes and turtles and other creatures. Daughter, Sarah is a student at Guilford College.

What follows is something a a professional resume. Since retiring from UTK in 2006 Dr. Bentley has taught as an adjunct at the University of Virginia, Mary Baldwin College, and Radford University, and has directed an Improving Teacher Quality program at Hollins University under the auspices of the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia (SCHEV). He has also continued to publish and participate in professional conferences as a presenter. Bentley coordinated the Earth Science Teacher Endorsement Project for the Roanoke Higher Education Center in 2001-2002 which provided courses for science teachers to obtain their licensure endorsement to teach high school earth science.  He directed the Elementary Science Education Institute for Teachers, a project sponsored by SCHEV throught the Dwight D. Eisenhower Program.  

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.  With more than thirty years experience in science and environmental education, Dr. Bentley has taught students at all levels - from elementary to graduate, and has directed masters theses and served on doctoral dissertation committees.  He has been a museum educator/administrator (Science Museum of Western Virginia), and has been on the ground floor in the creation of two schools (The Southwestern Virginia Governor's School, a magnet high school for science and technology; and Community High School, Roanoke, VA), and he has been a supervisor of K-12 science for the Virginia Department of Education. 

Dr. Bentley was awarded a BS in biology from King's College (which included studying abroad at the University of Leeds, England) and an MS in education from the University of Pennsylvania.  He  was awarded his doctorate in science education by the University of Virginia in 1985.   His dissertation was in environmental education, 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.

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, Mimosa Publications (Hawthorne, Australia), Shortlands Publications (Auckland, NZ), Rigby Education, and numerous schools and school districts, including those of Greenville, SC, Salem, VA, Albemarle County, VA, Orange County, VA, Montgomery County, VA, Chicago, Des Plaines, IL, Oak Park, IL, Elgin, IL, Waukegan, IL, Community School (Roanoke, VA), and Miami Country Day School, Miami, FL.  He has consulted for Kaplan College, IA, the Roanoke (VA) Higher Education Center, and Norfolk State University, Norfolk, VA.   Dr. Bentley also has conducted formal program evaluation services performed for the Virginia Department of Education, Loyola University of Chicago, Sweet Briar College, and the Virginia Tech Institute for Connecting Science Research to the Classroom.

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 and George Glasson directedthe 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. Since coming to UT in 2001 Dr. Bentley has won several funding awards and currently directs the Inquiry, Integration and Differentiation Project, A UT Professional Development Institute for Appalachian Educators.

3rd Scientific Conference on the Environment, 2005
yemen05.jpg
President of Taiz University & Prof. Alwan
Taiz University, May 3-5, 2005

Keynote presentation

The 8 day visit to Yemen included stays in Sana'a and Taiz and interaction with environmental scientists from all over the Arab world.

Family

Susan Emmons Bentley is Rector of St. James Episcopal Church, Roanoke, Virginia (http://www.stjamesroanoke.org/)

Dr. Bentley is the author of several other books, including two books for middle school and high school students published by the Princeton Review: Astronomy Smart Junior (1996) of the award-winning Smart Junior reference works for early teens, and Earth Science Review (1998). Dr. Bentley, Dr. Chris Ebert of the University of South Carolina and Dr. Edward Ebert of Coker College, SC, co-authored The Natural Investigator: A Constructivist Approach to Elementary School Science (2000, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning). Bentley, Ebert and Ebert updated that textbook and it was published in 2007 as Teaching Constructivist Science K-8: Nurturing the Natural Investigator by Corwin Press.