Senior Science Educator; Director, Leadership Development and Capacity-Building; Director of Strategic Partnerships
Jody Bintz, MA, serves as Senior Science Educator; Director, Leadership Development and Capacity-Building; Director of Strategic Partnerships at BSCS Science Learning. She works primarily in the areas of leadership development and teacher professional learning.
Jody has designed and led a variety of programs to develop organizational leadership capacity and enhance the knowledge and skills of professional development leaders in various sites across the country, particularly as related to implementing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). She directed the BSCS National Academy for Curriculum Leadership (NACL). This work included a six-year partnership with Washington State LASER and involved nearly 30 secondary science leadership teams and 20 state-wide leaders. She served as the principal investigator for a research study to test the influence of the NACL leadership development model on student achievement. Also as a principal investigator, she spearheaded a synthesis study focused on teacher leadership development. Jody serves as co-principal investigator of an efficacy study of the professional development program STeLLA® (Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis) and its impact on high school biology student learning and teacher practice. With a vision of developing tools and processes to advance the implementation of the NGSS, she leads a project involving collaborators from the K-12 Alliance at WestEd, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Learning Innovations at WestEd, and Achieve, Inc.
Before joining BSCS, Jody served as an instructional services consultant with Loess Hills AEA 13 in southwest Iowa. Her responsibilities included serving on the Iowa Support Team for Schools in Need of Improvement, strategic school improvement and professional development planning, and designing and leading professional development activities with K-12 science teachers focused on curriculum, instruction, assessment, technology integration, and the integration of reading strategies. Jody taught high school science and coached in Treynor, Iowa. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from the University of Northern Iowa and her Master of Arts degree in Science Education from University of Northern Iowa.