The Virginia Association of Science Teachers, Inc. (VAST) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.
VAST is a comprehensive educational organization dedicated to the nurturing and advancement of superior science education. Its objectives are to advance the study of science, to promote excellence in the teaching of science and to provide opportunity for communication among science educators in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Leadership is provided by promoting the study of science at all grade-levels, supporting conditions which ensure an optimal environment for the teaching of science, advocating high quality science instruction for all students at all levels and by providing an avenue for communication among the members of the science education community.
Formed in 1952, it is the Virginia chapter affiliated with the National Science Teachers Association.
Famous quotes containing the words association, science and/or teachers:
“An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The belief that established science and scholarship—which have so relentlessly excluded women from their making—are “objective” and “value-free” and that feminist studies are “unscholarly,” “biased,” and “ideological” dies hard. Yet the fact is that all science, and all scholarship, and all art are ideological; there is no neutrality in culture!”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)