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)
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
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“Nevertheless, no school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children’s best interests. Parents have every right to understand what is happening to their children at school, and teachers have the responsibility to share that information without prejudicial judgment.... Such communication, which can only be in a child’s interest, is not possible without mutual trust between parent and teacher.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)