Newcomers—if you're wondering what happens when you come to a conference, please visit our Newcomers' Page.
If you would like to present a session at an NSTA conference, see Presenting at Conferences for upcoming deadlines and instructions.
Want to promote your educational product or service? Select Exhibits and Advertising and learn about opportunities at NSTA conferences.
NSTA Conferences on Science Education: An Overview
Open to member and nonmember science educators, NSTA conferences offer the latest in science content, teaching strategy, and research to enhance and expand your professional growth. Take advantage of this unique opportunity to collaborate with science education leaders and your peers. Each year NSTA hosts a national conference on science education and three area conferences on science education.
NSTA conferences are jam-packed with innovative presentations and hands-on workshops as well as special invited speakers, educational field trips, short courses, NSTA Symposia (which provide online follow-up after the conference online), and exciting social events. The Exhibition of Science Education Materials is the largest exhibition of its kind and is an invaluable source of curriculum and other products.
As an important addition to the national conference agenda (and selected area conferences), NSTA presents Professional Development Institutes—focused, content-based, partnered programs that explore key topics in significant depth. These daylong programs offer participants a unique learning opportunity that includes a personalized pathway through the full conference agenda. NSTA national and area conferences may also feature one-day topical research dissemination conferences on focused topics. In plenary sessions and multiple small-group workshops, speakers present findings from their NSF-funded research. Details on these special conference events will be provided as programs are confirmed.
Session Proposals
Submissions are no longer being accepted for NSTA’s 2008 area conferences in Charlotte, North Carolina (Oct. 30–Nov. 1), Portland, Oregon (Nov. 20–22), and Cincinnati, Ohio (Dec. 4–6), or for the 2009 national conference in New Orleans (March 19–22).
For a complete list of future NSTA conferences through 2009, click here.
Exhibitors and Advertisers
NSTA conferences offer you the opportunity to present your products or services to classroom science teachers—one-on-one in the exhibit hall, in exhibitor workshops, via conference advertising. And sponsorships allow you to cement your name among the teaching profession's leaders. Explore the myriad options!
In this section:
NSTA Conferences: A Brief History
The National Science Teachers Association was born on July 4, 1944—or rather, it came into being through a merger of two existing organizations. Less than five months later, NSTA held its first regional meetings in Chicago and New York, but for some years it continued to hold meetings in conjunction with other science organizations.
In 1952, its Summer Regional Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, brought the first commercial displays: 17 tabletops sold at $50 each. The next year,
NSTA held its first independent national convention. As noted in The Science Teacher: “[H]istory was indeed made at Pittsburgh.
Total registration reached 617, representing 33 states from coast to coast. Over 400 persons attended the Pittsburgh Hospitality Night. … 306 sat down
to dinner at the banquet session on Friday. The [28] commercial exhibits were well attended as were the nearly twenty instructional exhibits."
More than fifty years later, NSTA continues to provide rich venues for science educators to share their experience, but the scale has
changed significantly. Over 18,000 persons attended NSTA conferences in 2006—three regional conferences and the national conference
in Anaheim. Attendees had more than 1,700 sessions to choose from, and 428 exhibitors displayed their newest products.
With its Conferences on Science Education, NSTA helps keep the conversation going, furthering the "improvement of science education and
learning for all."