Forty classroom-ready science teaching and learning activities for elementary and middle school teachers Grounded in theory and best-practices research, this practical text provides elementary and middle school teachers with 40 place-based activities that will help them to make science learning relevant to their students. This text provides teachers with both a rationale and a set of strategies and activities for teaching science in a local context to help students engage with science learning and come to understand the importance of science in their everyday lives.
In the early twentieth century, a curriculum known as nature study flourished in major city school systems, streetcar suburbs, small towns, and even rural one-room schools. This object-based approach to learning about the natural world marked the first systematic attempt to introduce science into elementary education, and it came at a time when institutions such as zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums, and national parks were promoting the idea that direct knowledge of nature would benefit an increasingly urban and industrial nation. The definitive history of this once pervasive nature study movement, TeachingChildren Science emphasizes the scientific, pedagogical, and social incentives that encouraged primarily women teachers to explore nature in and beyond their classrooms. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt brings to vivid life the instructors and reformers who advanced nature study through on-campus schools, summer programs, textbooks, and public speaking. Within a generation, this highly successful hands-on approach migrated beyond public schools into summer camps, afterschool activities, and the scouting movement. Although the rich diversity of nature study classes eventually lost ground to increasingly standardized curricula, Kohlstedt locates its legacy in the living plants and animals in classrooms and environmental field trips that remain central parts of science education today.
Over the past twenty years, much has been written about the knowledge bases thought necessary to teach science. Shulman has outlined seven knowledge domains needed for teaching, and others, such as Tamir, have proposed somewhat similar domains of knowledge, specifically for science teachers. Aspects of this knowledge have changed because of shifts in curriculum thinking, and the current trends in science education have seen a sharp increase in the significance of the knowledge bases. The development of a standards-based approach to the quality of science teaching has become common in the Western world, and phrases such as “evidence-based practice” have been tossed around in the attempt to “measure” such quality. The Professional Knowledge Base of Science Teaching explores the knowledge bases considered necessary for science teaching. It brings together a number of researchers who have worked with science teachers, and they address what constitutes evidence of high quality science teaching, on what basis such evidence can be judged, and how such evidence reflects the knowledge basis of the modern day professional science teacher. This is the second book produced from the Monash University- King’s College London International Centre for the Study of Science and Mathematics Curriculum. The first book presented a big picture of what science education might be like if values once again become central while this book explores what classroom practices may look like based on such a big picture.
Educator John D. Mays lays out a revolutionary new paradigm for science education sorely needed today. Written in an accessible style and firmly grounded upon the biblical teaching of humans as God's image bearers, he explains the principles and strategies schools need to establish a premier science program. It's not about gimmicks or finding new ways to coax students to learn. It is about bringing the truth of humans as image bearers of God into the classroom. It is also about drawing students upward into the adult world of scientific study rather than pandering to juvenile tastes and cultural assumptions about teens and media. This book advocates a rethinking of strategies, methods and priorities that will result in students actually learning and retaining course material.
Contemporary science teaching approaches focus on fostering students to construct new scientific knowledge as a process of inquiry rather than having them act as passive learners memorizing stated scientific facts. Although this perspective of teaching science is clearly emphasized in the National Research Council’s National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996), it is however challenging to achieve in the classroom. Science teaching approaches should enhance students’ conceptual understanding of scientific concepts which can be later utilized by students in deeper recognition of real world (Marsak & Janouskova, 2007). This book identifies and describes several different contemporary science teaching approaches and presents recent applications of these approaches in promoting interest among students. It promotes conceptual understanding of science concepts among them as well. This book identifies pertinent issues related to strategies of teaching science and describes best practice The chapters in this book are culmination of years of extensive research and development efforts to understand more about how to teach science by the distinguished scholars and practicing teachers.
This book features 35 of best papers from the 9th European Science Education Research Association Conference, ESERA 2011, held in Lyon, France, September 5th-9th 2011. The ESERA international conference featured some 1,200 participants from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe as well as North and South America offering insight into the field at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. This book presents studies that represent the current orientations of research in science education and includes studies in different educational traditions from around the world. It is organized into six parts around the three poles (content, students, teachers) and their interrelations of science education: after a general presentation of the volume (first part), the second part concerns SSI (Socio-Scientific Issues) dealing with new types of content, the third the teachers, the fourth the students, the fifth the relationships between teaching and learning, and the sixth the teaching resources and the curricula.
Science Teaching explains how history and philosophy of science contributes to the resolution of persistent theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical issues in science education. It shows why it is essential for science teachers to know and appreciate the history and philosophy of the subject they teach and how this knowledge can enrich science instruction and enthuse students in the subject. Through its historical perspective, the book reveals to students, teachers, and researchers the foundations of scientific knowledge and its connection to philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, and broader social influences including the European Enlightenment, and develops detailed arguments about constructivism, worldviews and science, multicultural science education, inquiry teaching, values, and teacher education. Fully updated and expanded, the 20th Anniversary Edition of this classic text, featuring four new chapters—The Enlightenment Tradition; Joseph Priestley and Photosynthesis; Science, Worldviews and Education; and Nature of Science Research—and 1,300 references, provides a solid foundation for teaching and learning in the field.
This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects. There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. Science educators will be grateful for this unique, encyclopaedic handbook, Gerald Holton, Physics Department, Harvard University This handbook gathers the fruits of over thirty years’ research by a growing international and cosmopolitan community Fabio Bevilacqua, Physics Department, University of Pavia
