This book provides a comprehensive overview of humanistic approaches to science. Approaches that connect students to broader human concerns in their everyday life and culture. Glen Aikenhead, an expert in the field of culturally sensitive science education, summarizes major worldwide historical findings; focuses on present thinking; and offers evidence in support of classroom practice. This highly accessible text covers curriculum policy, teaching materials, teacher orientations, teacher education, student learning, culture studies, and future research.
How do tiny bugs get into oatmeal? What makes children look like-- or different from-- their parents? Where do rotten apples go after they fall off the tree? By presenting everyday mysteries like these, this book will motivate your students to carry out hands-on science investigations and actually care about the results. These 20 open-ended mysteries focus exclusively on biological science, including botany, human physiology, zoology, and health. The stories come with lists of science concepts to explore, grade-appropriate strategies for using them, and explanations of how the lessons align with national standards. They also relieve you of the tiring work of designing inquiry lessons from scratch. " What makes this book so special is the unique way science is integrated into the story line, using characters and situations children can easily identify with." -- Page Keeley, author of the NSTA Press series Uncovering Student Ideas in Science
In August 2003 over 400 researchers in the field of science education from all over the world met at the 4th ESERA conference in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands. During the conference 300 papers about actual issues in the field, such as the learning of scientific concepts and skills, scientific literacy, informal science learning, science teacher education, modeling in science education were presented. The book contains 40 of the most outstanding papers presented during the conference. These papers reflect the quality and variety of the conference and represent the state of the art in the field of research in science education.
Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.
Contributing to the social justice agenda of redefining what science is and what it means in the everyday lives of people, this book introduces science educators to various dimensions of viewing science and scientific literacy from the standpoint of the learner, engaged with real everyday concerns within or outside school; develops a new form of scholarship based on the dialogic nature of science as process and product; and achieves these two objectives in a readable but scholarly way. Opposing the tendency to teach and do research as if science, science education, and scientific literacy could be imposed from the outside, the authors want science education to be for people rather than strictly about how knowledge gets into their heads. Taking up the challenges of this orientation, science educators can begin to make inroads into the currently widespread irrelevance of science in the everyday lives of people. Utmost attention has been given to making this book readable by the people from whose lives the topics of the chapters emerge, all the while retaining academic integrity and high-level scholarship. Wolff Michael Roth has been awarded the Distinguished Contributions Award by The National Association for Research in Science Teaching, for his contributions to research in this field. He has also been elected to be the Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.
The Sourcebook for Teaching Science is a unique, comprehensive resource designed to give middle and high school science teachers a wealth of information that will enhance any science curriculum. Filled with innovative tools, dynamic activities, and practical lesson plans that are grounded in theory, research, and national standards, the book offers both new and experienced science teachers powerful strategies and original ideas that will enhance the teaching of physics, chemistry, biology, and the earth and space sciences.
Critical Pedagogy addresses the shortcomings of mainstream educational theory and practice and promotes the humanization of teacher and student. Where Critical Pedagogy is often treated as a discourse of academics in universities, this book explores the applications of Critical Pedagogy to actual classroom situations. Written in a straight-forward, concise, and lucid form by an American high school teacher, drawing examples from literature, film, and, above all, the everyday classroom, this book is meant to provoke thought in teachers, students and education activists as we transform our classrooms into democratic sites. From grading to testing, from content area disciplines to curriculum planning and instruction, from the social construction of knowledge to embodied cognition, this book takes the theories behind Critical Pedagogy and illustrates them at work in common classroom environments.
Use this book to move science learning out of the classroom and into everyday life. Science has a profound capacity to transform how we experience the world, but it can be challenging to foster transformative experiences. When it comes to the science classroom, too often the Las Vegas slogan applies: What happens here stays here. Based on over 20 years of research, this guide presents the Teaching for Transformative Experiences in Science instructional model to help teachers craft practices that will encourage students to apply science concepts beyond defined school boundaries. This practical resource includes detailed vignettes, classroom examples, guidance for trying out strategies, and materials for assessing transformative experiences. Book Features Introduction to transformative experience theory.A model of teaching based on empirical classroom research.Vignettes and classroom examples that illustrate application of the model strategies.“Try It Out” guides.Assessment materials. “Changing how students experience science can change more than their understanding of science. It can change the world.” —From the Foreword by Gale M. Sinatra, USC Rossier School of Education
At a time when scientific and technological competence is vital to the nation's future, the weak performance of U.S. students in science reflects the uneven quality of current science education. Although young children come to school with innate curiosity and intuitive ideas about the world around them, science classes rarely tap this potential. Many experts have called for a new approach to science education, based on recent and ongoing research on teaching and learning. In this approach, simulations and games could play a significant role by addressing many goals and mechanisms for learning science: the motivation to learn science, conceptual understanding, science process skills, understanding of the nature of science, scientific discourse and argumentation, and identification with science and science learning. To explore this potential, Learning Science: Computer Games, Simulations, and Education, reviews the available research on learning science through interaction with digital simulations and games. It considers the potential of digital games and simulations to contribute to learning science in schools, in informal out-of-school settings, and everyday life. The book also identifies the areas in which more research and research-based development is needed to fully capitalize on this potential. Learning Science will guide academic researchers; developers, publishers, and entrepreneurs from the digital simulation and gaming community; and education practitioners and policy makers toward the formation of research and development partnerships that will facilitate rich intellectual collaboration. Industry, government agencies and foundations will play a significant role through start-up and ongoing support to ensure that digital games and simulations will not only excite and entertain, but also motivate and educate.
This book sets out the necessary processes and challenges involved in modeling student thinking, understanding and learning. The chapters look at the centrality of models for knowledge claims in science education and explore the modeling of mental processes, knowledge, cognitive development and conceptual learning. The conclusion outlines significant implications for science teachers and those researching in this field. This highly useful work provides models of scientific thinking from different field and analyses the processes by which we can arrive at claims about the minds of others. The author highlights the logical impossibility of ever knowing for sure what someone else knows, understands or thinks, and makes the case that researchers in science education need to be much more explicit about the extent to which research onto learners’ ideas in science is necessarily a process of developing models. Through this book we learn that research reports should acknowledge the role of modeling and avoid making claims that are much less tentative than is justified as this can lead to misleading and sometimes contrary findings in the literature. In everyday life we commonly take it for granted that finding out what another knows or thinks is a relatively trivial or straightforward process. We come to take the ‘mental register’ (the way we talk about the ‘contents’ of minds) for granted and so teachers and researchers may readily underestimate the challenges involved in their work.
