Cases on Research-Based Teaching Methods in Science Education

Cases on Research-Based Teaching Methods in Science Education
Author: de Silva, Eugene
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2014-08-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1466663766
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While the great scientists of the past recognized a need for a multidisciplinary approach, today’s schools often treat math and science as subjects separate from the rest. This not only creates a disinterest among students, but also a potential learning gap once students reach college and then graduate into the workforce. Cases on Research-Based Teaching Methods in Science Education addresses the problems currently facing science education in the USA and the UK, and suggests a new hands-on approach to learning. This book is an essential reference source for policymakers, academicians, researchers, educators, curricula developers, and teachers as they strive to improve education at the elementary, secondary, and collegiate levels.

Using Research and Reason in Education

Using Research and Reason in Education
Author: Paula J. Stanovich
Publisher:
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2003
Genre: Education
ISBN:
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As professionals, teachers can become more effective and powerful by developing the skills to recognize scientifically based practice and, when the evidence is not available, use some basic research concepts to draw conclusions on their own. This paper offers a primer for those skills that will allow teachers to become independent evaluators of educational research.

Improving How Universities Teach Science

Improving How Universities Teach Science
Author: Carl Wieman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2017-05-22
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0674978927
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Too many universities remain wedded to outmoded ways of teaching science in spite of extensive research showing that there are much more effective methods. Too few departments ask whether what happens in their lecture halls is effective at helping students to learn and how they can encourage their faculty to teach better. But real change is possible, and Carl Wieman shows us how it can be brought about. Improving How Universities Teach Science draws on Wieman’s unparalleled experience to provide a blueprint for educators seeking sustainable improvements in science teaching. Wieman created the Science Education Initiative (SEI), a program implemented across thirteen science departments at the universities of Colorado and British Columbia, to support the widespread adoption of the best research-based approaches to science teaching. The program’s data show that in the most successful departments 90 percent of faculty adopted better methods. Wieman identifies what factors helped and hindered the adoption of good teaching methods. He also gives detailed, effective, and tested strategies for departments and institutions to measure and improve the quality of their teaching while limiting the demands on faculty time. Among all of the commentary addressing shortcomings in higher education, Wieman’s lessons on improving teaching and learning stand out. His analysis and solutions are not limited to just one lecture hall or course but deal with changing entire departments and universities. For those who want to improve how universities teach science to the next generation, Wieman’s work is a critical first step.

Reaching Students

Reaching Students
Author: Nancy Kober
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780309300438
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"Reaching Students presents the best thinking to date on teaching and learning undergraduate science and engineering. Focusing on the disciplines of astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, geosciences, and physics, this book is an introduction to strategies to try in your classroom or institution. Concrete examples and case studies illustrate how experienced instructors and leaders have applied evidence-based approaches to address student needs, encouraged the use of effective techniques within a department or an institution, and addressed the challenges that arose along the way."--Provided by publisher.

Taking Science to School

Taking Science to School
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2007-04-16
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309133831
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What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as: When do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child's development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects? What role does nonschool learning play in children's knowledge of science? How can science education capitalize on children's natural curiosity? What are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning? How can teachers be taught to teach science? The book also provides a detailed examination of how we know what we know about children's learning of scienceâ€"about the role of research and evidence. This book will be an essential resource for everyone involved in K-8 science educationâ€"teachers, principals, boards of education, teacher education providers and accreditors, education researchers, federal education agencies, and state and federal policy makers. It will also be a useful guide for parents and others interested in how children learn.

Scientific Research in Education

Scientific Research in Education
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2002-03-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309133092
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Researchers, historians, and philosophers of science have debated the nature of scientific research in education for more than 100 years. Recent enthusiasm for "evidence-based" policy and practice in educationâ€"now codified in the federal law that authorizes the bulk of elementary and secondary education programsâ€"have brought a new sense of urgency to understanding the ways in which the basic tenets of science manifest in the study of teaching, learning, and schooling. Scientific Research in Education describes the similarities and differences between scientific inquiry in education and scientific inquiry in other fields and disciplines and provides a number of examples to illustrate these ideas. Its main argument is that all scientific endeavors share a common set of principles, and that each fieldâ€"including education researchâ€"develops a specialization that accounts for the particulars of what is being studied. The book also provides suggestions for how the federal government can best support high-quality scientific research in education.

Scientific Teaching

Scientific Teaching
Author: Jo Handelsman
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781429201889
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Seasoned classroom veterans, pre-tenured faculty, and neophyte teaching assistants alike will find this book invaluable. HHMI Professor Jo Handelsman and her colleagues at the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching (WPST) have distilled key findings from education, learning, and cognitive psychology and translated them into six chapters of digestible research points and practical classroom examples. The recommendations have been tried and tested in the National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology and through the WPST. Scientific Teaching is not a prescription for better teaching. Rather, it encourages the reader to approach teaching in a way that captures the spirit and rigor of scientific research and to contribute to transforming how students learn science.

Discipline-Based Education Research

Discipline-Based Education Research
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2012-08-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309254140
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The National Science Foundation funded a synthesis study on the status, contributions, and future direction of discipline-based education research (DBER) in physics, biological sciences, geosciences, and chemistry. DBER combines knowledge of teaching and learning with deep knowledge of discipline-specific science content. It describes the discipline-specific difficulties learners face and the specialized intellectual and instructional resources that can facilitate student understanding. Discipline-Based Education Research is based on a 30-month study built on two workshops held in 2008 to explore evidence on promising practices in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. This book asks questions that are essential to advancing DBER and broadening its impact on undergraduate science teaching and learning. The book provides empirical research on undergraduate teaching and learning in the sciences, explores the extent to which this research currently influences undergraduate instruction, and identifies the intellectual and material resources required to further develop DBER. Discipline-Based Education Research provides guidance for future DBER research. In addition, the findings and recommendations of this report may invite, if not assist, post-secondary institutions to increase interest and research activity in DBER and improve its quality and usefulness across all natural science disciples, as well as guide instruction and assessment across natural science courses to improve student learning. The book brings greater focus to issues of student attrition in the natural sciences that are related to the quality of instruction. Discipline-Based Education Research will be of interest to educators, policy makers, researchers, scholars, decision makers in universities, government agencies, curriculum developers, research sponsors, and education advocacy groups.