The Role of Scientists in the Professional Development of Science Teachers

The Role of Scientists in the Professional Development of Science Teachers
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 1996-04-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309049997

Scientists nationwide are showing greater interest in contributing to the reform of science education, yet many do not know how to begin. This highly readable book serves as a guide for those scientists interested in working on the professional development of K-12 science teachers. Based on information from over 180 professional development programs for science teachers, the volume addresses what kinds of activities work and why. Included are useful examples of programs focusing on issues of content and process in science teaching. The authors present "day-in-a-life" vignettes, along with a suggested reading list, to help familiarize scientists with the professional lives of K-12 science teachers. The book also offers scientists suggestions on how to take first steps toward involvement, how to identify programs that have been determined effective by teachers, and how to become involved in system-wide programs. Discussions on ways of working with teachers on program design, program evaluation, and funding sources are included. Accessible and practical, this book will be a welcome resource for university, institutional, and corporate scientists; teachers; teacher educators; organizations; administrators; and parents.

The Role of Scientists in the Professional Development of Science Teachers

The Role of Scientists in the Professional Development of Science Teachers
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 1996-05-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 030910372X

Scientists nationwide are showing greater interest in contributing to the reform of science education, yet many do not know how to begin. This highly readable book serves as a guide for those scientists interested in working on the professional development of K-12 science teachers. Based on information from over 180 professional development programs for science teachers, the volume addresses what kinds of activities work and why. Included are useful examples of programs focusing on issues of content and process in science teaching. The authors present "day-in-a-life" vignettes, along with a suggested reading list, to help familiarize scientists with the professional lives of K-12 science teachers. The book also offers scientists suggestions on how to take first steps toward involvement, how to identify programs that have been determined effective by teachers, and how to become involved in system-wide programs. Discussions on ways of working with teachers on program design, program evaluation, and funding sources are included. Accessible and practical, this book will be a welcome resource for university, institutional, and corporate scientists; teachers; teacher educators; organizations; administrators; and parents.

Agriculture's Role in K-12 Education

Agriculture's Role in K-12 Education
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 57
Release: 1998-06-22
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309060486

The Board on Agriculture organized a Forum on Agriculture's Role in K-12 Education to provide an opportunity for agricultural professional societies to explore ways in which examples from agriculture, food, and environment systems can be used to enhance inquiry-based science education. Participants discussed how professional societies could enhance the continued education of K-12 teachers, improve school science programs, and increase collaboration with other professional societies and science teachers. This booklet presents the proceedings of this forum. Chapters include: (1) A Scientist's Role in K-12 Education; (2) Scientist and Teacher Partnerships; (3) Sustaining Support for Science Education; and (4) Future Roles for Professional Societies and Scientists. (ASK)

Scientific Teaching

Scientific Teaching
Author: Jo Handelsman
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2007
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781429201889

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.

Preparing Teachers

Preparing Teachers
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2010-07-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309128056

Teachers make a difference. The success of any plan for improving educational outcomes depends on the teachers who carry it out and thus on the abilities of those attracted to the field and their preparation. Yet there are many questions about how teachers are being prepared and how they ought to be prepared. Yet, teacher preparation is often treated as an afterthought in discussions of improving the public education system. Preparing Teachers addresses the issue of teacher preparation with specific attention to reading, mathematics, and science. The book evaluates the characteristics of the candidates who enter teacher preparation programs, the sorts of instruction and experiences teacher candidates receive in preparation programs, and the extent that the required instruction and experiences are consistent with converging scientific evidence. Preparing Teachers also identifies a need for a data collection model to provide valid and reliable information about the content knowledge, pedagogical competence, and effectiveness of graduates from the various kinds of teacher preparation programs. Federal and state policy makers need reliable, outcomes-based information to make sound decisions, and teacher educators need to know how best to contribute to the development of effective teachers. Clearer understanding of the content and character of effective teacher preparation is critical to improving it and to ensuring that the same critiques and questions are not being repeated 10 years from now.

How Students Learn

How Students Learn
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 633
Release: 2005-01-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309074339

How do you get a fourth-grader excited about history? How do you even begin to persuade high school students that mathematical functions are relevant to their everyday lives? In this volume, practical questions that confront every classroom teacher are addressed using the latest exciting research on cognition, teaching, and learning. How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom builds on the discoveries detailed in the bestselling How People Learn. Now, these findings are presented in a way that teachers can use immediately, to revitalize their work in the classroom for even greater effectiveness. Organized for utility, the book explores how the principles of learning can be applied in teaching history, science, and math topics at three levels: elementary, middle, and high school. Leading educators explain in detail how they developed successful curricula and teaching approaches, presenting strategies that serve as models for curriculum development and classroom instruction. Their recounting of personal teaching experiences lends strength and warmth to this volume. The book explores the importance of balancing students' knowledge of historical fact against their understanding of concepts, such as change and cause, and their skills in assessing historical accounts. It discusses how to build straightforward science experiments into true understanding of scientific principles. And it shows how to overcome the difficulties in teaching math to generate real insight and reasoning in math students. It also features illustrated suggestions for classroom activities. How Students Learn offers a highly useful blend of principle and practice. It will be important not only to teachers, administrators, curriculum designers, and teacher educators, but also to parents and the larger community concerned about children's education.

Ambitious Science Teaching

Ambitious Science Teaching
Author: Mark Windschitl
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
Total Pages: 455
Release: 2020-08-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1682531643

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Ambitious Science Teaching outlines a powerful framework for science teaching to ensure that instruction is rigorous and equitable for students from all backgrounds. The practices presented in the book are being used in schools and districts that seek to improve science teaching at scale, and a wide range of science subjects and grade levels are represented. The book is organized around four sets of core teaching practices: planning for engagement with big ideas; eliciting student thinking; supporting changes in students’ thinking; and drawing together evidence-based explanations. Discussion of each practice includes tools and routines that teachers can use to support students’ participation, transcripts of actual student-teacher dialogue and descriptions of teachers’ thinking as it unfolds, and examples of student work. The book also provides explicit guidance for “opportunity to learn” strategies that can help scaffold the participation of diverse students. Since the success of these practices depends so heavily on discourse among students, Ambitious Science Teaching includes chapters on productive classroom talk. Science-specific skills such as modeling and scientific argument are also covered. Drawing on the emerging research on core teaching practices and their extensive work with preservice and in-service teachers, Ambitious Science Teaching presents a coherent and aligned set of resources for educators striving to meet the considerable challenges that have been set for them.

Learning & Teaching Scientific Inquiry

Learning & Teaching Scientific Inquiry
Author: James Jadrich
Publisher: NSTA Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2011
Genre: Education
ISBN: 193695995X

Science teacher educators, curriculum specialists, professional development facilitators, and KOCo8 teachers are bound to increase their understanding and confidence when teaching inquiry after a careful reading of this definitive volume. Advancing a new perspective, James Jadrich and Crystal Bruxvoort assert that scientific inquiry is best taught using models in science rather than focusing on scientistsOCO activities."

Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards

Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2000-05-03
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309064767

Humans, especially children, are naturally curious. Yet, people often balk at the thought of learning scienceâ€"the "eyes glazed over" syndrome. Teachers may find teaching science a major challenge in an era when science ranges from the hardly imaginable quark to the distant, blazing quasar. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards is the book that educators have been waiting forâ€"a practical guide to teaching inquiry and teaching through inquiry, as recommended by the National Science Education Standards. This will be an important resource for educators who must help school boards, parents, and teachers understand "why we can't teach the way we used to." "Inquiry" refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and in which students grasp science knowledge and the methods by which that knowledge is produced. This book explains and illustrates how inquiry helps students learn science content, master how to do science, and understand the nature of science. This book explores the dimensions of teaching and learning science as inquiry for K-12 students across a range of science topics. Detailed examples help clarify when teachers should use the inquiry-based approach and how much structure, guidance, and coaching they should provide. The book dispels myths that may have discouraged educators from the inquiry-based approach and illuminates the subtle interplay between concepts, processes, and science as it is experienced in the classroom. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards shows how to bring the standards to life, with features such as classroom vignettes exploring different kinds of inquiries for elementary, middle, and high school and Frequently Asked Questions for teachers, responding to common concerns such as obtaining teaching supplies. Turning to assessment, the committee discusses why assessment is important, looks at existing schemes and formats, and addresses how to involve students in assessing their own learning achievements. In addition, this book discusses administrative assistance, communication with parents, appropriate teacher evaluation, and other avenues to promoting and supporting this new teaching paradigm.

Science Teachers' Learning

Science Teachers' Learning
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2016-01-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0309380189

Currently, many states are adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or are revising their own state standards in ways that reflect the NGSS. For students and schools, the implementation of any science standards rests with teachers. For those teachers, an evolving understanding about how best to teach science represents a significant transition in the way science is currently taught in most classrooms and it will require most science teachers to change how they teach. That change will require learning opportunities for teachers that reinforce and expand their knowledge of the major ideas and concepts in science, their familiarity with a range of instructional strategies, and the skills to implement those strategies in the classroom. Providing these kinds of learning opportunities in turn will require profound changes to current approaches to supporting teachers' learning across their careers, from their initial training to continuing professional development. A teacher's capability to improve students' scientific understanding is heavily influenced by the school and district in which they work, the community in which the school is located, and the larger professional communities to which they belong. Science Teachers' Learning provides guidance for schools and districts on how best to support teachers' learning and how to implement successful programs for professional development. This report makes actionable recommendations for science teachers' learning that take a broad view of what is known about science education, how and when teachers learn, and education policies that directly and indirectly shape what teachers are able to learn and teach. The challenge of developing the expertise teachers need to implement the NGSS presents an opportunity to rethink professional learning for science teachers. Science Teachers' Learning will be a valuable resource for classrooms, departments, schools, districts, and professional organizations as they move to new ways to teach science.