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Book Chapter
What Is Inquiry? A Framework for Thinking About Authentic Scientific Practice in the Classroom
In this chapter, a framework is suggested for organizing teacher thinking about inquiry and prioritizing the wide assortment of activities teachers typically use to familiarize their students with the processes of science. This framework articulates ...
Book Chapter
Assessing Science as Inquiry in the Classroom
Assessments of inquiry should align with what we know about learning and should be balanced and authentic. That is, they should include all the important features of inquiry, not just those easy to assess. This approach helps ensure that all students...
Book Chapter
Inquiry and Scientific Explanations: Helping Students Use Evidence and Reasoning
This chapter describes the importance of scientific explanation in inquiry, common difficulties students have in justifying their claims, and a suggested instructional approach for supporting students in writing scientific explanations. It then discu...
Book Chapter
Historical Development of Teaching Science as Inquiry
This chapter examines four periods in the history of science education. In particular it looks at how societal pressures brought about the teaching of science as inquiry in each period and how educators, cognitive psychologists, and scientists have r...
Book Chapter
Inquiry experiences in the Earth sciences are often indirect, because direct experimentation, such as is used in the physical sciences, is typically not possible. To support inquiry in the Earth sciences it is important to consider the components of ...
Book Chapter
Inquiry in the Chemistry Classroom: Perplexity, Model Testing, and Synthesis
Lavoisier's theory of combustion is used as a context for a set of interrelated, inquiry-fostering investigations in a high school chemistry class. Further, this example of chemistry inquiry is used to develop some central ideas about inquiry pedag...
Book Chapter
Field Studies as a Pedagogical Approach to Inquiry
By designing and conducting their own field studies, students learn science in a meaningful context, apply scientific knowledge to local environmental issues, use resources within and around the school, and link classroom science to real-world issu...
Book Chapter
Creating Coherent Inquiry Projects to Support Students Cognition and Collaboration in Physics.
This chapter presents an inquiry template that involves three phases: (1) students observe and reflect on phenomena and make predictions about underlying mechanisms, (2) students gather data to investigate these mechanisms as they build and refine th...
Book Chapter
Inquiry-Based Science Instruction for Students with Disabilities
Students with disabilities often are struggling readers who cannot successfully access and use print information. As a result, they usually experience difficulties with traditional science instruction, which typically relies on textbooks and other pr...
Book Chapter
Scientific Inquiry: The Place of Interpretation and Argumentation
Secondary school students typically believe that scientific inquiry begins with a direct observation of the natural world and that scientific laws and theories become apparent from these observations. In reality, observation provides only highly infe...
Book Chapter
In Praise of Questions: Elevating the Role of Questions for Inquiry in Secondary School Science
If scientific inquiry is to be part of the focus in secondary school science, teachers must develop learning situations in which question posing is essential and they must help students learn how to pose scientifically oriented questions. In focusing...
Book Chapter
Educational Technology in the Science Classroom
Each year billions of dollars are invested in establishing an effective infrastructure for employing information technology in schools. Almost all classrooms have been wired for internet access, computers have been installed, and inservice sessions a...
Book Chapter
Essentially, technology use in the science classroom is most effective when it encourages deeper student engagement with science content, when it is used to support rather than replace what we know about effective science instruction, and especially ...
Book Chapter
Digital Images and Video for Teaching Science
New technologies have revolutionized our ability to see and learn scientific phenomena. Reasonably priced digital still and video cameras have recently become popular additions to many classrooms, and teachers use them regularly to document student l...
Book Chapter
Using Computer Simulations to Enhance Science Teaching and Learning
Technological advances have increasingly brought instructional digital technologies into the science classroom. Teachers may have greater access to Internet-connected classroom computers, wireless laptop carts, computer projectors, and interactive wh...
Book Chapter
Probeware Tools for Science Investigations
Probeware is the general term used for probes and software that can be used with microprocessors (computer, calculator, palm device, etc.) to make scientific measurements. The characteristics of rapid data collection, nearly instantaneous display of ...
Book Chapter
Acquiring Online Data for Scientific Analysis
As you seek to provide more opportunities for your students to engage in scientific inquiry, you may find data collection to be time consuming and expensive. The internet, which provides immediate access to numerous data sets from government agencies...
Book Chapter
Online Assessments and Hearing Students Think About Science
This chapter examines online assessments and explores how they might be useful in your science classroom. Although there is a wealth of computer-based assessment tools (such as homework and exam generated programs that accompany many science textbook...
Book Chapter
Virtual schooling offers students the opportunity to enroll in a science course not taught at their home school or school district, interact with expert instructors in a particular field, and gain access to subject matter they may have otherwise miss...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: Science Talks
What are science talks? And what are the benefits of including them in the science curriculum? Mary Rizzuto, a science curriculum instructional specialist at the Needham Science Center in Needham, Massachusetts, shares her perspective. ...
Book Chapter
Essay: Creating a Foundation Through Student Conversation
This essay discusses a pedagogical practice called Science talks. Science talks allow students to use their diverse language practices and life experience to understand scientific phenomena and allow teachers to see new connections between students�...
Book Chapter
What is culture? How does it figure into learning and teaching? What can educators do to make their classrooms sites of deep learning for all children? This essay examines the concept of culture, exploring how this concept has evolved historically an...
Book Chapter
Case Study: Using Students' Cultural Resources in Teaching
Teachers often want to incorporate their students’ cultural resources into the curriculum but do not know how. This case study describes what teachers participating in the Funds of Knowledge for Teaching Project, based at the University of Arizona,...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: What Is Culture?
In her chapter, “What Is Culture?,” page 89, Norma González explains how the concept of culture has evolved historically and how it has affected education over time. As anthropologists continue to define culture in more dynamic ways, educators a...
Book Chapter
Essay: Learning a Second Language
What challenges face students who are learning a second language at the same time as they are learning science? This essay considers some of the difficulties associated with learning to speak, read, and write in a second language. Although the princ...
Book Chapter
Case Study: Using Two Languages to Learn Science
Often teachers ask their English language learners to confine themselves to using English as they explore ideas, frequently because the teacher does not know the child's first language. This case study tells the story of Jean-Charles who uses both hi...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: Learning a Second Language
In “Learning a Second Language,” page 107, Ellen Bialystok explains the ways in which reading a science text in a second language makes learning more challenging. She explains that language is the core of science learning because it “is the pri...
Book Chapter
Essay: Programs for Teaching English Language Learners
Today's K-12 American classrooms are rich with students from families of diverse cultural, socioeconomic, and linguistic backgrounds. An increasingly important dimension of diversity in contemporary schools is language and, in particular, the relativ...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: Programs for Teaching English Language Learners
In their essay, “Programs for Teaching English Language Learners,” page 129, Fred Genesee and Donna Christian take an in-depth look at some of the most frequently used educational approaches for teaching students who are learning English. They de...
Book Chapter
Essay: Creating Culturally Responsive Learning Communities
The population of the United States is more ethnically and racially diverse than ever, a fact particularly evident among young and school-age children. This presents today’s elementary schools—including teachers, administrators, and policy makers...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: Creating Culturally Responsive Learning Communities
In their essay, “Creating Culturally Responsive Learning Communities,” page 151, Eugene García and Okhee Lee begin with the idea that human beings construct knowledge by “applying knowledge of previous concepts to the new information that is p...
Book Chapter
Essay: What Is Equity in Science Education?
Concerns about equity often influence and drive decision making by educators and policy makers. How do these concerns—and different understandings of equity itself—affect the quality and form of science instruction available for English language ...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: What Is Equity in Science Education?
In his essay, “What is Equity in Science Education?,” page 167, Walter Secada challenges our understanding of equity by raising questions about how different meanings of equity can influence science education for English language learners. He hig...
Book Chapter
Conclusion: Reconceptualizing Diversity in the Science Classroom
This book has discussed steps teachers can take toward reconceptualizing diversity as an intellectual strength in the science classroom. By way of closing, the authors outline a path for those interested in pushing their practice further. It involves...
Book Chapter
Essay: Using Students' Conversational Style
In the United States, science instruction is based on an idealized, Western view of scientific practice and on the language practices of a middle-class population. Unbeknownst to teachers, this orientation ignores much of the knowledge and experience...
Book Chapter
Essay: Encouraging students' Imagination
How do scientists use their imaginations in their daily work and thinking? Is there a place for imagination in the science classroom? This essay explores the role that imagination plays in the intellectual work of science. Examples from professional ...
Book Chapter
Essay: Using Everyday Experience to Teach Science
How does everyday experience function in science learning and teaching? Is everyday experience a source of student misconceptions? Or is it an essential foundation of science learning? This essay examines everyday experience and its importance for al...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: Using Students' Experience to Understand Science
Can students use their knowledge of natural phenomena to make sense of science in school? How can teachers use this knowledge to construct meaning in the classroom? Renote Jean-François, an English-as-a-second-language and literacy teacher in the Sh...
Book Chapter
Essay: What Is Academic Language?
When children learn science in school, they are learning both new ways of thinking about the world and new ways of using language to make meaning. This essay examines some characteristic ways in which academic styles of language are used in the scien...
Book Chapter
Essay: What Is the Vocabulary of Science?
What is the nature of the vocabulary words that children need to know to do well in science? How and where might children learn these words? In this essay, the authors explore these questions about the teaching and learning of the words of science. T...