Synopses & Reviews
Everyone can learn science. How can science courses help learners refine their understanding of science topics by making science relevant to their lives? This book describes the knowledge integration approach to science teaching and learning and contrasts it with typical instruction that implements the absorption approach.
Science Learning and Instruction:
- Synthesizes a large body of literature on knowledge integration patterns
- Illustrates the advantages of knowledge integration
- Clarifies how teachers can guide students to become independent learners
- Shows curriculum developers and designers how to take advantage of technology to promote inquiry and understanding of science
By viewing the many intuitive ideas that students develop to explain the natural world as a starting point, this book illustrates how science activities can lead to coherent understanding. It shows how conducting hands-on and virtual experiments, interrogating scientific simulations, and collaborating with peers can contribute to lifelong learning. Instruction aimed at knowledge integration can empower everyone to take advantage of their natural curiosity about the world and explore the wonder of science.
Synopsis
Science Learning and Instruction describes advances in understanding the nature of science learning and their implications for the design of science instruction. The authors show how design patterns, design principles, and professional development opportunities coalesce to create and sustain effective instruction in each primary scientific domain: earth science, life science, and physical science. Calling for more in depth and less fleeting coverage of science topics in order to accomplish knowledge integration, the book highlights the importance of designing the instructional materials, the examples that are introduced in each scientific domain, and the professional development that accompanies these materials. It argues that unless all these efforts are made simultaneously, educators cannot hope to improve science learning outcomes. The book also addresses how many policies, including curriculum, standards, guidelines, and standardized tests, work against the goal of integrative understanding, and discusses opportunities to rethink science education policies based on research findings from instruction that emphasizes such understanding.