Higher education is a strange beast. Teaching is a critical skill for scientists in academia, yet one that is barely touched upon in their professional training—despite being a substantial part of their career. This book is a practical guide for anyone teaching STEM-related academic disciplines at the college level, from graduate students teaching lab sections and newly appointed faculty to well-seasoned professors in want of fresh ideas. Terry McGlynn’s straightforward, no-nonsense approach avoids off-putting pedagogical jargon and enables instructors to become true ambassadors for science. For years, McGlynn has been addressing the need for practical and accessible advice for college science teachers through his popular blog Small Pond Science. Now he has gathered this advice as an easy read—one that can be ingested and put to use on short deadline. Readers will learn about topics ranging from creating a syllabus and developing grading rubrics to mastering online teaching and ensuring safety during lab and fieldwork. The book also offers advice on cultivating productive relationships with students, teaching assistants, and colleagues.

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.

Why forestry field studies? These studies were designed and used as a unit in an advanced placement environmental science course. They could be used as a lab in a biology, botany, forestry, or ecology class at the high school or beginning college level.

Effective Online Teaching is an essential resource that offers a clear understanding of how cognition and learning theory applies to online learning. This much-needed resource provides specific strategies for incorporating this knowledge into effective learner-centered teaching that gets results. The book includes strategies on motivation, tailored instruction, interaction, collaboration, monitoring and communication, time and information management, student concerns, and legal and ethical issues. Designed as a text for online instructors, the chapters can be used for self-directed learning or in a formal training setting in concert with the companion Training Manual and CD. "Tina Stavredes has done something sorely needed in the online teaching world she has successfully combined solid theory and research with the practical application of instructor training. Both the book and the training manual are a 'must' for any online education organization. Bravo!" Dr. Darcy W. Hardy, assistant vice provost for Technology Education Initiatives, University of Texas at San Antonio, and chair emerita, United States Distance Learning Association "Drawing from years of experience and solidly grounded in an understanding of the adult learner and learning, Stavredes offers dozens of helpful instructor strategies, activities, and resources to support adult learners' success in an online environment. Effective Online Teaching and its accompanying training manual is a 'must-have' set for online instructors in higher education, corporate, and government settings." Sharan B. Merriam, professor emeritus of adult education, University of Georgia, and coauthor, Learning in Adulthood "An eminently practical book that provides clear and unpretentious explanations of the learning theories that are essential knowledge for every online teacher, together with equally uncluttered and easy-to-follow guidance about how to apply this knowledge to achieve excellent teaching." Michael Grahame Moore, Distinguished Professor of Education, The Pennsylvania State University, and editor, The American Journal of Distance Education

In the early twentieth century, a curriculum known as nature study flourished in major city school systems, streetcar suburbs, small towns, and even rural one-room schools. This object-based approach to learning about the natural world marked the first systematic attempt to introduce science into elementary education, and it came at a time when institutions such as zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums, and national parks were promoting the idea that direct knowledge of nature would benefit an increasingly urban and industrial nation. The definitive history of this once pervasive nature study movement, TeachingChildren Science emphasizes the scientific, pedagogical, and social incentives that encouraged primarily women teachers to explore nature in and beyond their classrooms. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt brings to vivid life the instructors and reformers who advanced nature study through on-campus schools, summer programs, textbooks, and public speaking. Within a generation, this highly successful hands-on approach migrated beyond public schools into summer camps, afterschool activities, and the scouting movement. Although the rich diversity of nature study classes eventually lost ground to increasingly standardized curricula, Kohlstedt locates its legacy in the living plants and animals in classrooms and environmental field trips that remain central parts of science education today.

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.