Teaching Primary Science Constructively helps readers to create effective science learning experiences for primary students by using a constructivist approach to learning. This best-selling text explains the principles of constructivism and their implications for learning and teaching, and discusses core strategies for developing science understanding and science inquiry processes and skills. Chapters also provide research-based ideas for implementing a constructivist approach within a number of content strands. Throughout there are strong links to the key ideas, themes and terminology of the revised Australian Curriculum: Science. This sixth edition includes a new introductory chapter addressing readers' preconceptions and concerns about teaching primary science.

Brings teaching primary science to life, with dedicated chapters for chemistry, physics, biology and earth and environmental science.

Teaching Primary Science Constructively helps readers to create effective science learning experiences for primary students by using a constructivist approach to learning: a method that has personal, social and cultural dimensions. Introductory chapters explain the principles of constructivism and their implications for teaching. They also discuss scaffolding strategies, planning and implementing sequential lessons, 'thinking and working scientifically' and general pedagogical issues, including concerns teachers may have about their own level of scientific knowledge. Subsequent chapters then focus on the major topic strands covered in most primary science syllabuses. Each topic-focused chapter: suggests ways to reflect on and challenge your own ideas about learning science, teaching science and the topic's key scientific concepts; offers suggestions for improving your own understanding of the topic; reviews the research related to primary students' ideas about the topic; discusses scientists' ideas on aspects of the topic; considers what children want to know about the topic; supplies key constructivist teaching principles and selected strategies for to the topic; includes case studies of lesson sequences based on constructivist teaching approaches; lists the key scientific concepts and understandings that teachers should be familiar with; details other teaching and learning considerations related to the topic or to primary science teaching in general; incorporates activities to encourage analysis and reflection. Intended for pre-service as well as practicing teachers, Teaching Primary Science Constructively enables readers to successfully facilitate scientific learning by building upon students' pre-existing notions of how their world works from a scientific viewpoint.

First published in 1994. Leading scholars in science education from eight countries on four continents and ex-pert practising science teachers (primary and secondary) wrote about the teaching and learning of particular science content or skills, and hence how different science content requires different sorts of teaching and learning. Having shared the papers, they then met to discuss them and subsequently revised them. The result is a coherent set of chapters that share valuable insights about the teaching and learning of science. Some chapters consider the detail of specific topics (e.g. floating and sinking, soil and chemical change), some describe innovative procedures, others provide powerful theory. Together they provide a comprehensive analysis of constructivist learning and teaching implications.

Teaching Primary Science Constructively helps pre-service teachers to create effective science learning experiences for primary students by using a constructivist approach to learning. This best-selling text explains the principles of constructivism, the implications for learning and teaching and discusses core strategies for developing science understanding and science inquiry processes and skills. Part 2 provides research-based ideas for implementing a constructivist approach within a number of content strands. Throughout there are strong links to the key ideas, themes and terminology of the latest Australian Curriculum: Science.

First Published in 1999. This book arose from a growing awareness of student teachers' need for an easy, informative and inspiring book about the constructivist approach. On hearing that label, students tend to react either with, 'Isn't that marvellous - the answer to all my problems', or 'Sounds fine in theory, but I couldn't do it'. Both are wrong. This book may help to get the balance right.

Teaching is changing. It is no longer simply about passing on knowledge to the next generation. Teachers in the twenty-first century, in all educational sectors, have to cope with an ever-changing cultural and technological environment. Teaching is now a design science. Like other design professionals – architects, engineers, programmers – teachers have to work out creative and evidence-based ways of improving what they do. Yet teaching is not treated as a design profession. Every day, teachers design and test new ways of teaching, using learning technology to help their students. Sadly, their discoveries often remain local. By representing and communicating their best ideas as structured pedagogical patterns, teachers could develop this vital professional knowledge collectively. Teacher professional development has not embedded in the teacher’s everyday role the idea that they could discover something worth communicating to other teachers, or build on each others’ ideas. Could the culture change? From this unique perspective on the nature of teaching, Diana Laurillard argues that a twenty-first century education system needs teachers who work collaboratively to design effective and innovative teaching.

Provides a comprehensive introduction to teaching and learning mathematics in today's classrooms.

Current research suggests that active study of science reinforces thinking, language and reading skills. Presenting the necessary tools to integrate literacy with science, this hands-on book contains valuable instructional ideas and activities that make science less daunting - especially for teachers.

This book chronicles the revolution in STEM teaching and learning that has arisen from a convergence of educational research, emerging technologies, and innovative ways of structuring both the physical space and classroom activities in STEM higher education. Beginning with a historical overview of US higher education and an overview of diversity in STEM in the US, the book sets a context in which our present-day innovation in science and technology urgently needs to provide more diversity and inclusion within STEM fields. Research-validated pedagogies using active learning and new types of research-based curriculum is transforming how physics, biology and other fields are taught in leading universities, and the book gives profiles of leading innovators in science education and examples of exciting new research-based courses taking root in US institutions. The book includes interviews with leading scientists and educators, case studies of new courses and new institutions, and descriptions of site visits where new trends in 21st STEM education are being developed. The book also takes the reader into innovative learning environments in engineering where students are empowered by emerging technologies to develop new creative capacity in their STEM education, through new centers for design thinking and liberal arts-based engineering. Equally innovative are new conceptual frameworks for course design and learning, and the book explores the concepts of Scientific Teaching, Backward Course Design, Threshold Concepts and Learning Taxonomies in a systematic way with examples from diverse scientific fields. Finally, the book takes the reader inside the leading centers for online education, including Udacity, Coursera and EdX, interviews the leaders and founders of MOOC technology, and gives a sense of how online education is evolving and what this means for STEM education. This book provides a broad and deep exploration into the historical context of science education and into some of the cutting-edge innovations that are reshaping how leading universities teach science and engineering. The emergence of exponentially advancing technologies such as synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and materials sciences has been described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and the book explores how these technologies will shape our future will bring a transformation of STEM curriculum that can help students solve many the most urgent problems facing our world and society.