Learning progressions – descriptions of increasingly sophisticated ways of thinking about or understanding a topic (National Research Council, 2007) – represent a promising framework for developing organized curricula and meaningful assessments in science. In addition, well-grounded learning progressions may allow for coherence between cognitive models of how understanding develops in a given domain, classroom instruction, professional development, and classroom and large-scale assessments. Because of the promise that learning progressions hold for bringing organization and structure to often disconnected views of how to teach and assess science, they are rapidly gaining popularity in the science education community. However, there are signi?cant challenges faced by all engaged in this work. In June 2009, science education researchers and practitioners, as well as scientists, psychometricians, and assessment specialists convened to discuss these challenges as part of the Learning Progressions in Science (LeaPS) conference. The LeaPS conference provided a structured forum for considering design decisions entailed in four aspects of work on learning progressions: de?ning learning progressions; developing assessments to elicit student responses relative to learning progressions; modeling and interpreting student performance with respect to a learning progressions; and using learning progressions to in?uence standards, curricula, and teacher education. This book presents speci?c examples of learning progression work and syntheses of ideas from these examples and discussions at the LeaPS conference.

This state-of-the art research Handbook provides a comprehensive, coherent, current synthesis of the empirical and theoretical research concerning teaching and learning in science and lays down a foundation upon which future research can be built. The contributors, all leading experts in their research areas, represent the international and gender diversity that exists in the science education research community. As a whole, the Handbook of Research on Science Education demonstrates that science education is alive and well and illustrates its vitality. It is an essential resource for the entire science education community, including veteran and emerging researchers, university faculty, graduate students, practitioners in the schools, and science education professionals outside of universities. The National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) endorses the Handbook of Research on Science Education as an important and valuable synthesis of the current knowledge in the field of science education by leading individuals in the field. For more information on NARST, please visit: http://www.narst.org/.

Gathering contributions from leading scholars around the world, this handbook offers a comprehensive resource on the most recent advances in research surrounding the theories, methodologies, and applications of science learning progressions. Researchers and educators have used learning progressions to guide the design and alignment of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and to help students learn scientific knowledge and practices in a coherent and connected way across multiple years. This handbook lays out the development and current state of research in this field across four sections: learning progression theories and methodologies; learning progressions to promote student learning; teachers’ learning and use of learning progressions; and new technology in learning progression research. Featuring internationally-recognized experts in learning progression research as well as up-and-coming voices, the Handbook of Research on Science Learning Progressions offers a defining new resource for researchers, teachers and teacher educators, and curriculum and assessment developers in science education.

The Handbook of Research Design in Mathematics and Science Education is based on results from an NSF-supported project (REC 9450510) aimed at clarifying the nature of principles that govern the effective use of emerging new research designs in mathematics and science education. A primary goal is to describe several of the most important types of research designs that: * have been pioneered recently by mathematics and science educators; * have distinctive characteristics when they are used in projects that focus on mathematics and science education; and * have proven to be especially productive for investigating the kinds of complex, interacting, and adapting systems that underlie the development of mathematics or science students and teachers, or for the development, dissemination, and implementation of innovative programs of mathematics or science instruction. The volume emphasizes research designs that are intended to radically increase the relevance of research to practice, often by involving practitioners in the identification and formulation of the problems to be addressed or in other key roles in the research process. Examples of such research designs include teaching experiments, clinical interviews, analyses of videotapes, action research studies, ethnographic observations, software development studies (or curricula development studies, more generally), and computer modeling studies. This book's second goal is to begin discussions about the nature of appropriate and productive criteria for assessing (and increasing) the quality of research proposals, projects, or publications that are based on the preceding kind of research designs. A final objective is to describe such guidelines in forms that will be useful to graduate students and others who are novices to the fields of mathematics or science education research. The NSF-supported project from which this book developed involved a series of mini conferences in which leading researchers in mathematics and science education developed detailed specifications for the book, and planned and revised chapters to be included. Chapters were also field tested and revised during a series of doctoral research seminars that were sponsored by the University of Wisconsin's OERI-supported National Center for Improving Student Learning and Achievement in Mathematics and Science. In these seminars, computer-based videoconferencing and www-based discussion groups were used to create interactions in which authors of potential chapters served as "guest discussion leaders" responding to questions and comments from doctoral students and faculty members representing more than a dozen leading research universities throughout the USA and abroad. A Web site with additional resource materials related to this book can be found at http://www.soe.purdue.edu/smsc/lesh/ This internet site includes directions for enrolling in seminars, participating in ongoing discussion groups, and submitting or downloading resources which range from videotapes and transcripts, to assessment instruments or theory-based software, to publications or data samples related to the research designs being discussed.

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.

The International Handbook of the Learning Sciences is a comprehensive collection of international perspectives on this interdisciplinary field. In more than 50 chapters, leading experts synthesize past, current, and emerging theoretical and empirical directions for learning sciences research. The three sections of the handbook capture, respectively: foundational contributions from multiple disciplines and the ways in which the learning sciences has fashioned these into its own brand of use-oriented theory, design, and evidence; learning sciences approaches to designing, researching, and evaluating learning broadly construed; and the methodological diversity of learning sciences research, assessment, and analytic approaches. This pioneering collection is the definitive volume of international learning sciences scholarship and an essential text for scholars in this area.

Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.

Building on the foundation set in Volume I—a landmark synthesis of research in the field—Volume II is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art new volume highlighting new and emerging research perspectives. The contributors, all experts in their research areas, represent the international and gender diversity in the science education research community. The volume is organized around six themes: theory and methods of science education research; science learning; culture, gender, and society and science learning; science teaching; curriculum and assessment in science; science teacher education. Each chapter presents an integrative review of the research on the topic it addresses—pulling together the existing research, working to understand the historical trends and patterns in that body of scholarship, describing how the issue is conceptualized within the literature, how methods and theories have shaped the outcomes of the research, and where the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps are in the literature. Providing guidance to science education faculty and graduate students and leading to new insights and directions for future research, the Handbook of Research on Science Education, Volume II is an essential resource for the entire science education community.

This book informs an international audience of teachers, scholars and policymakers about the development of learning progressions for primary and secondary geography education in various countries and regions of the world. The book represents an important contribution to learning progressions research and practice. The different chapters explore how curriculum standards and frameworks in different countries portray progress and sophistication in the learning of geography. The book compares educational systems and how teachers and curriculum developers use the concept of “learning progression” to guide educational practices. As an approach to educational research, learning progressions offer considerable potential for understanding how children develop understanding of geographic concepts and practices across grade bands and in relation to national geography standards. The book analyzes the general conditions of learning progressions within the context of a globalized world. Important themes are addressed such as: knowledge acquisition in formal education; measuring learning progressions in informal settings; learning progressions for one curriculum standard or several standards; conditions to assess progression in the learning of facts, concepts, and skills; and multiple pathways for understanding or learning geography. The contributing authors are experienced scientists in the field from all around the world giving specific insights into the practices of their countries. The book appeals to K-12 teachers, school administrators, policymakers, researchers in geography education, professors and lecturers at universities around the world.

Like all enthusiastic teachers, you want your students to see the connections between important science concepts so they can grasp how the world works now-- and maybe even make it work better in the future. But how exactly do you help them learn and apply these core ideas? Just as its subtitle says, this important book aims to reshape your approach to teaching and your students' way of learning. Building on the foundation provided by A Framework for K- 12 Science Education, which informed the development of the Next Generation Science Standards, the book' s four sections cover these broad areas: 1. Physical science core ideas explain phenomena as diverse as why water freezes and how information can be sent around the world wirelessly. 2. Life science core ideas explore phenomena such as why children look similar but not identical to their parents and how human behavior affects global ecosystems. 3. Earth and space sciences core ideas focus on complex interactions in the Earth system and examine phenomena as varied as the big bang and global climate change. 4. Engineering, technology, and applications of science core ideas highlight engineering design and how it can contribute innovative solutions to society' s problems. Disciplinary Core Ideas can make your science lessons more coherent and memorable, regardless of what subject matter you cover and what grade you teach. Think of it as a conceptual tool kit you can use to help your students learn important and useful science now-- and continue learning throughout their lives.