This study uses a national probability sample of 1,027 mathematics and science teachers to provide the first large-scale empirical comparison of effects of different characteristics of professional development on teachers’ learning. Results, based on ordinary least squares regression, indicate three core features of professional development activities that have significant, positive effects on teachers’ self-reported increases in knowledge and skills and changes in classroom practice: (a) focus on content knowledge; (b) opportunities for active learning; and (c) coherence with other learning activities. It is primarily through these core features that the following structural features significantly affect teacher learning: (a) the form of the activity (e.g., workshop vs. study group); (b) collective participation of teachers from the same school, grade, or subject; and (c) the duration of the activity.

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What Makes Professional Development Effective? Results From a National Sample of Teachers

1 On behalf of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, this lesson was prepared by Arizona State University’s Mars Education Program, under contract to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology. These materials may be distributed freely for non-commercial purposes. Copyright 2014; 2012; 2010; 2000. Last edited: April 24, 2014 Marsbound! Mission to the Red Planet

A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas

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Antimicrobial effects of silver nanoparticles

The laboratory has been given a central and distinctive role in science education, and science educators have suggested that rich benefits in learning accrue from using laboratory activities. Twenty years have been elapsed since we published a frequently cited, critical review of the research on the school science laboratory (Hofstein & Lunetta, Rev. Educ. Res.52(2), 201–217, 1982). Twenty years later, we are living in an era of dramatic new technology resources and new standards in science education in which learning by inquiry has been given renewed central status. Methodologies for research and assessment that have developed in the last 20 years can help researchers seeking to understand how science laboratory resources are used, how students' work in the laboratory is assessed, and how science laboratory activities can be used by teachers to enhance intended learning outcomes. In that context, we take another look at the school laboratory in the light of contemporary practices and scholarship. This analysis examines scholarship that has emerged in the past 20 years in the context of earlier scholarship, contemporary goals for science learning, current models of how students construct knowledge, and information about how teachers and students engage in science laboratory activities. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed88:28–54, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/.sce10106

https://gpquae.iqm.unicamp.br/gtexperimentacao.pdf

The Laboratory in Science Education: Foundations for the Twenty-First Century

Many innovative approaches to education such as problem-based learning (PBL) and inquiry learning (IL) situate learning in problem-solving or investigations of complex phenomena. Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) grouped these approaches together with unguided discovery learning. However, the problem with their line of argument is that IL and PBL approaches are highly scaffolded. In this article, we first demonstrate that Kirschner et al. have mistakenly conflated PBL and IL with discovery learning. We then present evidence demonstrating that PBL and IL are powerful and effective models of learning. Far from being contrary to many of the principles of guided learning that Kirschner et al. discussed, both PBL and IL employ scaffolding extensively thereby reducing the cognitive load and allowing students to learn in complex domains. Moreover, these approaches to learning address important goals of education that include content knowledge, epistemic practices, and soft skills such as collaboration and sel...

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Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning: A Response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006)

National Science Education Standards

Although collaborative-learning techniques show a great deal of promise, it is important that these techniques not be accepted uncritically but that they be carefully tested for their effect on student learning, which is, after all, the ultimate objective of our teaching. I have used both collaborative-learning and active-learning techniques for at least twenty-five years and have encountered a number of significant problems, including the following: 1) many students strongly prefer to work alone and actively dislike dealing with the problems created by having to work in groups; 2) commuter students often have difficulty finding mutually acceptable times for group meetings; 3) some students are simply irresponsible, fail to do their share of the assigned work, and leave the rest of the group to deal with the irresponsibility; 4) groups tend to have dominant members who often do the work, monopolize the group discussion, and carry less assertive members along with them; 5) superior students often resent ha...

Problems with Collaborative Learning

The geological sciences are steadily becoming more mathematical and quantitative, yet a survey of the mathematical content of 15 college-level physical-geology textbooks published during the period 1980–90 demonstrates that: (1) The amount of mathematics ranges from almost none to a relatively modest amount, with the most popular and widely used texts having the least; (2) Mathematical equations are seldom used as an integral part of the subject; (3) Very few worked examples are provided as learning aids; (4) Very few end-of-chapter questions call for use of the equations given; (5) Virtually all of the mathematics used is at the rudimentary college-algebra level; (6) The use of “constants” is mostly avoided; and (7) High-school- level stoichiometry is nonexistent. Further, the college-level texts have significantly less mathematics than even the 1967 ESCP ninth-grade earth-science text. Clearly most geology teachers have yielded to the belief that modern college students are incapable of handling all but...

Mathematics in Physical-Geology Textbooks

In an effort to provide additional opportunities for active and cooperative learning by students in introductory earth-science classes, I have developed an exercise on the use of globular clusters to determine the size of the Milky Way Galaxy and our position in it. The exercise has the added virtue of dealing with one of the fundamental astronomical questions of the twentieth century, namely the nature of the Milky Way Galaxy and Earth's position in the Galaxy. In the early years of this century, the most widely accepted model of the Milky Way Galaxy was that developed by J.C. Kapteyn who postulated that the Galaxy is a flattened ellipsoidal system of stars with a diameter of 50 to 60 thousand light years, with the earth located a bit above the plane of the system and only about 2 thousand light years from the center. It was the opinion of most astronomers at the time that the Milky Way Galaxy was the cosmos, the Universe. An alternative model was proposed by H. Shapley in the years 1915-17 on the basis ...

An Exercise for Introductory Earth-Science Classes on Using Globular Clusters to Determine the Size of the Milky Way Galaxy and Our Position in It

Advocates of creationism claim that uniformitarianism is a substantive theory, that it includes concepts of identity of ancient and modern causes, constancy of rates, gradualism, a very old Earth, and various specific assertions about Earth processes. None of these ideas is, in fact, a part of modern uniformitarianism, but each of them is quite common in the geological literature, thus providing a basis for creationist attack on the validity of historical geology. Modern uniformitarianism has been shown to be no more and no less than the philosophical rule of simplicity. Contrary to creationist allegations, modern uniformitarianism makes no assertions about nature, but instead, tells scientists to choose the simplest hypothesis that both fits the observations and leads to greatest simplicity in overall theory. What the creationists attack, therefore, is not uniformitarianism as it is used by contemporary geologists, nor uniformitarianism as it has been clearly explained in several careful analyses publish...

James H. Shea

Papers

National Science Education Standards

Problems with Collaborative Learning

Mathematics in Physical-Geology Textbooks

An Exercise for Introductory Earth-Science Classes on Using Globular Clusters to Determine the Size of the Milky Way Galaxy and Our Position in It

Creationism, Uniformitarianism, Geology and Science