Growing and Sustaining Student-Centered Science Classrooms


Book Description

A wealth of practical tools and guidance for rooting out injustice and creating science learning spaces in which students feel valued, safe, and eager to engage. In Growing and Sustaining Student-Centered Science Classrooms, David Stroupe promotes powerful conversation and action around knowledge-building practices in science education. The book takes readers into inspiring classroom communities in which all students are invited and encouraged to engage in the work of science. An illuminating series of real-time classroom scenes demonstrate flexible teaching approaches and instructional pivots that Stroupe calls talk moves and shows how they foster inclusive collaboration and participation to create a more expansive, and better, version of science education. Even as Stroupe champions student-centered science education, he acknowledges that common obstructions to knowledge sharing, or epistemic injustices, can often prevent this student-led ideal from materializing. He calls attention to four types of injustices that frequently stifle student voice and access in science learning communities: testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, intrapersonal injustice, and hierarchical injustice. Recounting real-life examples of these individual and systemic injustices, Stroupe gives educators the tools to both identify and eradicate them. This thought-provoking book sets forth ambitious tactics for educators to audit assumptions and biases in science, promote student agency, and conduct action research to document change. Using Stroupe's accessible methods, teachers, teacher educators, and administrators can design immediate and long-term instructional practices to disrupt injustices in STEM classroom communities and support student learning.







Reframing Science Teaching and Learning


Book Description

Responding to recent reform efforts, such as the Next Generation Science Standards, which call for students to learn science practices, this book proposes a conceptual reframing of the roles of teachers and students in formal and informal science learning settings. Inviting the field to examine the state of "science practice," it provides concrete examples of how students, supported by the actions of educators, take on new roles, shifting from passive recipients of information to active participants in conceptual, social, epistemic, and material features of science work. Each chapter provides an examination of how and why science practice evolves in learning communities in which students and teachers negotiate disciplinary work; an analysis of how specific pedagogical and social actions taken by someone with authority (a teacher or other educator) provides opportunities for students to shape science practices; a set of concrete recommendations for working with young students in formal and informal learning settings; and a set of suggestions and questions to catalyze future research about and the evolving relationships between educators, students, and science practices in the field of science education. Showing how and why the conceptual ideas presented are important, and providing specific, actionable suggestions for teachers and other educators for their daily work, this book includes both elementary and secondary learning sites.




Ambitious Science Teaching


Book Description

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.




Handbook of Research on Classroom Diversity and Inclusive Education Practice


Book Description

As classrooms are becoming more diverse, teachers are now faced with the responsibility of creating an inclusive classroom community. As such, researching classroom pedagogies and practices is an imperative step in curriculum planning. The Handbook of Research on Classroom Diversity and Inclusive Education Practice is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on ways to effectively teach all students and further refine and strengthen school-wide inclusive pedagogy, methods, and policies. Featuring extensive coverage on a number of topics such as special education, online learning, and English language learners, this publication is ideally designed for professionals, educators, and policy makers seeking current research on methods that ensure all students have equal access to curricular content and the chance for growth and success.




Handbook of Research on Building, Growing, and Sustaining Quality E-Learning Programs


Book Description

As e-learning has evolved into a global change agent in higher education, it has become more diverse in its form and applications. Now that many institutions have implemented e-learning programs as part of their course offerings, it is essential for these institutions to fully grasp how best to facilitate continued improvements and accessibility in online education. The Handbook of Research on Building, Growing, and Sustaining Quality E-Learning Programs highlights several significant elements of e-learning, including program planning, quality standards, and online course development, as well as institutional, student, and faculty support. Serving as a critical resource for online and hybrid learning programs, this publication is designed for use by administrators, educators, instructional designers, and doctorate-level students in the field of education.




Leading Lesson Study


Book Description

"Provides readers with a compelling rationale for the process, offers experience-tested tools, and suggests ways to address commonly-occurring challenges. This book will assist teachers, and those who support them, in understanding and implementing all phases of lesson study, from initial planning through sharing with others what was learned." —Dennis Sparks, Executive Director National Staff Development Council "A powerful teacher professional development process that focuses collaborative teams directly on the classroom, and the perfect tool for teachers, professional developers, and team leaders. Gives you everything you need to use lesson study to support teachers in thinking deeply about practice." —Roberta Jaffe, Science Education Coordinator, New Teacher Center, University of California, Santa Cruz Use this team-centered approach to directly enhance teaching and learning in your school! First introduced in Japan, lesson study has gained enthusiastic advocates in US educational circles as a powerful, collaborative approach that brings teachers together as researchers into the science and craft of teaching and learning in their classrooms. Teachers work as teams to develop a lesson plan, teach and observe the lesson to collect data on student learning, and use their observations to refine their lesson. Participants build their sense of professional authority while discovering effective practices that result in improved learning outcomes for their students. This "how-to" guide provides teachers, administrators, and team leaders with practical strategies, models, and tools. The book leads a beginning team through the phases of the lesson study cycle and provides an experienced team with new perspectives. Using examples from U.S. classrooms, this handbook: Encourages educators to generate and share knowledge Inspires a teacher-researcher stance Illustrates both the process and substance of lesson study Encourages collaboration Provides guidelines for avoiding common pitfalls Leading Lesson Study is an excellent resource for both experienced and novice lesson study teams, administrators who want to start a lesson study program, and lesson study team facilitators such as instructional coaches and professional development providers.




Sustaining Disabled Youth


Book Description

Asset-based pedagogies, such as culturally relevant/sustaining teaching, are frequently used to improve the educational experiences of students of color and to challenge the White curriculum that has historically informed school practices. Yet asset-based pedagogies have evaded important aspects of students’ culture and identity: those related to disability. Sustaining Disabled Youth is the first book to accomplish this. It brings together a collection of work that situates disability as a key aspect of children and youth’s cultural identity construction. It explores how disability intersects with other markers of difference to create unique cultural repertoires to be valued, sustained, and utilized for learning. Readers will hear from prominent and emerging scholars and activists in disability studies who engage with the following questions: Can disability be considered an identity and culture in the same ways that race and ethnicity are? How can disability be incorporated to develop and sustain asset-based pedagogies that attend to intersecting forms of marginalization? How can disability serve in inquiries on the use of asset-based pedagogies? Do all disability identities and embodiments merit sustaining? How can disability justice be incorporated into other efforts toward social justice? Book Features: Provides critical insights to bring disability in conversation with asset-based pedagogies.Highlights contributions of both university scholars and community activists. Includes analytical and practical tools for researchers, classroom teachers, and school administrators. Offers important recommendations for teacher education programs.




Culture Re-Boot


Book Description

Packed with hands-on activities, this practical handbook shows you how to be the transformational leader your school needs to enact a culture change and improve student outcomes.




The Power of Teacher Networks


Book Description

This is a simple, effective idea that should have been thought of sooner. Kung Fu Phonics teaches phonics, i.e. the rules of "sounding out" words, through phonetics. Q: How do you say "phone?" A: /fon/ Phonics books out today (chockablock with happy hippos and grinning giraffes) are aimed at kindergartners. 4th-grade kids consider them "baby books." Phonetics texts are all daunting tomes for grad students of comparative linguistics and philology, and buying one will put you out fifty dollars No book has used the one to teach the other, until KUNG FU PHONICS. Phonetics has only ever been used to describe how words sound. Kung Fu Phonics is the first to employ phonetics PREDICTIVELY, asking students to describe how unfamiliar words SHOULD sound. Kung Fu Phonics is great for teaching K and pre-K kids to read, and with them you can skip the phonetic notations and just have them read and say the words. It's also a fine tool for teaching English to non-native speakers of any age. If your child is reading below grade level, spend twenty minutes a day with him studying phonetics with this book. Phonetics is just a tool, an uncomplicated but exacting series of squiggles. It's a nice bit of misdirection He'll complain about phonetics and how useless it is while you're doing something awfully concrete to bolster his reading skills: teaching PHONICS. (And since he's learning something his classmates aren't, it doesn't have the embarrassing feel of remediation.) It's an 88-page workbook. Twenty-five lessons, five model words and fifty exercise words per lesson. Concise instructions keep almost every lesson to two pages. And the instructions are so clear that anyone who reads English on a high-school level can use Kung Fu Phonics to teach reading. (Alas, you can't just toss it to a kindergartner and tell her to get busy; it requires cooperative effort.) It requires no DVD or audio CD to use; it's ready to teach as is. This is the American English edition of KUNG FU PHONICS. It uses American (Merriam-Webster) phonetics and describes American pronunciations.