[...] Many worry that if we talk about this in the science classroom, we affirm it. If we talk about the way students make sense of the world, even when the ways they makes sense of the world are not scientifically accurate is that the same as affirming those conceptions? See the Learning Links page of this site for links to research on how people learn. That research clearly indicates that failing to engage initial conceptions greatly reduces the likelihood of meaningful learning. [...]
Learning Links
This was a posting that grew out of responses to an earlier post discussing pedagogy and resources to help us think about a professional development workshop. I kept coming back to the follow up post and tweaking it, so I thought it ought to be in a more conspicuous place, in part so that I can update it more easily. I deleted the old post and left a pointer to this page.
The resources mentioned in the first post all address how people learn or how we assess what people have learned directly. They all (save one) come from the National Academy Press. The other was an NPR story. I do repeat them all in this post and add a few more.
Here I’ll include four sorts of resources:
- Those distinctly focused on the science learning, like those from the National Research Council’s Committee on How People Learn and resources from AAAS’s Project 2061;
- Things that at first blush may not seem to speak directly to teaching, like the blog Creating Passionate Users (written by folks who write software users’ manuals); and
- Michigan State University Professor of Science Education, Charles (Andy) Anderson’s Website;
- Just a few things in audio format that come primarily from National Public Radio.
Explicitly Focused on the Science of Learning:
Every teacher ought to be familiar with at least one of the following books. College and university of faculty are included when I say every. The introduction to How Students Learn is a good place to start.
Here are the National Academy Press recommendations mentioned in the last post:
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (1999)
http://books.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/
Read this FREE online!
Full Book | Podcast
How People Learn: Bridging Research & Practice (1999)
http://books.nap.edu/html/howpeople2/
Read this FREE online!
Full Book | PDF Summary | Podcast
Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment (2001)
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309072727/html/
Read this FREE online!
Full Book | PDF Summary
How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom (2005)
http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10126.html
Read this FREE online!
Full Book | PDF SummaryAnd here’s one that wasn’t recommended earlier, but distinctly useful and relevant to our work:
Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning
http://books.nap.edu/html/inquiry_addendum/index.html
Read this FREE online!
Full Book
If we’re right that these are good things to read, that invites us to dig further into the National Academy Press’s website. The scope of solid resources on both the teaching of science and science itself is almost overwhelming. A tremendous amount of it is also available free as pdfs. For some of these, like The National Science Education Standards, they’ve recently added the option to download full text as a pdf. For full text, you have to register at the site, but that’s free. For sample chapters of many books, like How Students Learn, you do not need to register. (And that particular sample chapter is perhaps my favorite overview of research on how people learn). You can also view the text of any page of most any NAP book (although not always in a printer friendly way).
Here’s The National Science Education Standards:
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I recently learned of a colleague’s blog that focuses on the kinds of resources we’re discussing here. Philip Bell’s blog How We Learn: Research, News & Perspectives looks like a great resource that has most or all of the texts we’ve mentioned so far. Bell’s blog pointed me to a book that looks very useful: The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. The 2005 book from Cambridge University Press is edited by R. Keith Sawyer. Here’s a table from the first chapter (an excerpt is available as a pdf):
Project 2061 Books and Websites
The resources from the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS’s) Project 2061 focus on the teaching of science and mathematics and are well-grounded in the science of cognition. I’m adding this subsection after the initial posting as I just learned that Volume 2 of The Atlas of Science Literacy is now available. This is just one of many helpful publications available from the Project 2061. If you’re reading this web site, you’re probably aware of some of these resources, like Science for All Americans and Benchmarks for Science Literacy, but the project has many more resources than just those.
One important set of resources that seems to me to be less known to teachers are the Benchmark-based evaluations of textbooks. The reviewed texts include middle school science, high school biology, middle school mathematics and high school algebra.
Ugh. These things are so depressing.
You can read these and become very depressed — most of the textbooks that are widely used aren’t very good for doing the kinds of things that the evaluators were looking for. A more positive way to use these reports is as tools that highlight what particular texts do well and do poorly. Where the text is weak is where the teacher needs to pay special attention. If the text doesn’t elicit students’ existing understandings, what can I do to engage those conceptions?
Where does that kind of thinking lead?
That kind of thinking can lead to more productive readings of the myriad reports that are critical of our educational system. A report on the problems of teacher education? Does it ring true for my own preparation? If so, what holes do I have in my skill set that I should be working to fill? Another critical of school laboratory work? How should that inform the design of my work with students?
Articles on Learning
I expect to update this with some regularity. Check back from time to time.
Cognitive Apprenticeships
The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences has a chapter by Allan Collins on cognitive apprenticeship. An article on the same topic, Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible, is available from The 21st Century Learning Initiative, a site worthy of further exploration, especially its archive of articles, speeches, presentation slides and book recommendations.
Blogs that don’t look like they’re about teaching…
The only blog I read regularly was Creating Passionate Users. It’s a blog written by authors of software manuals, mostly by Kathy Sierra. Unfortunately, due to a series of disturbing and threatening posts, Kathy stopped publishing, but the old posts remain valuable.
Creating Passionate Users claims to be about engaging people in using software to kick butt in what they do. To actually make that work on a broad scale, you need to teach quite a bit. The insights shared here have much of use for teachers.
The posting, The best user manuals EVER, uses the example of materials from Parelli Natural Horsemanship to make the case for companies to produce great users manuals. Read Kathy’s post while thinking of science curriculum as user manuals for science and science teaching. Does the curriculum your using (to use Kathy’s phrase) help you kick ass? If it does, it probably stands up well to Project 2061 criteria mentioned above.
One of the things I especially like about the blog are the insightful illustrations. Here’s a favorite from the post titled, Death by risk-aversion:
If that doesn’t speak to the educational system, I don’t what does…
I learned about Creating Passionate Users from Visual Thesaurus. This isn’t a blog, but it hosts a few and the software that is the Visual Thesaurus is very cool and very helpful for those who like to think about connections and using words to illuminate connections. The word maps on the About page of this site were created with Visual Thesaurus.
Creating Passionate Users has pointed me to several other blogs, or at least blog posts, of interest. One post of interest is on the blog, Joel on Software. The post is “Seven steps to remarkable customer service.” Joel Spolsky is a software developer in New York City.
Andy Anderson’s Website:
I taught with Andy at Michigan State when I was a grad student. His site includes links to some of his work and work of his collaborators. Most relevant to science teachers is, perhaps, the resources for the different cohorts of future teachers. These pages (here’s the 2007 cohort page) are the work of more than just Andy.
The Environmental Literacy Project goes to the core of what I think science teaching should be about.
Audio of interest:
Students’ View of Intelligence Can Help Grades
by Michelle Trudeau
Morning Edition, February 15, 2007 ·
This story highlights a recent study that indicates teaching kids that intelligence is not fixed raises achievement.
The Secret Behind Why Ideas ‘Stick’
by Renée Montagne
Morning Edition, February 19, 2007
“Brothers Chip and Dan Heath examine why some ideas spread around the globe, while others are forgettable, in their book, Made to Stick. They say most people don’t know how to frame their ideas in a clear and compelling way.”
How much of what we teach can be sticky? What’s the point if it isn’t sticky?
What do you suggest?
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at 4:30 pm
[...] Some resources related to the art and science of teaching can be found in the Learning Links section of Facilitate Wonder. [...]
