JoinAll Book Chapters
Book Chapter
Essay: Encouraging students' Imagination
How do scientists use their imaginations in their daily work and thinking? Is there a place for imagination in the science classroom? This essay explores the role that imagination plays in the intellectual work of science. Examples from professional ...
Book Chapter
Essay: Using Everyday Experience to Teach Science
How does everyday experience function in science learning and teaching? Is everyday experience a source of student misconceptions? Or is it an essential foundation of science learning? This essay examines everyday experience and its importance for al...
Book Chapter
A Teacher's Perspective: Using Students' Experience to Understand Science
Can students use their knowledge of natural phenomena to make sense of science in school? How can teachers use this knowledge to construct meaning in the classroom? Renote Jean-François, an English-as-a-second-language and literacy teacher in the Sh...
Book Chapter
Essay: What Is Academic Language?
When children learn science in school, they are learning both new ways of thinking about the world and new ways of using language to make meaning. This essay examines some characteristic ways in which academic styles of language are used in the scien...
Book Chapter
Essay: What Is the Vocabulary of Science?
What is the nature of the vocabulary words that children need to know to do well in science? How and where might children learn these words? In this essay, the authors explore these questions about the teaching and learning of the words of science. T...
Book Chapter
What can a teacher do when she realizes that she has used an apparently simple word like think in a way that some students find strange? This happened in Suzanne Pothier’s classroom of first and second graders. She decided to take up the problem a...
Book Chapter
The Triad Story—A Science Education Community Navigating Gender Equity
In chapter 1, Triad and the Framework are described from a community perspective. In chapter 2, the authors describe how the Framework evolved from a more theoretical standpoint. They introduce its anatomy and initiate a more detailed discussion of i...
Book Chapter
The Nature of Science and Science Inquiry
In a knowledge-centered science classroom, students work to answer scientifically oriented questions by creating explanations based on evidence. This approach, called science inquiry, is how science is conducted. It creates a learning environment tha...
Book Chapter
Youth Leadership at The Franklin Institute: What Happened When the Grant Ran Out
The Franklin Institute's Center for Innovation in Science Learning develops model programs for the K-12 science education community, both inside and outside the Museum walls. This chapter profiles the Institute's Partnership for Achieving Careers in ...
Book Chapter
Science Career Ladder at the NY Hall of Science: Youth Facilitators as Agents of Inquiry
The New York Hall of Science is New York City’s hands-on science and technology center, with more than 400 interactive exhibits exploring physics, chemistry, and biology. The Hall also creates and presents demonstrations and programs for students a...
Book Chapter
A Burger, a Beer… and a Side of Science
Science Cafés are part of a unique national informal education outreach initiative for NOVA ScienceNow, a PBS science series. The project's special focus is to reach new audiences—both on air and off—especially those younger than traditional PBS...
Book Chapter
The Museum Institute for Teaching Science (MITS) promotes the teaching of participatory, hands-on and minds-on, inquiry-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at the K-8 grade levels, through collaboration among informal scien...
Book Chapter
Discovery Center at Murfree Springs, a hands-on museum and environmental education center, has created a science tour for grades preK-2, called “Splash, Flash, Crank, Slide, Alive Tour,” which is based on the National Science Education Standards....
Book Chapter
Grands Are Grand is a monthly informal science program for children ages 3-5 and their grandparents offered by the North Museum of Natural History & Science in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The lessons include a wide variety of touchable, visual, and aud...
Book Chapter
FAMILY MATH and Science Education: A Natural Attraction
The Lawrence Hall of Science is a resource center for science and mathematics education and a public science center with exciting hands-on experiences for learners of all ages. One of its programs, FAMILY MATH, is built on the belief that children c...