Supporting Scientific Practices in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms

June 10, 2013

Meaningful science learning in middle schools requires teachers not just to 'stand and deliver,' but to listen and respond to students' ideas. For students science to learn new ideas, those ideas must build from, and be grounded in, students' existing ideas. But teaching of this sort is extremely difficult. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Leema Berland and colleagues in Curriculum and Instruction are engaging preservice teachers in a new practice—pedagogical argumentation. Berland's work supports these teachers as they attend to and explore responses to student ideas. It addresses the questions: 1.) What cognitive, social, and/or contextual resources do preservice teachers bring to bear during pedagogical argumentation? 2.) How can we support the development of those resources? and 3.) How does developing and refining such resources affect teachers' pedagogical reasoning? More about Berland's research is available here.