Taking Science to School Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 (2007) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Pages 1-8
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In part, these achievement gaps mirror inequities in science education and take on greater significance with the looming mandate of the No Child Left Behind Act that states assess science beginning in the 20062007 school year. Thus, science education in the United States has become a subject of grave and pressing concern.
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This framework rests on a view of science as both a body of knowledge and an evidence-based, model-building enterprise that continually extends, refines, and revises knowledge. This framework moves beyond a focus on the di chotomy between either content knowledge or process skills because con tent and process are inextricably linked in science.
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Children's rich but naïve understandings of the natural world can be built on to develop their understandings of scientific concepts. At the same time, their understandings of the world sometimes contradict scientific explanations and pose obstacles to learning science.
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At present, a variety of factors result in inequities in science education that limit the opportunities for many students to learn science. Classroom level factors related to instruction, such as teachers' expectations or strate gies for grouping students, play a role in producing inequitable learning opportunities for economically disadvantaged and minority children.
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Assessment should provide teachers and students with timely feedback about students' knowledge that, in turn, supports teachers' efforts to improve instruction. Teacher preparation and professional development should be focused on developing teachers' knowledge of the science they teach, how students learn science, and specific methods and technologies that support science learning for all students.
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In order to provide meaningful opportunities for science learning, policy makers, education leaders, and school administrators need to ensure that adequate time and resources are provided for science instruction at all grade levels for all students. They must also ensure that teachers have adequate knowledge of science content and process and are provided with adequate professional development.
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Profes sional development should be rooted in the science that teachers teach and should include opportunities to learn about science, about current research on how children learn science, and about how to teach science. Recommendation 7: University-based science courses for teacher candidates and teachers' ongoing opportunities to learn science in service should mirror the opportunities they will need to pro vide for their students, that is, incorporating practices in the four strands that constitute science proficiency and giving sustained attention to the core ideas in the discipline.
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