Science and Engineering for Grades 6-12 Investigation and Design at the Center (2019) / Chapter Skim
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6 Instructional Resources for Supporting Investigation and Design
6 Instructional Resources for Supporting Investigation and Design
Pages 153-180
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From page 153... ...
Many types of tools and resources can support teacher instruction during science investigation and engineering design. This chapter discusses the role of instructional resources from the perspectives of the features presented in Chapters 4 and 5: making sense of phenomena; gathering and analyze data; constructing explanations; communicating reasoning to self and others; fostering an inclusive learning environment; connecting learning through multiple contexts; and fostering coherence in student experiences.
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From page 154... ...
The application of science knowledge beyond the classroom requires making sense of novel phenomena and engineering solutions to new challenges. Instructional materials can facilitate science instruction to link multiple phenomena, with multiple core ideas to provide sufficient opportunities for students to apply learning to new contexts and conceptualize the science core ideas and crosscutting concepts beyond the classroom.
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From page 155... ...
Furthermore, cobbling together individual lesson plans is unlikely to result in supporting students in incrementally developing, extending, and refining their explanatory models. The traditional paradigm of having textbooks or instructional resources simply present the central parts of disciplinary core ideas, and having students then explain them back or use them to achieve particular tasks fails to reflect this three-dimensional nature of lessons.
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Explaining a phenomenon or solving a problem must require developing or applying key elements of disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts. As discussed in Chapter 3, it is advantageous to connect phenomena and challenges to students' interests and everyday experiences where possible.
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Construct explanations. • Explanations provided by • Resources support students the teacher or found in the as they develop arguments textbook.
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From page 158... ...
to novel phenomena and • Modular lessons and units; design challenges beyond the individual lessons mapped classroom. to standards; logic of • Units present students with instructional sequence clear coherent investigation and to curriculum writers and design opportunities that teachers but not students.
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When considering sequencing and the choice of phenomena or design challenges, teachers need to consider in advance whether there is enough depth to the examples chosen to connect the multiple learning goals or performance expectations to be met in the unit. Each investigation or design challenge requires investing extended classroom time so they should be chosen judiciously so that each one helps students meet learning goals, build student understanding incrementally, and help students see how ideas connect and relate to one another (Krajcik et al., 2014)
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From page 160... ...
Developers of instructional resources can help teachers by anticipating student questions that will arise and demonstrating a sequence for exploring those questions that can help students build and test explanatory models or design and test solutions progressively over time. Research on design learning provides insight about cognition and can provide a framework for engaging students.
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From page 161... ...
More advanced students can use various statistical calculations to find the best fit line or to test if one set of data is different from another set of data. While these online tools provide unprecedented power for students to analyze data, the tools must be used as a component of students' engagement in three-dimensional learning (i.e., a scientific investigation)
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. Such tasks need to include scoring guides that help teachers interpret students' responses in light of the overall goal for unit learning, not just discrete elements of disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts.
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. Furthermore, embedded formative assessments should be based upon research into how student thinking develops in a disciplinary domain, taking into account how students' lived experiences interact with and inform their development of understandings of disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts.
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concluded, promoting equitable participation across different student populations means an emphasis on making meaning, on hearing and understanding the contributions of others, and on communicating ideas in a common effort to build understanding of the phenomenon or to design solutions for the system being studied. COHERENCE Instructional resources that develop student understanding over time provide extensive supports for continuous sense-making and incremental building of models and mechanisms, including providing guidance to teachers in how to support students in making connections between their investigations and the questions they are trying to answer and how the models they build explain and support phenomena.
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. The application of practices, core ideas, and crosscutting concepts to make sense of phenomena provides a way for students to internalize, conceptualize and generalize knowledge in ways that it becomes part of how they see the natural and engineered world.
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. LEARNING GOALS AS PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS Instructional resources help students build toward performance expectations by engaging learners in making sense of phenomena or solving
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to support students in sense-making. By focusing on phenomena and design challenges, instructional resources bring together science and engineering practices with disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts into three-dimensional performances that have three-dimensional learning goals, rather than treating "content" and "process" as separate learning goals.
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demonstrated that probeware indeed could be used with handheld computers and effectively integrated into middle school science classrooms when coupled with supportive instructional resources. In their study, teachers responded positively to the introduction of
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, students also improved in their graph comprehension capabilities. Together, these studies affirm that the use of probeware in science and engineering classrooms, when coupled with supportive instructional resources and other tools, can be an asset for student learning.
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From page 170... ...
, as well as how to best support students in designing and navigating complex collections of data sources for which relationships are likely to be especially noisy, multivariate, and caused by unknown or unexpected factors. Computer-based technology has the potential to support learners in conducting all aspects of scientific investigations.
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But not all learning technologies are designed to support students in conducting scientific investigation. E-books that are a digital representation of a classical textbook might have certain features to support student learning, but they typically do not support learners in conducting scientific investigations.
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From page 172... ...
However, when they are embedded within a learning environment in a manner that supports learners in answering meaningful questions, making sense of phenomena, and finding solutions to challenges in ways that support clear and specified learning goals, they can support students in three-dimensional learning. Scaffolds can be provided to support students in being successful with challenging tasks.
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From page 173... ...
Likewise, content experts may have deep understanding of the core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices, and they can identify common and persistent misconceptions and alternate conceptions that should be acknowledged in instruction (and may be educative for the teachers)
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From page 174... ...
Phenomena and challenges need to shift from illustrations or applications of science ideas that students have already been taught to contexts that raise questions or challenges in which students develop, reason through, and utilize these ideas to explain phenomena or develop solution to challenges. When instructional resources provide a variety of carefully chosen phenomena and design challenges, teachers can select and adapt phenomena and design challenges that are best suited to their students' backgrounds, prior knowledge and experiences, and culture and place.
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International Journal of Science Education, 27(10)
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. Science education in 3-part harmony: Balancing conceptual, epistemic and social learning goals.
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International Journal of Science Education, 30(13)
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. A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas.
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Paper commissioned for the Board On Science Education Workshop Instructional Materials for the Next Generation Science Standards. Available: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/documents/ webpage/dbasse_180270.pdf [October 2018]
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International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 7(4)
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