Talking and Doing Science: Important Elements in a Teaching-for-Understanding Approach

Publisher Summary This chapter explores how the teaching of science should take place in the context of scientific inquiry wherein students do, learn, and communicate through a specialized process and language. Students do not develop an understanding about the nature of a scientific enterprise without repeated exposure and experiences to scientific investigations. Science educators need to portray accurately to their students the scientific research practices and the resulting conclusions drawn from such research endeavors. A classroom view of science that depicts scientific knowledge as a simple extension of the data collected objectively during research is clearly misleading. An analogous thought process in education called conceptual change occurs in meaningful learning. Cognitive growth happens as students try to integrate and make sense of everyday and more formal, school-based knowledge. When these two types of knowledge are in opposition, cognitive conflict occurs. Working collaboratively with others not only enhances the understanding of science, it also fosters the practice of many of the skills, attitudes, and values that characterize science.

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