Which of the following issues do you or have your faced?

1. Students who can't understand their science textbook.
2. Students who are totally disinterested in learning science.
3. Deciding how much to guide students during discovery learning.
4. Wondering if there are teaching strategies that might help students understand a particular science concept.
5. Balancing the time constraints of lab work and covering all the topics in the curriculum.

On a day-to-day basis, most teachers do not have time to turn to research journals to find out what is already known about these common issues, but this is the course in which we shall do just that. The fruits of science education research often take a long time to trickle down to the classroom teacher and when they do they have sometimes become distorted so that the recommended practices no longer makes sense or do not seem to help.

In this course, we shall be reading research articles and examining how the research was carried out. You will then conduct an "action research" project. Those who engage in action research have a commitment to bring about change. In this case, you will be investigating something in your own classroom or school that concerns you and therefore the results of your research will help you to think about what might be done to change the situation. Through the collection and sorting of data we can gain insights into situations that were previously muddy. Teachers often have to make judgments based on experience, but this is not persuasive to outsiders. With data we can convince others that the course of action we choose is justified.

Instructor

Anita Greenwood, Ed.D.
Professor, Science Education
University of Massachusetts, Lowell.
http://gse.uml.edu/gse/about/faculty/Greenwood.html
anita_greenwood@uml.edu

Click here to return to course offerings.