Exploring The Intersection Of Science Education And 21st Century Skills

An emerging body of research suggests that a set of broad "21st century skills"-such as adaptability, complex communication skills, and the ability to solve non-routine problems-are valuable across a wide range of jobs in the national economy. However, the role of K-12 education in helping students learn these skills is a subject of current debate. Some business and education groups have advocated infusing 21st century skills into the school curriculum, and several states have launched such efforts. Other observers argue that focusing on skills detracts attention from learning of important content knowledge. To explore these issues, the National Research Council conducted a workshop, summarized in this volume, on science education as a context for development of 21st century skills. Science is seen as a promising context because it is not only a body of accepted knowledge, but also involves processes that lead to this knowledge. Engaging students in scientific processes-including talk and argument, modeling and representation, and learning from investigations-builds science proficiency. At the same time, this engagement may develop 21st century skills. Exploring the Intersection of Science Education and 21st Century Skills addresses key questions about the overlap between 21st century skills and scientific content and knowledge; explores promising models or approaches for teaching these abilities; and reviews the evidence about the transferability of these skills to real workplace applications.

Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today's children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management - often referred to as "21st century skills." Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills- such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn. 21st century skills also include creativity, innovation, and ethics that are important to later success and may be developed in formal or informal learning environments. This report also describes how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century summarizes the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education. In this report, features related to learning these skills are identified, which include teacher professional development, curriculum, assessment, after-school and out-of-school programs, and informal learning centers such as exhibits and museums.

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) has been adapted, adopted, and taken up in a diversity of ways in science education since the concept was introduced in the mid-1980s. Now that it is so well embedded within the language of teaching and learning, research and knowledge about the construct needs to be more useable and applicable to the work of science teachers, especially so in these times when standards and other measures are being used to define their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Re-examining Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Science Education is organized around three themes: Re-examining PCK: Issues, ideas and development; Research developments and trajectories; Emerging themes in PCK research. Featuring the most up-to-date work from leading PCK scholars in science education across the globe, this volume maps where PCK has been, where it is going, and how it now informs and enhances knowledge of science teachers’ professional knowledge. It illustrates how the PCK research agenda has developed and can make a difference to teachers’ practice and students’ learning of science.

The world is experiencing unprecedented rapidity of change, originating from pervasive technological developments. This book considers the effects of such rapid change from within computing disciplines, by allowing computing educationalists to deliver a considered verdict on the future of their discipline. The targeted future, the year 2020, was chosen to be distant enough to encourage authors to risk being visionary, while being close enough to ensure some anchorage to reality. The result is a scholarly set of contributions expressing the visions, hopes, concerns, predictions and analyses of trends for the future.

Ths bk examines the role of aesthetic experience in learning science&in science education from the perspective of knowlecge as action&language use,based on the writings of John Dewey&Ludwig Wittgenstein.It offers a novel contribution to the current debat

Technology-enhanced learning is a timely topic, the importance of which is recognized by educational researchers, practitioners, software designers, and policy makers. This volume presents and discusses current trends and issues in technology-enhanced learning from a European research and development perspective. This multifaceted and multidisciplinary topic is considered from four different viewpoints, each of which constitutes a separate section in the book. The sections include general as well as domain-specific principles of learning that have been found to play a significant role in technology-enhanced environments, ways to shape the environment to optimize learners’ interactions and learning, and specific technologies used by the environment to empower learners. An additional section discusses the work presented in the preceding sections from a computer science perspective and an implementation perspective. This book comes out of the work in Kaleidoscope: a European Network of Excellence in which over 1,000 people from more than 90 institutes across Europe participate. Kaleidoscope brings together researchers from diverse disciplines and cultures, through their collaboration and sharing of scientific outcomes, they are helping move the field of technology-enhanced learning forward.

Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.

Educational researchers are bound to see this as a timely work. It brings together the work of leading experts in argumentation in science education. It presents research combining theoretical and empirical perspectives relevant for secondary science classrooms. Since the 1990s, argumentation studies have increased at a rapid pace, from stray papers to a wealth of research exploring ever more sophisticated issues. It is this fact that makes this volume so crucial.