Knowledge And Understanding Of Science

Develops secure subject knowledge for primary science with the ability to test understanding through the new online resources.

What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as: When do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child's development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects? What role does nonschool learning play in children's knowledge of science? How can science education capitalize on children's natural curiosity? What are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning? How can teachers be taught to teach science? The book also provides a detailed examination of how we know what we know about children's learning of scienceâ€"about the role of research and evidence. This book will be an essential resource for everyone involved in K-8 science educationâ€"teachers, principals, boards of education, teacher education providers and accreditors, education researchers, federal education agencies, and state and federal policy makers. It will also be a useful guide for parents and others interested in how children learn.

The first comprehensive exploration of the nature and value of understanding, addressing burgeoning debates in epistemology and philosophy of science.

One of the pathways by which the scientific community confirms the validity of a new scientific discovery is by repeating the research that produced it. When a scientific effort fails to independently confirm the computations or results of a previous study, some fear that it may be a symptom of a lack of rigor in science, while others argue that such an observed inconsistency can be an important precursor to new discovery. Concerns about reproducibility and replicability have been expressed in both scientific and popular media. As these concerns came to light, Congress requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conduct a study to assess the extent of issues related to reproducibility and replicability and to offer recommendations for improving rigor and transparency in scientific research. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. Unlike the typical expectation of reproducibility between two computations, expectations about replicability are more nuanced, and in some cases a lack of replicability can aid the process of scientific discovery. This report provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science.

To most scientists, and to those interested in the sciences, understanding is the ultimate aim of scientific endeavor. In spite of this, understanding, and how it is achieved, has received little attention in recent philosophy of science. Scientific Understanding seeks to reverse this trend by providing original and in-depth accounts of the concept of understanding and its essential role in the scientific process. To this end, the chapters in this volume explore and develop three key topics: understanding and explanation, understanding and models, and understanding in scientific practice. Earlier philosophers, such as Carl Hempel, dismissed understanding as subjective and pragmatic. They believed that the essence of science was to be found in scientific theories and explanations. In Scientific Understanding, the contributors maintain that we must also consider the relation between explanations and the scientists who construct and use them. They focus on understanding as the cognitive state that is a goal of explanation and on the understanding of theories and models as a means to this end. The chapters in this book highlight the multifaceted nature of the process of scientific research. The contributors examine current uses of theory, models, simulations, and experiments to evaluate the degree to which these elements contribute to understanding. Their analyses pay due attention to the roles of intelligibility, tacit knowledge, and feelings of understanding. Furthermore, they investigate how understanding is obtained within diverse scientific disciplines and examine how the acquisition of understanding depends on specific contexts, the objects of study, and the stated aims of research.

All the subject knowledge you need to teach primary science. The essential subject knowledge text for primary science. Secure subject knowledge and understanding is the foundation of confident, creative and effective teaching. This comprehensive text, covering the whole primary curriculum, includes interactive tasks, self-assessment questions and links to other resources in all chapters. Primary science matters. This 10th edition includes links to the ITT Core Content Framework and new content on children’s common misconceptions in science.

This broad collection of accessible essays helps readers develop a fuller appreciation of the nature of science and scientific knowledge in general. The focus throughout is on the relationships in science between fact and theory, about the nature of scientific theory, and about the kinds of claims on truth that science makes. Arranges essays according to three essential aspects of scientific practice: Method, theory, and discovery. For scientists looking to broaden their general knowledge of basic scientific theory.

Science education has to be improved in order to become more responsive to the needs of society confronted with a rapidly changing world. Bringing science teaching up to a higher level is a key factor in this endeavour. The authors of this book think about teachers as part of the immediate and large communities and systems in which they function. They consider the development of teachers professional knowledge as a continuous process that depends on the communities they are committed to and participate in, the discipline they are teaching, the social context in which they perform, the instruments made available in their environment, and their day-to-day classroom experience. From this perspective, each teacher learns in an individual way, but cannot learn without relying on their colleagues and other partners. Such professional knowledge is partly tacit and explicit, and thus possessed by teachers, experts and researchers. Coordinating activity theory and models of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), the book provides a better understanding of the growth of science teacher professional knowledge. The chapters are organised around shared perspectives and themes and based on research findings. The emerging model can inform pre-service teacher educators, researchers and students. The book results from exchanges and symposia during international conferences (ECER, ESERA) and from a two-day seminar held at Université Grenoble Alpes in March 2015.