Physical Science And Everyday Thinking

Appropriate as a textbook for courses in cognitive psychology or social cognition, Everyday Thinking reviews the rapidly growing literature on cognition in naturalistic settings. It differs from other textbooks in that, where possible, it focuses on thinking in real-world settings rather than in controlled laboratory settings and provides detailed treatments of each of the following topics: * how we form impressions of and represent persons in memory; * how we recognize and represent faces; * how we reason in our day-to-day lives and go about solving everyday problems; * how we make judgments and decisions; * how we encode memories of events--both for future action and for our own life histories; and * what are some of the implications of everyday knowledge and cognition for education and instruction. This book presents the theoretical positions and research evidence on each of these topics and examines the generally unexplored connections among them. As a result, this book presents the study of cognition in a more relevant form and in a context that readers can more readily apply to their own lives.

What can make a ball roll faster? Does the temperature of wood affect the heat of a fire? How can old-fashioned tin can telephones teach today's students about sound and technology? By presenting everyday mysteries like these, this book will motivate your students to carry out hands-on science investigations and actually care about the results. The 21 open-ended mysteries focus exclusively on physical science, including motion, friction, temperature, forces, and sound. The stories come with lists of science concepts to explore, grade-appropriate strategies for using them, and explanations of how the lessons align with national standards. They also relieve you of the tiring work of designing inquiry lessons from scratch.

Answering calls in recent reform documents to shape instruction in response to students’ ideas while integrating key concepts and scientific and/or mathematical practices, this text presents the concept of responsive teaching, synthesizes existing research, and examines implications for both research and teaching. Case studies across the curriculum from elementary school through adult education illustrate the variety of forms this approach to instruction and learning can take, what is common among them, and how teachers and students experience it. The cases include intellectual products of students’ work in responsive classrooms and address assessment methods and issues. Many of the cases are supplemented with online resources (http://www.studentsthinking.org/rtsm) including classroom video and extensive transcripts, providing readers with additional opportunities to immerse themselves in responsive classrooms and to see for themselves what these environments look and feel like.

Dr. Olcbee Lee SchoolofEducation, UniversityofMiami Coral Gables, Florida 33124 I remember my excitement and appreciation several years ago when I first read World View Theory and Science Education Research by Bill Cobern (1991). It was a comprehensive, theoretical discussion ofworldview theory in science education. I am delighted to see that Cobern has taken the next step to provide empirical accountsofworldview in Everyday Thoughts about Nature. . The primary goal of the book is to understand how typical- ninth grade students and their science teachers think about Nature or the natural world, and how their thoughts are related to science. In pursuing this goal, the book raises a basicquestion about the purpose ofscienceeducationfor the public: Should science education seek to educate "scientific thinkers" in the pattern of the science teachers? Or, should science education seek to foster sound science learning within the matrices ofvari- ous cultural perspectives? (p. 3) The answer to this question becomes clear, thanks to Cobern's excellent research and persuasivearguments. First, this research takes a humanistic approach in understanding what students and teachers think about Nature "through the language and ideas voluntarily expressed" (p. I). The research used multi- directional prompts and encouraged students and teachers to speak freely and at length in any directions they wished. This humanistic approach is stated clearly: " T]he research seeks to illuminate some of the various ways in which students think aboutNature withoutjudging eventhe most unorthodox perspectives" (p. 14).