Our new book is out! Ambitious Science Teaching

Jan 21, 2018

If you are interested in changing your classroom discourse, anchoring your instructional units in puzzling phenomena, or engaging students in scientific practices such as modeling, evidence-based explanation, or augmentation this is the source. If you want to see how to make classroom more relevant and equitable for all learners while upping the rigor, this book will show you how.

Check out twitter: #AmbScienceTeach

Here’s the link to order: Harvard Ed Press

And here’s the table of contents:

Chapter 1 A Vision of Ambitious Science Teaching

Chapter 2 Core Practice Set #1

Planning for Engagement with Big Science Ideas

Chapter 3 Productive Discourse, Part I

Talk as a Tool for Learning

Chapter 4 Productive Discourse, Part 2

Encouraging More Students to Participate in Talk

Chapter 5 Core Practice Set #2

Eliciting Students’ Ideas

Chapter 6 Modeling, Part 1

Making Thinking Visible Through Models

Chapter 7 Modeling, Part 2

Allowing Students to Show What They Know

Chapter 8 Core Practice Set #3

Supporting On-going Changes in Thinking: Introducing New Ideas

Chapter 9 Core Practice Set #3

Supporting On-going Changes in Thinking: Activity and Sense-making

Chapter 10 Core Practice Set #3

Supporting On-going Changes in Thinking: Collective Thinking

Chapter 11 Scientific Argument

Making and Justifying Claims in a Science Community

Chapter 12 Core Practice Set #4

Drawing Together Evidence-based Explanations

Chapter 13 Organizing with Colleagues to Improve Teaching

Chapter 14 Can We Be Ambitious Every Day?

Appendices

Appendix A. Coherence Between AST and Professional Standards for Practice

Appendix B. Reminding Ourselves of the Bigger Picture of Instruction

Appendix C. Taxonomy of Tools

Appendix D. How to Help Students Understand the “What-How-Why” Levels of Explanation

Appendix E. Rapid Survey of Student Thinking (RSST) Tool

Appendix F. Supports for Students in Making Sense of Experimental Design and Purpose

Appendix G. Supporting Explanation Writing

Auto Draft

“When I teach… future science teachers, having in-service teacher-vetted and co-designed tools that we know help kids learn in classrooms, available in your methods class where you’re learning right now, and having opportunities to use those during teaching rehearsals in the methods class, that’s really powerful.”

– Teacher Educator

Ambitious Teaching—An overview

In this video we illustrate what Ambitious Teaching looks like in classrooms ranging from high school to kindergarten. The practices were developed through collaborations between teachers and researchers, and they are continually evolving as we learn more about how they work with young learners. There are several themes that you’ll see in all examples, such as a focus on puzzling and complex phenomena, opportunities to make sense through talk, making thinking visible, attending to who is participating, using various forms of scaffolding and tools, and much more.

This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award #1907471 and #1315995