Background on Students' Science Understanding:
Especially important in a science class is an environment which supports substantive dialogue, nurtures risk taking, and encourages cooperative problem-solving. Through collaboration--connecting students with students, students with teachers, and students with the global community--students learn to analyze openly, listen to someone else, accept diverse points of view, and come up with ideas to test out. Afterall, scientists learn more from their mistakes than anything else.Classrooms like these offer forums of visible thinking and reasoning where all are empowered to offer thoughts, questions, and comments.

In this new middle school science curriculum, the focus is on facilitating conceptual understanding and teaching for conceptual change. As teachers ask students to construct new science understandings through reflecting on prior knowledge and being critical of untested data, the students' results will help identify naive thinking and direct the next steps toward conceptual change and application.

Principles of effective teaching (from Science for All Americans, AAAS, 1989

Consistent with the Nature of Scientific Inquiry

Begin with questions about nature
Engage students actively
Concentrate on the collection and use of evidence
Provide historical perspectives
Insist on clear expression
Use a team approach
Do not separate knowing from finding out
Deemphasize the memorization of technical vocabulary

Reflects Scientific Values

Welcome curiosity
Reward creativity
Encourage a spirit of healthy questioning
Avoid dogmatism
Promote aesthetic responses

Aim to Counteract Learning Anxieties

Build on success
Provide abundant experience in using tools
Support the role of girls, women and minorities in science
Emphasize group learning

"When implemented, the AAAS teaching principles lead to improved student achievement in a variety of undergraduate science and mathematics courses."
"Evaluating College Science and Mathematics Instruction," The Journal of College Science Teaching. March/April 2002. Volume XXXI No. 6. pp 388-393.

The Atlas Project 2061...
A collection of strand maps that show how students' understanding of the "big ideas" that lead to science literacy grow over the K-12 experience. Below are links to on-line sample map commentarys and maps. The commentary inlcudes background information on the topic, a summary of the relevant cognitive research, and notes on the evolution of the understandings for major grade levels K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.

Evidence and Reasoning In Inquiry

Gravity

Atoms and Molecules

Cell Functions