Designing Coherent Science Education

Too often in today’s science classes, students learn isolated facts but are unprepared to apply scientific thinking outside of checking off answers on standardized tests. Designing Coherent Science Education demonstrates how effective instruction, supported by research-based curriculum materials and technologies, prepares learners to use scientific principles to make sense of the world around them. Arising from the National Science Foundation-funded Delineating and Evaluating Coherent Instructional Designs for Education (DECIDE) project, this volume brings together experts in curriculum development, technology-assisted learning, diversity, teacher education, and assessment to consider strategies that will help students achieve a more integrated understanding of science.

Offering important policy recommendations, this practical resource:

• Provides a set of design principles for the next generation of curriculum materials, both print and technology-based.
• Synthesizes current research on the most promising methods and models for coherent science instruction.
• Discusses how courses can help students interpret contemporary scientific dilemmas like global warming and personally relevant issues like health and disease.

Contributors include Jane Bowyer, Allan Collins, Elizabeth A. Davis, George E. DeBoer, Joseph S. Krajcik, Roy D. Pea, and James Slotta.

Yael Kali is Senior Researcher at the Department of Education in Science and Technology, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. Marcia C. Linn is Professor of Development and Cognition, specializing in education in mathematics, science, and technology in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Jo Ellen Roseman, Director of Project 2061 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has been involved in the design, testing, and dissemination of Project 2061's science literacy reform tools since 1989.

“A must-read for everyone interested in the development of a coherent science curriculum.”
—James Trefil, George Mason University

“Everyone involved with improving science education should read this book and heed its message.”
—George D. Nelson, Western Washington University

“This volume is a harbinger for a new approach to improving science education. It is based on the best of a quarter century of curriculum development, improved by designs that are informed by current research, and powered by modern technology.”
— From the Foreword by Robert Tinker, President, The Concord Consortium