Teaching and Learning

Some Key Qualities of Best Practices in Science and Math Education

Constructivism

• Encourages learner autonomy

• Recognizes that learners construct their own personal understanding from interaction with their environment

• Provides time for learners to construct conceptual understanding and create connections (both during discussions and during hands-on experiences)

• Learner response drives the lessons and determines instructional strategies and content (This does not mean that students alone determines what is taught or is not taught, but that their interests are integrated taking advantage of teachable moments)

Inquiry Learning

• "A set of behaviors involved in the struggle of human beings for reasonable explanation of phenomena about which they are curious" (NWREL, 1998)

• Learners personally construct their own experiments, analyze, interpret and communicate their results

• Learners have significant input and take responsibility for nearly every aspect of their learning

• Teachers act as facilitators for the learning rather than purveyors of knowledge

• Is a continuum from teacher-directed learning, where the teacher presents the problem or question and orchestrates the investigation to completely student-directed learning

• Good questioning strategies are used to facilitate deeper learning

Multiple Intelligences

• The definition of intelligence according to Howard Gardner (Frames of Mind, 1983) is "the ability to solve a problem or make something that is valued by a culture"

• Verbal/linguistic

• Visual/spatial

• Bodily/kinesthetic

• Musical/rhythmic

• Interpersonal

• Intrapersonal

• Naturalist

Alternative Assessment

• Uses multiple sources of information for assessment, not just paper and pencil tests

• Encourages the construction of new knowledge through application of skills/concepts

• Encourages students to show what they have learned in their preferred intelligence

• Gives feedback to both student and teacher

• Provides opportunities for decision making