Fundamentals of Science Education

Full course description

Science teaching is a complicated craft, involving extensive knowledge and skills from various fields that you will not have time to completely master by the end of this course. Thus, our goal is to support you in becoming a well-started beginning science teacher by focusing on a small number of high-leverage teaching practices. These teaching practices are essential for successful student learning and can often distinguish more effective from less effective teachers. Learning to use high-leverage practices effectively is a difficult and time-consuming process because they are not simple skills you can use on all occasions. Instead, they involve both skill and principled reasoning – figuring out what form of the practice is appropriate for the students, content, and context with which you are working. In this course, you will have opportunities to rehearse these practices with your peers.