Learning Progressions To Support Ambitious Teaching Practices

Abstract

One challenge faced by teachers, especially novice teachers, is navigating the messy and confusing landscape of science teaching reforms. In reform-based classrooms, students may be moving around and talking as they share ideas. Part of developing expertise as a teacher is learning which aspects of the classroom environment can be ignored and which ones can be pursued to fruitful ends. Teachers must learn to separate the signal from the noise, so to speak, during the act of teaching. Goodwin (1994) identified this ability as professional vision; namely, the ability to survey a complex landscape, identify important elements in that landscape, and connect those elements to a larger framework of understanding that is shared by a profession. The field of science education is only beginning to develop effective supports for helping teachers develop professional vision (McDonald, 2008).KeywordsScience TeachingTeaching PracticeTeacher LearningNovice TeacherStudent ThinkingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.