Communicating Ocean Sciences

The National Academies Press published two books that we recommend to use as textbooks for Communicating Ocean Sciences K-12. Ready, Set, SCIENCE! was written for education practitioners and is appropriate for undergraduate students. Taking Science to School is the research version of the book and is better suited for graduate students. Both books are available as free PDFs from the National Academies Press website.

Ready, Set, SCIENCE!

Michaels, S., Shouse, A. W., and Schweingruber, H. A. (2007). Ready, Set, SCIENCE!: Putting Research to Work in K-8 Science Classrooms. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.

Description from the National Academies Press:
What types of instructional experiences help K-8 students learn science with understanding? What do science educators teachers, teacher leaders, science specialists, professional development staff, curriculum designers, school administrators need to know to create and support such experiences?

Ready, Set, Science! guides the way with an account of the groundbreaking and comprehensive synthesis of research into teaching and learning science in kindergarten through eighth grade. Based on the recently released National Research Council report Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8, this book summarizes a rich body of findings from the learning sciences and builds detailed cases of science educators at work to make the implications of research clear, accessible, and stimulating for a broad range of science educators.

Ready, Set, Science! is filled with classroom case studies that bring to life the research findings and help readers to replicate success. Most of these stories are based on real classroom experiences that illustrate the complexities that teachers grapple with every day. They show how teachers work to select and design rigorous and engaging instructional tasks, manage classrooms, orchestrate productive discussions with culturally and linguistically diverse groups of students, and help students make their thinking visible using a variety of representational tools.

This book will be an essential resource for science education practitioners and contains information that will be extremely useful to everyone including parents directly or indirectly involved in the teaching of science.

Download a PDF of the book from the National Academies Press.

Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8

Duschl, R. A., Scheweingruber, H. A., & Shouse, A. W. (Eds.). (2007). Taking science to school: Learning and teaching science in grades K-8. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press.

Description from the National Academies Press:
What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as:

• When do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child’s development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects?
• What role does nonschool learning play in children’s knowledge of science?
• How can science education capitalize on children’s natural curiosity?
• What are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning?
• How can teachers be taught to teach science?

The book also provides a detailed examination of how we know what we know about children’s learning of science—about the role of research and evidence. This book will be an essential resource for everyone involved in K-8 science education—teachers, principals, boards of education, teacher education providers and accreditors, education researchers, federal education agencies, and state and federal policy makers. It will also be a useful guide for parents and others interested in how children learn.

Download a PDF of the book from the National Academies Press.