Understanding Science

Making Sense of SCIENCE™ focuses on the intersection of knowledge about science content, literacy, and teaching. Our professional development model is based on the premise that to develop pedagogical content knowledge, teachers must have opportunities to learn science content in combination with analysis of student thinking and instructional strategies for learning that content. Teaching Cases are used to bring together science, student thinking, and instruction in the classroom context. Drawn from actual classroom episodes, the cases are written by classroom teachers in conjunction with Understanding Science for Teaching project staff, and contain student work, student-teacher dialogue, context information, and teacher thinking and behaviors.

During a Making Sense of SCIENCE course teachers engage in a Teaching Investigation when they examine student thinking and critically analyze instruction presented in the Teaching Case. Doing this leads teachers to explore alternative perspectives and solutions, which in turn causes them to rethink their own instruction.

One elementary teacher talks about his experience:

"This has been a really terrific experience…This is the first time I've experienced professional development that gets to the heart of things. You're looking at science concepts. You're asking what student work reveals about student knowledge, and you're looking at teaching. You're talking about everything at once, and that is the most valuable part … the thing we don't often get to do."