In this book various scholars explore the material in science and science education and its role in scientific practice, such as those practices that are key to the curriculum focuses of science education programs in a number of countries. As a construct, culture can be understood as material and social practice. This definition is useful for informing researchers' nuanced explorations of the nature of science and inclusive decisions about the practice of science education (Sewell, 1999). As fields of material social practice and worlds of meaning, cultures are contradictory, contested, and weakly bounded. The notion of culture as material social practices leads researchers to accept that material practice is as important as conceptual development (social practice). However, in education and science education there is a tendency to ignore material practice and to focus on social practice with language as the arbiter of such social practice. Often material practice, such as those associated with scientific instruments and other apparatus, is ignored with instruments understood as "inscription devices", conduits for language rather than sources of material culture in which scientists share "material other than words" (Baird, 2004, p. 7) when they communicate new knowledge and realities. While we do not ignore the role of language in science, we agree with Barad (2003) that perhaps language has too much power and with that power there seems a concomitant loss of interest in exploring how matter and machines (instruments) contribute to both ontology and epistemology in science and science education.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This edited book provides readers with a guide for implementing self-assessment and self-evaluation that is based on a model implemented successfully in a diverse range of teacher education courses. Educators from disciplines as diverse as theater arts, early childhood, psychology, mathematics, and science education have adopted a model of self-assessment and self-evaluation that supports the individual ongoing assessment of learning throughout a course as well as the final synthesis of individual learning in the course. Self-assessment and self-evaluation are presented here as a means to help students and teachers reinvent the learning process as co-constructed, powered by evidence and agency in order to lift thinking beyond the mere attainment of an end-point grade; to help students own their learning in new ways they may not have experienced before; to think about teaching and learning that will carry them beyond their formal schooling years; and to value new questions as evidence of learning.

Many would argue that the state of urban science education has been static for the past several decades and that there is little to learn from it. Rather than accepting this deficit perspective, Improving Urban Science Education strives to recognize and understand the successes that exist there by systematically documenting seven years of research into issues salient to teaching and learning in urban high school science classes. Grounded in the post structuralism of William Sewell_and brought to life through the experiences of different students, teachers, and school settings in Philadelphia_this book shows how teachers and students can work together to enact meaningful science education when social and cultural differences as well as inappropriate curricula often make the challenges seem insurmountable. Chapters contain rich images of urban youth and each strives to offer insights into problems and suggestions for resolving them. Most significant, in spite of the challenges, the research offers hope and shows that fresh approaches to teaching and learning can lead students_some who have already been pronounced academic, even societal, failures_to becoming avid and deep learners of science.