Rethinking Scientific Literacy presents a new perspective on science learning as a tool for improving communities. By focusing on case studies inside and outside of the classroom, the authors illuminate the relevance of science in students' everyday lives, offering a new vision of scientific literacy that is inextricably linked with social responsibility and community development. The goal if not tote memorization of facts and theories, but a broader competency in scientific thinking and the ability to generate positive change.

This book proposes a new way to conceive of scientific literacy, as it has emerged from two research agendas that the authors have been pursuing independently but which have converged conceptually. This book presents a new and entirely different perspective than previous books on scientific literacy in that it valorizes the capacities of human beings to participate in worldly affairs and to change their life contexts. The book is important because it portrays a positive perspective, one that embodies the capacity of all human beings (independently of knowing that scientists think that protons...

According to John Dewey, Seymour Papert, Donald Schon, and Allan Collins, school activities, to be authentic, need to share key features with those worlds about which they teach. This book documents learning and teaching in open-inquiry learning environments, designed with the precepts of these educational thinkers in mind. The book is thus a first-hand report of knowing and learning by individuals and groups in complex open-inquiry learning environments in science. As such, it contributes to the emerging literature in this field.
Secondly, it exemplifies research methods for studying...

According to John Dewey, Seymour Papert, Donald Schon, and Allan Collins, school activities, to be authentic, need to share key features with those worlds about which they teach. This book documents learning and teaching in open-inquiry learning environments, designed with the precepts of these educational thinkers in mind. The book is thus a first-hand report of knowing and learning by individuals and groups in complex open-inquiry learning environments in science. As such, it contributes to the emerging literature in this field.
Secondly, it exemplifies research methods for studying...

The study described in this book arose in the contextof a three-year collective effort to bring about change in science teaching at Mountain Elementary School. 1 This opportunity emerged after I contacted the school with the idea to help teachers implement student-centered science teaching. At the same time, the teachers collectively had come to realize that their science teaching was not as exciting to children as it could be. They had recognized their own teaching as textbook-based with little use of the "hands-on" approaches prescribed by the provincial curriculum. At this point, the...

The book is designed to encourage discussion of issues surrounding the reform of classroom science discourse among teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. The contributors - some of the top educational researchers, linguists, and science educators in the world - represent a variety of perspectives perfaining to teaching, assessment, research, learning, and reform. As a whole the book explores the variety, complexity, and interconnectivity of issues associated with changing classroom learning communities and transforming science classroom discourse to be more representative of the...

During the summer of 1990, while taking my holidays to teach a university course of physics for elementary teachers, I also tutored one of the tenth-grade students at my school in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In return for working with him for free, I had requested permission to audiotape our sessions; I wanted to use the transcripts as data sources for a chapter that I had been in vited to write. It so happened that I discovered and read Jean Lave's Cognition in Practice that very summer, which inspired me to read other books on mathe matics in everyday situations. Two years later,...

During the summer of 1990, while taking my holidays to teach a university course of physics for elementary teachers, I also tutored one of the tenth-grade students at my school in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In return for working with him for free, I had requested permission to audiotape our sessions; I wanted to use the transcripts as data sources for a chapter that I had been in vited to write. It so happened that I discovered and read Jean Lave's Cognition in Practice that very summer, which inspired me to read other books on mathe matics in everyday situations. Two years later,...

This book, which features detailed case studies of identity as both resource and outcomes of learners in a variety of settings, will be of interest to anyone concerned with learning science in and out-of schools. The book also caters for readers who have wondered about how identity mediates science learning and, simultaneously, how engagement in science-related tasks and activities mediates the emergence and development of identities. The general tenor of all chapters is a cultural-historical and sociocultural framework that is brought to issues of identity, thereby inherently transcending...