Imporving Science Education

Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part one: Researching teaching and learning science

Why things fall: evidence and warrants for belief in a college astronomy course
Designing teaching situations in the secondary school
Formative assessment and science education: a model and theorizing
National evaluation for the improvement of science teaching
Learning to teach science in the primary school
Managing science teachers' development
Status as the hallmark of conceptual learning
Analysing discourse in the science classroom

Part two: Reviewing the role and purpose of science in the school curriculum

Providing suitable content in the 'science for all' curriculum
Interesting all children in 'science for all'
Making the nature of science explicit
Shifting the paradigm on 'science for all'
Science, views about science, and pluralistic science education
Renegotiating the culture of school science

Part three: Researching science education

Research programmes and the student science learning literature
Goals, methods and achievements of research in science education
Didactics of science
the forgotten dimension in science education research?
Policy, practice and research
the case of testing and assessment
Notes on contributors
Index.

This book takes stock of where we are in science education research, and considers where we ought now to be going. It explores how and whether the research effort in science education has contributed to improvements in the practice of teaching science and the science curriculum. It contains contributions from an international group of science educators. Each chapter explores a specific area of research in science education, considering why this research is worth doing, and its potential for development. Together they look candidly at important general issues such as the impact of research on classroom practice and the development of science education as a progressive field of research.

The book was produced in celebration of the work of the late Rosalind Driver. All the principal contributors to the book had professional links with her, and the three sections of the book focus on issues that were of central importance in her work: research on teaching and learning in science; the role of science within the school curriculum and the nature of the science education we ought to be providing for young people; and the achievements of, and future agenda for, research in science education.