Science Education (ESCI) 4430 Syllabus

Science Education (ESCI) 4430, Fall 2011	Dr. David F. Jackson, Associate Professor
Science Curriculum for the Middle Grades	University of Georgia
Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, 11:15-12:05	212 Aderhold Hall, (706) 542-1763
215 Aderhold Hall pre- or corequisite: GEOL 4750, PBIO 2010 or equivalent followup: ESCI 4440 and CHEM 1060 or equivalent	djackson@uga.edu Mr. Leonard Bloch, Teaching Assistant lenbloch@uga.edu

Course description, from UGA Bulletin:
Examination and selection of science curriculum materials and assessments. Evaluating and reformulating materials for relevance to middle grades classrooms. Special attention to examples and problems drawn from the life, earth, and environmental sciences.

Text materials will be extensive and will consist not of entire textbooks but of electronically accessible readings drawn from a wide variety of sources, including notes and examples authored by present or past instructors and portions of copyrighted materials used in accordance with Educational Fair Use guidelines. Most notes and readings will be posted on the instructor-authored web site referenced below. Especially large electronic files will be posted on the eLearningCommons site, under ESCI 4430, instead. For students interested in further detail, a library of entire books from which some readings are drawn (and also of DVD materials used in class) will be continously built and maintained in Room 215 during the semester for reference and informal lending.

The specific schedule will be determined, week-to-week and day-to-day, based on the progress and input of the class, the occasional availability of field experience opportunities or guest instructors, coordination with GEOL 4750 and/or PBIO 2010 activities, and, in the case of several planned outdoor activities, the weather. Although the issues considered in this course are inherently interrelated, topics will be first introduced approximately in the order in which they are listed within each of the four major categories of objectives below, so the list of objectives may also be considered a crude topical outline for the course.

A web site for the course may be accessed at http://djackson.myweb.uga.edu/ESCI4430.html and will be continuously developed and revised during the semester. Adding this site to your bookmark/favorites list is highly recommended. To allow for maximum flexibility/responsiveness in teaching approach and emphasis, daily updates listing activities, readings, and assignments will typically be posted within a few hours immediately following (only partially and tentatively before) each class.

As stated by UGA policy, "the course syllabus is a general plan for the course; deviations announced to the class by the instructor may be necessary."

My available office hours are: immediately after class, most of the day on most Tuesdays and Thursdays; and at 2:00 (after the science content courses) most Wednesdays and Fridays.

Daily or weekly ungraded, "homework" assignments will be given fairly often, although far from every day. These may involve reading, brief writing, and/or previewing web sites or videos, and are designed to provide relevant raw material for interactive discussions planned for the following class period. If you don't do them, you lose and so do your classmates. Do them!

Formal assignments, of which there will be approximately six during the course of the semester, will be reflective essays or practical design projects, designed to require creative and critical thinking about the objectives being addressed. In order to accomodate preferences in working styles and schedules, students may choose to prepare and submit these either alone or as groups of as many as four people. Submission of assignments via e-mail attachment (preferably as .doc or .docx files) is encouraged, and those submitted in this form will be commented upon and returned via the same technology. Topics of the most common assignments in the past have included, but those this semester may not be limited to:

Learning Cycle-based individual lesson planning
Curriculum "triage:" What to keep and what to toss
Constructing traditional assessment items
Learning Cycle-based unit scope and sequence planning
Adapting and planning for use of video
Adapting and planning for use of web-based resources
Incorporating science process skills and the nature of science into topical science lessons
Reaction paper: Teaching about biological evolution in light of possible perceived conflicts with students' religious ideas

Grading of individual assignments will be on a 15-point scale according to the following general, subjective, but reasonable rubric:

15: strikingly impressive; excellent in every way (not necessarily "perfect")
13-14: both complete and showing substantial evidence of informed, original thought
12: all required aspects of assignment minimally completed
10-11: some worthwhile work; one or more major aspects of assignment missing or of unacceptable quality
9: almost shouldn't have bothered
<9: no convincing evidence of meaningful learning or of serious thought
0: not submitted, or providing significant evidence of willful violation of the University Honor Code and Academic Honesty Policy (see below)

A more specific rubric may be provided in advance for some assignments.

Nominal grades will assigned according to the following minimum (rounded) percentages of credit:
A 94%; A- 90%; B+ 87%; B 83%; B- 80%; C+ 77%; C 73%; C- 70%; D 60%; F <60%

Elements of the semester grade will be 90% for approximately 6 formal assignments (equally weighted) and 10% for the Final Exam.

Late work policy: A formal assignment will be penalized 2 points (of 15) for lateness if submitted after it has already been returned to those who submitted it on time.

Mastery Learning policy: Any assignment may be redone as a whole (in a significantly different way or on a different specific topic) for a fully revised grade.

Final exam items/questions will be a series of interrelated practical problems, designed to require creative and critical thinking in applying general principles learned in the course to the potential use of specific, previously unfamiliar curriculum materials. The final exam will require some reading and preparation based on materials (text, video, and/or web-site-based) distributed or demonstrated during the last week of classes, and will be given on a time-limited but open-notes basis. The option of either a 30-minute oral interview or a traditional 3-hour written exam will be offered. The oral interview format is strongly suggested, has been customary for nearly all students in this course for many years, and may be scheduled at any mutually convenient time during the exam week (as with written exams, not earlier).

Attendance policy: Attendance and class participation are not in themselves a formal aspect of the course grade. My goal is to try to design class activities so that you feel that you are clearly missing something important if you are not present (both physically and mentally!). Polite but pointed inquiries will be made, however, about the reasons for repeated or habitual absence or lateness.

In accordance with the University Honor Code and Academic Honesty Policy, academic work must meet the standards contained in the UGA document A Culture of Honesty (http://www.uga.edu/honesty/). Each student is responsible to inform themselves about those standards before performing any academic work.

Music will be played regularly during the 10-15 minutes immediately preceding class (in order to, as Bugs Bunny would say, soothe the savage beasts). Everyone is invited to take turns bringing in CDs, or else risk being subjected to my own wildly eclectic tastes.

Course Objectives ("Students will be able to..."):

Basic Principles of Science Teaching

Describe the Learning Cycle Model (exploration, concept/term introduction, application) of science teaching and learning, and recognize, modify, and design coherent individual lessons and sequences of lessons using this approach.
List, describe, and demonstrate facility in the Science Process Skills (observation, description, inference, prediction, and classification, as well as the design and analysis of formal experiments), and recognize, modify, and design middle-grades-level activities, including both single lessons and longer-term, project-based units, appropriate for developing them.
Describe and critically evaluate strategies for scaffolding student reading and writing in middle grades science, including but not limited to: lab reports, science journals, and advance organizers for reading and note-taking.
Describe and critically evaluate classroom and materials management strategies appropriate for middle grades science activities.
Gather, prepare, and critically evaluate specific "hands-on, minds-on" activities appropriate for middle grades students in each of several major Life and Earth Science topic areas typically included in middle grades science objectives.

Science Curriculum and Assessment Issues

Demonstrate an understanding of the nature of science as a distinctive way of knowing, and describe and apply selected aspects of the history of science and of current scientific research that can inform science teaching and curriculum.
Describe and critically apply various criteria for the design of the specific scope and sequence of the Life Science and Earth Science components of a curriculum framework for middle grades science, with reference to both current state and local objectives and influential U. S. national science standards documents.
Select, adapt, and construct traditional assessment items with the goal of achieving the best possible balance between authenticity, efficiency, validity, reliability, and fairness.
Describe and apply the strategy of Backward Design for long-term planning of the relationship between curriculum, teaching and learning activities, and assessment.

Electronic Technologies in Science Teaching

Describe examples of the advantages and limitations, as teaching tools for middle school science, of:

selective, creative, interactive use of video footage
electronic display technologies
other internet-based resources, e. g., scientific information databases, interactive simulations of natural phenomena or of scientific inquiry, and collaborative "citizen science" projects

Ethical, Cultural and Social Issues in Science Teaching

Describe the problematic nature of several ethical, cultural, and social issues that commonly arise in middle school Life Science and Earth Science teaching, and some relevant legal, sociological and psychological principles that may help teachers, students and parents to resolve them:

Use and treatment of animals (living and dead) in the science classroom
Interactions between science and religion, especially in regard to teaching the subject matter areas of cosmology, historical geology, and biological evolution