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SCED
550
Current Issues &
Research in Science Education
Prerequisite:
Admission to Science Education M.S. program. SCED
550 is a core course required of all Science Education M.S. candidates.
This survey course introduces students to the body of research and
practical knowledge shared by the science education community. Course
work includes studying and discussing articles chosen from the science
education literature relevant to key issues in science education.
(Course requirements include attending local, state, or national
science teachers conventions.) BASIC INFORMATION Semester: Fall 2008 Instructor: Alan Colburn Classroom: PH1-112 Meeting Time: M 5:00-7:50 p.m. Office: FO5-132 Office Hours: M,W 1-2. These times don't work well for students in this particular class, I know, but I usually respond to e-mails quickly, and I am on campus almost every day. Let me know when you want to come. Telephone: 562 985 5948 E-mail:
acolburn@csulb.edu OVERVIEW OF THE COURSE
& COURSE GOALS Welcome to the CSULB M.S.
program in Science Education! This course is first in the
three-course
sequence that is at the heart of the Science Education M.S. degree.
ScEd 550 is designed to introduce you to the field of science education
as a discipline. In this class you will learn about science education's
history, current issues in our field, and become familiar with the
reasons we study these problems. You’ll get to know some of
the
journals making up our professional literature, meet the rest of the
Science Education Department faculty, and meet local science education
leaders. You’ll explore new issues, including those that
might
become the basis for your thesis/project, while simultaneously building
upon the knowledge you gained during your credential program and time
in the K-12 classroom. My overarching mission is to
create a class introducing you to the big picture of science education.
I want to help you see your profession through a different lens. As a
practicing teacher, you're used to seeing teaching via a close-up
perspective. This class will help you also view teaching via a more
distant perspective. The goal is not to replace your day to day
classroom viewpoint, but to enhance it. The ability to see your
profession with various viewpoints is a necessary quality for any
educational leader. And creating educational leaders is one of the main
goals of the CSULB
M.S. in Science Education program. This 'big picture' viewpoint
includes things like thinking about your discipline’s
history, understanding how and why people have justified science being
part of the school curriculum, major issues to which we attend,
learning about beginning teachers and induction (since they are the
group many science educators often work with), professional
development, what's going on with science education at the state and
national levels, etc. You’ll also become familiar in this class with the kinds of scholarly literature making up the discipline of Science Education. You'll read a variety of articles from widely varied journals. You'll become better at understanding the style of scholarly work in education. At the same time, you will learn some things that will help you when you eventually complete your thesis--like how to find relevant references via online databases, APA and thesis formatting requirements, and getting research clearance from the Institutional Review Board. The purpose of the class (and
indeed the entire M.S. program) is for you to head toward a point where
you can hold your own when talking with anyone
about science teaching and the science education discipline! REQUIRED COURSE
MATERIALS Text: DeBoer,
G.E. (1991). A History of Ideas in Science Education: Implications for
Practice. New York, NY: Teacher’s College Press. [will
be distributed in class] Optional Text: Colburn, A.
(2003). The Lingo of Learning: 88 Education Terms Every Science Teacher
Should Know. Arlington, VA: NSTA Press. I put this on the list solely
for students who feel intimidated by a lack of science education
background. If you have never had a Science Methods course, you might
find the book a handy reference. It's in the library at Q181 .C5265. ASSIGNMENTS &
ASSESSMENT Course grades will be based on
these assignments: • Reading, participation, short essays related to reading assignments (45%): With a class this small, you will definitely participate extensively. If you’re unprepared for class for some reason, it will be pretty obvious. Sometimes you might be responsible for developing guiding questions to examine and clarify readings, providing a summary of an article, or even leading a portion of the weekly seminar. There may also be times when you will be responsible for finding an article(s) for everyone in the class to read. The class will also include small essays. I'll assign them as the class goes on, and post the information below. These assignments are short--one page maximum--and designed to get you thinking about issues. For these short essays I'll be grading on the basis of simple effort + cogency. A student will receive an A if it looks to me like s/he responded in a way reflecting serious thought, written clearly. The small essays include very brief responses to four questions after each of the reading assignments from DeBoer's book. Bring your responses to the questions to the class session in which we discuss the assignment:
• Curriculum Project (15%): Today's hands-on science curricula owe a lot to their predecessors from the 1960's. Many still popular activities were created for these projects. The purpose of this assignment is for you to become familiar with one of the successful "alphabet soup" curricula (so named because they were know via acronyms), and educate your classmates about the project. You'll ultimately write a paper (and give a presentation) in which you provide this information:
• Conference Proposal (10%).
Students are required to
present at a conference sometime before receiving their M.S. For this
assignment you will submit a presentation proposal, or at least
complete the proposal for a hypothetical presentation you will
hopefully give someday soon. Beside the proposal you’ll also
provide: a list of the materials needed for the presentation, an
outline of the presentation, and copies of handouts you’ll
give attendees. • Mini-literature review (30% for paper+presentations): You will conduct a literature review for a specific science education issue, and make two small presentations related to your work. A few weeks before the paper is due I'll ask you to tell your classmates about a relevant research article that you thought was well done. You and I will discuss the article beforehand. This aspect of the assignment provides a way for everyone in the class to learn about interesting, well done educational research. In your presentation you'll want to tell your classmates about the study's question(s), how the question(s) were investigated, what the researchers found, and how they interpreted their findings. You'll also want to discuss your thoughts about the work, why you do or do not support the findings in relation to your school/district, and the audience to whom you think the work might be most relevant, e.g., you might believe your study to be more relevant to smaller rural school districts or upper middle class suburban districts with college bound students than to other schools, or perhaps you believe your study would be most appropriate for school administrators trying to match teachers and students, etc. You will also (later) discuss your overall paper in
class—a little less formally—and submit the
scholarly
literature review paper. The
paper should include comparison between research-oriented and
practitioner-oriented articles on the same topic. The presentation will
include discussion about the classroom implications of research
articles you read. We will take classtime to discuss further details of
the assignment and I will
answer all your questions long before the assignment is due. Examples of research-oriented journals available at
CSULB include: Journal of Science Teacher Education, Journal
of Research in Science Teaching, School Science & Mathematics,
Science Education, Educational Leadership, and Phi
Delta Kappan. Just about any topic, with instructor approval, is fair game. Examples include—but are not limited to:
COURSE POLICIES Deadlines
Assignments are expected to be handed in on time. Late assignments will
be marked down unless arrangements have been made with the instructor
before the assignment is due. Attendance,
Participation Attendance and participation are
essential components of this course. If you don't come, and talk, class
won't work! You and your classmates' ideas need to be heard for
individual and collective growth to occur. As such, your final course
grade will reflect your level of attendance and participation: an "A"
student will have attended virtually all classes and participated in
each. I understand,
of course, that
things happen. I don't want you coming to class if you have a
contagious disease, for example! So, you can miss one class session (of
15 total) without a penalty. However, if you miss two sessions you will
have missed more than 10% of the total class time. In a class like
this, you can't miss that much class and learn as much as if you were
present and participating. Thus, your final grade may decrease 3.3% if
you miss two class sessions,6.6% if you miss three class sessions, etc.
unless you can provide support for the absences being excused. If you
know weeks beforehand that you will miss a class, please let me know. Grading Traditional grading only. Attendance
and participation in class are required. Clear communication is
important as well as the ability to synthesize complex ideas. Students
earning an A will demonstrate excellent written and oral communication
skills and an ability to think critically about issues related to
science education. Disability
Students with disabilities who need reasonable modifications, special
assistance, or accommodations in this course should promptly direct
their request to the course instructor. If a student with a disability
feels that modifications, special assistance, or accommodations offered
are inappropriate or insufficient, s/he should seek the assistance of
the Director of Disabled Student Services on campus TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE
You and I will fill in
certain schedule details as the course progresses.
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SCED 550
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