TEACHING STANDARD B:
Teachers of science guide and facilitate learning. In doing this, teachers

Focus and support inquiries while interacting with students.

Orchestrate discourse among students about scientific ideas.

Challenge students to accept and share responsibility for their own learning.

Recognize and respond to student diversity and encourage all students to participate fully in science learning.

Encourage and model the skills of scientific inquiry, as well as the curiosity, openness to new ideas and data, and skepticism that characterize science.

Coordinating people, ideas, materials, and the science classroom environment are difficult, continual tasks. This standard focuses on the work that teachers do as they implement the plans of Standard A in the classroom.

At all stages of inquiry, teachers guide, focus, challenge, and encourage student learning.

Teachers of science constantly make decisions, such as when to change the direction of a discussion, how to engage a particular student, when to let a student pursue a particular interest, and how to use an opportunity to model scientific skills and attitudes. Teachers must struggle with the tension between guiding students toward a set of predetermined goals and allowing students to set and meet their own goals. Teachers face a similar tension between taking the time to allow students to pursue an interest in greater depth and the need to move on to new areas to be studied. Furthermore, teachers constantly strike a balance among the demands of the understanding and ability to be acquired and the demands of student-centered developmental learning. The result of making these decisions is the enacted curriculum--the planned curriculum as it is modified and shaped by the interactions of students, teachers, materials, and daily life in the classroom.

FOCUS AND SUPPORT INQUIRIES. Student inquiry in the science classroom encompasses a range of activities. Some activities provide a basis for observation, data collection, reflection, and analysis of firsthand events and phenomena. Other activities encourage the critical analysis of secondary sources--including media, books, and journals in a library.[ See Content Standard A (all grade levels) [K-4] [5-8] [9-12] ]

In successful science classrooms, teachers and students collaborate in the pursuit of ideas, and students quite often initiate new activities related to an inquiry. Students formulate questions and devise ways to answer them, they collect data and decide how to represent it, they organize data to generate knowledge, and they test the reliability of the knowledge they have generated. As they proceed, students explain and justify their work to themselves and to one another, learn to cope with problems such as the limitations of equipment, and react to challenges posed by the teacher and by classmates. Students assess the efficacy of their efforts--they evaluate the data they have collected, re-examining or collecting more if necessary, and making statements about the generalizability of their findings. They plan and make presentations to the rest of the class about their work and accept and react to the constructive criticism of others.[ See Teaching Standard E]

At all stages of inquiry, teachers guide, focus, challenge, and encourage student learning. Successful teachers are skilled observers of students, as well as knowledgeable about science and how it is learned. Teachers match their actions to the particular needs of the students, deciding when and how to guide--when to demand more rigorous grappling by the students, when to provide information, when to provide particular tools, and when to connect students with other sources.

In the science classroom envisioned by the Standards, effective teachers continually create opportunities that challenge students and promote inquiry by asking questions. Although open exploration is useful for students when they encounter new materials and phenomena, teachers need to intervene to focus and challenge the students, or the exploration might not lead to understanding. Premature intervention deprives students of the opportunity to confront problems and find solutions, but intervention that occurs too late risks student frustration. Teachers also must decide when to challenge students to make sense of their experiences: At these points, students should be asked to explain, clarify, and critically examine and assess their work.[ See Program Standard E and System Standard E]

See the example entitled "Earthworms"

ORCHESTRATE DISCOURSE AMONG STUDENTS ABOUT SCIENTIFIC IDEAS. An important stage of inquiry and of student science learning is the oral and written discourse that focuses the attention of students on how they know what they know and how their knowledge connects to larger ideas, other domains, and the world beyond the classroom. Teachers directly support and guide this discourse in two ways: They require students to record their work--teaching the necessary skills as appropriate--and they promote many different forms of communication (for example, spoken, written, pictorial, graphic, mathematical, and electronic).

Using a collaborative group structure, teachers encourage interdependency among group members, assisting students to work together in small groups so that all participate in sharing data and in developing group reports. Teachers also give groups opportunities to make presentations of their work and to engage with their classmates in explaining, clarifying, and justifying what they have learned. The teacher's role in these small and larger group interactions is to listen, encourage broad participation, and judge how to guide discussion--determining ideas to follow, ideas to question, information to provide, and connections to make. In the hands of a skilled teacher, such group work leads students to recognize the expertise that different members of the group bring to each endeavor and the greater value of evidence and argument over personality and style.

CHALLENGE STUDENTS TO ACCEPT AND SHARE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN LEARNING. Teachers make it clear that each student must take responsibility for his or her work. The teacher also creates opportunities for students to take responsibility for their own learning, individually and as members of groups. Teachers do so by supporting student ideas and questions and by encouraging students to pursue them. Teachers give individual students active roles in the design and implementation of investigations, in the preparation and presentation of student work to their peers, and in student assessment of their own work.

RECOGNIZE AND RESPOND TO STUDENT DIVERSITY AND ENCOURAGE ALL STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE FULLY IN SCIENCE LEARNING. In all aspects of science learning as envisioned by the Standards, skilled teachers recognize the diversity in their classes and organize the classroom so that all students have the opportunity to participate fully. Teachers monitor the participation of all students, carefully determining, for instance, if all members of a collaborative group are working with materials or if one student is making all the decisions. This monitoring can be particularly important in classes of diverse students, where social issues of status and authority can be a factor.

Teachers who are enthusiastic, interested, and who speak of the power and beauty of scientific understanding instill in their students some of those same attitudes

Teachers of science orchestrate their classes so that all students have equal opportunities to participate in learning activities. Students with physical disabilities might require modified equipment; students with limited English ability might be encouraged to use their own language as well as English and to use forms of presenting data such as pictures and graphs that require less language proficiency; students with learning disabilities might need more time to complete science activities.

ENCOURAGE AND MODEL THE SKILLS OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY, AS WELL AS THE CURIOSITY, OPENNESS TO NEW IDEAS, AND SKEPTICISM THAT CHARACTERIZE SCIENCE. Implementing the recommendations above requires a range of actions based on careful assessments of students, knowledge of science, and a repertoire of science-teaching strategies. One aspect of the teacher's role is less tangible: teachers are models for the students they teach. A teacher who engages in inquiry with students models the skills needed for inquiry. Teachers who exhibit enthusiasm and interest and who speak to the power and beauty of scientific understanding instill in their students some of those same attitudes toward science. Teachers whose actions demonstrate respect for differing ideas, attitudes, and values support a disposition fundamental to science and to science classrooms that also is important in many everyday situations.

The ability of teachers to do all that is required by Standard B requires a sophisticated set of judgments about science, students, learning, and teaching. To develop these judgments, successful teachers must have the opportunity to work with colleagues to discuss, share, and increase their knowledge. They are also more likely to succeed if the fundamental beliefs about students and about learning are shared across their school community in all learning domains. Successful implementation of this vision of science teaching and learning also requires that the school and district provide the necessary resources, including time, science materials, professional development opportunities, appropriate numbers of students per teacher, and appropriate schedules. For example, class periods must be long enough to enable the type of inquiry teaching described here to be achieved.