Designing Communities (Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education)

The book employs a rich set of theoretical frames to yield a panorama of research findings having potential interest for educational researchers, policy makers, teacher educators and K-12 teachers. Roth's ideal science classrooms feature creative and inquisitive students working together to solve problems that interest them. More learning occurs at centers of high pupil density and students who participate most in on-task activities are not necessarily those who contribute or learn most. Roth identifies weaknesses of assessment based on products only and highlights the advantages of using videotapes as sources for assessment. Roth shows that student learning is not only a result of individual sense-making efforts but involves interactions between living and artifactual components of a community of participants.
`This book promises to be a turning point for science educators involved in social constructivist reform; they will be challenged to reconsider the gloss that they have painted over the social dimension of knowledge construction.'
Peter C. Taylor, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia