The Art of Teaching Science: Inquiry and Innovation in Middle School and High School

by Jack Hassard

The Art of Teaching Science focuses on the preparation of science teachers as professional artists. This text emphasizes a humanistic, experiential, and constructivist approach to teaching and learning, integrating a wide variety of pedagogical learning tools. These tools involve inquiry, experimentation, reflection, writing, discussion, and interaction. Becoming a science teacher is a creative process, and this innovative textbook encourages students to construct ideas about science teaching through their interactions with peers, professionals, and instructors, and through hands-on, minds-on activities designed to foster a collaborative, thoughtful learning environment.

The Art of Teaching Science is a science-teaching handbook designed for the professional development of middle- and high-school science teachers. The experiential tools in the book make it useful for both pre- and in-service teacher education environments, easily adapted to any classroom setting. Profound changes in our understanding of the goals of science teaching-as evidenced by the emphasis on inquiry-based activities advocated by the National Science Education Standards-underscore the need to equip a new cadre of educators with the proper tools to encourage innovation and science literacy in the classroom. Providing meaningful learning experiences and connections with the most recent research and understanding of science teaching, The Art of Teaching Science sets the standard for the future of science education.

496 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2004

About the author

Jack Hassard, Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor of Science Education at Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. He is an internationally known science educator, researcher and writer. His books include Minds on Science, The Art of Teaching Science, The Whole Cosmos Catalogue of Science, Science as Inquiry, Environmental Science on the Net.

He’s been blogging since 2005 at jackhassard.org. His blog writing served as the foundation for The Trump Files. His book is a vivid, real-time documentation of the nation’s turbulent Trump years returning citizens to those troubling days of not-so-very-long-ago to help deal with the future.

Jack Hassard has also spent an adventurous career as a “Citizen Diplomat”, traveling extensively through Russia and the world, creating courses, exchanging democratic views on psychology, medicine, sociology, and other subjects needed for a peaceful coexistence and to prevent war.

As the cover of his new book, The Trump Files portends, we are living in a world that has been turned on its head. There are no alternate facts! There are many books out now on the Trump years, but this one comes from a practical and extensive wisdom that should not be missed.

Reviews

[meme · Rating 5 out of 5]

The art of teaching science is basically a literacy methods course which articulates a theory of critical literacy instruction. These critical literacy practices encourage students to use language to question the everyday world, interrogate the relationship between language and power. These relationships make way for thought provoking questions and answers which is essential in building knowledge. The use of Socratic method by the teacher or students in science related issues will advance there literacy very quickly in my opinion.

The approach to teaching and learning here integrates a wide variety of pedagogical tools. These tools encourage students to construct ideas about science teaching through their interactions with their peers through hands-on, minds-on activities which is designed to foster a collaborative learning environment (such as reflection, experimentation, writing, discussion, and interaction).

[Jeanne Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book with some interesting information.

[Pauline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science teacher's approach to lesson planning, designing a mini-unit.