Skip to main content

To focus on practicing leading a group discussion, this learning cycle supports novice teachers to facilitate spaces that encourage students participation in productive dialogue about scientific phenomena.

This three class-session unit, designed for a secondary science methods course, focuses on supporting novice teachers to question the common notion that the sciences are objective, value-free, culture-less, neutral, full of indisputable facts, and immune to human subjectivity.
Select a quadrant below to view related activities:
Introduce
Novice teachers learn about the practice of leading a group discussion by examining video of teachers engaging in whole group discussion and recognizing the importance of using appropriate scientific representations.
Prepare
Novice teachers simulate leading a whole group sensemaking discussion with their peers and a teacher educator and then receive feedback about their simulated facilitation.
Enact
In their field placements, novice teachers plan and enact a science lesson, paying attention to how they support students’ in making sense of scientific phenomena through listening, speaking and interpreting.
Analyze
Novice teachers analyze students’ interpretations, reflect on their own experience teaching a science lesson in the field, and analyze a video of their teaching practice.
Tools
Teaching Leading a Discussion in Science
Tools
Teaching Leading a Discussion in Science
Tools
Teaching Leading a Discussion in Science
Tools
Teaching Leading a Discussion in Science

For more information about the learning cycle

Lampert, M., Franke, M. L., Kazemi, E., Ghousseini, H., Turrou, A. C., Beasley, H., Cunard, A., & Crowe, K. (2013). Keeping it complex: Using rehearsals to support novice teacher learning of ambitious teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 64(3), 226-243.

McDonald, M., Kazemi, E., & Kavanagh, S. S. (2013). Core practices and pedagogies of teacher education: A call for a common language and collective activity. Journal of Teacher Education64(5), 378-386.

Teacher Education by Design. (2014). University of Washington College of Education.