The Artistry of Teaching Science: Exploring the Cornerstone of Teaching

De: Jack Hassard

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The eBook is written in the context of an assault on the profession of teaching and teacher education. With support from a relatively small number of think tanks, philanthropic (family) foundations, corporations and few very wealthy individuals, American education is being privatized at the peril of participatory democracy and public education. False claims have been made about the quality of public education, the academic performance of students (not just in America, but in just about every nation in the world), and the purpose of schooling in a democratic society. It's in the best interests of corporate and private philanthropists to convince American citizens that their public education is in shambles, when it really isn't. It also is convenient to use international test score results as if they were reliable measures of student learning, and then to use them to rank order the performance of one nation against each other. And it is also paramount among the wealthy and corporate reformers to make the claim that a nation's economy is dependent on the academic performance of students, and that the real purpose of schooling is to prepare students for the workforce. These are all false claims. American education is not in shambles. Yes, our public schools could be better. But are not inferior to other forms of education, especially charter schools. American students perform very well. In fact, if you study the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) testing performance in mathematics, science, and reading over the past 40 years, the trend in scores is upward, not down, and the gap between ethnic groups has diminished. Children come to school full of joy, and an eagerness to learn. Parents want schools as places where the values that guide the school cherish the humaneness of what education should be about. The Artistry of Teaching is an eBook that challenges the assumptions of these reformers by showing that schooling is much more than teaching to the test, and that student learning should be encourage in a humanistic and experiential environment. The eight chapters of the book were written as a series of posts on the artistry of teaching by Jack Hassard at his blog The Art of Teaching Science in August, 2013. The eBook describes how teachers think about their profession, and how they are able to humanize the experiences for their students and their families, and their colleagues. It’s about how teachers mingle art and science, as well theory and practice. It is about the artistry of teaching.