Prather Edward E, Slater Timothy F
Department of Astronomy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
Astrobiology. 2002 Summer;2(2):215-23. doi: 10.1089/15311070260192282.
A continuing challenge for scientists is to keep K-12 teachers informed about new scientific developments. Over the past few years, this challenge has increased as new research findings have come from the field of astrobiology. In addition to trying to keep abreast of these new discoveries, K-12 teachers must also face the demands of the content and pedagogical goals imposed by state and national science education standards. Furthermore, many teachers lack the scientific content knowledge or training in current teaching methods to create their own activities or to implement appropriately new teaching materials designed to meet the standards. There is a clear need for special courses designed to increase the scientific knowledge of K-12 science teachers. In response to this need, the authors developed a suite of innovative, classroom-ready lessons for grades 5-12 that emphasize an active engagement instructional strategy and focus on the recent discoveries in the field of astrobiology. They further created a graduate-level, Internet-based distance-learning course for teachers to help them become familiar with these astrobiology concepts and to gain firsthand experience with the National Science Education Standards-based instructional strategies.
对科学家来说，一个持续存在的挑战是让从幼儿园到12年级的教师了解科学新进展。在过去几年里，随着天体生物学领域不断有新的研究发现，这一挑战愈发严峻。除了努力跟上这些新发现之外，幼儿园到12年级的教师还必须面对州和国家科学教育标准所规定的内容及教学目标的要求。此外，许多教师缺乏科学内容知识或当前教学方法方面的培训，无法自行设计活动或恰当地实施旨在符合标准的新教材。显然需要开设专门课程，以增加幼儿园到12年级科学教师的科学知识。为满足这一需求，作者为5至12年级开发了一套创新的、可直接用于课堂的课程，这些课程强调积极参与的教学策略，并聚焦于天体生物学领域的最新发现。他们还为教师创建了一门基于互联网的研究生水平远程学习课程，以帮助他们熟悉这些天体生物学概念，并亲身体验基于国家科学教育标准的教学策略。
