Teaching with Purpose: Closing the Research-Practice Gap

The best science teachers don’t just get up in front of the class and start talking. They draw from a plan… a rationale… a purpose. This book helps you create and implement a detailed, research-based teaching rationale that works even with students of varied needs in less-than-ideal facilities. The key is a method that this book’s authors and their colleagues have used to help more than 3,000 preservice and inservice science teachers achieve improved results in their classrooms. Teaching with Purpose provides a framework for coordinating your unique students and school with your desired educational outcomes and the education research literature. You can use this framework in several aspects of teaching: for planning lessons and units, selecting activities and curriculum, and analyzing your role as teacher. All this is explained within the book’s easy-to-grasp structure. It covers the case for a research-based teaching rationale, the elements of such a rationale, how to develop and implement it, and then how to become a mentor to others. Throughout the text, more than a dozen elementary, middle, and high school science teachers comment on how developing a research-based rationale has made them better educators. The book’s combination of theory and practice, instruction and inspiration, makes it ideal for planning personal development and for use at teacher workshops.