What children bring to light: a constructivist perspective on children's learning in science

How can we better understand students' experience of science learning? What new ways of thinking about science teaching might help children grow into more active, happily engaged learners? This volume helps teachers develop new insights into these and other questions fundamental to meaningful reform in science education. Bonnie Shapiro clarifies the historical development of constructivism, and employs a constructivist approach in her own methodology. To construct new ideas means to take action when one is learning science. Learning is understood not only as a cognitive experience, but also as one that derives from the emotional, personal, social, cultural and pre-conceptual. These often neglected dimensions, which permeate all subject matter learning, are given high status in this book. Six case studies, each emphasising a very different reception of one teacher's introduction of the topic, light, form the core of the book. Shapiro not only analyses this core in the book's third part, but shares the thinking that lies behind the research and data collection.