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Scientific and Environmental Learning (EDUC90889)
Graduate courseworkPoints: 6.25On Campus (Parkville)
Overview
| Availability | February |
|---|---|
| Fees | Look up fees |
This subject will support Teacher Candidates’ understanding of science as both a body of knowledge and the enactment of skills and processes associated with scientific thinking, reasoning and inquiry. Teacher Candidates will learn how to use scientific thinking to engage children in science learning experiences and to encourage children’s use of scientific thinking, reasoning and inquiry in order to develop science knowledge.
Seminar topics are centred on children’s everyday lives and the natural world. Topics draw on contemporary research evidence and introduce science content knowledge. In addition, the subject explores opportunities for teachers to collaborate with children, their families and the wider community whilst investigating opportunities for sustainable living. The subject will equip Teacher Candidates to teach children from infancy to eight years of age and is informed by the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework and the science standards in the Victorian Curriculum Foundation to Level Two.
Topics include the relationship between climate change and sustainability, the basic needs of all living things, principles of ‘classification’ in science, plants and their uses in everyday life, invertebrates (‘minibeasts’) and their characteristics, air and water, light and sound, magnetism and electricity, technology, and space and the universe. Teacher Candidates will design, implement, review and refine sequences of science learning experiences.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of this subject, Teacher Candidates should be able to:
Graduate Standards refers to the Graduate-level Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.
- Critically reflect on research into how students learn and understand the concepts, substance, structure and implications for effective teaching practice, including the creation of effective learning environments (Graduate Standards 1.2, 1.5, 2.1, 3.2, 3.6)
- Understand how to design lesson plans and learning sequences, using knowledge of student learning, curriculum, assessment, reporting as well as effective teaching resources (Graduate Standards1.2, 1.5, 2.2, 3.2, 3.3, 3.6)
- Understand how to set learning goals that provide achievable challenges for students of varying abilities and characteristics (Graduate Standards 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 3.6
- Select appropriate strategies to differentiate teaching to meet specific needs of students, including digital technologies, literacy, numeracy and 21 st Century skills in order to engage and empower students in their learning (Graduate Standards1.2, 1.5, 2.6, 3.3, 3.4)
- Evaluate teaching programs to improve learning and to determine the effectiveness of strategies and resources (Graduate Standards 3.3, 3.4, 3.6, 5.1)
- Identify assessment strategies including formal and informal diagnostic, formative and summative approaches to assess and to support students’ learning (Graduate Standards 2.3, 3.4, 3.6, 5.1)
- Demonstrate understanding of how to encourage children’s scientific thinking, reasoning and inquiry by providing clear directions, differentiating teaching as appropriate (Graduate Standards 2.1, 2.3)
- Implement teaching strategies for using ICT to expand curriculum learning opportunities for students (Graduate Standards 2.6)
- Demonstrate science content knowledge and competence in seeking out additional information to supplement their own knowledge as teachers (Graduate Standards 2.1, 6.2, 6.4).
Generic skills
This subject will develop the following set of key transferable skills:
- Clinical reasoning and thinking
- Problem solving
- Evidence based decision making
- Creativity and innovation
- Teamwork and professional collaboration
- Learning to learn and metacognition
- Responsiveness to a changing knowledge base
- Reflection for continuous improvement
- Linking theory and practice
- Inquiry and research
- Active and participatory citizenship.
Last updated: 10 February 2024