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Teaching strategies
Professional development readings about the learning and teaching of science.
Scientists use different methods of investigation in different circumstances. Exploring each type of investigation with students helps them to understand how scientists work and the nature of science.
Models and modelling play a crucial role in science practice. Most models are limited or "wrong" in some key aspect. This can create learning problems if students take a different meaning from the model than that intended by the teacher.
When scientists investigate, they draw on the full complexity of their current understandings of science. Students cannot be expected to do the same and will seldom be able to create genuinely new science knowledge, but they can gain a feel for disciplined enquiry.
The role of the teacher is to help students learn where the products of science came from (that is, how those products originated as specific types of knowledge).
As their abilities and understandings develop, students progress along a continuum from "school science" to "working science".