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MindWorks: Making Scientific Concepts Come Alive

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Abstract

The Southwest Regional Laboratory, through major funding from the National Science Foundation (ESI-9450235), has developed a series of eight instructional modules for use in common secondary school physical science that address three central goals of U.S. science literacy education: (1) to motivate students who have previously shown little interest in science; (2) to accomplish deep change in students' internalized conceptions of the structure and workings of the physical world; and (3) to build greater understanding, in both teachers and students, of the process and culture of scientific activity.

Beginning with a discussion of the conceptual scaffolding that undergirds the project's pedagogical approach, the paper presents an overview of MindWorks' goals, the materials that have been developed to achieve these goals, and the progress of the pilot implementation and project evaluation.

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Becker, B.J. MindWorks: Making Scientific Concepts Come Alive. Science & Education 9, 269–278 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008669823959

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