Elementary Science Methods: An Assets-Based Approach to Teaching, Learning, and Advocacy, Grades K-6, Second Edition

Teachers and parents often remark that children make the world’s best scientists. Skillful science teachers understand how to tune in and connect to children’s interests and observations to create engaging and effective lessons. This focus on the innate curiosity of children, or humans overall is celebrated and used to justify and support efforts around STEM teaching and learning. Yet, when we discuss elementary school teachers, we often hear many voices from inside and outside the classroom report that these teachers dislike, fear, and feel uncomfortable with science. This is exactly the opposite approach from what is universally recommended by science education scholars.

The second edition of this textbook offers an up-to-date and practical guide to support excellent science teaching with even more ideas and tools to bring real-life authentic science into elementary classrooms.. This text meets the immediate, contextual needs of future and current elementary teachers by using an assets-based approach to science teaching, showing how to create inquiry-based lessons, differentiate instruction and lesson design based on children’s developmental ages and needs, and providing easy-to-use tools to advocate for scientific teaching and learning guided by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Updates in this book include strategies for addressing complex and sometimes controversial scientific issues such as vaccine hesitancy and climate change to ensure teachers are well prepared to support a scientifically literate populace.

Lauren Madden is a professor of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at The College of New Jersey, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate science teaching methods courses and degree capstone courses. She has published science education articles in many peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of Science Teacher Education, Science and Children (NSTA), Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Research in Science Education, Environmental Education Research, CITE Journal (Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education), and International Journal of Science Education. Her research interests include scientist-educator collaboration, intersections of Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core Curriculum Standards, preservice teacher perspectives and attitudes on STEM education, and the uses of interactive science notebooks.