Teaching Children in the Laboratory

Joan Solomon wrote this book about science teaching at a time when, in her words, the whole profession was buzzing with new projects at almost every level and when the design of syllabuses had already passed out of the hands of the large project committees to small groups or individual schools. The book was published in 1980 towards the end of the era in which there had been a great diversity of CSE and well as O-level science courses. Joan Solomon wrote the book to share with others her experience of being a science teachers and as part of a quest to unravel the curious patterns of success and failure which attended practical work in school science. In the book she examined the challenges and dilemmas associated with a discovery approach to teaching and learning. For her, the crucial insight was that imaginative understanding was not a sequel to successful experiment but, on the contrary, it was an essential prerequisite. She quotes a girl who turned to her at the end of the lesson with outright disappointment and reproach, and said, 'I can see all that but I don't understand it one bit! You haven't explained it.' [b]Contents[/b] 1 The Laboratory Comes of Age 2 Discovery and Play 3 Discovery Teaching in Action 4 Individuals and Untaught Learning 5 Images and Concepts 6 Behaviour and Teaching Strategies 7 Discussion and Prediction 8 Apparatus and Practical Skills 9 Imagination and Teaching