Do you want to co-construct meaning without lecturing, slide decks, worksheets, or leaving students to discover for themselves?
Laying down a new path in biology teaching, Difference Maker explains how to enact a learning environment where meaning isn’t transmitted or discovered, but co-constructed.
It shows how to provoke understanding with just diagrams and dialogue. It demonstrates how to see with systems theory and variation theory in practical detail. Downloaded the first chapter for free here.
Inside you’ll find:
The recursive teaching model. An evidence-and-theory informed model for co-constructing meaning with students rather than just telling them or having them discover alone.
Detailed examples of my lessons. I show the exact diagrams I’ve drawn in a lesson and explain how I’ve drawn them step by step. I show the questions I’ve asked students, at what point in the lesson, and why.
A theory-informed how-to guide for planning explanations. I show how to explain biological concepts by applying the variation theory of learning and enactive cognitive science. This simple heuristic should cut your planning time while improving your students’ understanding.
A theory-informed how-to guide for encouraging conversation in lessons. You never know how students will interpret a new explanation so conversing with them is essential. Using a new model for conversation, I show how to keep everyone on the same page. Through examples from my lessons, I show the types of questions that allow a conversation to develop without becoming too open and inefficient.
A theory-informed how-to guide for co-constructing stock and flow diagrams. These diagrams have helped my teaching become more conceptual and conversational. I show how to read, design, and teach them with detailed lesson examples. There’s also an appendix of 37 diagrams I’ve used with my classes.
A new model of curricular content. I show that the curriculum is not just a list of content of equal weight. There are key ideas that give meaning to the rest of the curriculum. I explain the concept of “metacontent” and show how I apply it in detailed examples.
The first type of metacontent I explain is a set of systems principles that I share with students and discuss during every topic. These unifying principles avoid the feeling that biology is just a lot of facts to learn.
The second type is understanding understanding itself. I share a taxonomy of understanding that allows students to grasp what I expect of them in every topic. I provide example sentences for each level of understanding, questions I’ve asked to test my students’ understanding, and answers my students have given.
A way of seeing and being. Rather than a training manual with activities to follow, this book provides teachers with a new conception of teaching, learning, and acting together in the classroom. It exemplifies all the ideas in practice from real lessons in real teaching contexts. This book will give you a new and viable perspective on teaching and learning.
Free first chapter here.
See it in store: Amazon UK, Amazon USA, Kobo, Barnes & Nobel, Apple Books, SmashWords, Google, etc.
