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Insights in Biology. Kendall/Hunt, 1998

Cell Structure and Function: Instructional Analysis

I: Providing a Sense of Purpose

Conveying unit purpose

Rating = Fair
The material meets indicators 1, 2, and 5.

Indicator 1: Met
The purpose of each module is presented to students in an opening letter at the beginning of the module. For example, the opening letter in The Matter of Life informs students that they will be learning about the characteristics and processes of life:

In this module The Matter of Life, you will be exploring the characteristics that define a substance as having "life." What processes do living things carry on that distinguish them from nonliving matter? How do organisms carry on these processes? One of the themes of this module is that there is unity among the diverse forms of life. The characteristics of life and the processes that enable life to continue are similar among all forms of life.

front matter

The material also provides the teacher with an explicit statement of purpose and list of student learning outcomes in the Module Description section of the teacher guide (The Matter of Life, p. xxivt). These statements are consistent with the purposes stated in the opening letter to students.

Indicator 2: Met
The purposes given in the opening letters and the prologues to the first learning experiences are likely to be comprehensible to the students. They are written with vocabulary that students should understand.

Indicator 3: Not met
The purposes in the opening letters and prologues are stated in vague terms that are not likely to be interesting or motivating to the students. The questions do not involve phenomena that are relevant to concrete experiences students have had and will want to learn more about.

Indicator 4: Not met
The questions in the opening letters and the prologues to the first learning experiences are rhetorical. Students are not asked to stop and think about them or otherwise discuss the purposes presented.

Indicator 5: Met
The lessons are consistent with the stated purpose. For example, learning experiences in The Matter of Life that were examined for the cell structure and function topic are consistent with the questions posed at the beginning of the module (as described in indicator 1): Learning Experience 10 focuses on cells as functional units and Learning Experience 11 focuses on cell division.

Indicator 6: Not met
The material does not return to the stated purpose at the end of the modules. The Matter of Life relates one learning experience to another in a few places (which is credited for Category I, Conveying Lesson/Activity Purpose, below), but does not return to the unit purpose stated at the beginning of the module.

Conveying lesson/activity purpose

Rating = Satisfactory
The material meets two indicators and somewhat meets a third.

Indicator 1: Met
The material consistently states the purpose of the lesson/activity to students. Each Learning Experience begins with a prologue and an introduction that explains to students what they will be doing in the Learning Experience. And activities and readings within each learning experience are framed with questions. For example, The Matter of Life provides purposes like this one:

Activity: The Whole Cell and Nothing But the Cell

What is in the cell that allows it to carry out metabolic processes? In the following activity you are going to identify where in the cell these processes occur. You will research what structures are in a cell and determine the metabolic processes which take place within them. You will then determine how structures within the cell work to ensure that these processes occur efficiently and effectively. Then, using available materials, you will build a large model of your cell. When the model is completed, each group will make a presentation to the class, describing its cell.

p. 88s

Indicator 2: Met
The purposes are likely to be comprehensible to students.

Indicator 3: Not met
While questions are provided to frame activities and readings, students are not asked to think about them.

Indicator 4: Not met
The material rarely conveys, or prompts teachers to convey, to students how the activity relates to the unit purpose.

Indicator 5: Somewhat met
The material typically mentions to students (in the Prologue for each Learning Experience) how the learning experience connects with and extends what they have learned so far. For example, prologues in The Matter of Life relate what students have done in a prior learning experience to the one they are about to begin:

Learning Experience 10: Night of the Living Cell

In the past several learning experiences you have been exploring the biochemical basis of life. You have examined how simple molecules such as carbon dioxide and water can be transformed into more complex molecules and how complex molecules can be broken down and rearranged by metabolic processes to produce a vast diversity of complex molecules which make up living organisms.

In essence, you have been examining the molecular architecture of life—how simple components can be combined to make complex and intricate structures. In this learning experience you will examine the next step in the organizational hierarchy, the cell. All of the components of a cell are composed of the biomolecules you have been examining. These biomolecules are organized into structures which have specific functions in the cell and are the sites in the cell where the metabolic processes you have been studying take place.

p. 87s

While this prologue does a nice job of conveying the relationship between one learning experience and another, it does not prompt students to process and think about these connections.

Justifying lesson/activity sequence

Rating = Fair
The material somewhat meets the first indicator but does not meet the second.

Indicator 1: Somewhat met
Very few activities and readings focus on the key ideas for cell structure and function. Hence, it is difficult to identify a logical sequence. On the other hand, there are also very few extraneous activities and ideas to interrupt the flow.

Indicator 2: Not met
The teacher guide provides no rationale or justification for the sequence of activities.

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II: Taking Account of Student Ideas

Attending to prerequisite knowledge and skills

Rating = Poor
The material minimally meets indicator 1 and somewhat meets indicator 4, but does not meet indicators 2, 3, and 5.

Indicator 1: Minimally met
The material alerts teachers to some prerequisites but not to others. The teacher’s guide sometimes includes a section called Assumptions of Prior Knowledge and Skills that describes “what students should be familiar with before beginning the learning experience” (The Matter of Life, p. viit). For example, The Matter of Life alerts teachers to the following prerequisites to the key ideas at the beginning of Learning Experience 10: Night of the Living Cell:

Students are aware that all living things are composed of cells.

Students understand that living things can exist as single celled organisms, as collections or colonies of similar cells, or as multicellular organisms composed of many different kinds of cells.

p. 114t

However, the material does not alert teachers to several important prerequisites from Benchmarks for Science Literacy, including the following ideas:

• Within cells, many of the basic functions of organisms—such as extracting energy from food and getting rid of waste—are carried out. The way in which cells function is similar in all living organisms. [5C(6-8)/3]
• Various organs and tissues function to serve the needs of all cells for food, air, and waste removal. [5C(6-8)/2]
• Atoms may stick together in well-defined molecules or may be packed together in large arrays. [4D(6-8)/1]
• The configuration of atoms in a molecule determines the molecule’s properties. Shapes are particularly important in how large molecules interact with others. [4D(9-12)/8]
• The rate of reactions among atoms and molecules depends on how often they encounter one another, which is affected by the concentration, pressure, and temperature of the reacting materials. [4D(9-12)/9]

Indicator 2: Not met
The material does not alert teachers to the specific ideas for which the prerequisites are needed.

Indicator 3: Not met
The material does not alert students to prerequisite ideas or experiences that are being assumed.

Indicator 4: Somewhat met
The material briefly mentions parts of some prerequisites. For the prerequisite idea that “Atoms may stick together in well-defined molecules or may be packed together in large arrays” [4D(6-8)/1], the student text mentions that atoms may join together: “When two or more atoms join together, they form a molecule” (The Matter of Life, p. 41s). However, this prerequisite idea is not further explained or clarified. This idea is mentioned again in the introduction for the next activity in the context of biomolecules: “In living organisms atoms of the six elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, phosphorus, and nitrogen) are joined in different arrangements and in different quantities to form all of the different biomolecules” (p. 43s).

For the prerequisite idea that cells perform many of the same functions as organisms [5C(6-8)/3], one reading explains:

Many of the fundamental processes of life which enable organisms to live are carried out at the cellular level. Cells take in resources such as nutrients, water, and gases from their environments. Cells use these resources to transform energy and to synthesize biomolecules that can be used to build new components of the cell. Despite the enormous diversity we see among animals, plants and bacteria, the functions and chemical composition of all cells are remarkably similar.

pp. 87–88s

This excerpt explains that cells perform specific functions, but does not relate the functions of cells to those of organisms. Thus, only part of this prerequisite idea is treated.

Likewise, a student reading describes the process of digestion, but it only implies the prerequisite idea that various organs function to serve the needs of cells [5C(6-8)/2]:

Digestion of nutrients from food begins in multicellular animals when the animal ingests food. The breakdown process of complex carbohydrates starts in the mouth. Food continues to be digested in the stomach and the resulting products are passed on to the small intestine where further digestion occurs. By this time the original food—though it has not yet entered any cells—has been broken down into its basic components as sugars, amino acids, and fatty acids. These components are then be absorbed [sic] into individual cells by mechanisms similar to those carried out by single-celled organisms.

pp. 90–91s

Indicator 5: Not met
Although parts of a few prerequisite ideas are mentioned briefly in the student text, these prerequisite ideas are not linked to the relevant key ideas. For instance, the example above implies that the digestive system of a multicellular animal serves the needs of the individual cells. However, the text continues to explain how food is processed but does not mention the specialized parts within the cell that play a role in the processing of food and releasing energy (Idea b). No other prerequisites are linked to the relevant key ideas.

Alerting teachers to commonly held student ideas

Rating = Not rated
For the topic of cell structure and function, materials were not rated on this criterion because no research base outlines commonly held student ideas.

Assisting teachers in identifying their students’ ideas

Rating = Fair
The material provides some questions that meet indicators 1, 2, and 3, but the questions are not well focused on the key ideas.

Indicator 1: Somewhat met
Two features of this material could be used to identify students’ initial ideas. Both the Introductory Questionnaire and the Discussion Questions include some questions relevant to two of the key ideas. But none of the questions is well focused on the key ideas.

The teacher guide for each module includes an Introductory/Final Questionnaire, which is “designed to help determine which, if any, of the module’s basic concepts and skills students already understand; which concepts and skills they understand partially; and which ones they do not know at all” (The Matter of Life, p. ivt). However, only one of the questions appears to be designed to elicit student ideas relevant to a key idea for cell structure and function:

The basic characteristics of life that you have just described occur in each cell as well as in the whole organism. List four different structures that are found in cells. For each structure you have listed, explain what processes that structure helps the cell perform in order to sustain life.

The Matter of Life, p. xxxviiit, number 2

The teacher guide also includes Discussion Questions at the beginning of some learning experiences that teachers can use to find out what their students know about the key ideas. For example, the following questions provided in The Matter of Life are relevant to the key idea about the cell membrane (Idea a):

If the cell is separate from its environment, how does it obtain the resources it needs to perform metabolic processes?

 

Describe what you think might be important functions of the cell membrane.

 

What kinds of substances might be in the environment that the cell would need to get inside?

 

In what ways might a cell membrane be like skin? Does the skin let any substances in or out? How do you think skin might do this?

 

What might the structure of a cell membrane look like?

 

What would be the characteristics of a functional membrane?

p. 125t

However, no questions are provided for the other key ideas.

Indicator 2: Somewhat met
Most of the questions above are likely to be comprehensible to students who have not studied the topic and are not familiar with the scientific vocabulary. However, some terms may be somewhat vague to students, such as “metabolic processes” and “functional membrane.”

Indicator 3: Somewhat met
At several points, the teacher guide explains that the questions provided are to help teachers determine what students already know. However, the emphasis is on finding out if students know the correct answer rather than on eliciting students’ ideas (and possible misconceptions). For example, the teacher guide to The Matter of Life indicates that the Introductory Questionnaire “is designed to help you determine which, if any, of the module’s basic concepts and skills students already understand; which concepts and skills they understand partially; and which ones they do not know at all” (p. ivt).

Indicator 4: Not met
The questions provided do not ask students to make predictions about or explain phenomena.

Indicator 5: Not met
The material offers no suggestions for how teachers can probe beneath students’ initial responses to questions. For example, the teacher guide does not tell the teacher to listen for his/her students’ responses or to avoid correcting their ideas at this time. Without these warnings, it is unlikely that the questions provided will be used to elicit student ideas.

Addressing commonly held ideas

Rating = Not rated
For the topic of cell structure and function, materials were not rated on this criterion because no research base outlines commonly held student ideas.

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III: Engaging Students with Relevant Phenomena

Providing variety of phenomena

Rating = Poor
Since the rating scheme depends on how many phenomena meet both of the indicators, the report for this criterion is organized to reflect the overall rating rather than each indicator judgment.

The material provides no phenomena to support the key ideas. Although the material provides readings and a model-making activity that focus on some of the key ideas, it does not provide real-world phenomena to support the key ideas.

Providing vivid experiences

Rating = Poor
Since the rating scheme depends on how many phenomena meet all of the indicators, the report for this criterion is organized to reflect the overall rating rather than each indicator judgment.

Since no phenomena were provided to support the key ideas about cell structure and function, none could be judged for vividness.

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IV: Developing and Using Scientific Ideas

Introducing terms meaningfully

Rating = Satisfactory
The material somewhat meets indicator 1 and mostly meets indicator 2.

Indicator 1: Somewhat met
This material sometimes introduces new terms in the context of some relevant analogy. For example, when the term “organelle” is introduced in The Matter of Life (p. 94s), it is in the context of an analogy comparing a eukaryotic cell to a mansion that has particular rooms designed for particular activities. Likewise, the permeability of the cell membrane is compared to a tea bag through which water can flow but the tea leaves cannot (p. 129t).

However, other terms are either not introduced in the context of relevant experiences or not linked to them. For example, The Matter of Life introduces terms about the structure of the cell membrane (e.g., “carboxyl group,” “phospholipid,” and “hydrocarbon units”) and an accompanying diagram adds additional terms such as “glycerol,” “hydrophilic head,” “hydrophobic tail,” and phosphate” (p. 131t).

Indicator 2: Mostly met
In comparison with other high school biology texts, this material introduces many fewer technical terms. In general, the material selects only those terms that are essential for conveying the key ideas (e.g., “cell membrane” and “organelles”). Often when technical terms are introduced, a small definition or explanation is provided in parentheses, as when nutrients being “engulfed” by a cell is described as a “wrap-around eating process” (The Matter of Life, p. 90s). However, the material also includes technical terms such as “lipid bilayer,” “endocytosis,” “eukaryotes,” “prokaryotes,” “lysosome,” and “Golgi body” that are not needed to develop the key ideas.

Representing ideas effectively

Rating = Poor
Since the rating scheme depends on how many representations meet all of the indicators, the report for this criterion is organized to reflect the overall rating, rather than each indicator judgment.

The material provides few representations that are likely to be helpful in clarifying the key ideas. Some of the representations that are included involve the students in model-making. For instance, students make a cell and its internal compartments from pipe cleaners, drinking straws, plastic or wooden beads, yarn, and other common items (The Matter of Life, pp. 88–90s) and students role-play the function of the cell membrane (The Matter of Life, pp. 130–133t). Although model-making activities can be useful, no questions ask students to consider how the models are like and unlike the real thing. A few diagrams are also presented but do not focus on the key ideas. For example, a diagram of some of the major organelles does not clarify how these organelles perform particular functions (The Matter of Life, p. 94s). Likewise, diagrams of the cell membrane focus on the architecture of the membrane instead of how it controls what can enter and exit the cell (The Matter of Life, pp. 134–135t).

Demonstrating use of knowledge

Rating = Poor
The material meets no indicators.

Indicator 1: Not met
The material does not demonstrate how to use the key ideas to explain phenomena or suggest how teachers could do so. The material does not carry out (or instruct teachers to carry out) the expected performance. While the teacher guide sometimes includes answers to discussion questions, it does not instruct the teacher to model the use of knowledge.

Indicator 2: Not met
No demonstrations are provided.

Indicator 3: Not met
No demonstrations are provided.

Indicator 4: Not met
No demonstrations are provided.

Providing practice

Rating = Poor
Since the rating scheme depends on how many practice tasks meet all of the indicators, the report for this criterion is organized to reflect the overall rating, rather than each indicator judgment.

The material provides very few questions that give students a chance to use the key ideas and only occasionally provides novel questions. The primary source of practice questions was the Analysis section found in some of the Learning Experiences. While many questions are also provided in features such as Processing for Meaning and Applying, none of those questions involves students in using the key ideas. Some questions are not on target, such as the following in an Analysis section in The Matter of Life:

What structures does a eukaryote have that a prokaryote lacks? What structures do they have in common?

Describe advantages and disadvantages of eukaryotes. Then describe the advantages and disadvantages of prokaryotes based on the diagrams, table, or concept maps you created while reading "Giardia: A Missing Link Between Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes."

p. 96s, Analysis, items 1 and 3

The following questions could involve students in using the key ideas. However, since no suggested responses appear in the teacher guide, it is uncertain whether the key ideas will be covered:

Why is it important that each daughter cell receive cellular organelles such as mitochondria, chloroplasts, golgi apparatus, endoplasmic reticulum? Describe which process(es) a cell might be unable to accomplish if it were lacking one of these organelles.

The Matter of Life, p. 106s, Analysis, item 3

What methods of transport does a cell membrane have?

The Matter of Life, p. 138t, Analysis, item 1

Overall, very few practice questions are provided for these key ideas. Only two key ideas are practiced; no questions or tasks are provided for the other key ideas. The questions review presented information but do not ask students to apply the key ideas to a novel context. No feedback is provided to students.

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V: Promoting Students’ Thinking about Phenomena, Experiences, and Knowledge

Encouraging students to explain their ideas

Rating = Fair
The material meets two indicators and somewhat meets a third.

Indicator 1: Met
This material includes several features for students to express their ideas. The student modules include Analysis questions at the end of readings and investigations, and the teacher guides to the modules include Discussion Questions in the Processing for Meaning section. Typically, these Discussion Questions do not include recommended responses, indicating that students’ own ideas are being sought (in contrast to the Discussion Questions in the Applying section, which often specify what a correct response should include). Some of the questions in The Matter of Life relate to the key ideas, as shown below:

How do nutrients get into a cell?

How does that method compare with what you described about nutrients entering into your body?

Where in the cell do nutrients get processed?

How might a cell use nutrients?

p. 116t

How do you think substances move in and out of the cell across this boundary?

p. 121t

Indicator 2: Somewhat met
In one instance students are asked to represent their understanding of one key idea. In The Matter of Life, after students research what structures are in a cell and how those structures work to ensure that metabolic processes occur efficiently and effectively, students are to build a model of a cell (pp. 88–89s). However, asking students to clarify, justify, or represent their own ideas is not done routinely across the set of key ideas.

Indicator 3: Met
Many of the questions require written responses, so that each student will consistently have opportunities to express his or her ideas.

Indicator 4: Not met
The teacher guides do not include specific suggestions to help the teacher provide explicit feedback to students. Nor does the student text provide feedback to students.

Indicator 5: Not met
The material does not include suggestions on how to diagnose student errors, explanations about how these errors might be corrected, or recommendations for how students’ more limited ideas might be further developed.

Guiding student interpretation and reasoning

Rating = Fair
The material minimally meets indicators 1 and 2, but does not meet indicator 3.

Indicator 1: Minimally met
The material includes very few specific questions at the end of readings and investigations that are relevant to the key ideas. For example, after modeling how cells allow substances to enter and exit, students are asked the following questions:

Why does a cell require certain substances? Why does it need to rid itself of certain substances? What kinds of substances might it remove? By what methods might they be removed?

The Matter of Life, p. 138t, item 2

However, many questions provided focus on topics outside the scope of the key ideas, such as:

In what ways might active transport be an advantage to the cell?

 

What could be disadvantages to this type of transport?

 

How do proteins facilitate movement of substances in this type of transport?

 

Where might cells get the energy required for active transport?

The Matter of Life, p. 136t, items 1–4

Indicator 2: Minimally met
As illustrated above, very few questions provided after the readings help students relate the readings to the scientific ideas. The questions typically do not frame important issues or help students to relate their own ideas to the scientific ideas.

Indicator 3: Not met
No question sequences are scaffolded to move students from their observations to the key ideas. Questions are single questions, or relevant questions are interspersed with questions about experimental design.

Encouraging students to think about what they have learned

Rating = Poor
The material somewhat meets the first indicator.

Indicator 1: Somewhat met
These materials could have asked students to revise their initial ideas, but they missed the opportunities to do so. Each unit includes an Introductory/Final Questionnaire which, if used appropriately, could help students think about what they have learned. However, even though the questionnaires exist, there never is any prompt to the teacher about when or how to use them. The teacher guide explains that the same questionnaire is to be used at the end of the module as at the beginning, but the purpose appears to be for the teacher to assess progress rather than for the students to monitor their ideas: “The repetition of the same questions allows you to evaluate the degree of change that has occurred during the module” (The Matter of Life, p. vit). As was mentioned earlier, the questions that students are asked are not ones that can easily be used to help students see progress in their understanding. They are neither thought-provoking nor motivating and they rarely relate to the key ideas.

Indicators 2 and 3: Not met
The material does not engage students in monitoring how their ideas have changed.

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VI: Assessing Progress

To assess students’ understanding of concepts, each of the teacher guides of Insights in Biology includes an Introductory/Final questionnaire that typically consists of four questions. When used at the end of instruction, the questionnaire serves “to evaluate the degree of change that has occurred during the module” (The Matter of Life, p. vit).

Aligning assessment to goals

Rating = Poor
Since the rating scheme depends on how many assessment tasks meet both of the indicators, the report for this criterion is organized to reflect the overall rating rather than each indicator judgment.

Only one of the four questions in the module is related to one of the key ideas on cell structure and function (Idea b):

The basic characteristics of life that you have just described occur in each cell as well as in the whole organism. List four different structures that are found in cells. For each structure you have listed, explain what processes that structure helps the cell perform in order to sustain life.

A complete answer would include four of the following structures:

• Mitochondria are the sites in which the energy transfer occurs; glucose is catabolized to produce intermediates for anabolism and ATP is produced from these reactions.

• The nucleus contains the DNA and is the site where information is copied into RNA.

• The cell membrane separates the cell from its environment and allows selective uptake of nutrients into the cell and the removal of waste products out of the cell.

• The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is the site of protein synthesis; it contains ribosomes and it is involved in the movement of newly synthesized proteins away from the site of synthesis. Some ER contains enzymes involved in other cellular processes such as cholesterol synthesis and detoxification of substances.

• Ribosomes are made up of protein and RNA and are the site of protein synthesis.

• Chloroplasts are the site of photosynthesis in plants, both the dark and light reactions.

• Golgi apparatus is involved in modifying a protein after it has been synthesized. These modifications might include the addition of sugar molecules to a protein, cutting a polypeptide chain, or changing the protein in other ways.

The Matter of Life, p. xlt, question 2

Testing for understanding

Rating = Poor
Since only one assessment task was aligned to one of the key ideas, the report for this criterion is organized to reflect the overall rating rather than each indicator judgment.

Only one assessment item is provided that requires the application of one of the key ideas. This is insufficient for this set of key ideas.

Using assessment to inform instruction

Rating = Poor
Since the material provides few tasks for this criterion, the report for this criterion is organized to reflect the overall rating rather than each indicator judgment.

The developers of Insights in Biology emphasize in the introduction to the teacher guides that assessment strategies in their material are designed “to assist in informing instruction by providing insight into student progress through each learning experience” and that “[t]he primary purpose of assessment in education should be instructional decision-making” (The Matter of Life, p. ivt). They then identify a variety of tools in the material that can be used to evaluate student progress to inform instruction (Teacher Guide, pp. iv–vi; Implementation Guide, pp. 51–52). These include informal ways—such as using the student notebook as an ongoing record of student progress, or evaluating student presentations and responses to the questions in the module—as well as formal Embedded Assessment with scoring rubrics (found in the teacher guide for some of the learning experiences). In addition, Assessment components (found in the margin of each of the learning experiences) focus the teacher on what to pay attention to in student responses.

Only a small number of the suggested items probe students’ understanding of key ideas:

Do the diagrams show the relationship between structure and function of cell parts and their associated metabolic processes?

Are students indicating an understanding that the cell is made up of the biomolecules it synthesizes?

The Matter of Life, p. 120t

Other questions do not. For example, Assessment items in margins ask the following:

As students are constructing their "cells," are they using appropriate resources to find accurate information? Are their models realistic and appropriate?

The Matter of Life, p. 117t

Are all students participating in constructing one model and preparing for the presentation?

p. 119t

Furthermore, the material does not include suggestions for teachers about how to interpret students’ responses, nor does it include specific suggestions about how to use students’ responses to make decisions about instruction.

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VII: Enhancing the Science Learning Environment

Providing teacher content support

Rating = Some support is provided.
The material provides minimal support in alerting teachers to how ideas have been simplified for students to comprehend and what the more sophisticated versions are. Science Background notes provide sophisticated versions of ideas for selected student text and activity sections. The advanced explanations often do not explicitly alert teachers to how ideas have been simplified for students (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 121t) or only briefly elaborate on one or a few student text concepts (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 59–60t). Overall, the Science Background notes may be used as a selective but not a comprehensive content resource by the teacher.

The material provides some sufficiently detailed answers to Discussion Questions in the Teacher Guide and tasks in the student book for teachers to understand and interpret various student responses (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 125t, Discussion Questions, item 2; The Matter of Life, p. 146t, Discussion Questions, item 2). However, the material is limited in often omitting responses to student tasks (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 116t, Discussion Questions, items 1–10; The Matter of Life, p. 146t, Discussion Questions, item 7).

The material provides minimal support in recommending resources for improving the teacher’s understanding of key ideas. A reference list with some annotations subdivided by learning experience is provided at the end of the Teacher Guide for each module (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 213–219t, Appendix C, Resource List). The limited descriptions for some of the references identify topics addressed, but few of the references are explicitly linked to specific text sections or key ideas.

Encouraging curiosity and questioning

Rating = Some support is provided.
The material provides a few suggestions for how to encourage students’ questions but not guide their search for answers. For example, the module introductory letter to students states that the developers “hope that this curriculum encourages you to ask questions…” (The Matter of Life, Student Manual, Introductory Letter).

The material provides some suggestions for how to respect and value students’ ideas. Introductory teacher notes state that discussions should be facilitated “ensuring that students listen and consider the viewpoints of others, and that no comments or opinions are cut off, ignored, or unfairly dismissed” (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. xvi, Facilitating and Creating a Safe Environment). Within the learning experiences, teacher notes state that multiple student answers should be acceptable for some tasks (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 125t, Setting the Context, items 2 and 6).

The material provides some suggestions for how to raise questions such as “How do we know? What is the evidence?” and “Are there alternative explanations or other ways of solving the problem that could be better?” The material includes some tasks that ask students to provide evidence or reasons in their responses (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 96s, Analysis, item 4; p. 102s, Analysis, items 2–3).

The material provides some suggestions for how to avoid dogmatism. Throughout the material, the writing avoids dogmatism by being explicitly directed to students (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 87s, Prologue) and including accessible excerpts from trade books and articles (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 92–95s, Reading). In addition, the material discusses historical contributions of scientists (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 39–42s, Reading) and presents descriptions of related science careers that may be of interest to students (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 97–98s and 106–107s, On the Job).

The material does not provide examples of classroom interactions (e.g., dialogue boxes, vignettes, or video clips) that illustrate appropriate ways to respond to student questions or ideas. However, some sense of desirable interactions may be gained from general guidelines (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. ix–xt and xv–xixt, Teaching Strategies) and particular directions for cooperative group activities (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 117–118t, Experimenting and Investigating; pp. 125–126t, Experimenting and Investigating).

Supporting all students

Rating = Some support is provided.
The material generally avoids stereotypes or language that might be offensive to a particular group. For example, the material’s use of multiple writing genres—including traditional expository text (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 90–92s, Reading) and excerpts from nonfiction trade books and articles (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 92–95s, Reading)—may support the language use of particular student groups.

The material provides a few illustrations of the contributions of women and minorities to science and as role models. Most of the contributions of women and minority scientists, however, appear in a separate career feature entitled On the Job. For example, one career feature describes the training and hospital interactions of a woman phlebotomist named Arzu (Traits and Fates, p. 23s, On the Job). While these sections highlighting science careers are interesting and informative, they may not be seen by students as central to the material because they are presented in separate features.

The material suggests multiple formats for students to express their ideas during instruction and assessment, including cooperative group activities (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 130–137t, Activity), laboratory investigations (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 100–102s, Activity), whole class discussions (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 125t, Discussion Questions), essay questions (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 106s, Analysis, item 3; p. xlt, item 2), oral presentations (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 89–90s, Procedure, items 6–7), diagrams (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 42–43s, Analysis, item 1), making models (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 88–90s, Activity). However, the material does not usually provide alternatives for the same task.

The material does not routinely include specific suggestions about how teachers can modify activities for students with special needs. However, the student text and Teacher Guide provide some additional activities for students. At the end of the learning experiences, there are sometimes For Further Study (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 123–139t) and Extending Ideas (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 106s) features in which students may further study a related interest.

The material provides some strategies to validate students’ relevant personal and social experiences with scientific ideas. Some text sections relate specific personal experiences students may have had to the presented scientific concepts (e.g., The Matter of Life, pp. 93–94s). In addition, some tasks (e.g., The Matter of Life, p. 116t, Discussion Questions, items 1–5; p. 96s, Extending Ideas, item 2) ask students about particular personal experiences they may have had or suggest specific experiences they could have. However, the material rarely encourages students to contribute relevant experiences of their own choice to the science classroom. Overall, the tasks are well integrated with students’ personal and social experiences with scientific ideas.

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