Beyond Science Standards: Play, Art, Coherence, Community

Beyond Science Standards captures a vision of science education both whimsical and serious. Ranging across examples from elementary to university level classrooms and grounded in philosophy and history, the stories address dimensions beyond the realm of bureaucratic standards. Its thesis brings into question the premise of scientific unity and its representation in school as notions of method, process, nature, and practice. Schools, no less than the sciences, profit from playful exploration―of musical instruments in fourth grade physical science, for example, and hotel lobby decorative rock in a college geology course. Aesthetic expression permeates geologic interpretation and evolutionary insight―in depicting dentition, for instance, in the history of the horse family and linking this history to changing landscapes. Participating in collecting local, high altitude weather data enhances trust in climate science, especially when the observations benefit the local farming community. Allied with historical examples of the conduct of science, Beyond Science Standards offers the reader inspiring stories of science teaching, varying from place to place, time to time, discipline to discipline, and purpose to purpose.

Charles R. Ault, Jr. (“Kip”), professor emeritus, Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, coordinated the school’s Master of Arts in Teaching program for science teachers for more than two decades. Kip began his career teaching primary grades and middle school science in Connecticut and Colorado. Author of Do Elephants Have Knees? and Challenging Science Standards, his writing reflects an interest in paleontology and the value of subject diversity in the reform of school science.