Master’s Programs Curriculum

This course is the first of a two-course sequence in secondary science teaching methods. The goal of the sequence is to develop core instructional capacity that enables you to support and extend all students’ meaningful science learning. In this course, we will focus on current research on teaching and learning, facilitating productive discussions, lesson planning, and effective instructional practices. This course is based on extensive research about how students learn science and how teachers learn teaching.

Textbooks and resources used in the course include:

• Ambitious Science Teaching
• 5 Practices of Orchestrating Task-Based Discussions in Science
• Teaching Science in Diverse Classrooms
• Becoming a Responsive Science Teacher
• NSTA journals: Science Scope, The Science Teacher

This course is the second of a two-course sequence in secondary science teaching methods. The goal of the sequence is to develop core instructional capacity that enables you to support and extend all students’ meaningful science learning. In this course, we will focus on curriculum design, elements of effective science units, working on students ideas across time, and effective instructional practices. This course is based on extensive research about how students learn science and how teachers learn teaching.

Textbooks and resources used in the course include:

• Ambitious Science Teaching
• Growing and Sustaining Student-Centered Science Classrooms
• Model-Based Inquiry
• NSTA journals: Science Scope, The Science Teacher

This course will examine student work and assessment issues in science as they relate to improving student learning and align with standards-based curriculum and instruction. This course contains key assessments.

Textbooks and resources used in the course include:

• Seeing Students Learn Science
• The Feedback Loop: Using Formative Assessment Data for Science Teaching and Learning
• NSTA journals: Science Scope, The Science Teacher

This course examines the enterprise of science from multiple perspectives including those of philosophers, historians, science studies scholars, and scientists themselves. Specific attention is paid to the impact of this scholarship on the field of science education and the empirical foundations of the practices of science. The course is foundational to all graduate programs in science education. Course components, including lectures, readings, assignments, and discussion, develop various skills including academic writing.

Textbooks and resources used in the course include:

• Helping Students Make Sense of the World using Next Generation Science and Engineering Practices
• Everyday Practice of Science
• NSTA journals: Science Scope, The Science Teacher

In this course, students will become critical readers of current science education research and its implications to classroom practice. Areas to be discussed include but are not limited to: curriculum and instruction, knowing and learning, equity, technology, professional development, nature of science and informal science education. Students will also receive instruction on basic educational research methods and gain experience in designing a study.

Textbooks and resources used in the course include:

• APA 7th Edition
• NSTA journals: Science Scope, The Science Teacher

Design and execution of a project that is a capstone for all work exhibited in program of study with an emphasis in practical classroom applications. Finals projects involve the production, improvement, and/or evaluation of a product intended for use by practicing professionals. A final project report must be modeled after a practitioner journal article and defended to a graduate committee.

Recent curricular projects include:

• Explaining the Dust Bowl: Using Historical Data, Meteorological Data, and Soil Science to Model the Causes of the Dust Bowl
• Broken Bone: Engineering Better Bone Healing
• Using Discussion to Address Modern Land Ethics in High School Biology
• Applied Chemistry: Using Community Oriented Curriculum to Expand High School Students’ Understanding and Use of Chemistry
• Historical Molecular Biology: Tools for Enhancing Students’ Understanding of the Central Dogma
• Problem Solving for the Future of Water in Arizona
• Model Based Inquiry: Bring Together Authentic Science Practices and Models to Promote Science Practices and the Teaching of Nuclear Chemistry

This course provides an overview of major episodes in the history of science from the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century through the present. Topics include recent historiographical approaches within the history of science along with noteworthy episodes in the history of biology, chemistry, physics, and the earth sciences. The course does not attempt to be definitive or exhaustive in its coverage of the history of science; it is not a celebration of great geniuses or theories. It is instead an attempt to pick out a handful of episodes that are judged to be particularly revealing about the way in which the sciences have developed. Readings include a combination of primary and secondary sources.

Textbooks and resources used in the course include:

• Making Modern Science
• Copenhagen
• NSTA journals: Science Scope, The Science Teacher

In this course, students will learn strategies to integrate engineering design into their secondary science classrooms.

Graduate-level science content course electives will be offered each summer. Please see the Summer Course page for our current offerings. Previous courses have included:

• Core Ideas in the Life Sciences
• Core Ideas in the Physical Sciences
• Core Ideas in the Earth and Space Sciences