ABSTRACT

Engaging students in learning about their subject is a central concern for all teachers and teacher educators. How teachers view and use the pedagogic potential of different tasks to engage pupils with knowledge in different subjects, is central to this endeavour. 

Designing Tasks in Secondary Education explores models for effective task design, helping you translate the curriculum into the tasks and activities that you ask your students to do in order to facilitate developmental or higher-level understanding of curriculum content.

Written by experts in the field of education from a range of subjects and including a foreword written by renowned author Professor Walter Doyle, this book spans an international context and offers a refreshing alternative of how to plan and design tasks that will not only intellectually stimulate but improve teaching quality. Key topics explored include:

  • Designing tasks which engage learners with knowledge
  • Policy perspectives on task design
  • Designing cognitively demanding classroom tasks
  • Task design issues in the secondary subjects

Designing Tasks in Secondary Education offers essential insight into task design and its importance for enhancing subject understanding and student engagement. It will challenge and support all education professionals concerned with issues of curriculum design, subject knowledge, classroom organisation, agency in the learning process and teaching quality.

part 1|44 pages

The background

chapter 1|10 pages

Introduction

Tasks, concepts and subject knowledge

chapter 3|17 pages

Policy Perspectives on Task Design

Classroom learning and the national curriculum

part 2|143 pages

Learning from the subjects

chapter 4|23 pages

The Interplay Between Mathematics and Pedagogy

Designing tasks for mathematics teacher education

chapter 5|16 pages

Disciplinary Knowledge

Task design in geography

chapter 6|21 pages

Communication, Culture and Conceptual Learning

Task design in the English classroom

chapter 7|22 pages

Practical Theorising

Designing tasks for science explanations

chapter 9|18 pages

Negotiating Knowledge

Task design in the history classroom

chapter 10|18 pages

Insiders and Outsiders

Task design in learning about religions

part 3|18 pages

Looking forward

chapter 11|16 pages

Designing the Task of Teaching Novice Teachers

How to design instructional tasks