ABSTRACT
Over the past 15 years, significant developments in psychological theories of learning have occurred. A strategy for science teaching based on these theories of learning and consistent with the nature of scientific inquiry is presented in this chapter. The strategy is cyclical and reflects the iterative nature of both learning and scientific inquiry. The strategy enables students to develop: (1) scientific understanding of the natural world; (2) the understanding that scientific knowledge is the product of a process engaged in by a community of scientists; and, (3) skills in the processes of learning science. When this strategy is employed, students act as a community of novice scholars. The teacher is at once coach and referee—coach in the sense of setting tasks for the student which will improve the students' performance as individual scholars, and referee in the sense of helping the collective develop and apply community standards for evidence and argument.
