ABSTRACT
A generally agreed upon strategy for the reform of science education is that of making students’ thinking more visible. Curriculum, instruction, and assessments models are being reconsidered and redesigned to promote and facilitate (1) students’ capacities to reason and reflect on their reasoning and (2) teachers’ abilities to monitor, assess, and coordinate such reasoning and reflection. SenseMaker, a component of the Knowledge Integration Environment (KIE) Internet-based learning suite developed at the University of California, Berkeley, is a tool designed to make thinking visible and, in turn, make possible assessments of students’ knowledge construction and scientific beliefs.
