Powerful Learning What We Know About Teaching for Understanding

What type of teaching produces powerful learning? This book summarizes what is known about effective teaching and learning in three major areas: reading / literacy, mathematics, and science. It includes an examination of project-based learning, performance-based assessment, and cooperative learning to see how they measure up against the demands of today's classrooms. Recent reports and analyses show that meaningful learning is largely missing from many of the nation's classrooms. Students who are taught in meaningful ways are able to think critically, engage in flexible problem solving, and apply learned skills and knowledge to new situations. Linda Darling-Hammond and a team of content area experts carefully examine this dilemma and present classroom vignettes which represent the best of what we know. Focusing on K-12 language arts, math, and science, the authors answer such important questions as how to support productive inquiry-based learning, how to connect reading and writing for maximum comprehension, how to ensure sense-making in math, and how to link science concepts to the world outside the laboratory/classroom. In addition to classroom practice, the authors look at school redesign programs--where the ultimate goal is a coherent system, from one classroom to the next and from grade to grade. Table of Contents Introduction: Teaching and Learning for Understanding Chapter 1: Teaching for Meaningful Learning Chapter 2: Teaching Reading for Understanding Chapter 3: Teaching Mathematics for Understanding Chapter 4: Teaching Science for Understanding Conclusion: Creating Schools that Develop Understanding

Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommon Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she serves as co-director of the School Redesign Network and the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on teaching quality, school reform, and educational equity.?Among her nearly 300 publications are the award-winning books: The Right to Learn, Teaching as the Learning Profession, and Preparing Teachers for a Changing World.

Brigid Barron is an Associate Professor of Education at Stanford University.

P. David Pearson is Dean of the Graduate School of Education and a Professor in the area of Language and Literacy?at the University of California, Berkeley.

Alan Schoenfeld is the Elizabeth and Edward Conner Professor of Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

Elizabeth Stage is the director of the Lawrence Hall of Science, the University of California, Berkeley's public science center.

Timothy Zimmerman is an academic researcher at the University of California, Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science.

The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) is a nonprofit foundation that gathers and disseminates?information on K-12 teaching and learning in the Digital Age. The foundation publishes stories of innovative teaching and learning through a variety of media — a magazine, e-newsletters, DVDs, books, and this Web site. They are based in the San Francisco Bay Area.