An Enactment of Science A Dynamic Balance Among Curriculum, Context, and Teacher Beliefs

"Robert W. Blake, Jr., thoughtfully portrays and interprets the considered effort and practical enactment of a dedicated science teacher. In so doing he sheds light on the practice of teaching, the multitude of influences on teachers, and the need to be ever-mindful of the central curriculum question: What is worth knowing and experiencing?" (William H. Schubert, Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago; Vice-President of the American Education Research Association; President-Elect, Society of Professors of Education)
"Too often, the worlds of teachers come to us in segmented pieces in scholarly journals, or through a few quotes in a book. This warm and clearly written book is an exception. Through the words of Robert W. Blake, Jr., we are introduced to Donna, an exceptional teacher, as she goes about the daily work of introducing her six-graders to the wonders of science. Too often, examples of powerful pedagogy are confined to suburban schools with middle-class populations, well endowed with resources, and rich in the kind of cultural capital schools value. Not so here, Donna works in a diverse urban environment with children others would label as 'disadvantaged.' Here we find a teacher who believes that children should have no opportunity to fail; a teacher who believes that while content has value, cultivating inquiring habits of mind is more enduring; a teacher who sees herself as enabling her students to figure out who they are, where they are going in life, and how best they can maximize their unique gifts. Furthermore, Donna values social justice as an aim of teaching with action as its outcome.
The detailed portrayal in this book unveils the complex choreography involved in balancing a given curriculum, mandated assessment, and all of the foregoing ambitions in a persuasive enactment of science instruction. For anybody who believes that teaching can be reduced to simplistic prescriptions, this book is a must read, and it is likewise for teachers who are struggling to balance their design to be humane and just in their prac-tice with increasing demands from external curriculum and accountability pressures." (Michael O'Loughlin, Education Studies and Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University, New York)