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The GIsML Project

GIsML = Guided Inquiry supporting Multiple Literacies
"Guided" in the name signifies our view of the teacher’s role as one of mediating student thinking and activity, which includes:

  • modeling scientific activity and thinking
  • questioning
  • "seeding" ideas or language
  • privileging some ideas or language over others
  • refocusing student thinking and activity
  • thinking aloud about instructional decisions

The GIsML Orientation

GIsML refers to an orientation to teaching (Shulman & Grossman). By orientation we mean a set of knowledge and beliefs about the purposes and goals for teaching science at a specific level. As an orientation, GIsML represents a way of thinking about instruction and all the elements that are part of it (i.e., curriculum, student learning, and assessment).

Full enactment of GIsML can be thought of as: sustained engagement in a program of study situated in a learning community in which there is complementary use of first and second-hand investigations in a seamless manner to learn about the physical world, resulting in children’s acquisition of deep understanding (demonstrated by language and action) of both the products of science and the nature of scientific reasoning.

GIsML has similarities to Project-based Science in the elements that describe the approach. For GIsML we define the elements characterizing it as: (a) the assumption that the inquiry will encompass important and substantial concepts; (b) the creation of products — artifacts — that are important occasions for students to represent their understanding; (c) the involvement of students in authentic experiences from the perspective of disciplines such as science, engineering, history, mathematics, etc.; and (d) the direction and organization of the inquiry on the basis of an overall "driving" question and related Focus questions which define the driving question for a particular Course of Study.

 

Theoretical Foundations | Heuristic

 

 


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