Leema Berland

Professional Title
Assistant Professor
Organization/Institution
University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison)
About Me (Bio)
I study student engagement in complex scientific practices, such as argumentation and engineering design. In addition, I focus on understanding how the existing classroom culture influences the students work with these new practices. Through this work, I design learning environments, work with teachers to enact the learning environments, and examine what happens when they do.
Keywords
Classroom Practice

Fostering Pedagogical Argumentation: Pedagogical Reasoning with and About Student Science Ideas

University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison)
10/01/2013

This project will use an iterative approach to design activities and supports that foster pedagogical argumentation for use in undergraduate teacher education courses. This project will examine: 1) whether and how PSTs engage in pedagogical argumentation and 2) whether and how this engagement impacts how they listen and respond to student ideas.

Supporting Scientific Practices in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms

Northwestern University (NU)
09/01/2010

This project will develop a learning progression that characterizes how learners integrate and interrelate scientific argumentation, explanation and scientific modeling, building ever more sophisticated versions of practice over time using the three common elements of sense-making, persuading peers and developing consensus. The learning progression is constructed through students’ understanding of scientific practice as measured by their attention to generality of explanation, clarity of communication, audience understanding, evidentiary support, and mechanistic versus descriptive accounts.