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Product Description: How can educators improve the literacy skills of students in a historically underachieving urban high school? In this timely book, the author draws on her experience as a participant observer to provide a unique, insider's view to both designing and implementing a culturally responsive approach to improve learning and teaching in a specific subject area...read more

This book shares the lessons learned by a large community of educational researchers and science teachers as they designed, developed, and investigated a new technology-enhanced learning environment known as WISE: The Web-based Inquiry Science Environment. WISE offers a collection of free, customizable curriculum projects on topics central to the science standards as well as guidance for teachers on how these Internet-based projects can be used to improve learning and instruction in their science classrooms (grades 6-12). Hundreds of teachers and over 100,000 students have learned from WISE projects taught in English, Norwegian, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Chinese, and Korean. Highlights of WISE include:* A wealth of findings about the WISE curriculum and assessments from 10 years of research funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.* A collection of classroom-tested, inquiry-based curriculum projects that are available to every classroom via the Internet, free of charge.* An accumulation of successful practices, patterns, and principles to guide classroom teachers and curriculum designers.* Effective models of professional development and school partnerships that support teachers in integrating inquiry-based methods in their own curriculum.* Key strategies and recommendations for policymakers.