…to the personal website of Keith S. Taber: Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.
This site is (like life and learning themselves) a 'work in progress' but hopefully is developing towards something that may be useful to the wider community.
Themes
The main themes of this website are the intersections of science, education and research (in various combinations).
There are sections concerned with:
- Learners' conceptions and thinking (e.g., alternative conceptions, misconceptions)
- Teaching science
- Science concepts
- Constructivism
- Research methodology
- Giftedness
- Academic standards and scholarly / scientific values
A 'Site Map' in the form of a hierarchical listing of the webpages on this site may be found here.
Some quick links:
- examples of science misconceptions
- examples of science analogies
- examples of science similes
- examples of science metaphors
- examples of anthropomorphism in science
Posts
There are also 'blog' postings.
The posts are organised under theme headings ('categories', and those discussing student thinking in science are 'tagged' related to science topics and concepts being discussed).
Glossary
There is a glossary for the site, which can be accessed here (or by following the links from highlighted terms)
Commonplace
My commonplace page: some quotes I especially like…
Publications
Details of my own publications can be found here
Copyright agreements with publishers restrict what I can make freely available, but I am working to increase what is available for download.
A warning to learners…
Although it may be possible to learn some science from this site*, the site is not intended to support those studying science in school or college. The site is aimed at those working in education, such as teachers and researchers, and those preparing to be teachers or educational researchers. Postings discuss students' ideas, and present some of their language, as a focus for exploring educational themes related to learning and teaching.
*Learners' ideas presented in posts may be seen as wrong, confused, incomplete, or vague, and are NOT intended as models of good answers.
Legacy web-pages…
For some years I had a site hosted on University servers as a personal site, but when the University withdrew the service, I set up this website. Initially pages were loaded on this domain with a re-direct from the university server.
This included my 'science-education-research' blog postings, web-pages that I had built up to support the teaching of educational research methods, and those relating to my activities as part of the 'ECLIPSE' project. These pages have mostly now been replaced with updated pages integrated into this site, and accessible from the links on this page. The search facility can also help locate specific material.
The original webpages for ECLIPSE (Exploring Conceptual Learning, Integration, and Progression in Science Education) were hosted on the University of Cambridge 'Camtools' VLE; then when that was closed down the pages were moved to the University's servers for personal websites – before being moved again when that service was withdrawn. The pages that offered specific examples of students talking about their ideas are being republished as posts.
