Designing Tasks in Secondary Education Enhancing subject understanding and student engagement

Engaging students in learning about their subject is a central concern for all teachers and teacher educators. How teachers view and use the pedagogic potential of different tasks to engage pupils with knowledge in different subjects, is central to this endeavour. Designing Tasks in Secondary Education explores models for effective task design, helping you translate the curriculum into the tasks and activities that you ask your students to do in order to facilitate developmental or higher-level understanding of curriculum content. Written by experts in the field of education from a range of subjects and including a foreword written by renowned author Professor Walter Doyle, this book spans an international context and offers a refreshing alternative of how to plan and design tasks that will not only intellectually stimulate but improve teaching quality. Key topics explored include: Designing tasks which engage learners with knowledge Policy perspectives on task design Designing cognitively demanding classroom tasks Task design issues in the secondary subjects Designing Tasks in Secondary Education offers essential insight into task design and its importance for enhancing subject understanding and student engagement. It will challenge and support all education professionals concerned with issues of curriculum design, subject knowledge, classroom organisation, agency in the learning process and teaching quality.

Foreword: Walter Doyle Part 1: 1. The background Introduction: Tasks, Concepts, and Subject Knowledge Ian Thompson 2. Designing Tasks which Engage Learners with Knowledge Anne Edwards3. Policy Perspectives on Task Design: Classroom learning and the national curriculum Mark Chater Part 2: Learning from the subjects 4. Mathematics and Pedagogy: Designing tasks for Mathematics teacher education Gabriel J. Stylianides and Anne Watson 5. Disciplinary Knowledge: Task design in Geography Roger Firth 6. Communication, Culture, and Conceptual Learning: Task design in the English classroom Ian Thompson 7. Practical Theorizing: Designing tasks for Science explanations Ann Childs and Jane McNicholl 8. Promoting Learning: Task design in the Foreign Language classroom Trevor Mutton and Robert Woore 9. Negotiating Knowledge: Task design in the History classroom Jason Todd 10. Insiders and Outsiders: Task design in learning about religions/ Task design in Religious Education Nigel Fancourt Part 3: Looking forward 11. Designing the Task of Teaching Novice Teachers How to Design Instructional Tasks Peter Smagorinsky

Ian Thompson is Associate Professor of English Education at the University of Oxford, UK.