Best Evidence Science Teaching
The best teaching draws on the best evidence.
Amid increasing calls for evidence-based practice in classrooms, science teachers’ lives are usually too busy for them to comprehensively access and implement the best evidence emerging from education research.
Best Evidence Science Teaching (BEST) is a collection of free research evidence-informed resources for effective teaching of difficult ideas, embedded formative assessment and adaptive lesson planning. It is initially focussed on science at ages 11-14.
Research evidence-informed progression toolkits for key concepts in science include:
- appropriately-sequenced learning steps
- diagnostic questions that provide evidence of learning and of common misunderstandings
- response activities that promote purposeful practical work, metacognition and conceptual progression
The BEST resources (age 11-14)
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BIOLOGY
Browse resources by big idea:
The cellular basis of life
Heredity and life cycles
Organisms and their environments
Variation, adaptation and evolution
Health and disease -
CHEMISTRY & EARTH SCIENCE
Browse resources by big idea:
Substances and properties
Particles and structure
Chemical reactions
Earth chemistry
Dynamic Earth -
PHYSICS
Browse resources by big idea:
Matter
Forces and motion
Sound, light and waves
Electricity and magnetism
Earth in space
Publication of resources
Teaching and learning resources will be added on a topic-by-topic basis. The resources are being developed based on careful consideration of the best available research evidence.
Sign up for BEST email updates from University of York Science Education Group or follow @BestEvSciTeach on Twitter to find out when new topics have been made available.
Further information
Read more about how BEST can help you develop evidence-based practice in the classroom
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Download a short, easy-to-read introduction to Best Evidence Science Teaching.
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Download an introductory presentation about BEST, with speaker notes.
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How can BEST help you work towards the recommendations of the Education Endowment Foundation’s Improving Secondary Science report?
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An introduction to using diagnostic questions to provide evidence of learning, diagnose misunderstandings and inform what happens next.
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An introduction to using response activities to challenge misunderstandings, encourage metacognition and facilitate progress in understanding.
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An introduction to building students' understanding of energy using the stores and pathways approach.
BEST project development
The resources are being developed by the University of York Science Education Group in collaboration with science teachers, with generous support from the Salters’ Institute.
They are providing online access to the resources in collaboration with STEM Learning to support science teaching at no cost to teachers or schools.
All Best Evidence Science Teaching (BEST) resources are © University of York Science Education Group. The resources are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license.