Al Schademan and Science Education

Greetings,

This is my first post in many moons. My blog just reconnected me with a friend that I thought I might never hear from again, so my faith in this medium has been restored. I have never been very consistent with this kind of thing (journaling, etc), but I’m going to give it another shot.

I taught a graduate level science methods class tonight. It seemed to go well. Great folks. A diverse group of preservice, inservice, and doctoral students. It should be quite the adventure trying to meet the needs of the group. But it’s a great course, one that I’ve taken over from the lead professor as she concetrates on her research. The class hung in there for me, but going through the syllabus and the assignments seemed to drag on forever. Given the different needs of the students, we’ve tried to structure the course’s assignments accordingly, which of course, made for a longer syllabus. I find that students are most concerned about the assignments, so I try ot get that out of the way so we can get to work. It just took too long, as the assignments are somewhat complex.

But we did get on to a nature of science activity that engaged the students in some very cool discussions in thier small groups. I took the activity from Scharmann, et al. (2005). It was a list of knowledge claims that the students had to place in order from least to most scientific. The activity unearthed some insights about the epistemology of science. I’s use it again, but go into the activity with better questions designed to better get at the students’ rationales for their decisions.

Overall, I think that we are off to a great start.

Al

Reference

Scharmann, L., Smith, M. U., James, M. C., & Jensen, M. (2005). Explicit reflective nature of science instruction: Evolution, intelligent design, and umbrellaology. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 16, 27-41.

The focus of this essay is that the teacher plays an integral role in how technology is used and how well it supports student learning in science. Viewed in this way, technology is not a simple prop or a time filler that the teacher uses in order to sit in the back of the room and catch up on grading papers. Nor is technology just glitz and glamour designed to catch student attention. Instead, the teacher integrates appropriate technology into units, projects, activities and lessons in order to achieve curricular goals. In the process, the teacher proactively supports students learning as they facilitate student learning through interaction with technology.

Matthews (1994) presents one example of this view of using technology in science teaching through her use of what she calls interactive video. Students in her class wrote about and discussed a series of short video clips during which they learned about stereotypes, perspective, and science. In so doing, Matthews considered not only the information to be learned, but the attitudes of students toward the experience of viewing the video and how these attitudes might enhance learning a variety of things. She abandoned the use of any introductory script, and instead showed short, decontextualized clips each followed by a class discussion facilitated with open-ended questions. In so doing, she helped students to explore not only the science in the video, but the also students’ own attitudes about science, and how perspective can influence what people see and the meanings they make from their observations. Such inquiry-oriented video viewing moves past transmission modes of pedagogy often used with video and incorporates constructivism where students are challenged to build meaning from the experience.

Teachers can implement technology in their classrooms in innovative ways without a broader framework that relates technology, science, and society. If done so, students may miss important connections that help to contextualize science learning through technology with important societal issues to which a student can relate. Chiapetta and Koballa (2006) argue that the Science, Technology and Science (STS) movement provides guiding framework for science teacher planning that makes explicit the intimate connections between science, technology and society. In STS, teaching strategies include design and build, investigate and improve, issue and problem awareness and investigation, action learning, and project-based science. STS is employed to help students understand societal issues, the role of science in the issue, and to learn the science behind investigating some issues. An important caveat of STS is to foreground the science learning, as it can often take a back seat to the discussion and investigation of issues.

Operating under the framework of STS, teachers have a variety of options for using different kinds of technologies. Chiapetta and Koballa (2006) divide science teaching with technology into five broad categories each with a number of subcategories:

1. Multimedia: still images, audio, video, animation, 3-D virtual reality.
2. Electronics and remote control: calculators, hand-held computers,
3. Text: supports the use of all media and technology.
4. Computers: basic software, CD-Rom, simulations, games.
5. Internet: email, world wide web, Internet-based activities, projects, inquiries, and WebQuests.

The authors provide a list of resources for each subcategory and in some cases, things to consider for the teacher (See Chapter 15). Given this extensive list and links to multiple sources, teachers are presented here with a plethora of choices. But what does the research say about these sources?

One study by Hug, Krajcik, and Marx (2001) compares the use of two technologies and gives teachers some things to consider in their use. Hug and her colleagues analyzed the use of Thinking Tags and Artemis technologies in a high school science classroom, as the teacher and students were engaged in a project concerning the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in a population. The researchers found that the technologies supported student engagement in the project, connections to outside of school experience, and formulation of meaningful questions that balanced personal experience and science content. However, both technologies failed to help students construct step-by-step inquiry projects to research their question, to facilitate proper data collection, and to assimilate technical scientific terminology and concepts into their knowledge base. Further, the Artemis research tool remained difficult for students to master throughout the project decreasing its effectiveness as a tool to support learning.

Given these findings, the researchers suggest that teachers need to match the strengths of technologies to curricular goals and support student learning of these goals. Further, the article highlights the importance of teacher feedback to software and technology designers so that changes and adjustments can be made that increase the effectiveness of the technological tools.

References

Chiapetta, E. L., & Koballa, T. R. (2006). Science instruction in the middle and secondary schools: Developing fundamental knowledge and skills for teaching (Sixth ed.). Upper Saddle, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Hug, B., Krajcik, J. S., & Marx, R. W. (2001). Using innovative learning technologies to promote inquiry and engagement in an urban science classroom. Paper presented at the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, St, Louis, MO.

Matthews, C. E. (1994). Interactive video. Science Teacher, March, 20-23.

Mayberry (1999) compares cooperative learning and feminist or transformative pedagogies. Although cooperative learning is promoted by researchers in science education who focus upon issues of race and ethnicity (Atwater, 2000; Gallard, 1992), gender (Alper, 1993), and ability (McGinnis, 2000). Mayberry (1999) claims that cooperative learning privileges and reproduces dominant masculine discourses that marginalize both women and students of color in science classrooms (Mayberry does not include ability in her analysis). As education was structured around an industrial model in the early 1900s, the current move towards cooperative learning reflects a similar move in the business world. The move has found much success in increasing achievement in science, but Mayberry argues that it has failed to foster the critical thinking skills in both teachers and students necessary to question what and why certain kinds of curricula are in place. Further, collaborative learning fails to address the differences in how knowledge is produced across race, class, and gender. In other words, science remains disembodied from the learner, knower and doer of science. Such non-relational approaches reproduce an objectivist epistemology of science failing to substantively transform learning communities towards inclusion of diverse perspectives.

Feminist approaches build upon Frierian anti-oppressive pedagogy by attending to gender in its analysis of teaching and learning in addition to race and class. Rather than setting up a binary, Mayberry acknowledges that feminist pedagogies use collaborative learning but do so through activities that expose hierarchies and injustices created around race, class, and gender and work towards change and transformation of injustices. In other words, social justice is central to feminist approaches of pedagogy.

Mayberry argues that the issue of making science more inclusive for women has resulted in two approaches: a “women in science” approach that strives to make courses more “female friendly” on one hand, and approaches that create feminist science courses. A “women in science/female friendly” approach is supported in part by Alper (1993). In order to break down obstacles to girls in science education, Alper (1993) promotes the presence of females as role models, designing courses around hands-on activities, and group work. However, Alper also speaks to a feminist science by including in her analysis of pedagogy a critique of objectivist views of science and by tying science learning to social and environmental issues. Mayberry (1999) holds that the two approaches are not exclusive but that feminist science pedagogy adds something that cooperative learning does not. The goal of a feminist science is to address and act against injustice and inequality in an effort to transform society. Part and parcel of this view is a critique of how western science has worked to maintain systems of inequality.

One goal of Mayberry’s article is to articulate a starting point for bringing these two approaches together. One stumbling point in the past has been how the role of gender in science is viewed. A gendered analysis of science does not mean making science better for women, but critiquing science for its masculine approach, its objectivist epistemology, and for ignoring the potential it has to work towards social justice. Merely invoking cooperative learning without such critical analysis will not result in changing the epistemology and aims of science, the primary goal of a feminist science. Mayberry holds that science itself must be changed before it can begin to act towards social change.

Practically and pedagogically, feminist educators attempt to contextualize science education within societal and environmental issues. In such units, traditional classrooms may explore content, technology, and the processes of science. In addition to these important aspects of science education, a feminist science pedagogy would encourage students to examine potential social and environmental impacts of pursuing particular ends and means and how taking an objectivist scientific position on such issues contributes to social and environmental problems. Importantly, the epistemological claim made by feminists is that all knowledge is made in relation to a position or a standpoint. Both Heisenberg and Bohr stated as much in their writings about science. The observer is always subjective as they cannot tear themselves apart from the object or phenomenon they are observing. In other words, science is always more or less subjective as observers are always positioned in relation to objects. Allowing students to explore the roots of their position encourages them to think critically about how scientific knowledge is constructed and to explore alternatives that add diversity to what kinds of knowledge is constructed through science.

Coming from a multicultural education perspective, Gallard (1992) focuses upon harnessing the large potential that diversity can bring to knowledge construction in science. America has always been a nation of immigrants, but the races and ethnicities of the current wave of immigrants, mostly from the Latin Americas and Asia, are different than the European immigrants that came through Ellis Island. The new wave of immigration presents a new set of challenges for American schools making the multicultural education highlighted by Atwater (2000) all the more important. If constructivist views of science are correct in that meaning is negotiated based upon prior knowledge, then teachers must create space and opportunities for all students to make meaning from science related experiences. As the diversity of background increases in a classroom, the plurality of meanings constructed will also increase. A problem emerges however when the meanings negotiated by teachers and students from European backgrounds become hegemonic. In such classrooms, the cultural resources (the world views) of students from non-European backgrounds are ignored and their interpretations of experience marginalized. Many students will resist such cultural assimilation and become disengaged from the classroom activities decreasing the likelihood that they will form practice-linked identities around science.

Communication plays a major role as a person’s world view is closely associated with language. Taking a lesson from the successes of ESL programs, Gallard (1992) holds that students need to be given opportunities to make sense of experience using their native languages. Context-embedded learning environments are based upon shared understandings and recognition the central role of language in meaning making. Teachers can facilitate such classrooms by grouping students who share language backgrounds and by relating science experience to shared cultural experiences. Gallard calls for making culture a part of science teaching all year long, and not simply at certain times.

However, none of the researchers explored thus far speak directly to inclusion of students with disabilities in science education. It seems that a more contextualized science that speaks to real world issues would be good for all students, but none of the authors speak to how such a pedagogical move could benefit students with disabilities. Personally, I have faced the challenge of mainstreaming students with disabilities in to my own science classes, and feel that the students benefited greatly from the experience with hands-on science activities. But McGinnis (2000) helps us move past the focus on hands-on activities by exploring what inquiry-based science might look like for students with disabilities. McGinnis sees learning as conceptual change and “supported science inquiry” as an appropriate pedagogy given its analogous nature with social constructivist theories of learning. He believes that such instruction should be designed for all students, including those with disabilities, and cite supporting evidence from science education standards, public law, and from research conducted in science classrooms with students with disabilities. The benefits to students with disabilities engaging in inquiry include concept mastery as well as increased participation in differing modes of classroom activity. Practically, the author cites research supporting effective teacher practices in inquiry classrooms containing students with disabilities. Effective practices include a focus on appropriate participation, clear guidelines for classroom management, lab notebooks, student construction of hypotheses, cooperative group work, and use of oral presentations to display findings. Science teacher and special needs teacher collaboration is highly recommended.

I think it unfortunate that neither Mayberry, Gallard, nor McGinnis recognize that students with disabilities could add to the diversity of views that could potentially enrich science knowledge construction. It seems time to examine science education from where issues of race, class, gender, and ability intersect rather than separating out these categories which leads to the inclusion of some while furthering the marginalization of others. A feminist science pedagogy that recognizes students with disabilities could be fruitful, but it must first include students with disabilities specifically in its analysis.

References

Alper, J. (1993). The pipeline is leaking women all the way along. Science, 260(16), 409-411.
Atwater, M. (2000). Multicultural education. The Science Teacher, 48-49.

Gallard, A. J. (1992). Creating a multicultural learning environment in science classrooms. In F. Lawrence, K. Cochran, J. Krajcik & P. Simpson (Eds.), Research matters… to the science teacher (pp. 85-91). Manhattan, KS: National Association for Research in Science Teaching.
Mayberry, M. (1999). Reproductive and resistant pedagogies: The comparative roles of collaborative learning and feminist pedagogy in science education. In M. Mayberry & E. C. Rose (Eds.), Meeting the challenge: Innovative feminist pedagogies in action (pp. 2-22). New York: Routledge.

McGinnis, J. R. (2000). Teaching science as inquiry for students with disabilities. In J. Minstrell & E. v. Zee (Eds.), Inquiry into inquiry learning and teaching in science (pp. 425-433). Washington D. C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The focus of this post is to tie together my epistemology of learning and my metaphor for science teaching, each described in two earlier posts. In order to thread together the conversation, I am repeating these earlier posts and then making an attempt at synthesis. In re-reading my epistemology of learning, I do not see any reason to change it at the moment. Here it is.

Learning primarily occurs through long term, situated, embodied experience in collective social and cultural practices that have evolved historically overtime. Practices take place within complex contexts defined in part by activity systems and goal-directed activities which have practical functions. Through practices, people construct knowledge socially in the presence of artifacts that act as mediators between people and the material world. Mediating artifacts include kinds of social interactions, language, symbols, and tools, all of which carry with them certain perspectives, ways of knowing, and cultural values that have been socially and historically formed. As we appropriate artifacts through social interaction and use, we learn socio-historically formed ways of thinking and being in and seeing the world. Although learning is normally characterized by face-to-face interactions, mediating artifacts like language, symbolic systems, and ways of knowing connect these immediate contexts to larger networks that are extended across both space and time. The knowledge that we construct in the present connects us to particular sociocultural pasts and places us upon trajectories for the future.

Also in an earlier post, I was challenged to create a metaphor for science teaching. Here it is:

A beautifully woven Navajo rug as it represents the weaving together of many things to create something amazing, like the earth. If we follow Michael Cole and think of context as something that weaves together, good science teaching is creating contexts in which science learning can take place, especially for non-dominant populations that are often left out of the picture.

Questions abounded from this metaphor pertaining mostly to who is doing the weaving and such. I replied as follows:

The rug is really a metaphor for what happens during and as a result of teaching. It is the process and the product. There’s really no weaver, per se, as the context is that which weaves together, rather than something that surrounds. This view of context gets away a false dichotomy between subject and object, person and context. At best, the teacher sets into motion activities, people, and artifacts through engaging people in practices, such as inquiry. The context (people, artifacts, interactions, relationships, certain time in history, etc) does the rest. What happens in what I would call good teaching, science included, is a thing that takes on a life of its own once set into motion and is determined by how the strands of the context become woven together, something that can only be facilitated by, and not controlled or determined by, the teacher. Also, there is no one rug, no one outcome, as different people involved will derive different meanings from the experience.

Here is what I would add to this conversation at this time.

We could also view the rug as a metaphor for human knowledge that is extended through both space and time and is ever growing in its length, breadth and scope. Importantly, the rug represents more than knowledge, but also all the contextual factors that went into knowledge construction. The tools and ways of reasoning in science have been significant aspects of knowledge construction since the 1600s and its significance is growing. We can see the rug then as a somewhat completed past, a record of what we have found, with unfinished strands stretching out into the future. The role of the science teacher is to expose sections of the rug, pieces of existing scientific knowledge that are relevant to students’ lives. Teachers then facilitate a process through which the students can add a stitch to the rug, helping them to find their voice in an ongoing conversation through the construction of some kind of knowledge. Importantly, the process happens by immersing students in the practices of science, practices which are sociocultural and mediated by artifacts and certain kinds of reasoning. As students do not normally do science in their everyday lives per se, the role of the teacher is ultimately to bring these two worlds together, to make science a part of everyday life. This can only occur after a lengthy immersion in the practices of science.

Who is doing the weaving then? I would say anyone who can get a seat at the table when a situation grounded in practicality calls for action. Science teachers prepare students to bring the practices of science to bear upon novel situations and problems that emerge in their personal or professional lives. Part of science teaching is therefore helping students gain access to the table where the weaving is taking place. Currently, science has much power at the table, so bringing a scientific epistemology to the table can help gain and maintain that access. This is especially important for members of historically non-dominant groups. Borrowing from Plato then, my new metaphor is science teaching is a finger pointing at the rug. Teachers set up contexts in which the rug is exposed so that students can make sense of it and add to it.

The central argument that I make in this essay is that changing the ways teachers assess student understandings and knowledge is foundational to reform efforts designed to move education past transmission modes of teaching and learning through rote memorization. Making student understandings visible is a central feature of assessment. In this way, assessment is central to teaching. Teachers must get an idea of the knowledge students have constructed before they can facilitate fruitful learning trajectories. Assessment therefore goes far beyond grades: it is an essential tool for skilled teachers who want to help all students learn.

Moving past tests, skilled teachers use a number of ways to make student understandings explicit. Berliner (1993) suggests homework, Novak (1991) promotes concept maps, and Palmer (1987) engages students in discussions through the use of carefully crafted questions. Each method has its benefits, but for the most part, what each author really focuses upon is what teachers do with student knowledge once it is made explicit. For instance, Berliner reviewed studies that showed that individualized feedback on homework improved both performance on achievement tests and attitudes towards mathematics and school in general. Even teachers’ attitudes towards teaching math improved. Hand written teacher comments need to be specific, focused upon patterns in mistakes made and propose ways to correct the problem at the root of the mistakes being made. Lastly, Berliner suggests ending with comments they convey something positive about student work.

Based upon a constructivist epistemology, Novak supports the use of concept maps in order to help students construct and make visible their understandings of the meanings and relationships between concepts in a subject area or discipline. Importantly, students can construct maps in any number of ways. This flexibility gives students agency in how they represent their understandings. Further, teachers can examine student created concept maps for prior knowledge, incomplete knowledge or misconceptions and can plan future instruction that both challenges and engages student conceptions.

Designed to probe, encourage and deepen student thinking, Palmer examines the range, progression and authenticity of questioning in the classroom. His begins with but extends beyond teacher-initiated questions by proposing techniques that begin discussions both with and between students. To do so, he suggests using a variety of different kinds of questions that probe deeply into student interpretations, hypotheses, and their abilities to extend knowledge into novel situations. Importantly, skilled use of questions can create inclusive classroom climates in which all students can participate. The ideal end result of skilled questioning for Palmer is not only to make student thinking visible, but to build student abilities to craft creative and innovative questions to guide their own learning. The idea that teachers can help to instill a love of lifetime learning in students simply by modeling good questioning is profound.

To these researchers, assessment is not simply a tool for the grade book, but a mediator of effective, significant and authentic teaching and learning. Before taking this class, I viewed assessment as an end, not as a means through which I could facilitate learning and create supportive classroom climates. Such thinking places education firmly on the trajectory towards standardization and accountability that we are currently on. A broader view of assessment can actually support progressive, sociocultural and critical approaches to learning as it is be based in a constructivist epistemology. Importantly, the ways that teachers choose to assess as well as the reasons and purposes for their assessments drives pedagogy. The broader and more creative view of assessment of these researchers presents an excellent argument for backwards design, which I would argue is what is happening in most traditional classrooms anyhow. The logical positivistic epistemology at the base of more standardized assessments (multiple choice, etc) results in a transmission mode of teaching and students that are engaged in rote learning. Thought about in this way, changing the ways that teachers assess student understandings could be foundational for reform efforts that move teachers and students past these unfruitful means of teaching and learning as they are geared towards such constrained and unauthentic ends.

References

Berliner, D. C., & Casanova, U. (1993). Why what you write on homework papers counts. In Putting Research to Work in Your School (pp. 20-22): New York Scholastic Leadership Policy Research.
Novak, J. (1991). Clarifying with concept maps: A tool for students and teachers alike. The Science Teacher, October, 44-49.
Palmer, D. P. (1987). The art of questioning. Academic Connections, Winter, 1-7.

Lawrenz (1992) provides a survey of assessments for science education that offer alternatives to standardized and traditional tests. Such assessment techniques include essay tests, practical assessment, portfolios, observations and interviews, dynamic assessment, and projects. She argues that by using a variety of tools, teachers can increase the validity of a teacher’s overall assessment of student performance in a classroom. Lawrenz’s article is helpful in increasing the number of assessment techniques available to teachers, and hopefully helps move teachers away from relying too heavily upon traditional methods of assessment.

However, Lawrenz’s article fails to connect these methods to either standards or a design process that links assessment to instruction. Newman, Secada, and Wehlage (1995) related authentic instruction and assessment using examples primarily from social studies and mathematics. Further, Wiggins (1997) places authentic assessment in science within a larger design process based upon standards and peer review in order to increase the credibility of both curricula and assessment. He argues that using standards and peer review in assessment will lead to increasing the rigor of student work. Curricula and assessments should be created and judged against standards and go through peer review also guided by standards. The criteria for guiding the design process are credibility, user-friendliness, and feasibility. Elements to consider along the way are validity, designing assessment for understanding, and critique and revision of products. Peer review, in addition to creating better curricula and assessments, can create collaborative relationships between faculty. Peer review needs to be based upon established criteria of the assessment system which elicits input from the parents and community. Such standards and criteria focus upon purpose in addition to the kinds of assessments used, are user-friendly, make assessment central to the process by creating a backwards design process, are based upon authentic tasks, and consider local context.

Taking an important albeit less holistic view of assessment are Chiapetta and Koballa (2006) who focus upon lesson assessment. The authors view lesson assessment as part of a larger system that incorporates the following interrelated elements: learning goals, lesson objectives, monitoring during lesson, and end of lesson assessment. Goals are driven by standards and lesson planning is often driven by the assessment by backwards planning. Like Wiggins, the authors suggest a collaborative with district personnel in order to create a more comprehensive assessment system that is based upon standards and peer input and review.

The system-based approaches of Wiggins (1997) and Chiapetta and Koballa (2006), the multiple assessment techniques proposed by Lawrenz (1992), and the tying of instruction and assessment by Newmann et al. (1995) all provide teachers and districts with the tools to move past the isolated teacher creating traditional assessments. Such tests, usually based upon multiple choice questions or the like, not only fail to incorporate more than low-level content knowledge assessment, but are also unfair in that they fail to provide multiple avenues for students to express their understandings and mastery of lesson goals and objectives. Traditional assessments also lead to instruction that is geared towards the low-level, rote content that may students do not find interesting as it is not well connected to their lives outside of school. Authentic assessment, especially when employed in a backwards fashion in planning curricula and activities, can help create science classrooms that are more engaging, rigorous, and relevant to kids lives.

Previous to this set of readings, I had always thought that assessment in general was ‘the’ problem. Now I realize that it is not assessment per se that leads to teaching to the test, but the kinds of assessments that are commonly employed. Authentic assessments can actually serve as a basis for positive reform in science, and education in general, when employed in a thoughtful and systematic way.

References

Chiapetta, E. L., & Koballa, T. R. (2006). Science instruction in the middle and secondary schools: Developing fundamental knowledge and skills for teaching (Sixth ed.). Upper Saddle, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Lawrenz, F. (1992). Authentic assessment. In F. Lawrence, K. Cochran, J. Krajcik & P. Simpson (Eds.), Research matters… to the science teacher (pp. 65-70). Manhattan, KS: National Association for Research in Science Teaching.

Newmann, F. M., Secada, W. G., & Wehlage, G. G. (1995). A guide to authentic instruction and assessment: Vision, standards, and scoring. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Research.

Wiggins, G. (1997). Practicing what we teach in authentic assessment. Educational Leadership, 54(4), 18-25.

Planning has never been what I would call my strong point, so I entered the readings for this week with some reservations. Planning is not what I would call a very compelling topic. However, I think I learned something interesting from these papers: the importance of combining a larger vision for a science course with day-to-day lesson planning in order to teach science effectively in an innovative and reform-based way. I could have used that view when I taught years ago.

Focusing upon the day-to-day planning of teaching science through lesson planning, Lederman and Niess (2000) cite research that supports a high correlation between planning and effective teaching. They also provide a list of what effective teachers tend to incorporate into their lessons. The main claim of the paper is that it takes planning to teach in these effective ways. However, in spite of the wealth of research and evidence linking planning to effective teaching, preservice teachers tend to minimize planning. The day-to-day planning of teachers is of course guided by lesson plans. Lederman and Niess (2000) claim that “less thoughtful” preservice teachers require more detailed lesson plans than “more thoughtful” ones. Mentor teachers require the least having the ability to conceptualize lessons due to their wealth of experience. However, this situation creates a problem in that mentor teachers often fail to model detailed lesson planning for student teachers. As a result, preservice teachers feel as if planning is not necessary for their success.

Huebel-Drake, Finkel, Stern, and Mouradian (1995) relate their efforts at planning a successful course. This kind of planning includes but goes well beyond day-to-day lesson planning. For these researchers and practitioners, planning a successful course involves a number of considerations that extend well beyond the classroom. First, they take an integrated approach to curriculum incorporating the life, chemical, environmental, and physical sciences into one course. Pedagogically, they use project-based pedagogy and teach the concepts, processes and practices of science through environmentally-based investigations of stream quality in their local community. In order to pull off such a large endeavor, they leverage a wide variety of community resources including information and help from local nonprofits, technology and research support from the local university, and financial support from local businesses. Another important aspect of the planning of Huebel-Drake et al was to incorporate new approaches into their project from year to year. Changes were incorporated into the course based upon both past failures and successes as well as the needs of students which can change from year to year. The ability to change based upon reflection and by considering changing contexts seem to be an important aspect of planning for successful science courses.

The perspectives of the two papers appear to go hand in hand. Huebel-Drake and her colleagues present the big picture of planning a successful, innovative, and reform-based science course that uses authentic inquiry in community-based issues as its foundation. On the other hand, Lederman and Niess present a smaller picture view of the importance of day-to-day planning for effective teaching. The big picture view provides the larger vision, one that links classroom science learning to the community situating student school-based experiences in the outside world. The smaller picture attends to the day-today planning that is necessary for effective teaching and learning to take place on a daily basis. The two views of planning together seem to present a recipe for success.

But making these two views of planning work together is a whole other issue. How does a teacher construct detailed lesson plans around a changing and dynamic project-based course in which different groups of students are doing different things each day? It seems that some days may lend themselves better to detailed lesson plans than others, days in which specific group-level activities and goals need accomplished. Less structures days seem to require less detailed planning and more fluid facilitation by the teacher.

References

Huebel-Drake, M., Finkel, E., Stern, E., & Mouradian, M. (1995). Planning a course for success. The Science Teacher, 62(7), 18-21.

Lederman, N. G., & Niess, M. L. (2000). If you fail to plan, are you planning to fail? School Science and Mathematics, 100(2), 57-60.

This past Monday, I co-taught a lesson with April designed to help preservice science teachers facilitate the development of student-initiated questions. The goal was to lead them to a question with which they could all be happy with given their interests and wonderings. To stimulate interest and show an example of a student-led inquiry project, we showed a video from PBS Kids of two students who conducted a study on eating breakfast and school-based assessments. The discussion of the video was centered around the question “What made this study work?” during which the students listed a number of important reasons.

We then had the students take on the role of an actual Science STARS student with a number of interests. They listed their interests on post-it notes and placed them on a wall. I challenged the students to arrange their interests into themes. This part of the activity was designed to show the preservice teachers how to pull together the divergent interests of a group into common interests in order to create a research question of interest to all group members. These first two parts of the activity went very well and according to plan, although it was somewhat awkward to get the teachers to role-play their students. I think next time I’d drop the role-play, and just give the teachers the student names and have them place their interests on the wall.

We then asked the teachers to place questions or wonderings about their interests on post-its around the themes. This part became tricky, as this is where the real undefined part of the group inquiry process begins. Taking wonderings and interests and bringing them together into a researchable question is a situational process. Guidelines for facilitation are making certain that all voices are being heard and the timely interjection of content knowledge and ideas in order to keep projects from going off in potentially unfruitful directions.
This is where the lesson began to diverge from the goal for a number of reasons. First, the students were more interested in having some of their questions and concerns addressed about the process with their students rather than completing the goal of the activity. Also, I began to falter at this point, as I think many facilitators do. It’s a real messy process. I’ve been through it many times as a researcher, student, and as a facilitator. The lesson, as it was a role-play, seemed to lack some authenticity at this point, so it began to brake down. But what was authentic was the process, which was, at least to an extent, modeled for the teachers. What became authentic for the teachers at that point in time, was not coming up with a question for the sake of going through the process, but addressing concerns about things like connecting their students to University or community resources in order to support inquiry. April and I followed the flow of this conversation, and we did our best to engage the teachers in a discussion that wasn’t part of the plan, but seemed fruitful in addressing some of their issues.

I left the lesson feeling that we could have seen that one coming and planned for it. Hindsight is 20/20, but perhaps it might have been best to plan to cut the activity when it began to exhaust its authenticity, and move to a more structured discussion around teacher concerns. This is what happened, but had we planned for it, we may have been able to better guide the discussion. Overall, the lesson seemed worthwhile, but at the same time, it did not quite reach my expectations for scaffolding the teachers through a very difficult process.

Learning primarily occurs through long term, situated, embodied experience in collective social and cultural practices that have evolved historically overtime. Practices take place within complex contexts defined in part by activity systems and goal-directed activities which have practical functions. Through practices, people construct knowledge socially in the presence of artifacts that act as mediators between people and the material world. Mediating artifacts include kinds of social interactions, language, symbols, and tools, all of which carry with them certain perspectives, ways of knowing, and cultural values that have been socially and historically formed. As we appropriate artifacts through social interaction and use, we learn socio-historically formed ways of thinking and being in and seeing the world. Although learning is normally characterized by face-to-face interactions, mediating artifacts like language, symbolic systems, and ways of knowing connect these immediate contexts to larger networks that are extended across both space and time. The knowledge that we construct in the present connects us to particular sociocultural pasts and places us upon trajectories for the future.

The overwhelming list of science ‘misconceptions’ from our readings presents a daunting task for teachers. Lists of student conceptions like these have had mixed effects in science education. On the positive side, they acknowledge student conceptions and prior knowledge and thus move past pre-constructivist learning theories. On the other hand, they have led to conceptual change models that consider only cognition and a rational view of learning. Fortunately, our other readings help us to move past these early perspectives by embracing the idea that student interests, practices, tacit knowledge, and motivations need to be considered for conceptual change to take place.

Kyle, Abell, and Shymansky (1992) ground the conversation in what Pintrich, Marx, and Boyle (1993) refer to as ‘cold” models of conceptual change. To Kyle et al, student existing knowledge is constructed through “personal observation ad experience” (p. 30) and is seen as a barrier to learning scientific content knowledge. They provide a list comparing scientific and children’s conceptions of a variety of things and phenomena. The authors cites research that supports the notion that students who learn science content are successful at integrating their tacit and scientific knowledge. However, most students do not integrate these knowledges and science content becomes lists of disconnected facts. In the latter, little to no conceptual change takes place.

The authors promote a conceptual change model that supports making student thinking visible through social interaction and challenging student conceptions. The process takes time, so he promotes streamlining content and curriculum. Specifically, they promotes the Generative Learning Model (GLM) that treats students as active participants in the construction of their conceptions. According to the model, science learning takes place in a series of four phases designed to: 1) make visible student conceptions about a phenomenon or topic, 2) explore the concept of interest through investigations, 3) exchange ideas, concepts, and findings, 4) and apply knowledge to novel situations in order to promote and assess conceptual change.

Moving the conversation past cognition, Berliner and Casanova (1993) promote a theory of learning that focuses upon building upon what students already know from their culture, activities and practices. The goal is to use what students know to teach them something new. The pedagogy begins with what students want to learn, then explores what they already know, and provides opportunities for students to display their knowledge. Much of the knowledge is tacit and seen as a resource in the classroom. To expose student tacit knowledge and use it, teachers must interpret and translate student talk by relating it to learning in the classroom. To do this, teachers must consider the culture and context in which students are developing.

Like Kyle et al, Pintrich et al (1993) extend conceptual change models in order to incorporate student motivation by considering student goals, values, self-efficacy, and control beliefs. The authors outline a number of conceptual change theories based upon Piaget’s notions of assimilation and accommodation including Posner et al’s (1982) conditions that support accommodation. He calls these “cold” conceptual change models as they focus purely upon cognition from a rational perspective and ignore the role of affect. Pintrich et al present a complex model that relates a number of factors including classroom context, motivation, cognition, and conditions for conceptual change. They hold that authentic, open-ended projects in which student and learning goals are aligned can foster deep conceptual change. Further, Consideration of student interests and values help to shape goal formation for students. In addition, tasks that are structured to build student self-efficacy in learning and doing science have a significant effect upon student conceptual change learning. Lastly, long term projects that offer a variety of opportunities for students to have control the content and direction of their learning seems to foster conceptual change. All of these findings support an inquiry-based approach to learning science that builds upon student interests and motivations.