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Contents
Introduction 5
The Constructivist Paradigm and Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2
CONTENTS 3
Reflection Journal 99
Reflections on Each Week of Epol-344 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Personal Philosophy of the Nature of Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Reflections on the Curriculum ‘Treasure Hunt’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Teaching “Acids and Bases”—Blog Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Reflection on Fads and Trends in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Final Reflections for Epol-344 104
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Introduction
These are free collaborative collective course note for the 2010 online students en-
rolled in the VUW EPSY-344 course. Please copy and redistribute as you please,
respecting the GPL-FDL copyright.
Quotes from the online discussion forums have been added to these course notes.
The suggestion is to not read this book serially, but to instead scan the topics and
delve into the quoted paragraphs as your interest guides you—that way the book will
hopefully not seem too daunting to read. Also, these course notes are not intended
as substitutes for the course Module notes, textbook and readings. The idea is that
this book will serve as a reference and memory jog for all of our future work in
education, and not so much as an exam preparation guide for the course.
5
CONTENTS 6
theory because it includes the fossil record evidence and molecular genetics and
other explicitly described mechanisms of evolution that can in principle be falsified
as explanations of evolution. The theory of evolution is however not a complete
theory, since it is constantly undergoing modification. The same is true for almost
all scientific theories. Some scientific theories are however so mature that they have
hardly changed in many centuries. Newtonian classical mechanics is an example of
a very mature theory, though it is also supplemented slightly from time to time as
new results are proven—so we can say that we do not fully understand Newtonian
mechanics1 .
Science has traditionally advanced by virtue of our (human civilizations) belief
in the objective reality of the physical world. So how can the modern constructivist
paradigm be correct? It is worth noting that the constructivist paradigm of science
is not a theory. It is a philosophical position that informs some scientific practice and
education and sociological theory. It can be viewed not as a rival to Popper’s views
but as complementary. Popper inserted the important element of uncertainty into
sociological views of science. The idea that scientific theories should be falsifiable
means that we cannot really ever have 100% certainty about the accuracy and
completeness of any given well-formed scientific theory. This is quite different to the
situation in mathematics.
Mathematics is a logical edifice built upon reasoned axioms and proven theorems.
Mathematics involves numerical experimentation as well, and therefore incorporates
elements of falsifiability, but this is of an entirely different character to scientific ex-
perimentation. In mathematics Gödel’s incompleteness theorems can be interpreted
as providing a never-ending role for numerical experimentation and guess work in
mathematical progress, but once a mathematician chooses a particular set of axioms
then that is it! One can then either prove theorems within the consistent axiomatic
system, or if the system is inconsistent then it is useless and cannot be mathematics,
and if the consistent axioms are powerful enough then there will be theorems that
cannot be either proven nor dis-proven using the system. Science is not like this.
Mathematics is nevertheless intimately linked with science—it is a universal lan-
guage for formulating scientific theories. This is because in reality science is based
upon an objective universe of presumed unchanging laws. The problem is that the
laws of nature are unknown to any scientist. Furthermore, scientists do not have the
luxury of mathematicians in choosing a set of axioms to investigate. The postulates
of science must result in accurate predictions within given specified uncertainties,
otherwise one is not doing science. Scientific predictions are arrived at my modelling
1
The uniqueness of solutions to the classical fluid dynamics equations—the Navier-Stokes
equations—has not to this day been rigorously proven. In fact a solution is worth a million
dollar prize, see the Clay Maths Institute
CONTENTS 7
it seems, and we have no evidence that any human lacks such capacity. So with
this innate conscious sentient awareness humans are able to gradually build up new
knowledge and meaning.
That is probably enough philosophical background for now. Next we critique the
constructivist paradigm by addressing the questions posed in (Carr et al., 1994).
together into theories and models that accurately predict the phenomena under in-
vestigation, and of course we then need to communicate science to each other and
interpret one another’s research and statements. So science has grand ‘final’ goals,
and ideals of crisp concepts and arbitrarily accurate models, but it often ends up
being a somewhat messy and fuzzy activity along the way to finer refinements.
that exists in the science community that there is nothing that cannot ultimately
be explained in scientific terms if only given enough experimental data and thought.
Furthermore, many people may think that all of the topics in the school science cur-
riculum are supposed to have correct explanations that teachers should be drilling
into students. Here we can readily agree with constructivist sociologists of science
who point out the incredible naı̈vety of such views. The teacher needs to take care
to correct poor scientific thinking and foster accuracy and incisive explanations and
deep questioning, but never allow students to think that there is only one correct
answer to any given question. There may objectively be a best answer of course,
but who are we to say that we know what it is?
What a minute though, doesn’t all of this conflict with what we tend to expect
from students in examination answers? We’d argue yes. There is still a level of
duplicity in the way science is taught in many schools. When an exam is graded
by comparing student answers to certain template ‘model answers’ then we are
implicitly teaching science in the old school way by expecting students to offer a
single best explanation. There are ways to avoid this without doing away with
exam assessments, for example by posing open-ended questions in exams, and by
using flexible grading schemes that award marks for carefully explained reasoning
rather than just ‘correct answers’.
“The false idea that science is exact and therefore that concepts in
science are unproblematic can be argued to have trapped science teaching
CONTENTS 11
into a pedagogy which misrepresents both the content of science and the
process whereby this content is constructed.”
How on Earth could such a situation have ever arisen in science teaching? One can
only conclude that at some time in the history of science education things went
horribly conservative. We believe that most successful scientists have avoided such
education systems and have never in their blessed lives thought of science as ‘exact’
and ‘unproblematic’. We pity the students who ever had to sit through school classes
where such unrealistic and conservative ideological views of science education were
sustained.
The three rules of thumb for acceptance/rejection of one scientific theory over
another are interesting to ponder for their teaching implications.
1. Parsimony: this refers both to the economy of a theory and it’s general
applicability. This might be hard for some students to comprehend. A nice
way of giving students an appreciation of this rule might be to get them to
look at the atomic models of Thompson and Bohr and compare the generality
of each. Another basic way of illustrating the point might be to get one group
of students to describe the trajectory of a cricket ball (just for instance) using
a sequence of coordinates that can be interpolated to make predictions; and
give another group of students the power of the classical kinematic relations
to describe the flight of the ball in a single equation. Ask the groups how they
could use their respective models to predict the trajectory of a tennis ball.
2. Elegance: this is very easy for students to comprehend. Just write the
equations for classical electrodynamics in Clifford algebra notation and com-
pare to Maxwell’s mechanical gear model for electrodynamics. The Lotka-
Volterra equations describing predator-prey population relations is another
nice example of elegance. Consider prior models of predator populations in an
ecosystem—they were probably simple seasonal models with no variable for
the prey population number.
a shorter path, so for smooth flow the air flow over the top wing must be faster,
and Bernoulli’s equation predicts that this results in lower pressure, so the higher
pressure under the wing tends to raise the wing. It’s quite amazing to think that
this effect can lift a 400 ton Boeing 747. But aeroplanes can also fly upside down!
Shouldn’t the pressure differential then send the plane plummeting to the ground?
The better theory in this case is good old Newtonian particle dynamics: the lift is
not merely caused by the pressure differential of air flow over the wing (which in
any case is highly turbulent and so Bernoulli’s equations do not hold), the main
lifting effect is the simple high speed impact of air molecules onto the lower wing
surface which is always slightly inclined ‘at a high angle of attack’ so-to-speak to
the forward motion of the plane through the atmosphere. This explanation works
for both normal and inverted flight. We say this is the “main lifting effect” but
we should expect and encourage students to further critique this model of winged
aerodynamic lift. How do birds and insects achieve lift for example?
1. Module 1—Science Content and
Pedagogy
• Introduction: Safety and What is science and why should students learn sci-
ence?
• The Nature of science
• Introduction to Science within the New Zealand Curriculum 2008
• Issues in science teaching and learning identified by recent research.
1. Read lecture one then please work your way through the files sequentially.
2. Read lecture two after the Nature of Science file.
3. Complete the studio task for this week in the Studio folder. This will be the
first forum for the week for online students.
4. Complete the NOS Questionnaire, email answers to Azra.moeed@vuw.ac.nz
13
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 14
• The legally binding Health and Safety Code of Practice is available online,
www.minedu.govt.nz/Property/HealthSafety.
• A whole bunch of health and safety and codes of practices apply to schools,
including the HSNO Act 1996.
• Boards of Trustees are required to develop suitable health and safety policies
and practices and school staff are required to adopt them. A number of policy
requirements are mandated, such as
• There are strict requirements for building safety and equipment storage.
• Strict regulations and codes of practice also cover use of other equipment
including optical devices, burners, gas cylinders, glassware and sharp objects,
protective clothing and sound generating equipment.
– A strobe lamp and sound below 40 Hz should never be used at the same
time.
• All schools must comply with the Animal Welfare Act 1999, and animals
should be treated with respect.
• Various common-sense codes of practice are given that cover handling and use
of micro-organisms, organic materials, plants and minerals.
– Use of safety glasses, pipette fillers, fume cupboards, and safety screens
must be made part of routine laboratory practice where applicable.
– The appropriate material safety data sheet should be referred to prior to
use of any chemical.
– No one should be exposed to hazardous chemical concentrations greater
than threshold or permissible exposure limits.
– Data sheets can be found at www.ilpi.com/msds/index.chtml, and www.-
msdsonline.com and www.hazard.com.
– Safe storage and labelling practices cover things like,
∗ Under no circumstances should concentrated nitric or sulphuric acid
or strong oxidizing agents be stored in plastic containers.
∗ All chemical should be stored adequately labelled and according to
their compatibility (e.g., separate acids from bases and so forth).
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 16
Definitions of Science
“Science is seeing what everyone else has seen but thinking what no
one else has thought.”
• What image of science is portrayed here? Why? Is it “right”? How does the
view suggested here compare with the real world of contemporary scientists?
The images portray a very human image of science, a social activity, and also
an intellectual activity. Thinking of the science cycle mentioned above, the pic-
tures seem to convey an accurate impression of what science is all about. The
modelling aspects of science are captured by the ‘making predictions’, ‘solving
problems’ and ‘calculating’ images. The honesty and perseverance images are
very important and should probably be explicitly part of any students science
education. It also seems appropriate that the very first image is ‘asking ques-
tions’ since this, along with experimentation, is probably the beginning of all
science. The images could be made to reflect the real world of science even
closer if the honesty aspect could somehow be conveyed to capture the problems
of integrity—such as when science is funded by interest groups that put pres-
sure on scientists to find ‘the correct answers’—since that motive is something
all scientists, good or bad, should avoid! Also, perseverance might be better
portrayed not so much as involving tedium but the challenge of trying to ob-
tain good data in the face of frustration from equipment failure, interference,
bad judgements, poor guesswork, the need for repeated trial and error in some
cases, exhaustive search and so forth. For all of these reasons these images of
science from Relph et al. (2003) seem ‘about right’.
We’ve read some definitions of science. Now we’d like to add a definition of a
scientist. Here is one whimsical, but we think quite accurate, definition: a scientist
is someone who, in seeking to understand the world, is so lazy that they will go to
superhuman efforts to organize and simplify their knowledge to the barest minimum
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 18
number of elementary facts possible required to explain whatever they are interested
in. So good scientists can be extraordinarily lazy people.
Jinxi had an elegant way of putting this,
• Q.3 Science neutrally assesses the risks and benefits of modern technology.
In an ideal world this statement would be true, and I would like to agree with
it. The trouble is, in the real world science is run by people, and people have
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 19
• Q.16 Scientific evidence only includes data about the natural world.
I agreed with this, but I do not really know what ‘the natural world’ means.
Does it include human consciousness? But conscious thoughts are purely sub-
jective phenomena, so they cannot be fully made the subject of scientific in-
quiry. Brain scans can only go as far as correlating neural impulses and pat-
terns with first person subjective accounts of thinking. So if consciousness is
considered part of the natural world I might think twice about agreeing with this
statement. I would still agree of course, because the scientific evidence from
brain scans is then still data about the natural world. Is there anything ‘unnat-
ural’ that counts as scientific evidence? I can’t think of any scientific evidence
that would be unnatural, but again, it depends what you mean by natural, and
for that mater what we mean by ‘evidence’. If we mean ‘not magical’ and ‘not
fictitious nor imagined’ then yes, all scientific evidence is natural. Imagina-
tion is used in science to help originate new theories or formulate conjectures
and so forth, but this is not evidence, if by evidence we mean objective data.
• Q.28 When many scientific theories exist, the correct one is identified when
enough data is collected.
This statement seems tautologically true. Of course, if ‘enough’ data has been
collected naturally one unique theory will emerge as the best fit. However,
who can say it is ‘the correct’ theory? Maybe none of the competing theories
are truly ‘correct’, but only form a sequence of better approximations to a
putative correct theory (see Q.7). Taking a more relaxed interpretation of the
statement, we can still disagree with the statement because merely given that
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 21
enough data has been collected does not automatically decide which theory is
best. Data does not think, so data cannot decide. Humans (or some sentient
thinkers) are required to do science and analyse the data. Unless the data
clearly points out the relative ‘correctness’ of one of the theories, one generally
still has the hard work of analysing the data to see which theoretical model
best fits the data, this may be far from trivial, even with sufficient data. If
we take an even more relaxed interpretation of this question, and suppose the
intent is to consider when gathered data can decide between the best of many
alternative theories, then the statement is tautologically true and therefore an
inane question-statement.
• Q.29 Scientific methods are the same in every culture.
I have never thought about this carefully. Some methods of science are acul-
tural, and so are indeed the same in every culture. However, science has origi-
nated in many different cultures and societies independently, so there will also
be many culturally specific methods. These can however all be ‘borrowed’, that
is, co-opted by another culture, if perhaps found to be efficacious or just inter-
esting. So there is nothing inherently culture-dependent about science. This
is one reason why science is so powerful and important in any education sys-
tem, it transcends culture in many ways, as does mathematics, although each
culture brings to these disciplines it’s own unique approaches and insights.
We should also add that science involves a fair amount of playfulness and fun and
can be engaged in for pure aesthetic pleasure, the Aesthetic argument. Indeed,
a huge amount of great science has originated from playful hacking with nature.
Most Nobel Prizes in science probably begin with people having fun or discovering
strange things and exploring them deeply out of a sense of curiosity.
A commentary on the article (Carr et al., 1994) was given above in the introduction
to these course notes on page 5. So there is no need to discuss this article further
here. The next reading is the British report on “What should we teach about
science?” (Osborne, Ratcliffe, Collins, Millar, & Duschl, 2001). An initial three
pronged dilemma posed by the report was the identification of three competing
motives in science education, (1) the need to communicate the power of science
both as a knowledge creation and exciting activity, (2) the method of authoritarian,
sometimes dogmatic and extended education and training required of scientists,
(3) providing students with a picture of the ‘inner workings of science’. These three
goals or motives of traditional science education are not easy to blend harmoniously
together in the short time span of a typical school lesson. The report sought to find
out what really should be taught in science classes in a broad sense, independently
of any particular field of science.
The report questioned a number of learned individuals and collated their opinions
about the question title of the report. Three open-ended questions were chosen.
1. What, if anything, do you think should be taught about the methods of sci-
ence?
2. What, if anything, do you think should be taught about the nature of scientific
knowledge?
3. What, if anything, do you think should be taught about the institutions and
social practices of science?
After a few rounds of revision nine key themes emerged from the collective experts
on what they thought should be part of science education.
The second task is to read the Aims of the Nature of Science Strand of the NZ science
curriculum foldout. What four aspects are included in the Nature of Science? They
are,
2. Investigating in science.
3. Communicating in science.
Now read the Achievement Objectives for this strand of the curriculum for Level 5.
Think about an example of how you would teach the students about the nature of
science. Add any questions arising from this task in the forum. Below are various
sample streams of thought on these topics.
Example—Communicating an Experiment
[TODO: discuss enhancements and specific sample experiment data. Can be tailored
to suit any curriculum level and science subject.]
Tell the class that they are to investigate melting and boiling points
of various substances. The number of substances to investigate should
be small, say three, such as ice, water, paraffin wax. Arrange suitable
apparatus and small samples of materials. For an advanced class salt
could be provided to encourage students to investigate the effect of im-
purities on the m.p. and b.p., but is not necessary. The important thing
is to provide each student (or in small groups) with three thermometers,
two of which have been deliberately incorrectly calibrated. So either
alcohol glass thermometers with faulty scale markings or offset digital
thermometers are required. Bunsen burners are needed for achieving
b.p. measurements, with suitable tripods and water baths. Buckets or
thermos flasks of crushed ice should be provided so that students can
zero calibrate their thermometers. The teacher should provide minimal
instruction and just let the students freely conduct measurements, sim-
ply telling them the objective is to accurately estimate the m.p. and b.p.
of the various sample substances.
During the period, as students discover discrepancies in the ther-
mometer readings the teacher can gently guide them towards figuring out
how to correctly calibrate a thermometer by indirect questioning. Ad-
vanced classes should be guided to account for measurement uncertain-
ties in both the calibration and the m.p.b.p. measurements and should
be expected to quote results with reasonable estimates of uncertainty
and coverage factor. Advanced classes can also be shown where to look
on the Internet for expert advice on how to perform accurate thermom-
etry measurements (for example, msl.irl.cri.nz/training-and-resources/-
technical-guides)
Alternatively, the same activity could be performed with weight/mass
measurements using deliberately mis-calibrated balance scales. Simi-
larly, another alternative is to do simple length or area or volume mea-
surements using deliberately mis-calibrated rulers or callipers. For these
measurements the class need to be given some minimal information about
reference lengths and masses.
Yet another simple alternative would be stop watch or other time
keeping instrument calibration. This will require phoning the IRL talk-
ing clock or using a computer running an NTP client as a time standard.
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 26
could be hidden by a black screen or wall. The students would fire the
projectile though a small hole in the screen without being allowed to look
though it. Of course contrarian and wise-ass students would be asked to
suspend their judgement for the sake of simulation purposes!
So the idea is to simulate a system that cannot directly be observed.
The aim is to figure out the shape of the hidden object by observing
what happens to visible projectiles as they scatter off the object. The
computer version is simple. A pen and paper version would need to
involve some preparation of data. Students could also make up object
themselves and figure out how to simulate scattering data and then let
other students try to figure out the shape of their sample object. For
the physical version of the game it would be best to keep the scattering
2-dimensional by using a large flat table.
For Level Six or lower classes the hidden objects will probably need
to be very simple, either square or circle or toroidal cross sections, and
at first only the cross section shape (one-dimensional projection) needs
to be considered for simplicity.
Advanced students could be given clues about how to numerically re-
construct the shape of the object. Less advanced students can be asked
to deduce a simpler methodology that may just allow the rough size
(extent) of the hidden object to be approximately determined. There
are many ways to do this, one is to use brute force methods such as
comparison with scattering results from known sized objects. Another is
to use simple shadow projection. Sophisticated basic image reconstruc-
tion algorithms, such as Radon transforms, could be introduced to gifted
students and Level Eight students.
More advanced students might be able to cope with the complication
of gravity on the flight of tennis balls used as probes for 3D imaging,
which would probably take at least three class periods.
When summarizing and concluding the lesson the teacher can in-
troduce the technologies of X-ray imaging, computed tomography, and
maybe even high energy particle accelerators. Comparisons with the
very different methods of optical imaging could be discussed with more
advanced students.
2. Read the achievement aim for Living World Strand for Life processes. When a
student completes their secondary schooling, if they have taken biology would
the aim of the strand be achieved?
Yes, it seems reasonable to expect that a completion of the achievement objec-
tives at each level would end up in a student having a good understanding of
the overall achievement aims for the Living World strand of the curriculum.
Partly this is obvious since the Achievement Aims are sufficiently vague as
to be difficult to avoid some sort of appreciation of after completing all the
detailed Achievement Objectives. So the curriculum does appear to be at least
well designed enough to be consistent.
3. Why do you think it is important for the teacher to follow the curriculum
instead of teaching a topic from a text book?
This is a leading question which I dispute! Seriously though, there is nothing
wrong with a teacher teaching a topic from a textbook, provided it has some
relation to the grand plan of the schools interpretation of the science curricu-
lum. What would seem a bit weird would be a teacher who solely teaches lessons
out of textbooks with no appreciation of the learning goals of the curriculum.
Maybe they have a ‘better’ curriculum in mind, but sadly that would be a legal
obligation problem! Teachers do have social obligations to practice certain pro-
fessional standards and not deviate too much from the curriculum, and they
will always have the opportunity from time to time to participate in curriculum
reviews.
1. Pick another strand, this time choose your senior specialist subject (Physics/Chemistry
etc. if you are a biologist choose Planet Earth).
OK, for this sample we’ve chosen physics.
2. Starting from the achievement aim (first column) follow through the same
objective for each level, up to level 8.
Assume we’ve done so.
4. For each level, can you think of the content you might teach to achieve that
particular objective?
Here are suggestions for the Physics Levels:
We could continue with the wave motion theme, but for a change let’s
consider some quite different physics content. How about the effect of
switches in electrical circuits. This topic would cover the notion of changes
in energy and forces, as well as the new content at this level. Conserva-
tion of energy is also involved through the basic circuit laws—Kirchoff ’s
laws (the junction rule and loop rule).
A suitable related technology application of physics worth exploring at this
level could be computer network basics, such as signal routing and logic
gates. These can make for a lot of fun game-based lessons.
• Level 6 extends level 5 to both trends and relationships and extends
skills to problem solving tasks. Also the topics are extended by introduc-
ing atomic and nuclear physics. Applied physics skills are extended to
investigative activities.
The extensions at this level seem quite pronounced. To cover all of them
lets consider a few additional physics subjects. At this level the rela-
tionships between position, velocity and acceleration of ballistic projectiles
should be easy to introduce with minimal calculus tools. There is a wealth
of interesting problem solving involving simple particle kinematics in the
presence of gravitational fields. To avoid the doldrums of traditional kine-
matics lessons we could make most of the lessons activities where students
need to solve real problems to achieve some sort of automated game so-
lution, such as setting up a tennis ball ‘gun’ to hit targets first time up
without any trial and error. Similarly billiards games could be set up to
investigate simple 2D collisions.
If Geiger counters and safe radioactive sources are available students
could investigate the tolerance that simple organisms (safe bacteria, fungi,
or plants) have when placed near a source. This activity would span a week
maybe, during which other investigations could be done. Food sterilization
technology perhaps could be investigated, if not demonstrated.
• Level 7 extends explanatory skills to cover unfamiliar phenomenon and
include quantitative explanation. Applied physics skills are extended
to explanatory activities. Problem solving is extended to include data
analysis skills.
Most students beginning this level will be unfamiliar with Poisson statis-
tics, and so this topic could be introduced along with further investigations
of radioactivity and atomic energy level transitions. An interesting related
technology that could be explained using radioactivity and atomic energy
levels could be cell death due to radioactivity. What energy dose typically
destroys a cell? Why are there lethal dose thresholds? What possible ex-
planations are there for radiation tolerance? Many of these question can
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 32
The Editor did not have many questions arising from the initial study of the NZ
science curriculum. Below are some thoughts posted by our colleagues.
One issue is the vagueness of the achievement aims and objectives. This is a good
thing in the Editor’s opinion. It gives teachers much room and flexibility to concen-
trate on providing science students with a rich and rewarding educational experience
at secondary school One problem with this is the external assessment regime which
still seems to demand that students answer fairly black & white questions, and does
not appear to give students much chance to demonstrate their scientific thinking
skills—which one might think would be the aim of a science education! Instead the
external exams are somewhat traditional and place undue emphasis on rote learning.
It is entirely possible that a student schooled in the curriculum skills will achieve
tremendous external assessment results, but this would be a side-effect. Many stu-
dents might struggle to achieve good exam grades without reducing themselves to
studying by rote. This places a dual burden on teachers: on the one had a rich and
varied educational experience is demanded by the curriculum, with many vague and
holistic goals and aims, on the other hand the pressure to help students do well in
external assessments might lead to poor teaching methods such as dreary drills and
verbatim ‘blackboard notes’ instruction and so forth.
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 33
Studio Tasks
Start by reading, “Being Scientific”, Epol344 Course Reading 6 (p. 54 of your book
of readings). The questions posed and some sample answers are given below.
• Write three reasons why you think teachers would do this activity with their
year 9 class.
• In the studio forum for this week, discuss how you could make the activity
described here into an open ended investigation?
We could challenge the students to look for ways to confound their expec-
tations. What happens if the heat source is moved further way from the
container? Is there an asymptote whereby with a very weak flame the time
to reach boiling is almost indistinguishable? What happens if impurities are
added like salt or sugar or oil? What about adding dirt or other solid or liquid
insoluble impurity? What about predicting the time it would take for a in-
termediate sized container to boil, or a much larger container? Does the time
taken increase linearly with the volume? These are all questions that extend
the activity.
To make the activity open-ended from the beginning, the teacher could merely
present the students with the equipment and ask them to do something with
scientific merit! Then ask students to bounce some ideas around. Someone
is highly likely to think of the boiling point measurement, and it would be
up to the teacher to give the go ahead to start on any suitable suggested
experiments. This might take up more period time, but would be worth it
owing to the mental exercise involved.
I’m not sure if Azra had something else in mind to make the activity more
open-ended. . . ?
Here is another nice answer from Diana,
This reading (Ross, Lakin, & Callaghan, 2000b) was a delight to review. Some
questions were a little bewildering or required a second glance even for an educated
adult, other were so simple and yet revealing when considering the naı̈ve answers
given by some children. The questions posed in the Module notes were: What
examples provided in this reading did you find interesting? Choose one of the
examples, in your view what may have led to students holding these alternative
ideas. Discuss your ideas in the online forum. Below is an extract from discussion
of some of the questions.
• The Temperature Question: Mixing hot and cold water is lovely and sim-
ple. It is particularly cool to wonder about children who predict a 70◦ − 10◦ =
50◦ result in the second instance. They are at least applying some analyti-
cal thought to the task, and only lack the correct understanding of intensive
properties, which after all is quite an advanced concept. So they should be
initially applauded perhaps for obtaining an interesting answer, before being
guided to the correct approximation of (70◦ + 10◦ )/2 = 40◦ .
• The Light Seeing Question: This is cute. Until about the 15th century
many learned philosophers used to still think that we see due to vision spirits
or what-have-you emanating from our eyes. So young children who still have
this naı̈ve view can be comforted by explaining to them what adult historical
intellectual company they share.
• The Gravity Question: this is a short and sharp little problem. The direct-
ness of the possible answers and the world-view one needs to adopt to get the
correct answer is lovely in it’s simplicity and perhaps surprise to youngsters.
The difficulty might lie in convincing them (young children) about why they
correct answer is correct, rather than just telling them the answer and having
them merely accept it upon authority. It requires some abstract thinking and
ideas about pictorial models, and of course involves a 2D representation of
something only astronauts and space tourists ever see as a whole in real life
(the Earth suspended in space).
• The Food Question: this was quite complex. A correct answer from the
multiple choices depends upon one’s ability to parse the terms fuel and mate-
Module 1—Science Content and Pedagogy 38
rial correctly, and of course overcome natural prejudices about what makes us
heavy after eating food. Excretion and exercise are the natural socially primed
answers to weight loss. But that is not what the question asks upon careful
reading. It takes quite an analytical mind to eliminate the incorrect choices.
The first option (a) is even a little ambiguous. It is true that using up food
will result in conversion of mass to energy. Similarly choice (e) is inviting but
misleading. The questions asks not about how energy leaves the body though,
it asks us about what happens to the (possibly chemically rearranged) atoms.
I enjoyed the complexity of this question, hence the multiple discussions about
it that could ensue in a classroom debate about the ‘correct’ answer.
2. Module 2—Science Lesson
Planning
When planning we refer back to the curriculum document to make sure that the
lesson/activity we are planning is suitable for the right strand, achievement level,
achievement objective and the learning outcomes are specific and measurable. Your
task is to follow the systematic process used to write the model plan you will be
looking into the mind of Azra as she prepared the plan.
As an example exercise:
39
Module 2—Science Lesson Planning 40
Write a report.
5. For this lesson I have decided to use Investigating and at level 4. (The reason
I have chosen level 4 is that my class at this stage are not up to level 5)
“It was good to see that instructions were issued prior to allowing the
students to leave their seats and that they were required to wear safety
glasses however Azra was not wearing any. I think that it is best to
develop high safety standards from the start. It is better to be cautious.
I would have requested that the drink bottle be removed and that the
Module 2—Science Lesson Planning 41
students wash their hands post the trials. The pouring of hot water into
the test tubes was not a good example!”
From Rewa,
From Hannah,
From Leah,
From Blair:
We were asked to discuss potential management issues. The online Forum was set
up with three strands—one for each lesson plan. We were to select two plans to
critique and write an entry discussing potential management issues. Discuss the
management issues with at least two other students by responding to their forum
entries and exchanging ideas.
Critique of the “Cells” Lesson Plan. Below are some comments on this dummy
lesson plan.
From Rewa:
“You have picked up on two important point, one that student need
reminder of prior procedural skills and it is a good idea to go back and
reteach these before proceeding with making slide. Cheek cell slide are
tricky these days o I make skin lides instead. e.g. give students a white
board marker (green or red work well). They scribble a couple of lines
on there arm with the pen. Then you give them a piece of cellotape to
put over it and press down. They peel it off and put the cellotape on a
slide. It is already stained and ready to oberve! They get a lot of debries
(dead cells) but are looking for a complete circle with a dot, which i a
skin cell!
“If using ceek cells they mut make their own slide and in the end
wrap it up and discard it.”
Lucy’s comment:
“The cells lesson doesn’t allow sufficient time, or a plan, for the whole
class to get out the microscopes safely. They should be briefed on how
to carry then properly and sent up in small groups, to avoid dropping
them. there is also no time allowed to go over the microscope skill learnt
in the previous lesson so that they set them up safely and effectivlely. . . I
reckon she’ll have a whole lot of students looking down their microscope
and not seeing a thing!
“Also there seems to be no place in the lesson for learning how to
mount the slide properly. If they’re using glass slides there are safety
issues as they are easily broken. There doesn’t seem to be any planning
for this at all.”
From Blair:
“What about the Advance Organizer being right in the middle of the
lesson after 30 mins? Seems like either a joke or a misprint in the plan.
“If I was a relieving teacher having to use this plan I wouldn’t know
what the ‘Resource’ thing is, I guess it’s some book called ‘Third Form
Science’, but where do I get one of those? In any case, is it actually used
in the lesson? I couldn’t see where. . .
“AO’s: Where are they, what are they? What does ”N5.1” refer
to...I guess it’s the ”Nature of Science” strand, but where is ”5.1” in the
science curriculum, or am I looking at the wrong material?
“LO’s: What is ”look under a microscope at cells” good for? and
how does it relate to the AO’s?
Module 2—Science Lesson Planning 44
“In ‘Discuss Results’: what were the ‘expected results”’ ? I can’t see
that any were mentioned, so what are students expected to write for
that? I guess it refers to the ‘similarities and differences’. But what
science motivated this? What is it about plants and animals that might
account for such differences? That is not in the plan. Maybe it is in the
Resource material? Who knows.
“Finally for now, the timing seems off. 60 minutes seem to be allo-
cated.”
Critique of the “Cells” Lesson Plan. Again, some comments from colleagues
follow.
From Hannah:
“I felt the main issue with this lesson plan for me was that it seemed
to be all direct instruction and group discussions based and I feel like
the kids would lose interest in the subject about 5 minutes in, which
would have a huge impact on trying to manage the class for the rest
of the session. The learning intentions were quite basic and to do with
‘describing’ and ’discussing’ but I’m not sure that many of the students
would be contributing by the end of the class.
“For the kind of subject that it is, there are so many other ways of
teaching or modelling it that could vary the delivery modes during the
class and put something in there for the visual and kinaesthetic learners
too. Or at least get the students physically out of their seats before they
all drift mentally out of their bodies!”
We might recall from Epsy302 that learning objectives differ slightly from learn-
ing intentions. Learning objectives are statements of expected performance of
students—what we’d like them to learn or skills we’d like them to acquire ideally.
A Warning: There is some conflict in the literature and various courses about what
Learning Outcomes and Learning Intentions are and how they differ. For example,
in Epsy302 the Achievement Outcomes are the curriculum objectives whereas the
Epsy302 “Learning Intentions’; are synonymous with the Epol344 “Learning Out-
comes”. Whereas it is the Epsy302 Advance Organizers that are synonymous with
Module 2—Science Lesson Planning 45
Using a microscope At the end of this lesson the students will be able to,
1. Prepare a simple sample for optical microscopy, such as skin cells or plant
cells samples, using stains if necessary.
2. Demonstrate how to illuminate and focus so that they can sketch details
of samples.
Plate tectonics At the end of this lesson the students will be able to,
1. Identify the Earth’s major continental plates and roughly align these with
regions of volcanic activity.
2. Explain in qualitative terms the mechanisms underlying plate tectonic
dynamics and how this relates to seismic and volcanic activity.
Writing a chemical formula At the end of this lesson the students will be able
to,
This sample uses good verbs and avoids the bad verbs such as, “Appreciate the use
of. . . ” or “Believe that. . . ”. As for the usefulness of the rest of the learning outcome
statements. . . well, that is up to the reader to judge [Ed.].
An associated Reflection Journal entry is suggested: Imagine you are to teach
the topic of acids and bases in chemistry. Write five learning outcomes that you
think the students should be able to achieve in this topic. Some samples are given
in the Journal section of these course notes on page 102.
3. Module 3—Use of Assessment
The introductory lectures will not be commented on in detail here. The following
are some highlights.
• NCEA Achievement Levels are not great, they are a bit artificial in many
respects.
46
Module 3—Use of Assessment 47
• the new idea is ’tidier’ and makes meaningful links to greater numbers of other
ideas
The task for this module was to research the idea of ‘concepts’ and in particular the
differences between ‘scientific facts’ and ‘scientific theories’. We often see theories
taught as facts and science reduced to dogma! Our thoughts on this were posted to
the online forum. Some contributions were as follow. Rewa wrote:
“I can see in school I thought everything I was taught was a fact, part
of the reason for this is that you had ingrained in you that teachers are
always right; that what they taught you was THE ONLY ANSWER. In
such a situation you see no reason to challenge your knowledge because
you think ‘that’s it’ for that topic ‘no more to learn there’.”
Blair’s contribution:
From Lucy:
“To differentiate between a Law and a Theory you just ask if what
you are hearing seeks to explain why, if it does that’s a theory. Thought
there is no such thing as absolute truth in Science there are ’indisputable
observations’, and these are called facts.”
Hannah’s contribution:
but they are constantly being tested and refined to get even closer to the
truth.”
• Why measure how well students do on a task—why not give them a task
and measure instead (observe) how much help they need to complete the task
successfully?
• Avoid asking students to copy down instructions or data. If they are not col-
lecting the data just give them the data, otherwise you are wasting everyone’s
time.
• Whenever possible get students to work things out for themselves! Do not
spoon feed them. Trust that this will develop cognitive skills in the students
that will ultimately aid their learning more than if you try to just transmit
your knowledge. See also the Journal Reflections for Epsy302 for notes on
the difficulties of this approach.
• Kill Two Birds with One Stone—use class time questions to educate as well
as to inform, thus formative assessment should not be seen as a burden, it can
be used as an essential part of each lesson.
• Ask open-ended questions—too many short answer questions is not very infor-
mative. We want questions that encourage students to think and talk about
science, not just give pat answers. Refer back to this reading (Parkinson, 2004)
for the full list of question categories.
Module 3—Use of Assessment 52
• Praise students for trying and attempting answers or solutions. Never deni-
grate effort.
• Use body language to give subtle hints about right or wrong track thinking.
Also use the students’ body language to gauge their level of discomfort or ease.
We want them to frown and struggle but not to squirm and melt away.
• When assessing written work provide informative comments and forget about
marking. The students can mark their own work. You should of course mark
all work and keep records for yourself. The feedback to students is most
effective in comment form, not grade form. Research proves that comments
are more effective feedback, and marks reduce the effectiveness of comments!
• Self-assessment can be effective—provided students (a) understand the learn-
ing objectives and (b) are well trained in making good judgements. Trusting
students to accurately self-assess is usually not a problem, and blatant cheating
is easy to pick up. So when it will save time use self-assessment.
• Make occasional use of deliberately incorrect work, and get student to act as
the teacher marking the work. The principle being that it is hard to spot
mistakes unless you know the subject well.
• At start of year, ask students to set themselves quantitative improvement
targets. These could be targets for summative assessment grades or homework
completions and so forth. Teachers could collect and keep these and use them
at the end of year in some way to rewards students who set good targets and
achieved or came close to them.
• Strategy—POE. Predict-Observe-Explain.
• Write a synopsis of the topics that are taught at each level (Years 11–13) and
comment on the sequential development of concepts.
• Go onto the NZQA website and download the Level 2 (Year 12) achievement
standards in your speciality. Read the “explanatory notes” for each and com-
pare them to the curriculum statements. Draw up a brief table matching
specialist curriculum AOs with Achievement Standards. (NOTE: physics has
peculiar issues to deal with. . . )
Module 3—Use of Assessment 54
• Make a note of any topics within your speciality area that may require further
reading. Select the ONE curriculum strand you feel weakest in and make
summary teaching notes for that topic.
• When you have updated your knowledge in a particular topic, download the
examination paper for that standard and do it (simulate an exam). Then
download the marking schedule and mark the paper. This is an important
exercise to do so that you are familiar with,
1. what to teach?
2. what to assess?
3. how to assess?
student and their desires, their goals and their needs. So teachers need to understand
these characteristics of students first, before launching into a strict lesson regime.
One thing that is reasonably certain is that all aspects of learning are import to
some degree. The degree will differ from individual to individual. So the only
general advice for teachers seems to be,
1. Know your students (diagnostic) and tailor lessons to suit them (formative),
either individually or in like groups.
The great unknown question is how to create lesson plans and implement them so
that these ideals are achieved. For novel lesson plans there is no recipe. The novice
teacher however, can—at least—draw upon a vast array of teaching resources and
proven lesson plans that already exist online or in published literature.
Table 3.1: Analysis of students concept maps, before and after a lesson.
Before After
Minimal links Detailed links
Incorrect relationships Correct relationships
Simplistic relations Complex relations
It is a bit hard to analyze the effectiveness of the concept map for learning given
just the example in the module notes. Clearly what the concept maps show is
that progress with the particular student or students has been made. So the lesson
seems to have been effective. We can tell this by comparing the characteristics of the
Module 3—Use of Assessment 56
concept map before and after the lesson, and as analysed in brief in Table 3.1. The
first concept map is diagnostic in that it shows a few misconceptions and knowledge
gaps, and perhaps one might say a lack of effort? The second concept map is
indicative of formative assessment. It shows the students have gained a better
understanding of the circulatory system and it proves the lesson in between the
concept map attempts was reasonably effective. It also shows that there has not
been quite the extension one would expect if the students had put in even more
effort, for example the role of CO2 is missing and no attempt has been made to
consider details of the heart and lungs and other more micro-level concepts.
In summary, the concept map looks to be effective in this small example both as a
diagnostic tool and as a formative inquiry tool for assessing the progress of students’
understanding. It also points the teacher to possible extensions of the concepts that
could further enhance learning.
4. Module 4—Teaching Experience
“I did not see any ”chalk and talk” but did see a lot of whiteboard
or youtube and talk! I think teaching to the NCEA tests was the killer
of science.
“The mode of teaching had a significant effect. For the associate
teachers the main mode was ‘chalk and talk’ (20 mins) followed often by
a short practical activity or worksheet exercise. The method was highly
successful in obtaining a breadth of coverage of topics and seemed to
prepare students fairly well for their tests and exams. However, I felt
that a lot of deep learning was avoided and the experience the students
had was less than inspired. Often they seemed bored and their questions
were suppressed. They were generally not engaged and excited as I would
hope for a science lesson.
“When challenged with difficult material requiring a bit of thought at
least one class rebelled and got very rowdy. This was actually a good sign
I thought, it showed that they were bothered by the harder challenges
offered. However their behaviour was verging on uncontrollable. This
appeared to be because of (a) the stress of the novelty of needing to
think hard and (b) the poor culture of learning and inquiry at the school.
(They largely wanted to be spoon-fed.)
57
Module 4—Teaching Experience 58
Hannah had a slightly more positive experience but with similar undertones:
“In the year 11 science class I was part of during my TE, the main
mode of teaching was very much chalk and talk. It was a class of only 11
students, at a rural area school. The students were generally quite well
behaved because of the small number, but they were also very hands-
on kids given the context of the school. I noticed early on that they
really enjoyed practical work, but would often end up having their own
conversations while the teacher talked if she talked for too long. They
were never particularly disruptive or defiant, but just got bored quickly.
Apart from standard practicals in pairs there were no cooperative group
activities, and nothing other than chalk and talk and exercises from their
workbooks. The students were all reasonably interested in science, and
as such I found it amazing that the whole class weren’t getting merits and
excellences since there were only 11 students! When I taught them I tried
to incorporate some more interactive activities and this had quite a good
effect on student engagement and behaviour, and they also remembered
the skills well when they came up again in later classes.
“The teacher did not use much formative or diagnostic assessment
because she said you know you’re just going to have to teach it all anyway.
I think she spent quite a lot of time teaching to NCEA and it seems like
so much is wasted by not taking advantage of a class that size in a rural
context where so much learning could be hands on!”
Leah noticed similar trends, but a positive difference for the teacher who had
better lesson plan structure:
but his lesson plans were non-existent he ran the class knowing what he
needed to get through in the next few lessons and could dig out whatever
resource he needed from his computer or store room at the back of the
classroom. The lack of structure meant that the students learning was
interrupted they waited while he scrolled through files trying to find the
right video/animation/photo and they lost interest pretty quickly. There
was a lot of talking in this class, which meant constant ‘shuushhing’ but
with very little action or consequence. No learning intentions were shared
with students and there was no summary at the end of the lesson about
what had been learnt. The teacher’s perception was that the students
weren’t willing to take any responsibility for their own learning, but
he didn’t give them any opportunity to do so, constantly feeding them
information, expecting that they knew what to do with it. Very little
formative assessment was done, except the teacher assuming that not
many people knew the information because they couldn’t answer many
questions he asked. In previous unit of work the achievement rate was
low.
“My second AT was an experienced lady who is known around the
school as a specialist classroom teacher. She gave me lots of tips and had
some great classroom routines and it was obvious that students knew
what she expected and so they knew what to expect from her. Her plans
were mostly in her head, but she still wrote a brief set of notes for each
lesson. She broke her lessons into well defined segments with one break
for 2-3 minutes if there was a lot of writing or thinking to be done.
The students were not achieving at an extraordinary level and I think
that their motivation to learn and understand was still low, even though
the routines, expectations and learning intentions were clear. Very little
organised cooperative learning was incorporated.
“Students had particular difficulty in both classes answering ques-
tions which required them to explain, discuss or describe.”
Consider the following opening paragraphs from an article by Patricia Harding, Leo
Vining, (Harding & Vining, 1997):
Another idea discussed is that since science always changes one thing we know for
certain is that science is wrong. Harding and Vining continue,
Harding and Vining then go on to point out that such views are misguided and that
teaching scientific knowledge is still, and will always be, an important and vital part
of science teaching—if we value our students.
The problem with such ideas like those, that Harding and Vining critique, is that
they betray a terrible lack of appreciation of scientific progress. Science is not really
wrong, but merely incomplete. That’s a good thing when you think about it.
As a case study, Harding & Vining consider the revolution in molecular biology
from 1958 onwards. This has been a period of rapid growth in knowledge in this field.
Despite the overwhelming growth in knowledge the actual fundamental of biological
science have not really changed during this time. It is all still just chemistry and
physics. It has become more complex, but again that is good. Old theories have
not been overthrown so much as tweaked as new data has been assimilated.
So here is some panacea offered by Harding and Vining, to the above alarmist
thinking:
• There is a false dichotomy in such ideas that set up a conflict between teaching
for knowledge and teaching for skills. The truth is more likely that knowing
how and knowing that are complimentary, both are necessary.
Module 4—Teaching Experience 61
• Planning an investigation
• Processing information
• Interpretation
• Communicating information
4. Read an article and pick out four possible problems and come up with ways
to solve it.
• Students own their contexts, they are more motivated, they are more likely to
persevere and are more committed to the task
• Rethink and revisit their own concepts and challenge those of others
• Students taught in conventional manner may not consider this way authentic
• Reflection is essential
Important Tip: Constantly evaluate how you feel about your teaching and how
the students feel about their learning. Then try to improve.
“1. In your view what advantage would teaching in this context have
for Maori students in the class? I could be cynical and say that the
context of a hangi adds nothing to the associated science that could
not be taught using some other context. However, the truth is that the
cultural context is significant. The the advantages include connecting
Maori students with their tikanga, the consequent pride in their culture,
and embedding of feelings of comfort with the idea that their culture
can be a source of knowledge and insight. Even if the students are bored
Module 4—Teaching Experience 64
by the background story, the science context gives them reason to think
about these old traditional activities in a new, hopefully positive, light.
“2. What message would it have for non Maori students in your class?
Science is acultural. Scientific principles can be gained by studying any
culture. All cultures have things to teach us and are worth respect and
study.
“3. What other learning may arise from using this approach to teach?
Students will find it hard to avoid forming memory links between the sci-
ence principles and the hangi experience. Especially if they are invited
to actually prepare or participate in a hangi. The brain learns primarily
when new neural connections are made or old connections strengthened,
and nothing aids formation of new connections than juxtaposing seem-
ingly unrelated things, such as cultural activities and scientific principles.
Most New Zealanders recognize a need for affirmative action for boosting Māori
education achievements. This is not social engineering or reverse racism. It is
simply a recognition that past injustices have not been fully righted and that like it
or not, New Zealand is dominated by a strong European hegemonic culture.
The second forum for this module asked us to, “share any experiences you have
had on your teaching experience where the school was addressing the issue of Māori
under achievement in the school. In your view, how successful are these initiatives
in improving student performance.”
Below are some forum contributions. First from Blair:
and largely due to just changing the perspective of where the problem
lies. He even said his students got to the point where if he was away, a
nominated student could run the class because they were all so engaged
with their learning that they knew what needed to be done.
“I found this session extremely inspiring, but as I progressed through
my TE I struggled to see how it was being put into practice in the school.
They have made quite an effort to develop a bicultural atmosphere with
Maori words for their ‘Whanau groups’ (houses/teams/the groups with
colors that earn points during the year!), a karakia that all classes say
at the beginning and end of the day (Ki runga, ki raro, ki roto, ki waho,
rire rire hau, pai marire), and beginning staff meetings with Maori songs.
In terms of the actual educational practice, however, there was not a lot
going on that I saw.”
Leah’s experience was mixed, the committed teachers were enthusiastic but they
were few:
Mike had a dispiriting time, showing us teaching in New Zealand schools is not
Module 4—Teaching Experience 67
Learning intentions: By the end of this lesson students should be able to,
Background: This lesson assumes the students are familiar with the following topics.
Human reproduction. Basic cell biology. Basics of the theory of evolution. Basics of structure and
function of DNA and RNA and protein synthesis. Function of chromosomes. Causes of genetic
disorders and mutations.
Key words and ideas: Proteins. Nucleotides. DNA. RNA. Genes. Alleles. Chromosomes. Cells.
Mitosis. Meiosis. Mutation. Variation. Selection.
Success Criteria:
1. Write all key notes in exercise books.
Continued on next page. . .
Module 4—Teaching Experience 69
Homework: None.
This is an inquiry learning lesson. Students are posed questions and problems that frame
the topic of inherited diseases.
Key Concepts and Warm Up Questions:
TODO: Examples
5 min Outline the lesson. Briefly display the Answer questions on hand-outs.
warm-up questions. Hand-out sheets.
NB: “after this lesson your fingers
should be aching from note-taking”.
35 min Lecture-exposition, slide show. Furious note writing and diagram drawing.
Evaluation:
Students were mildly disruptive during the question and discussion. It would have been better to
get them to write down the questions and answers in their books, rather than just read them, to
keep them busy.
Module 4—Teaching Experience 72
carbohydrates
proteins fats psychology knowledge
food
poisoning nutrition tradition
hygiene Health conversation
cooking
chemistry learning
Food Friends emotions
thermal calories laughter
conductivity
Maori Hangi memories
convection Science aluminium
temperature heat
Materials metallurgy
Fire Earth
heat Energy Baskets
capacity Fuel Iron rails
safety ash heat
pit
burns specific diffusion
First aid water manuka heat
steam
Figure 4.1: Concept map for the science associated with a Māori hangi.
5. Constructivism and Group
Learning
The humorous thing about this is the utter obviousness of it. People learn using
their brains (mental activity) and learners seek meaning. It’s verging on hilarity that
one needs to write that this whole “theory’ of constructivism is needed to articulate
the idea that we should consider learners as organisms seeking meaning.
The non-obvious thing about the constructivist perspective of education is really
the role of the teacher, or how the teacher is considered to be most efficient. Unless
you adopt extreme views of alternative theories of education, it is not really about
the student or learner—the learner plays a similar role no matter what the theory—
since the theory cannot tell us how we learn, it can only model and describe how
we learn. What educational theories can tell is is what methods work best for
facilitating our learning. For this role evidence becomes important and experiment
and methodological investigations can be used.
What constructivism ends up doing is providing a model or framework that
synthesizes a whole lot of learning styles and teaching methods that come closer
74
Constructivism and Group Learning 75
This is a bit speculative. Our prior concepts are more likely (in the editor’s opinion)
to place limits on how fast we can learn, but not on what we can learn period. Our
prior concepts more accurately determine only fuzzy boundaries to what we can
learn and how we learn it, there is probably no black & white boundary that cannot
be crossed with sufficiently expert teaching and learning environments. You could
teach an average five year old advanced quantum mechanics, but not at a high level
of mathematical sophistication.
This is backed up by the very next claim in the module readings,
The emphasis here is on the fact that some learning is accomplished, no matter
what the experience—surely an exaggeration and liberal use of the word “learning”
but we can nevertheless appreciate the sentiment.
The next passage was worth framing,
“The teachers’ role involves a lot more than providing the activity and the materials
to do it! The constructivist teacher is constantly engaged in finding out what
the students already know, what understandings have they gained through this
involvement and encourage students to think beyond the obvious.”
Before moving on here is a nice thought provoking abstract from (Chi, 2009):
And finally before getting onto constructivist pedagogy for science, here are two
lovely quotations, the first from a Chinese proverb,
Constructivist Pedagogies
• Game playing and role playing with specific learning intention focus.
Blair wrote about comparing rates of heat transfer by conduction and convection:
“The question posed to students (year 11) was ‘how efficient can heat
conduction be compared to convection heat transfer’.
“They can easily predict what will happen when an inflated balloon is
held directly in the path of a burning match. Explanations may be fairly
varied, for example, some students thought the heat expands the air
causes the balloon to burst from the pressure. Few actually articulated
the rubber skin being burnt, but many of the shy students would have
known this.
“(There’s a point about trying to get the quiet students to contribute—
not always easy to elicit in a noisy class of many extroverts.)
“Then you tell the students to fill a balloon with water, and hold it
directly in the flame again.
“They will (90% of them probably) be amazed at how resistant to
bursting the balloon now is.
Constructivism and Group Learning 79
“Discussion can ensue. Note that the experiment adds weight to the
hypothesis that the pressure causes the burst, since the same heat will
expand the air more than the water, plus the water is typically applying
less pressure or tension on the balloon skin.
“How does a teacher dissuade students that this hypothesis is the
main explanation? How about inflating a balloon with air only slightly
so that the skin tensions is about the same as the water-filled case? But
the air still could be considered to expand more from the same heat
input.
“So try measuring or estimating the expansion: is it really enough to
pop the balloon. No! Clearly not, even on ultra fast video cam! (You do
not need a high speed camera, just use touch to check the balloon does
not suddenly inflate rapidly before bursting.
“This does not leave heat conduction away from the skin mediated by
the water as the only sole surviving possible explanation, but it is a good
candidate. I personally could not think up another plausible explanation,
but your students might do better. Then you can have oodles of fun
testing and eliminating such further hypotheses until (preferably a bit
before) the students get bored and want to move on to some other topic.”
“On reflection I now see that I used PEOE with all the practicals
I ran with my year nines. I wasn’t doing it consciously I just found
the method a good way to get the students thinking about the particle
theory which they had just been taught by their teacher; what does it
mean in a real situation?
“One example was one lesson when they entered the class I had a
helium balloon and an air filled balloon tied to a stand on the bench.
This produced a lot of discussion. Why did one float? How does a gas
float? etc, . . .
“We predicted what would happen over time to each balloon and used
the particle theory to explain why we thought this was so. They next
day we observed what had happened and related that to our previous
explanation.
Hannah toyed with POE when teaching reactions with acids and bases,
• Smoothness—easy for a chalk & talk lesson, harder for cooperative group
work. Start by getting physical arrangements smooth: seating, group compo-
sition, lay out of materials, routines for dispersing and gathering groups.
• Suitability—make sure the activity is not trivial and involves some real,
meaningful, critical thinking and learning.
The cooperative group work example project-based lesson plan given (in the
Epol-344 Module document) on the topic of geology are so clear and well-planned
that it worth re-producing it here for reference.
This example lesson sequence starts with an introductory Instruction session, fol-
lowed by Research, then a student Teaching session and concludes with a class
Presentation session.
Instruction:
You will be working in groups of four. We will choose the group randomly.
Each member of the group will have two jobs. One is to research an aspect of
this task and the other is the job of a keeping the group focused, time keeping, and
proof reading getting the gear. You will be making the decision on which aspect to
research and which other job you can do.
This project is to take four spells of class time and some homework.
There will be a group assessment of this task.
Research: One spell in the library and one period in class. Using the materials
provided in the class and from the library research one of the following You are
looking for at least one typed page of information:
1. What are Elements, Minerals and Rocks? How are these related? Find out
and define each of these. Write three examples of each.
3. What are Igneous rocks? How do these form? What are the differences be-
tween Volcanic and Plutonic rocks? Give three examples of each of these
kinds.
4. What are sedimentary rocks? How are these formed? Define each of these
terms: sediment, cementing, and strata. What are fossils and which type of
rocks are likely to have fossils.
Constructivism and Group Learning 82
5. What is the rock cycle? How does one type of rock change into another type?
Draw a well-labelled diagram of the rock cycle.
Take turns explain your research to the rest of the group. Make sure that every one
understands the research that you have carried out.
If there are things that you are not able to explain clearly write them down to
discuss later.
• Prepare a poster that has all this information on it to share with the rest of
the class.
• Talk about your aspect of the poster to the rest of the class.
1. Jigsaw—Groups with five students are set up. Each group member is assigned
some unique material to learn and then to teach to his group members. To
help in the learning students across the class working on the same sub-section
get together to decide what is important and how to teach it. After practice
in these ”expert” groups the original groups reform and students teach each
other. Tests or assessment follows.
Constructivism and Group Learning 83
8. Circle the Sage—First the teacher polls the class to see which students
have a special knowledge to share. For example the teacher may ask who
in the class was able to solve a difficult mathematics homework question,
who had visited Mexico, who knows the chemical reactions involved in how
salting the streets help dissipate snow. Those students (the sages) stand and
spread out in the room. The teacher then has the rest of the classmates
each surround a sage, with no two members of the same team going to the
same sage. The sage explains what they know while the classmates listen, ask
questions, and take notes. All students then return to their teams. Each in
turn, explains what they learned. Because each one has gone to a different
sage, they compare notes. If there is disagreement, they stand up as a team.
Finally, the disagreements are aired and resolved.
9. Partners—The class is divided into teams of four. Partners move to one side
Constructivism and Group Learning 85
Source: http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/intech/cooperativelearning.htm
6. Epol-344 Exam Preparation
3. Teaching in context.
86
Epol-344 Exam Preparation 87
engineering and applied science, but it is not fully compatible with the way
people learn and understand.
• Real world contexts—not many things kill a science lesson more than a task
or exercises that have little obvious relation to real life. Relate your lesson to
the interests of your students. It can still be abstract and philosophical, but
make sure the focus is on something of interest to your students.
“Rather than asking how can we get more young people to pur-
sue science, the first question that any country must ask is whether
Epol-344 Exam Preparation 89
So yes, making lessons both more fun and more serious are ways to improve
the teaching of science. What we do not want to do is make science seem
difficult (even though it is, just as are all things, art, music, poetry, whatever)
obscure and mysterious knowledge held by only a society of elite’s and genius’.
These are fine ideas, but short on specifics. How should teachers achieve such
goals? It is easy to say that we need “good quality teachers”—yeah sure!
That’d solve the whole problem. But how do we make good quality teachers.
• ‘Doing’ is not enough—the sentiment is fine, but what really attracts stu-
dents to science and helps build them into great scientists? The tasks and
activities you set need to be worth doing, they need to elicit questions and
fascination.
questions: how to find good questions, how to frame a good question, and
how to go about answering them, or at least try to answer them.
• Fuzzy concepts—science is often published in clean crisp form. Students
then get the impression that science is exacting and demanding, which is so
ridiculously false that it would be laughable if not so tragically debilitating for
students. Teaching should not be afraid to delve deep into the unknown and
where fuzzy concepts abound. What is “energy”? Don’t provide a textbook
definition if there really is none. Tell the truth about it. I’d say to my students,
“I don’t know what energy really is, but it is a useful concept, let’s explore it. . . ”
• Revealing knowledge—don’t do this, or at least resist it with all your life.
Students learn deeply when they discover things for themselves. So help them
by posing good problems, and allowing them to ask questions, allowing them
to find things out.
• Aim for high standards but not perfection—science is too often regarded
as sacrosanct and pristine knowledge. This can put many good practically
skilled students off the subject. So have high expectations of your students,
but teach them that science is not perfect and yet seeks to advance all the
time. Do this by using activities, games and projects that are not pure and
pristine, yet which are still precise in aim and intent. For example, investigate
light wavelengths and relationship to perceived colour, e.g., how many primary
colours are there? No, really!
12. Food energy: How does the material that gets digested into our blood
(the atoms of the molecules) leave our body so that we don’t get heavier
all the time? (One correct response is that we breathe and sweat it out
mostly in the form of CO2 , water and hydrocarbons, also our urine, skin
flakes, etc.
Naı̈ve idea: Some gets stored. We “use it up”, converted to energy. We
excrete it out (this is not the correct answer, since we’re asking about the
digested molecules, not about the undigested stuff ).
• Teasing out these ideas—good teachers will first try to get these ideas
articulated before trying to teach children “what is right”. Sometimes it is just
the meaning of words that confuses us. Sometimes it is the deeper concepts
that are misunderstood (as in the gravity question).
• What is crucial for these gains?–the factors that need to be present for
such gains are,
1. Feedback
Epol-344 Exam Preparation 94
2. Active involvement
3. Adjustment of teaching
4. Consideration of motivation and self-esteem (don’t crush the students)
5. Self-assessment and self-improvement.
Thus far we’ve dealt with the research support in favour of stronger use of formative
assessment. But what are some of the specific techniques that we can use to conduct
formative assessment effectively in our classrooms? The following review is a start
on this teaching topic.
That’s about it for now on formative assessment. The most important thing is
to try these ideas out and adapt them to you own teaching style and classes. Keep
Epol-344 Exam Preparation 96
records that chart the effectiveness of your methods and don’t be afraid to try out
new things and adjust your lesson plans.
• Pace yourself —you can probably always deliver a lesson at a faster rate than
your students can absorb it. Going so fast will switch most students off—you
do not want this, believe us! Going to slow will have a similar effect, they will
again switch off. Better: structure lessons in a way that gives the students
some control of the pace—not allowing them to be slow and lazy, but just
giving them opportunity to make a few choices.
• Keep them busy—idle students are the most common generators of disrup-
tion. So provide plenty for them to ‘get on with’.
• Know the safety rules—especially for practical lessons. Be sure that the
students know the rules too, and test them on it before conducting risky
practicals that carry an element of risk such as Bunsen burners, hazardous
chemicals, or electricity.
engagement, but you have to try. Use smartly differentiated lesson plans in
this case.
• Use privileges—students will respect you more if you give them responsibility
and opportunities to earn your trust.
“My view is that there are two aspects to the nature of science that
are distinct and yet intimately related. First, science can be seen as
an abstract activity of sentient beings, involving an idealized process of
observation and questioning, hypothesizing and model building or the-
orization, prediction, experimentation and testing followed by repeated
observation and so on. This abstraction is only an idealization in the
sense that it need not be followed linearly or strictly sequentially, thus a
scientist in practice might begin by simply conducting an experiment for
fun, or they may begin by taking an existing theory or model and adjust-
ing it out of curiosity to see what predictions might change. This would
still be science. The observation aspect of science may involve very little
data collection and could simply begin with a very high level question
such as “what are things made of?” which will then later lead to more in
depth observation and question refinement. So even this abstract view
of science is quite complex and multi-faceted.
“The second aspect is the human and social dimension of science.
Here we consider a concrete group of sentient beings, such as we hu-
mans, either cooperating or competing or individually striving to conduct
a concrete version of the abstract scientific process of questioning and
discovery of our natural world. This second aspect to science attempts
to realize the abstract ideal of science, but is not perfect. It involves
mistakes, bad guesses, good guesses, team work, dysfunctional research
99
Epol-344 Exam Preparation 100
“Not sure If I’ll actually be allowed to stick to this philosophy, but for
what it’s worth, here is the rationale: the ideas are (1) no time pressure,
and (2) each lesson marks a psychological progress stage, so students will
always have a sense of achievement.
“After studying all this lesson planning business for the three concur-
rent courses, I’ve resolved to try to adhere to a philosophy of teaching
that seems sane to me—possibly others have thought of it all before?
Yet I haven’t seen it articulated in any of the course readings so far. It
is all too ‘50 min oriented’ as far as I am concerned, and I find myself
repelled by this artificial constraint. So here’s my alternative approach
to lesson planning.
“(1) I do not want to make 50 min lessons! This is too artificial. Also
too stressful. Instead I plan to teach topics in a fluid way. Each lesson
builds on the last, but no lesson has to be done in 50 mins. Some will
go faster, some slower, throughout the year I need to cover the required
units of the curriculum, but that’s a big picture goal, and not such a
stressful time management issue since we have a whole year to ‘tick the
boxes’.
“(2) Each 50 min period will be planned to have natural cut-offs,
ie. if the full topic is not completed then I will aim to have a number of
stages in the lesson where I can call it short and do a nice neat summary,
assessment, and review. Then pick up again the next day. So there is
no stress on finishing a particular lesson each day, but the students will
still get the important psychological feeling of having achieved something
and made progress.
“Probably cannot implement this approach during TE, but I’ll try.
My ‘out’ for TE is simply this:
Epol-344 Exam Preparation 102
“I’ll put ‘50 mins’ in the ‘Time:’ field of the lesson plan so that every-
one is happy. But in the plan body I’ll have stages of the lesson at which
I could ‘call it a day’ with the class and stop there and do a review.
Then the next day the same lesson plan can be pulled out and begun
from where the class left off. To make TE bearable I will simply choose
topics that I think can be covered in about an hour—which will mean
choosing really basic pieces of work and very discrete topics. When I
get into the real teaching world going solo then I can get back to deeper
lesson planning.”
Further comments: on the topic of the pressure of time in modern society, it’s worth
checking out The Long Now Foundation and their blogs and projects.
BTW: the above strategy worked only fleetingly during the editor’s seven week
TE practicum. There was too much of a ‘time squeeze’ planning for lessons day-
to-day to afford the development of twenty to forty really insightful lessons. The
students at the school were also not primed to receive lessons delivered in a radical
departure to their usual teacher’s style. On a positive note, many students clearly
showed some interest in more innovative teaching methods. So the receptivity is
there, we just need a way to infuse innovation in our future classrooms without
upsetting the crusty old administrators of our schools.
My comments on this brief curriculum study were given on page 28 of these notes.
The activity was useful because it engaged us in more than just reading. The
kinaesthetic actions of obeying the paper cut-out instructions were simplistic but
the intention was well appreciated! Physically putting the cut-out quotes alongside
the Curriculum strands really made them ‘pop out’ so it was hard to ignore the
trends and intent of the curriculum development.
First we go to StudyIt and check the subject content for NCEA Chemistry, subtopic
“Metals, Acids and Bases”. http://www.studyit.org.nz/. . . /chemistry1/4/subject-
content/. After browsing the topics we can formulate (no pun intended) some learn-
ing objecives for a sample lesson.
Here’s a sample of some suggested learning objectives:
Epol-344 Exam Preparation 103
At the end of this lesson on acids and bases the students will be able to,
3. Explain the bonding changes that occur in acid+base reactions and balance
simple examples of equations for such reactions.
4. Explain the bonding changes that occur in acid+metal reactions and balance
simple examples of equations for such reactions.
5. Explain the bonding changes that occur in acid+carbonate reactions and bal-
ance simple examples of equations for such reactions.
Comments: I could not separate out the ‘explain’ and ‘balance’ aspects of the last
three learning intention/outcomes. They seem to me to be fundamentally related
that it would be pedagogically stupid to separate them, hence they go together as
one complete learning outcome.
that are not brain-based. It would be like finding a fish that couldn’t swim, or like
finding an edible fruit that wasn’t DNA-based, or a banking institution that wasn’t
money-based.
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