Summary and Potential Impact of Model Based Learning

Summary and Potential Impact of Model Based Learning

Ryan Swapp

Arizona State University

Summary and Potential Impact of Model Based Learning

Summary of Model Based Learning Project

As a teacher born and raised in Arizona I take very seriously my commitment in

preparing our students to achieve their desires after leaving my classroom. Yet, year after year

Arizona continues to dwell at the bottom of the rankings for high school student’s preparation for

college level science. The last available rankings show us as 46th out of 50 in the year 2016. My

students have begun voicing their concerns about how we can better prepare them so they are

able to compete with other students coming from states with superior support for high school

science education. We designed a semester long program that will rectify these students

concerns. To often we try to teach science like we would math or language, but science is about

experimenting, failing, and returning with improvements based on our newly gained experiences.

The project we are aiming to implement will begin with third hour physical science only,

with future iterations including all science faculty and potentially district wide should our event

prove successful. Currently we possess years’ worth of data using traditional teaching methods

of teaching for students pre- and post-test scores. Gauging the classes success will be done by

conducting the same traditional tests, our hope is that our scores will considerably outperform

the traditional results.

There will be many techniques used to ensure we are getting the maximum performance

from each student. The first step is to switch to a flipped format for our students. The assigned

textbook will be for home reading with students having completed sections prior to coming into

class. This will allow the classroom to transition from a 70-30 lecture to lab ratio to a 30-70

lecture to lab ratio. Since so much of science needs to be hands on this will give students more

time to think through difficult concepts such as velocity, acceleration, gravity, and more. Too

ensure this knowledge is being learned correctly we will do daily white boards. This is were lab
Summary and Potential Impact of Model Based Learning

groups work together to solve problems, create procedures for labs, dissect results, or visualize

concepts. The layout of the classroom has been modified to allow students to sit in a large circle,

while viewing all the other boards. Students will be responsible for driving the conversation with

an understanding that being wrong is not a problem if you take away the right lessons. Educator

intervention will be limited to driving to students back in the correct direction, clearing up

misunderstandings, and digging deeper into material if the students don’t quite get there.

These three ideas will work in conjunction with many others to better prepare our

children for the much more intense standards found in the colleges and universities. It also

requires constant collaboration which will be required in school and into careers as students

prepare themselves for life after primary education. We are not foolish to believe that every

student will become a science major, as such we are striving to implement useful life skills that

will guide them no matter their direction. If these methods of approaching science education

prove fruitful for our initial 26 students, who knows how beneficial could be after wider

implementation.

Success and potential benefits do not start and end with the classroom though. Home life

plays a large role in moving forward, without parent guidance teachers will be hamstrung since

students may not be held responsible for keeping up with work completed at home. I can only

control student direction in my classroom and have limited time with them. Working

collaboratively, we can give all students involved the best opportunity to be successful. Arizona

has the potential to revitalize our science education interest and performance with very little

financial allocation. Our communities need this injection into the system as we continue to limit

students by not providing them proper preparation for careers that continually require higher

levels of technical expertise.

Summary and Potential Impact of Model Based Learning

References
American Institute of Physics. (2011, July 7). Science Education: Top and Bottom States. Retrieved from
Live Science: https://www.livescience.com/14953-states-add.html

Wells, M., Hestenes, D., & Swackhamer, G. (1995). A modeling methodnfor high school physics
instruction. American Journal of Physics, 606-619.