One of the serious issues related to contemporary science teaching is the dominance of traditional science teaching as defined by the rhetoric of standards-based science curriculum. Most students experience a science curriculum that is fundamentally didactic, rarely involving the students in authentic learning activities. The traditional model is overly mechanistic, individualistic, and focused on the learning of canonical content of science reflecting the orthodoxy of science. A more authentic approach to teaching would tend to prize innovative and flexible thinking, involve students in collaborative and interdependent work, and would help students learn how to learn, and how to ask questions. These two approaches are compared below as the traditional model vs. the Global Thinking Model.

The Global Thinking Project was based on an authentic model of learning in which students and teachers work together to solve real problems in their own community, and by means of the collaborative nature of the Internet, interact with peers in other countries. In a study of authenticity as an important idea in science teaching, researchers make a valuable contribution to our understanding as reported in this study: The Value of an Emergent Notion of Authenticity: Examples from Two Student/Teacher-Scientist Partnership Programs. As these researchers conclude, after an analysis of two authentic science programs, authenticity remains an important concept that can help us think of science teaching in ways if understood as emergent. It leads to a science education that has something to do with the real world of students, and is meaningful to them.

In these programs (some are listed below), students are involved in formulating their own questions, collecting their own data, and using resources on the Net to not only share their findings, but to collaborate with others. One of the projects in the GTP was Project Water Watch in which students investigated a stream close to their school. Here two Russian students participating in a collaborative exchange program sit on the bank of a river in North Georgia (USA) using a colormetic technique to determine the value of disolved oxygen in the water.

Two Russian students determine the amount of dissolved oxygen in a water sample collected in a North Georgia (USA) river as part of an authentic science project.

Engaging students in authentic science learning experiences humanizes the experience of science for students and teachers. Authentic learning involves students in making choices that are important to themselves and their community. Authentic science leads to the construct of “science for the people,” a motto that an activist group of scientists used many years ago. It’s needed today.

There are many examples of authentic science teaching programs, too many to list here. But here are a few as well other links:

How Accurate are Student-Collected Data?
Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment Project
Global Rivers Environmental Education Network Project
Forest Watch Project