There was an interesting “My Turn” essay in this week’s Newsweek entitled Lessons in Life (Science) by Sally G. Hoskins, who teaches undergraduate biology.  In the article, she informs us that one of major goals in the biology course she teaches is that her students leave the course with the idea that just like art of music, science is a creative process.  Having spent the past year working with Mike Dias rewriting our book, The Art of Teaching Science, I appreciated greatly her point of view.  One notion she emphasized in regard to teaching biology with this goal in mind was that teaching could be exasperating.

Hoskins indirectly stated that students construct their understanding of science.  She put it this way: “I’m old enough now to realize that I can’t really teach anyone anything; I can just try to create conditions that foster learning.  When students meet me half way, it sometimes works.” 

This is an underlying principle of the social constructivist theory of teaching.  In a sense we have to approach teaching and learning indirectly.  Learning does not necessarily occur when the teacher tells the student something.  It happens when the student uncovers a principle, makes sense of disparate ideas, comes to understand through personal construction.  It’s not a new idea.  John Dewey proposed learning from this framework, and that was near the end of the 19th Century.

One of the books that had a tremendous influence on me as a teacher was Carl Rogers’ Freedom to Learn.  One of the chapters in this interesting book is “Personal thoughts  on teaching and learning” (this link will bring to a page that includes most of the material in this chapter).  Rogers discusses the notion most of what is “taught” to another is relatively inconsequential.  I would add that much of what is taught is out of context, and does not provide the links needed to students’ lived experience for learning to be consequential.  Rogers goes on to suggest that the only learning which significantly influences behavior is “self-discovered.”  Although one might disagree with this from the social constructivist theory, the basic notion that we make meaning ourselves has relevance to the teaching of science process.  

What is your view?  Do you agree with Hoskins that as teachers we really can’t teach anyone anything? Or with Rogers that learning must be self-appropriated?