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SECTION 1: HOW STUDENTS LEARN This chapter organizes ideas about learning into two key topics, theories of learning and learning styles. You will also find that Chapter 6, Models of Science Teaching, is correlated with the theories that are presented here. Although Chapter 5 is more theory-oriented, and Chapter 6 is more practical, together they form an imporant link between theory and practice. Initial Case Study: A New Approach to Learning A second year teacher implements a constructivist approach to teaching in her high school biology class. A parent complains to the teacher's principal claiming that her son is wasting his time in this class. You can use this to start the chapter in class. An alternative way is to set this case study up on your bulletin board, and request that each student make at least one post to the case prior to coming to the next class. At the next class session, divide your students into five groups, and assign each group one of the questions that appears in the text on page 167. Questions include: How would you deal with this situation? What would you say to the parent? Is the teacher on sound footing regarding her theory of teaching. Give each group 5 - 10 minutes to discuss the question, and arrive at consensus, and be prepared to make a 2 minute report to the full class.
Figure 1. Team learning is an integral aspect of implementing a constructivist approach to teaching in the science classroom. Inquiry Activities There are five inquiry activities in this chapter. These can be used iin a variety of ways to engage your students in the content of the chapter. You could do all of the inquiry activities with your class, or you could assign each inquiry to a different group in the class. Devote one class session enabling each team to work together to accomplish the tasks associated with the inquiry. Each team then will be reponsible for "teaching" about their inquiry. Inform them that they will have no more than 15 minutes to convey the essential ideas to the class. Then integrate these inquiry reports into your plans for this chapter. Inquiry Activity 5.1: How Do Students Learn Science? In this inquiry student will assume the role of researcher and interview one or more teachers or peers seeking the circumstances in which they think students learn science best. Students will need to design a series of interview questions (using the ones on page 168) and then conduct the interviews. With pre-service teachers: If possible arrange for your students to interview some practicing science teachers. Arrangements could be made for them to visit a middle school or high school, or if you are teaching a graduate science education class of practicing science teachers, make arrangements for your in-service teachers to interview them. If neither of these arrangements works, have them interview each other, or other pre-service students at your college. With in-service & advanced graduate students: If your class is populated with practicing teachers, they can be "iinterview subjects" for each other in this activity, or they can interview one or more teachers at the school where they teach. Depending upon how you want the results to be used, suggest to the students that use audio and video in their interviews (but make sure that they obtain permission for this, and they explain how the results will be used). The audio and video results can be used as part of a presentation on "how students learn science." This is an important process (interviewing), and you might want to carry this forward into your student's practicum and teaching experiences. Inquiry Activity 5.2: Piagetian Concrete Reasoning Patterns Note for Inquiries 5.2 and 5.3: You might split the class and have half do Inquiry 5.2 and the other half do Inquiry 5.3. Then which each if completed, carry on a class conference on concrete and formal reasoning and implications for science teaching. This activity is comprised of 5 Piagetian tasks that you can use to further understand children's thinking at the concrete level. One way to do this is to have each student in your class work with a child that they might know (younger sibling, other family member, or a neighborhood child). Have each student prepare a kit containing the material needed to carry out the tasks: small amount of clay, 2 small vials, and 2 candy bars (Hershey bar will work well). Interview one or two students using the protocols on page 184. Record results in a chart like Figure 5.6. Results should be reported in class within small groups. Use the Minds-on Strategies as a strategy for the small group discussion, and also ask each group to be prepared to discuss with the whole class question 4 on page 183: What would the implications be for a teacher working with these students if these concepts were presented: Newton's first law of motion; classification of rocks; the concept of geological time? Inquiry Activity 5.3: The Mealworm and Mr. Short Activity 5.2 focused on concrete reasoning; this inquriy is an investigation into formal reasoning. As in Activity 5.2, I recommend that each of your students do the two puzzles (The Mealworm, and Mr. Short) with one or two students between the ages of 12 - 18). Materials they will be copies of the two puzzles. Have them photocopy them P. 136), but be sure that they only present one of the puzzles at a time to the student they are interviewing.  Figure
2. Mealworm Puzzle, p. 186You can also do this activity directly with your students. Have them work in pairs, with one doing the Mealworm puzzle, and the partner doing the Mr. Short puzzle. They should share their results with each other, and then they should analyze the student responses to the puzzles that are shown in Table 5.12. Use the activity results to compare and contrast concrete and formal reasoning, and implciations for science teaching. Inquiry Activity 5.4: Concepts versus Big Ideas: A Deweyan Experience In this activity students will select a cluster of concepts that they might teach in one area of science (perhaps from the NSES or the Benchmarks, or the State Standards where you teach). The notion in this inquiry to help students identify and articulate "big ideas" that subsume the concepts that they select. Inquiry Activity 5.5: Meeting of the Minds In this roleplaying inquiry, students assume the roles of theorists, and generate a discussion of teaching and learning from the various frameworks represented by the theorists. This would be a good activity to video tape, and then play back for analysis and discussion. Inquiry Activity 5.6: Ideas About Student Learning Styles This activity is best done in small groups whereby students collaborate to generate concepts maps reflecting what they know about (1) Factors affecting student learning styles and (2) What are ways to accommodate students with different learning styles? If you split your class into teams, some teach can be charged with concept map 1, and others with concept map 2. Have them draw their maps on very large sheets of chart paper, and have them use these to share their completed map. Use this activity as an introduction to the section on Student Learning Styles (pp. 198-204). Students and Science Learning You might present the chart below (see Table 5.1, p. 170 for the full table). Instead of including the items below the headings, brainstorm with the students on the first two categories (learn about and learn how to). Have the students generate at least three ideas in each category. They can learn
about They can learn how
to Processes they
undergo Knowledge products of scientific
inquiry Nature of the scientific
enterprise Act upon or apply
information Learn strategies to seek new
knowledge Internalize values Assess self interest in
science Table 1. What students can learn in science. Use these results to connect your students to theories of how students learn. Theories of How Students Learn This brief section is an introduction to the sections that follow on specific theories of learning. A couple of points. Firstly, there are some science educators who would suggest delaying the introduction of theory by letting it evolve out of practice. This might be considered the "practice-to-theory" path. Alternatively, you might be more drawn to the "theory-to-practice" pathway. In either case, practice and theory are linked, and we might consider them going together like peanut and jelly! For me, you can't have one without the other. Thus, I recommend thinking of Chapter 5 (more theory oriented) and Chapter (more practice oriented) 6 as a bonded pair. You might also point out to your students that the section in the Science Teacher Gazette entitled "Research Matters" is a wonderful example of linkages between practice and theory. These are consumer oriented research reports written by members of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. They show the value of research to the practicing science teacher. Organization of Theories of Learning Table 5.2 (Comparison of Theories and Perspectives of Learning) should help you organize the next three sections on learning theories. The complete chart is a useful teaching and learning tool for the chapter. You can use it as a graphical advanced organizer helping your students mentally organize the theories that will be introduced here, and tied to the very practical models of teaching in the next chapter. Notice that the first theory is constructivism, followed by sociocultural perspectives, and finally behavioral theories. The models in the next chapter are arranged in the same sequence. Theory Key Ideas Nature of
Learner Context of
Learning Contructivist
perspectives . . . Sociocultural
perspectives . . . Behavioral
perspectives . . . |
Constructivist Theories of Learning "Constructivism asserts that knowledge resides in individuals; that knowledge cannot be transferred intact from the head of teacher to the heads of students. The student tries to make sense of what is taught by trying to fit it with his/her experience." This quote is from the Research Matters piece in Chapter 6 (pp. 250-253) by Lorsbach and Tobin. According to these researchers, constructivism is an epistemology (branch of philosophy that studies knowledge), a theory of knowledge used to explain how we know what we know.
Figure 3. Constructivist links to concepts and inquiry activities in Chapter 5. You might use Figure 5.1 to do a deomonstration with your students (The coin toss and throw). In the figure, a coin is tossed into the air and comes down on a surface. After you do the demo, make a drawing similar to the one shown in the Figure 5.1 and then ask "What are the forces on the coin at point B, when it is moving upward through the air."
Figure 4. Coin Toss Problem The results should demonstrate that many students (including yours) hold alternative (naive, misconceptions, incorrect) ideas, as will many, if not most of their students. You might want to present a mini-lecture on the constructivist perspective by making use of the tables and charts on the following subtopics (pp. 173-188).
After your mini-lecture, present this problem to your class: Suppose you could interview one of the following theorists: Ausubel, Bruner, Piaget, VonGlassersfeld. How would the theorist you chose respond to the following: a ) Students learn best when they.....? b) What is learning? c) What is the best way to teach science d) How would you motivate reluctant learners? Sociocultural Theories of Learning Three prespecitives are presented under this rubric, including sociocultural, feminist and Deweyan. In a sense this is amplication and extension of the previous section on constructivism. However, in this case, a greater emphasis is on learning in a social context. I strongly recommend that you read J. L. Lemke, "Articulating Communities: Sociocultural Perspectives on Science Education," Journal of Research in Science Teaching 38, no. 3 (2001): 296-316. The sociocultural perspective implies that the construction of learning takes place in groups and by implication that collaborative (cooperative) learning strategies needs to implemented in science classrooms. You will find many applications of cooperative learning in The Art of Teaching Science. See Chapter 6, pp. 223-231 for details on implementing cooperative learning. The feminist perspective aligns with sociocultural theory. Two concepts are important here. The first is the notion of situated cognition, and the second is the idea of a community of practice. The Deweyan theory of experience is based on John Dewey's philosophy of education. Two ideas are presented here, the conception of learning, and experience and ideas-based teaching. Dewey believed that learning is embedded in experience, and thus you might want to look carefully at his "ideas-based teaching" conception. This is another way of looking at situated cognition, in that teaching consists of providing worthwhile experiences that lead to transformation. Have your students particiapte in Inquiry Activity 5.4 (Concepts versus Big Ideas: A Deweyan Experience). Behavioral Theories of Learning I've focused primarilly on the concept of operaant conditioning, and tried to relate the concept to the types of reinforcers that science teachers use with their students (social reinforcers--praise; token reinforcers--points, stars,etc.; activity reinforcers. These are used all the time; its useful to relate it theory. You might want to focus in on the applications of behavioral theory to science teaching. I've included a discussion of the use of classroom questions (p. 196) and classroom climate (p.196) as two examples. Student Learning Styles: Implications for Teaching There three important concepts in this section and they are: (1) The psychology of learning styles and the learning styles model; (2) Brain-Based Learning and the 4 MAT System; and (3) Metacognitive Strategies Present the Learning Styles model developed by Rita and Ken Dunn. Ask your students under what conditions they like to study and learn? Do they like it quiet? Do they study alone? You might want to visit the The Learning Syles Network. Another interesting site is the Institute for Learning Styles Research and in particular their overview of the 7 perceptual styles.
Figure 5. Learning Styles Model developed by Rita Dunn. See page 199 for details and source. Bernice McCarthy is the developer of the 4MAT system, which is shown here and in Figure 5.12, p. 202  Figure 6. Types of learners in the 4MAT system. See page 202 for further details and reference. I recommend you visit the 4MAT site About Learning. At the site you will find resources that you can use with your students to help them implement 4MAT. The last part of this section on learning styles focuses on meta-cognitive strategies including:
These strategies are tools that students can use to help them understand about their own thinking, and they in turn can apply this to their own classrooms by implementing one or more of these strategies as part of their course syllabus. SECTION 2: SCIENCE TEACHER GAZETTE Think Pieces You will find several think pieces focusing on theory. Anyone of these could be used for online bulletin board discussions. Or if you are having students keep a journal, they would be powerful questions for reflection on learning theory. Case Study: Theory of Science Teaching In this case a beginning teacher (with a provisional teaching certificate) is puzzled that another beginning teacher could possibly be trying to implement a theory of teaching, when surviving the first two weeks was the order of business. This is a great case to discuss because it will bring to the surface a variety of concerns that beginning teachers have for issues such as classroom management, discipline and paperwork. Case Study: The Student Who Thought He Failed In this case the discussion focuses on the use of pre-assessements (as part of a cognitive theory of teaching), and the impact they have on students' views of themselves as science learners. Science Teachers Talk In this Science Teachers Talk column, five teachers (Anna Morton, Ginny Almeder, John Ricciardi, Anita Bergman, and Barry Plant) respond to the question: How do you accommodate students' varying learning styles in your classroom? Problems and Extensions There are 6 P & E's in this chapter, anyone of which would provide the seed for a great classroom activity and discussion. For example, P & E no. 5 asks students to design a model of learning based on their work in the chapter and from their prior experiences. This is a good advance organizer for the next chapter in which the theories they have looked at here lead to models of teaching and leanring. Readings Here you will find a collection of readings on theory in science teaching. You might want to look at the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Vol. 38 no.3. There are several papers in this issue that focus on theory and science teaching. On the Web You will find four links for this chapter. I've added additional ones focusing on learning styles and the 4 MAT system. |
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