inspired by science

This post was originally written for the Bioblog – interesting how so many topics cross boundaries like this :)

A couple of days ago I was sent a copy of Inspired by Science (Bull et al. 2010) – a paper written ‘to encourage debate on how better to engage students with science’ which focuses particularly on what’s going on in our schools. It also asks ‘whether there is an increasing mismatch between science education of today and the demands of the 21st century.’ Those of you who are regular readers will know that this is a particular interest of mine (& of several of my blogging buddies over at Sciblogs), & so of course I was very keen to read the paper :)

Way back when I was a secondary science teacher (& we really are talking last century here!) I remember thinking that some of what we were teaching wasn’t all that useful to students in their everyday lives (just how relevant was an understanding of how urea fertiliser is manufactured, for example). If students don’t see something as relevant they’re likely to switch off, & in fact Bull et al. (2010) comment that ‘many students do not achieve sufficient understanding of [science] to be able to contribute to scientific debates.’ So if ‘society’s educational purposes’ (ibid.) include a population that sees science as relevant & that’s able (& willing) to take part in such debates, then maybe we need to look at how the subject’s taught. Otherwise the trend towards disengagement from science that Hipkins & Bolstad identified in their 2008 paper, Seeing yourself in science, may become a landslide.

 

And indeed, that’s what informed the development of the new curriculum now being implemented in our schools. This may well be seen as a problem by university lecturers in the various science disciplines, whose views of what should be taught in school science curricula differs from the one set out in this paper, and which I hold as well. In other words, different interest groups can have quite different, & deeply held, beliefs about what schools should be doing. And because up until fairly recently students in year 13 (7th form) classes tended to be the ones going on to uni, content & assessment were pretty much driven by the needs & demands of the universities, delivering chunks of knowledge & with not all that much attention to engaging them with the nature of science (NOS) itself. Even when the 1993 curriculum introduced NOS as a ‘parallel strand’ alongside general science & the indivdual subjects of biology, physics, chemistry, that strand tended to be ‘the pages we just skip over’ rather than an integral part of the curriculum. The current curriculum set out to change this, but nonetheless Bull et al. are able to identify several factors working against such change. And they comment that ‘understanding what good science education looks like – that is, science education that is educative, that represents science accurately, and that is engaging for students – is very challenging, and that, despite much effort, it continues to be very challenging.’

 

Of course, this does raise the question: how do we know when students are engaged? What does this thing ‘engagement’ look like? Bull et al. offer several possibilities here: continuing with study; demonstrating true intellectual curiosity about science & what it can & can’t do; showing interest in things like technologies, environmental issues, science media; aspiring to a scientific career; evincing a belief ‘in the value of science to the individual & to society’. You may be able to think of others. And this all feeds into how we assess the quality & success of the science education offered in New Zealand classrooms – it’s one thing to have students ‘doing’ science, but just how worthwhile is that if they don’t actually want to be there?

 

While I work mainly with senior biology students & their teachers, I’m aware that many students make up their minds about science as a subject for further study rather earlier than that, which means that their science experiences at primary & intermediate school are crucial to that decision. Surveys like TIMSS* and NEMP** show that primary school students enjoy science, report positive experiences of it, and would like to study more science :) Alas! this enjoyment and positive attitude declines as students move through to their secondary school years, & most students have pretty much decided about things like a having a science-related career well before they hit senior secondary school. Which suggests that a lot of our effort in engaging and supporting students in science should be focused on those primary & intermediate years – but not to the detriment of science teaching in secondary schools!

 

However, recent data from TIMSS (cited by Bull et al., 2010) indicate that primary students in this country spend on average 45 hours/year on science – well down on 66 hours in 2002 – and that only 6 of the other countries taking part the survey reported spending less time than that on studying science. Along with this, the number of students reporting that they never did experiments (something kids love!) has declined over the period 1999-2007. Now, because a lot of classroom teaching is cross-curricular, the children surveyed may simply not have recognised when they were doing science activities. But conversely, primary teachers may lack confidence in teaching science & so don’t include it in any integrated topics they may be teaching. This isn’t surprising as according to a 2010 Education Review Office report (also cited by Bull & her colleagues) found that ‘most primary teachers did not have a science background and that low levels of science knowledge and science teaching expertise contributed to the variation in quality of science teaching across schools… [and] that many teachers had not learned about science in their pre-service teacher training.’

 

So, if we’re going to turn this around, to improve the quality of science education in students’ early years at school, and enhance and maintain their engagement with the subject (however this manifests), then surely we need to make sure that primary teachers a) receive greater training in science than is currently the case & b) are better supported to deliver science experiences to their students. This doesn’t mean simply having a specialist science teacher in each primary school as this by itself may not be sufficient to change attitudes – it means all teachers in primary schools having regular access to relevant professional development and to specialist advice from trained science advisors. Both are extremely important. However, there are significant funding issues surrounding the provision of professional development, and in addition the introduction of National Standards appears to have focused attention elsewhere, away from the delivery of science. (I know that it should be possible to address the Standards within the context of science – or pretty much any other subject – but the risk is that this won’t be recognised by many teachers without opportunities for further training.)

 

For example, in late 2009 the Minister advised schools that the relevant university advisory groups would not be providing schools with help in any subjects other than reading, writing & mathematics, which may well have a negative effect on how science is taught in primary schools. This is not the first instance where PD has been delayed or removed: the same thing happened in regard to professional development for the Science Exemplar project & development of Building Science Concepts resources, with lack of funding cited in both instances. The related issue of whether/how to get scientists from the various research organisations more deeply involved with schools is no substitute for enhanced training & support for the classroom teachers themselves. So any suggestion of a national program directed at enhancing primary school science programs would be a very welcome one.

 

At the secondary level – I agree wholeheartedly that professional development involving both scientists & teachers is the way to go, with positive spin-offs for both teachers & the scientists involved. In fact, this sort of relationship should be in effect at all levels of schooling, as it would promote a situation where ‘[students] are challenged to develop deep understanding through strategies that emphasise student questioning, exploration, and engaging with significant ideas and practices. There would be much greater interaction between schools and the science community and more emphasis placed on students’ active engagement in their own learning’ (Bull et al., 2020).

 

With two caveats: firstly that it will be essential for those scientists involved in such programs to receive proper recognition for this role from their institutions, in things such as promotion rounds, as this would send a clear signal that these activities are valued. And equally important is the need for discussions around what is ‘core’ to the science curriculum. My experience in biology is that as new techniques or information become available they tend to be ‘front-loaded’ into the curriculum (e.g. by way of things such as the explanatory notes that accompany Achievement Standards) without any real consideration of how to fit everything in or, indeed, what might usefully be omitted in their place. I have argued for some time now that these discussions are essential in all science subject areas but see little real sign of this happening. But that over-full curriculum may give little opportunity for students to spend time discussing what they’ve learned, or take a creative approach to classroom work, especially if they’re working towards a series of assessments over the year. Maybe, with the advent of the new curriculum, there’s the opportunity for changes in teaching & assessment practices – maybe things like the integrated learning programs that some secondary schools have developed? – that will turn us around from the situation described by Bull et al. where ‘[traditional] science education, designed to prepare science-able students for science careers, is in fact turning many students away from science…’

 

And of course, there’s also the need for proper funding of professional development to make all this possible…

 

Unfortunately there’s quite a lot of support for ‘traditional’ science teaching among university academics, & the modes of teaching that are becoming more common in secondary classrooms have yet to make much of an inroad in the tertiary sector. This is a real pity as I believe such changes would go a long way towards enhancing students’ success as they move into their tertiary studies. There’s also a failure by many in the tertiary sector to recognise that university is not the next destination for a sizeable proportion of year 13 students. For example, while collectively our universities do emphasise the importance of the ‘secondary-tertiary interface’, one document on Te Pokai Tara (the NZVCC’s website) states that ‘the appropriate interventions must continue at the secondary level to minimise the extent to which bridging support is necessary at tertiary level.’ On the face of it, this fails to recognise the diversity of learning experiences offered to secondary students and the reasons for that diversity. Such expectations have the potential to constrain schools’ ability to offer innovative combinations of achievement standards that best meet their students’ needs & interests, and run counter to the intention of the New Zealand Curriculum.

 

I’d like to make a call for the development of a much stronger relationship between coordinators of first-year university classes (in particular) and secondary schools as there would be clear benefits for all parties involved: significant opportunities for professional development of both secondary & tertiary teachers; enhanced opportunities for secondary students to learn of new developments & opportunities in science; and improvements in the ability of tertiary teachers to bridge their students into successful university study (highly desirable now that TEC will be linking funding to completion & retention). This is something that I’d be very keen indeed to be involved in developing, & in fact I’m looking forward to speaking about it at an upcoming first-year biology educators’ colloquium, in Dunedin at the end of next month :)

 

* TIMSS = Trends in International Mathematics & Science Study

** National Education Monitoring Project

 

A.Bull, J.Gilbert, H.Barwick, R.Hipkins & R.Baker (2010) Inspired by science: a paper commissioned by the Royal Society and the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor. New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER), August 2010

R.Hipkins & R.Bolstad (2008) Seeing yourself in science: the importance of the middle school years. NZCER 

 

engagement techniques for teaching evolution

I see we’ve had a few hits recently from searches for teaching evolution. This is a topic that’s of particular interest to me, and while I’m definitely not an expert in the area of lifting student engagement with this often-contentious topic, I thought I might write a bit about some of the approaches we’ve tried here, plus some of the literature in this area. So pull up a chair, it could be a long-ish post :)

Teaching evolution can be fraught with difficulty: it is probably the only scientific theory to be rejected on grounds of personal belief. And beliefs can be very hard – perhaps impossible – to change. My own feeling, which fits with how I feel about teaching science in general, is that we should move from simply teaching a series of facts and concepts to looking at the development of the theory of evolution, and placing it in its social and historical contexts. After all, simply listing the observations & postulates that support Darwin’s concept of natural selection as the driver of evolutionary change isn’t exactly calculated to win hearts & sway minds! But helping students learn how our modern theory of evolution has developed over time may lead them to understand evolution, and so move beyond their various misconceptions around the topic.

There’s now a large amount of literature looking at the teaching of evolution. Back in 1994, William Cobern commented that “[teaching] evolution at the secondary level – is very much like Darwin presenting the Origin of Species to a public who historically held a very different view of origins.”  He felt that to meet this challenge, “teachers [should] preface the conceptual study of evolution with a classroom dialogue … informed with material on the cultural history of Darwinism.” In 1995 he added “I do not believe … that evolution can be taught effectively by ignoring significant metaphysical (i.e. essentially religious) questions. One addresses these issues not by teaching a doctrine, but by looking back historically to the cultural and intellectual milieu of Darwin’s day and the great questions over which people struggled.” Of course, the key issue here for classroom teachers is time – how on earth can all this be fitted into an already packed curriculum? (Well, that’s one issue – an equally pressing one is probably: where are the resources to support teachers in doing this?)

One answer lies in the changes to the NZ science curriculum, which is underpinned by a focus on the nature of science itself. You might remember that I wrote a bit about this in an earlier post. Part of that requires that students “learn about science as a knowledge system: the features of scientific knowledge and the processes by which it is developed; and learn about the ways in which the work of scientists interacts with society” – in other words, an understanding of the history of science is crucial here. And the ‘evolution back-story’ offers an excellent opportunity to learn about that, and also about the way science is done. Mind you, it also necessitates a change in how the topic is taught: one that gets students actively involved – not least, in examining their own conceptions of the topic. (My friend Kathrin Otrel-Cass & I discussed all this in a recent paper of our own.)

This was something I was very much aware of when I was redesigning our second-year paper ‘Evolution & Diversity of Life’. And that was a tricky balancing act! Pressure on the one hand to keep/increase the ‘diversity’ content, to support various third-year papers; and on the other, pressure to include more genetics; and in the middle, me, wanting more of the historical/philosophical stuff – completely necessary, given around 10% of students in the paper tended to a creationist view on the origins of diversity. Anyway, I read around a lot, & at the time I was quite heavily influenced by the work of Passmore & Stewart, who’d looked at practical ways of increasing student engagement with and understanding of the subject. (Tonie Stohlberg (2010) has also discussed such an approach, although I’m not entirely in agreement with her on all counts: for example, the statement that religion promotes a sceptical approach as much as science does. This sits uneasily with the faith-based nature of religious beliefs.)

In their 2002 paper, Cynthia Passmore & Jim Stewart discuss an evolutionary biology course that they designed, based on earlier classroom research and with 3 main principles underlying it:

1. “There should be a commitment to designing instruction around key models [in this particular case, natural selection] in the discipline under study.
2. There should be a recognition that scientific practice is discipline specific. The development of a curriculum should therefore take into account the ways in which scientists operate within their fields.
3. There should be a commitment to providing opportunities for students to develop, revise, and use models in ways that are true to the discipline.”

Passmore & Stewart discuss the nature of scientific models at some length – something that’s directly relevant to teaching the nature of science in NZ classrooms today. In fact, they comment that they “believe that organising curricula around sets of scientific models provides students with opportunities not only to learn about the conceptual subject matter of particular disciplines but also about the natre of scientific knowledge – how it is constructed and justified…” Their course also gave students the opportunity to examine things like language use and scientific methodolgy as they built up arguments around an historical event. I liked this approach, not only because emulating it would hopefully enhance my students’ understanding of evolution, but also because of that very emphasis on understanding the nature of science (NoS). (A colleague and I had done an informal survey of our students’ understanding of the NoS & found it lacking, so you can see why I was keen to improve on this.)

Because of the multiple pressures on the paper I had to be selective: we couldn’t adapt Passmore & Stewart’s program in its entirety. In the end, we combined a range of activities that enouraged the class to: work collaboratively, build models, discuss ideas, and defend their position. This included a session using Rob Gendron’s exercises based on the Caminalcules, intended to get students thinking about the evidence for determining relationships between groups of organisms, and  the ways in which organisms might change over time. (The Caminalcules are rather hard-case, & because they look nothing like any animals students will have experience of, there’s less chance of preconceptions around relationships affecting the outcome.) While fun, it also required students to explain and defend their decisions. Another class had them reading & discussing work by Paley, Lamarck & Darwin (as described by Passmore & Stewart) & then analysing these models to identify the assumptions made by each author – & also their shortcomings. The idea here was to allow the class to identify some of the common misconceptions around evolutionary theory, & hopefully to avoid them themselves. It led on to a deeper examination of natural selection, based around some other work from Rob Gendron: a simulation of the action of natural selection, that you can expand on by introducing things like variation & mutation into the discussion. And we originally  finished up with a role play, where students took on the role of mediator & protagonists in a creation/evolution debate (script from a debate broadcast in the US some years ago). Then a couple of years later the PBS documentary on the Dover trial came out, & we used that instead as the starting point for a discussion around the nature of science. (This section of the course was definitely not your ‘typical’ university science lab course!)

The class members certainly seemed to appreciate this approach. They commented (in the end-of-semester appraisals) that it was more interesting than ‘standard’ labs, and made them think harder about the topic; they also valued the fact that it was non-judgemental/non-threatening. (I’ve often thought that  putting someone in a situation where their personal beliefs are threatened is hardly a way to bring them round to another point of view.) They were certainly more actively involved – more engaged – with what was happening in the class, although because we didn’t have both pre- & post-tests in place I can’t put my hand on my heart & say that there was a long-term change in attitudes & understanding. That’s something we need to implement as part of the next revision of the paper. And this time round, of course, I’ll have the benefit of Craig Nelson’s 2008 paper on techniques for engaging students in classes, particularly those on evolutionary biology. But I think the program would have enhanced their appreciation of the following video, which has been doing the rounds on the various SciBlogs sites lately!

A.Campbell & K.Otrel-Cass (2010) Teaching evolution in New Zealand’s schools – reviewing changes in the New Zealand Science curriculum. Research in Science Education 40 (published on-line 21 April 2010). DOI: 10.1007/s11165-010-9173-6

W.Cobern (1994) Point: belief, understanding, and the teaching of evolution. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 31(5): 583-590

W. Cobern (1995) Science education as an exercise in foreign affairs. Science & Education 4: 287-302

C. Nelson (2008) Teaching evolution (and all of biology) more effectively: strategies for engagement, critical thinking, and confronting misconceptions. Integrated and Comparative Biology 48(2): 213-225

C.Passmore & J.Stewart (2002) A modelling approach to teaching evolutionary biology in high schools. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 39(3): 185-204. doi: 10.1002/tea.10020  

T.Stohlberg (2010) Teaching Darwinian evolution: learning from religious education. Science & Education 19(6-8): 679-692. DOI: 10.1007/s11191-009-9187-5