How Problems Can Help

Autor: Christopher K. Cratsley
Rok vydání: 1991
Předmět:
Zdroj: The American Biology Teacher. 53:390-392
ISSN: 0002-7685
DOI: 10.2307/4449342
Popis: THE statistics plastered all over the news in recent years portray a national disaster. By comparing figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics, Michael Leyden make a shocking statement in the March 1984 issue of The Science Teacher. Eight years after taking a freshman science class in high school, twice as many college-aged individuals will have spent time in prison than will have completed a bachelor's degree in biology, chemistry, physics, earth science or science education. These statistics are particularly shocking in light of the fact that elementary school children love science. "Start with Science," an article by Kenneth R. Mechling and Lynne E. Kepler in the March 1991 issue of Instructor magazine, refers to research studies which found that when asked to choose what topic they would prefer to study, children choose science topics more than fifty percent of the time. Students want to learn about science, but somehow between elementary school and college most students stop taking science courses. In order to graduate more scientists than criminals, our nation's high school science classes must rediscover the aspects of science that make it fascinating to elementary school children and use the natural appeal of science to capture the interest and imagination of students. Young students exhibit interest not in the discreet topics defined by modern high school science, but in particular aspects of the world around them. Thunder, lightning, waves, the moon, dinosaurs and whales all inspire the imagination. Students want to try to imagine what it was like when dinosaurs ruled the earth or what it is like on the moon. They would like to experience lightning raising the hair on their necks or see a whale up close. Students want to discover why they hear thunder during a storm or why the tide rises. High school science must address real-life topics which span the traditional scientific disciplines and must allow for student imagination, experience and discovery. In order to do this, we must challenge students to find current issues in science that interest them and to use the scientific process to address these issues. The process of science has always involved imagining, experiencing and discovering. Science consists of all our efforts to understand the world around us. Science uses curiosity, wonder and creativity to question; knowledge, observation, experience and imagination to hypothesize. Science calls on one's creativity, reasoning and observation to design and implement tests of these hypotheses. Finally, science requires textual, graphical and verbal skills to communicate ideas and findings to others. Current issues in science grab student interest when students can relate them to their lives. Engaging in the scientific process extends students' interest by allowing them to make science part of their personal experiences through imagining, experiencing and discovering. In order to improve secondary school science teaching we must teach students to use the activities of science: questioning, information gathering, hypothesizing, testing and conveying, to confront current issues and problems in science. The first activities of science that need to be encouraged are the student's questioning skills. This is one of the most difficult skills to teach. The ability to ask effective questions comes from a desire or inclination to do so, the characteristics of curiosity and wonder. The reason that questioning is rare in many high school classrooms is that the approach to science is too abstract. Students have no frame of reference from their own experience in which to form a question. The May/June 1990 edition of The Harvard Education Letter cites statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) that support this idea: The NAEP found that high school students see science as dull, difficult and having little connection to their lives outside of school. The disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics were formed by scientists grappling with the questions of past centuries. These disciplines have little relevance to contemporary students' attempts to grapple with the questions of today. Christopher Cratsley, 221 Nashawtuc Rd., Concord, MA 01742, is the winner of the first annual Campbell Biology Prize. The $2500 prize was created to nurture excellence and innovation in science education. It is administered by the Benjaminl Cummings Publishing Company and is sponsored by Neil Campbell, author of Biology 2nd ed.). Any undergraduate student intending to teach biology at the high schootlevel, who is currently enrolled at a North American college or university, may compete for the prize. Students submit an essay outlining an original, innovative idea for improving the quality of secondar-level science education. Cratsley, who just graduated from Brown Ulniversity's Undergraduate Teacher Education Program, was described as "a teacher of the future" by one of his professors at Brown. She went on to say: "There are some teachers who, by virtue of their intellect, their knowledge of the discipline and educational research, and their work in the classroom, encourage the teachers around them to reach new levels. I see Chris that way."
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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