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I found this article to be an interesting one and worth sharing with this
list. Having worked in both "formal" and "informal" education, I have always
thought some of the teaching methods used in museums can be far more
effective with students and the lifelong learning process, and have always
contained an element of the inquiry-based, and certainly "hands-on,
minds-on" approaches. There seems to be much merit to the idea for further
collaboration between museums/science centers and the schools and I expect
we will see much research and grant work being done in this field.



Amanda Chesworth

Educational Director, CSICOP

www.inquiringminds.org <http://www.inquiringminds.org/>





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  Science, Vol 306, Issue 5694, 228 , 8 October 2004


Changing Strategies in Science Education


As J. Handelsman et al. note in their Policy Forum "Scientific teaching" (23
Apr., p. 521 <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/304/5670/521> ),
recent educational research has shown that a variety of active-learning
strategies are superior to the teaching methods that many of us experienced
in our own training. That is, the traditional approach of lecturing to a
room full of students seems to be less effective than engaging these
students in the process of thinking about the information.

A particular challenge, which was not noted by Handlesman et al., is
reorienting our role in the training of secondary science teachers--indeed,
in training teachers throughout the K-12 enterprise. In general, the science
courses through which K-12 teachers learn their science are taught by
scientists. It is incumbent upon us as scientists to ask ourselves how well
we serve as role models for the teachers we train.

In general, we tend to teach the way we were taught ourselves. It is only
after we become more comfortable with our teaching expertise, and more
comfortable in our other roles as scientists, that some of us may begin to
investigate alternate pedagogical approaches. The same can be said for the
students whom we teach. If we instruct our future K-12 teachers by the
traditional approach of lecturing about scientific facts, we may expect that
they will use the same methods in their own classes.

But science is not the memorization of facts. It is an ongoing,
investigative endeavor. It requires thinking deeply about subjects, and
continuously assessing whether the data support the current understanding.
Actually doing science requires a world view that is quite different from
that which we portray in our classes.

As scientific literacy has declined, we have considered a variety of ways to
address it. One very important effort has been the development of the
National Science Education Standards (1
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5694/228?etoc#ref1> , 2
<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5694/228?etoc#ref2> ). Built
into the Standards is the expectation that the teaching of science should be
realigned to match more closely the doing of science. That is, K-12
instruction should, wherever possible, use methods of active learning and of
inquiry-based learning. The typical response to reading this, I suspect,
will be "good, that is as it should be."

Thus, we have a paradox. We applaud the Standards' exhortation to teach
science as an investigative endeavor and to use inquiry-based methods where
possible. Yet, we, ourselves, tend to teach the way we were taught and use
didactic lecturing--through which we train future K-12 teachers the
avoidance of inquiry-based methods. Consequently, it is exceedingly
difficult for K-12 teachers to incorporate inquiry-based teaching into their
courses. This realization suggests that it is essential that we move our own
teaching methods into the current century, pay attention to the educational
literature, and use active learning, problem-based learning, and
inquiry-based learning in our own classes.

Handelsman et al. have offered recommendations for how we might improve the
Culture of Science to put greater weight on the teaching enterprise. I
suspect, however, given the vast inertia of our scientific and educational
systems, that a single Policy Forum will be insufficient. It will be
necessary to give educational innovations the same degree of attention that
we give to basic research. Given the prestige and wide readership of
Science, I ask that a new section of the journal be created to discuss
teaching issues. We need open and frequent discussion of this tremendously
important issue.

J. Jose Bonner
Professor of Biology,
Director of Science Outreach,
Indiana University,
Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
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References

1.      National Research Council, National Science Education Standards
(National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1996).
2.      National Research Council, Inquiry and the National Science
Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning (National Academy
Press, Washington, DC, 2000).




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