Experience and Experimentation: The "Aha!" Moments of Science
Mathematics, science and technology teachers have been contributing to Exemplary Practices since the Prime Minister's Awards program began in 1993. As a result, the discussion is well developed and each year's group contributes new ideas to well-established themes.
The interesting new twist that the 2000-2001 winners brought was the suggestion that in addition to preparing young Canadians for careers in an increasingly technological world, mathematics, science and technology education helps with personal development as well.
There is no reason why mathematics, science or technology class can't be a life-changing experience every bit as profound as reading a novel such as The Catcher in the Rye or The Color Purple, says Richard Hechter of The Collegiate at the University of Winnipeg. Students often say that they take science courses to learn how the world works, he says. "What they often don't get from their science teachers is the sense of wonder and mystery that goes with science — that science often gives us answers that we are not prepared for and that it often shows us just how little we really know."
For Hechter, who teaches the sciences to university-bound students, one of the best ways to restore the sense of wonder to science is to integrate it with other subject matter. He is constantly on the prowl for interesting phenomena in the world of art, culture and history that he can include in his physics classes. "When you can show students that a famous painter has to have painted a painting of the night sky on a particular day, in a particular place, because that is the only time in history that anyone had that particular view of it, you open their eyes to the wonder of it all," he explains (see "Building Bridges").
Moving from the abstract world of mathematics and science to a new understanding of the world and personal growth has to begin with a new understanding of the basics, adds David Pilmer of The East Hants Rural High School in Milford, Nova Scotia. Basic skills in mathematics, for example, are often defined in terms of tools that students can pick up and apply, he explains. Traditionally, students were taught these skills individually and given little guidance on how to apply them beyond "a series of highly contrived word problems at the end of every chapter in the textbook," he says.
"As a result, we tended to churn out students who were very good at solving for 'x' but had little idea what 'x' meant and how the equations they were working with could help them better understand their world."
Pilmer reminds us that, historically, many developments in mathematics were directed by individuals who wished to understand and create models for many real world situations. Mathematics, to a large extent, developed from a need and was critical for advancements in many other disciplines. "If we show our students a need for mathematics, they are far more likely to commit the time and energy into the relevant subject material. Yes, you can do purely abstract mathematics once you have a solid understanding of this 'basic,' but learning mathematics begins in experiencing the world and experimenting to learn more about that world."
Pilmer freely admits that this approach means hard work for math teachers. "I have had to completely rethink the way I teach mathematics in order to implement a new constructionist curriculum — giving students problems to solve, but not the skills to solve them, and getting them to work together to develop the skills and find solutions — and I am still working on some things."
Rather modestly, he says, "I knew I couldn't carry it off on the basis of personality." But to see Pilmer effortlessly get a group of fellow Prime Minister's Award recipients to strike bodybuilding poses and shout out the answers to questions about quadratic functions in outrageous Austrian accents puts that claim in some doubt. However, there is no doubt about his claim that it is creativity that makes the constructionist approach work (see "This is Math Class?").
For Wendy Van Haastregt, a science teacher at Burnsview Junior Secondary School in Delta, British Columbia, the connections between science and personal development are unavoidable. She teaches at the junior high level, and all students take science. Her students range from those still struggling with Grade 3 reading skills to those who are clearly university-bound. She makes it her goal to ensure that all these students take something away from her science courses. "Most kids are not going to become traditional scientists, but everybody has science in their lives," she explains (see "The Science in Students' Lives").
Even if they never do another day of science study after leaving her classroom, Van Haastregt's students graduate from junior high with three solid pluses from their science education. They will have learned how to learn — the approach they have used to master science concepts will help them to learn in the rest of their schooling and beyond. They will have learned positive attitudes about life and choices. "Science is a remarkably good subject for teaching us about the consequences of our actions, such as dumping things down the drain," explains Van Haastregt. Finally, they will have learned how to understand the scientific information they will have to deal with in their daily lives.
I Can Do This
"I love the 'Aha!' moment," says Van Haastregt, "when a child realizes 'Hey, I can do this.'" This very important for Van Haastregt. She wants her students to leave the class with the feeling that they "can do." This is an achievement that goes beyond covering the curriculum. "If I can get all the students, including the ones who are working at a borderline level, to be able to not necessarily master something but to be competent at doing it and to know they are competent in ways they hadn't anticipated, even to a small extent, then I have accomplished something big."
One good way to remind students of just how much their learning empowers them is to do pre- and post-unit activities to establish how much they know. "When we talked about salts one year, all they could come up with before the activity was that salt makes food taste better," says Van Haastregt. Afterwards, they were able to go on for quite some time about the properties of salt, when it is produced by the body, the effect it has on liquid consumption and so forth. "The students realize that they couldn't do this an hour ago but now they could."
For the high flyers, who obviously have no difficult deciding they can do science, Van Haastregt comes up with different challenges that allow them to have other kinds of I-can-do-this experiences. First, she offers them the opportunity to volunteer to be tutors to classmates. "Not all kids are developing as fast socially as they are academically, especially the bright ones who have been carried along on the strength of their neurons," she explains. If these students are given the chance to act as tutors, they can develop social skills to complement their academic ones.
These students also have the chance to expand their learning horizontally. Too often, the only opportunity for gifted students is some sort of advanced program. There are, explains Van Haastregt, lots of ways to expand laterally as well that feed students' other interests and natural curiosity. For example, she encouraged one very athletic student to go beyond a planned nutrition unit and study the effects of different types of diet on energy level and fat and muscle development. "He brought back information about some of the fast foods that the kids were eating that grossed them out," says Van Haastregt with a laugh.
What it Takes to Do Science
Richard Hechter likes to shake up students' ideas of what it takes to do science. If you ask students, they typically say that you need apparatus to measure and collect data and a rigorous methodology to apply to the data. This understanding is largely mythical, Hechter explains. "Einstein, famously, did his scientific work without any apparatus other than his brain and a piece of paper," he says. Historical research into how famous scientists actually achieved the results they did shows that they did not follow a single scientific method so much as a variety of different methods, he adds.
Science isn't a cold application of technology and method but an emotionally charged social activity, says Hechter. "I like to drive this home by teaching a unit on the first chapter of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises." At the end of the unit, he asks the students how they feel. "They tend to be very angry," he says. "They are paying money to get a science credit and they don't see what this has to do with it."
"I then point out that this is exactly the way people responded to Copernicus," explains Hechter. Copernicus's new world view didn't seem to have anything to do with established science. He upset people's ideas of what they could expect from science and that made them very angry.
The inside joke, adds Hechter, is that the first chapter of The Sun Also Rises does have something to do with science. Hemingway has a character in the chapter comment on the wall of clocks old-time newsrooms had so that reporters could tell the time of day in various parts of the world. The problem is that Hemingway set up all the external references in the book so that you simply cannot figure out when in history the events are supposed to have taken place. "Copernicus upset people in a similar way because he upset all previous ideas about where in the universe the earth was," says Hechter.
It is quite amazing what you can do with your brain, says Hechter, when you put your mind to it. He tries to ensure students understand they can apply the "I can do it" lessons they learn in science anywhere. "I always say that education is the safest investment you can make. You can lose your house, your job or your savings but education is the one investment no one can ever take away from you."