Spring 2004

Talking Science

Taking Up the Challenge

In the Winter EQ, Bruce Wilson wrote that the real reform task for the middle years was to make the teaching in ordinary classes in ordinary classrooms ‘captivating, powerful, exciting, stimulating and unforgettable’. GARY SIMPSON couldn’t agree more. He shares his approach to achieving that vision in his science classroom.

Student-centred teaching and learning

I AIM TO CREATE a classroom environment that is inspired by critical constructivism, in which an equal partnership with my students develops a teaching and learning approach centred on the needs of each individual child. The classroom environment seeks to establish five essential characteristics. First, a connection between school science and out of school experiences is made—students’ experiences are used as a context for learning. Second, students are provided with opportunities to experience science as having arisen from inquiry in a social and cultural context and that scientific knowledge changes over time. Third, students are empowered to question the teacher’s pedagogical plans and methods. Fourth, students are invited to share control of the learning environment; to articulate goals, to design and to manage activities, and to determine and apply assessment criteria. Fifth, opportunities are provided for students to discuss, explain, negotiate and reflect on the viability of their own and other students’ learning.

That means I work to discover how each of my students is individual. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What are their expectations? I am able to measure their preferred intelligence, their preferred learning style and their learning ability. While formal tests are available to evaluate these characteristics (and I sometimes use these), I now use less formal ones to assess student work and behaviours. Knowing this information and sharing what it means with the student, empowers them and enriches my relationship with them. Then I like to discover what they know about the topic we are studying. I do this with a variety of tasks.

• A class discussion with or without prepared questions to stimulate the discussion.
• A brainstorm—whole class, small groups or individual.
• A concept map—whole class, small group or individual.
• Collecting the classroom wisdom. I start the process by writing the first line of a set of notes on the board and then by asking probing questions. The students’ responses are recorded on the whiteboard and gaps in their knowledge are listed. The gaps become our starting points for investigation.
• Matching the definitions with the term tasks—worksheets, on the overhead or on the board, as individuals, pairs, small groups or whole class.
• Responses to audio and/or visual stimuli—worksheets, on the overhead, TV, computer screen or on the board, as individuals, pairs, small groups or whole class.
• A written test—closed or open book.

Exploring the topic

Flexibility is the key. I like to use different combinations of ideas with different types of units, tailoring the task to the needs of the student and the material we are studying. There is no point using ‘collecting the classroom wisdom’ if the class have little combined knowledge of a unit of work, but then one must be in a position to make this assumption.

Having discovered what students know about the topic and what (mis)conceptions they have, I negotiate meaningful tasks to address their needs. These tasks include a variety of activities regularly seen in the classroom, including:

• a lecture or ‘talk and chalk’ from the teacher, a knowledgeable student or visitor
• a comprehension task
• follow the recipe experiments
• classroom discussions, forums, debates
• student-designed experiments
• research projects
• activity sheets
• making games, posters, models, role-plays
• WebQuest or Slam Dunk.

Setting the goals

When negotiating tasks, a number of parameters are open for discussion, however the essential learning outcomes are, of course, not negotiable. Areas for negotiation are: How many students will be in the team? What is the aim of the task? What outcomes/product(s) will be achieved? How much of the task will be completed at home/in class? When will the outcomes be presented to the class? What criteria will be used to assess the task? Who will assess the task?

Sharing the learning

An obligation of student-centred approaches to teaching is the need to share what students have learnt.

Depending on the project, the audience for sharing could be the class, larger groups within the school or the broader community. The students have used a considerable amount of class time for their projects. By sharing what they have learnt, they are required to justify their activities. Presentations can take the form of written reports, talks, participation in online news-groups, multimedia presentations, web pages, posters, models or installations (school or community).

Reflection

Flexibility, creativity and imagination are required to negotiate meaningful outcomes with students and to maintain the manageability of the task, through active communication and monitoring of student engagement. The focus remains the same—how can I make this an effective learning experience for each of my students?

Having a student-centred pedagogy is not an easier way of teaching. It requires the teacher to act as a facilitator, finding information or resources; a critical friend, questioning and assessing work in progress in a positive and meaningful manner; a referee, settling squabbles within and between groups of students over who did what; a police officer, maintaining good patterns of student and work behaviours; and a seer, having a strong knowledge of the subject area, asking the right questions of students, suggesting appropriate lines of inquiry and constructing successful investigations with students.

A student-centred classroom looks the same as any other classroom, but there is a great deal of difference in how it operates. The students move freely about the classroom, the whiteboard is often bare or at least has half a dozen different notes to different groups. The teacher moves freely about the class engaging with students (sometimes for significant periods of time). There can be a significant amount of noise and often very few students are in the classroom. They have escaped to other parts of the school that have the equipment or expertise that they require for the work that they have negotiated.

Importantly, the biggest difference may simply be in the relationships between the teacher and the learners and between the learners themselves. That is, a relationship based on mutual respect where each learner is considered to have the potential to succeed and an equal right to share control of the classroom environment, with the equal share of responsibilities and obligations this brings.

Gary Simpson teaches science at Woodleigh School in Baxter, Victoria.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au