{"id":266,"date":"2012-12-13T11:17:10","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T17:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=266"},"modified":"2012-12-13T11:17:10","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T17:17:10","slug":"science-education-and-argumentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2012\/12\/13\/science-education-and-argumentation\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Education and Argumentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of my work, I read a relatively new paper about the use of argumentation in a school laboratory setting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Basically, science classrooms are doing it wrong.\u00a0 I think most science teachers know that they are, but there’s not a lot to be done because the bureaucratic inertia is strong and teachers are too busy grading papers to read current research to show how teaching could be better and more effective.\u00a0 I’m going to try really hard not to get on my soap-box about how classrooms should work.\u00a0 I was moderately successful in using a lot of technology to reduce my workload and that allowed me to do more labs and more constructive work, but I also had 5 preps.<\/p>\n

Anyway, so this research project is really about what students do when preparing for and discussing the results of an experiment.\u00a0 The authors deliberately designed experiments to generate as ambiguous results as possible and then allowed time for students to discuss what was going on.<\/p>\n

In the first experiment, the authors gave groups of students 3 cups made of the same material, just painted different colors (white, black, and shiny silver), then asked them to determine which one is more effective at holding heat in.\u00a0 The students prepared an experiment to measure how the cups retained heat.\u00a0 Then the students had a post lab discussion about their results.<\/p>\n

What was interesting (to me, but not really the focus of the paper) was that the students were so used to the stock school ‘experiments’ that they tended to focus on getting the right answer instead of actually thinking about the experiment.\u00a0 The students focused on the “what do to” instead of the “why to do”.\u00a0 The students knew that the purpose was to measure heat flow out of the container, but there was no why involved.\u00a0 No mention of practical applications or (apparently) a discussion of heat flow.\u00a0 Just, “we do this then that”.<\/p>\n

The students also tended to see instant patterns.\u00a0 After only a few measurements of temperature, the students came to a conclusion and that’s what they stuck with.<\/p>\n

A more rich experiment was also done in which the students examined statements, discussed them, then experimented to find the answers.\u00a0 Discussion was remarkably short (and my understanding was that it was dominated by 1 or 2 students), the experiments yielded even more ambiguous results than the first experiment.<\/p>\n

The end result of all this was that students fell into several groups regarding their experimental results.<\/p>\n

\u25cf Group A denied the problem and simply accepted their measurements without
\nsaying whether they supported or refuted the hypothesis. That is, data became the
\nfinal answer to the task.
\n\u25cf Group B rejected their original hypothesis and concluded that salt loses mass
\nwhen being dissolved in water, thus accepting data as \u2018true\u2019.
\n\u25cf Group C at first rejected their original hypothesis, but then discussed the
\nevidence.
\n\u25cf Group D ignored anomalous data and kept the original hypothesis, thus accepting
\nthe hypothesis as \u2018true\u2019 over data.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What we can see here is a complete failure\u00a0 to A) understand the point of experiments B) understanding how science is done C) critically examine the results, the experiments, and the data collected.<\/p>\n

We see these problems in adults all the time.\u00a0 In politics, some groups want to stick with failed economic policies because they SHOULD work regardless of what the evidence actually is.\u00a0 In creationism (and other anti-science movements), data can be safely ignored or manipulated to show something that it really doesn’t.\u00a0 In personal life, the lack of skepticism regarding even the simplest things.<\/p>\n

There’s an annoying problem with a lot of science.\u00a0 We don’t want science to be a class that’s nothing more than the regurgitation of facts, but we can’t have a pure experiment, self-discovery class because the students just don’t have the background for it.\u00a0 It would be like taking a kid from the 1700s and sticking him in a modern kitchen with a recipe and asking him to make a cake.\u00a0 He probably wouldn’t be able to open most of the cans\/bottles\/boxes of supplies, much less turn on the oven.\u00a0 The other side of the coin though, is that if we teach him, step-by-step to bake a cake, then that’s all he can do.\u00a0 He still wouldn’t be able to batter and pan fry some fish.\u00a0 The skills just aren’t there.\u00a0 But without some knowledge, the skills are useless.\u00a0 If a student doesn’t know what heat is, then how can they design an experiment to measure it?<\/p>\n

School lab experiments are supposed to be unambiguous in their result.\u00a0 The idea to show a certain phenomenon… not that the student derive the phenomenon from their base knowledge (like Newton had to do).<\/p>\n

So, students in science classrooms are tending to get a false impression of science, what it is and how it’s done.\u00a0 They are not learning that science is often ambiguous, which may be harming science as these students become adults.\u00a0 When real science is presented as ‘confident’ or “may be” or anything like that, the only experience people have is of the certainty and ‘getting the right answer’ in their school science labs.\u00a0 They might (probably don’t) see that science, especially cutting edge research, really isn’t confident.\u00a0 There may not be a right answer, and even if there is, we don’t know what it is in advance.<\/p>\n

The latter issue is a big problem in dealing with the ID crowd.\u00a0 They see that experiments are designed, so any results are just evidence of intelligent design.\u00a0 That’s false, as I’ve discussed before.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of problems in our education system.\u00a0 This is one of the big ones.\u00a0 The teacher planning meetings that take place in the week before school starts should be talking about the latest research on effective teaching, not the minimum length of girls’ skirts..\u00a0 Teachers should be given tools to automate things like grading as much as possible and students should be taking responsibility for their own learning… I know, I’m living in a dream world (time to wake up Neo).<\/p>\n

Like I mentioned, I had a brief taste of how technology could be used to really aid the classroom teacher, not just as a toy for students to play with.\u00a0 If you don’t care about that, you can stop reading now.<\/p>\n

At my last teaching assignment, every classroom had a smartboard.\u00a0 A projector was used to project the information from a computer onto the board and the board was fitted with sensors like a giant touchscreen.\u00a0 So, I could create a powerpoint and actually draw on the board during the powerpoint presentation.\u00a0 We could surf the web.\u00a0 We could play videos, pause them, and draw on the screen to illustrate something.\u00a0 All in all, it was cool, but not critical.<\/p>\n

That changed when we got the first set of remote ‘clickers’.\u00a0 No one else wanted them, so I got to use them all the time.\u00a0 Basically, we had a classroom set of small hand-held devices with a number keypad that were wirelessly linked to a central box, which was then connected to my computer.<\/p>\n

When the students came in the door, they would grab a remote and sign in with their user id.\u00a0 Our school had required ‘bell-ringers’, these were short sets of questions or discussion topics that students were supposed to do when they came in the classroom.\u00a0 In the past, we collected an obscene amount of paper with two or three questions on them from the students, each day.\u00a0 With these remotes, I could ask multiple choice, T\/F, or numeric response questions, the students would enter their answers and my computer would record the score and display the results.<\/p>\n

This allowed me instant grading and to instantly review the material.\u00a0 If a question had a large percentage of wrong answers, then I knew it was something that we would need to go over.\u00a0 I would often use these bell-ringers to evaluate the previous day’s lesson or the assigned reading or homework.\u00a0 The students got a clue pretty quick and started to (amazingly) actually read the assignments before class started.<\/p>\n

Further, with the smartboard and the integrated remotes, I could stop my lesson at any point and ask a question.\u00a0 The students would respond and I could see immediately how many got it, how many didn’t get it, and how many where asleep.\u00a0 The students didn’t have to deal with the embarrassment of being called on when I could see that confused look.\u00a0 I could ask a question and only I could see the actual students who got it wrong. The students just saw the percentages right and wrong.<\/p>\n

Even further, I conducted several full on tests using the remotes.\u00a0 The computer could score the responses instantly and I could see, once all the tests were complete, who needed remediation in which areas.\u00a0 I didn’t have to wait for a week until I could get a bunch of tests graded to see if we needed a review day or two, I knew it right then.\u00a0 When dealing with science concepts that build on each other, it’s critical to know that everyone has step one before moving on to step two.<\/p>\n

The integration of technology that is designed to reduce the workload on the teacher can massively improve the education of students.\u00a0 Teachers can focus on teaching and discussion rather than grading (which, is a big deal, go ahead go ask an English teacher how long it takes to grade 200 5 paragraph essays).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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