WHY TEACH OPEN-ENDED, PROBLEM-SOLVING ACTIVITIES?

Much of the way science is taught is based on the way it was experienced as students in high school and college classrooms. Science was perceived as being a body of knowledge which was to be transmitted by the teacher to the students. Success was measured by the amount of content covered. Test results and national and international studies, however, show that most of our students do not learn science this way. In fact, they may actually develop a lifelong aversion to it. They see science as an activity having no personal relevance being performed by an elite group with which they cannot identify. Even students who are successful in this model and do not go into science-related careers (the vast majority), come away with a distorted view of what science is and how it actually works.

        Changing this situation will require a restructuring of what is taught and how science is taught. Current national science reform movements promote the concept of science literacy. A scientifically literate person "is aware that science, mathematics and technology are inter-dependent human enterprises with strengths and limitations; understands key concepts and principals of science; is familiar with the natural world and recognizes both diversity and unity; and uses scientific knowledge and scientific ways of thinking for individual and social purposes." (Science for All Americans, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Oxford University Press, 1990)

        Science is the product of centuries of human effort to describe, explain, predict and design objects, systems or events in the world around us. Scientific theories and instruments enable us to engage in these activities (description, explanation, predicting and design) with far more power and precision than otherwise would be possible. In teaching science, we must try to help students make sense of scientific concepts and theories and use those concepts and theories to describe, explain, predict and design real-world objects, systems or events.

        This is not an easy task. Most students already have ways of describing, explaining, predicting and designing objects, systems and events; ways that lack the power and precision of science, but are based on concepts and theories that make sense to them. Many students also do not think of science as a set of powerful conceptual tools for description, explanation, prediction and design but, rather, as a collection of facts and definitions to be memorized. To learn science with real understanding, these students will have to reorganize their own thinking about how the world works and about the nature of science.

        Ideal science teaching is designed to promote conceptual change, help students to see that the way they have understood and explained some aspect of the world is inadequate, even though it seems sensible to them, and help them to understand more sophisticated scientific approaches.  This is very difficult to do. Students do not give up familiar ideas or learn new ones easily and, as teachers, we need large amounts of knowledge, skill and planning to help them do so (adapted from documents by C.W. Anderson, E.L. Smith and K. Roth of Michigan State University).

        To help students achieve literacy in science, they must be active participants in their own science learning. Quality science classrooms reflect a philosophy that will develop understand-ing of science content, process and habits of mind.

 

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