1/12 Steve - learning progression and ngss practices

1/12

Summaries:

            In their paper Developing a Learning Progression for Scientific Modeling, Schwarz and colleagues propose guidelines for effectively using modeling to aid scientific education.  After defining modeling and discussing the different ways that modeling benefits students, the authors outline two major ways that student modeling can be evaluated.  The first criteria is how the model is used as a “tool for explaining and predicting”.  The second criteria is how students understand model as changeable in the face of new data or feedback. 

            The chapter on Scientific and Engineering Practices defines 8 practices used by both scientists and engineers in their work and suggests that science education should include chances for students to engage in all 8 of those practices.  Engineering and Science are continuously compared and contrasted, engineering being repeatedly described as solving human problems, and science as figuring out how things work.  The authors list a variety of modeling skills that high school graduates should possess. 

Relevant Themes:

·         As an engineer I have always wanted to bring more “real world” practices into my teaching and modeling seems like an effective way to do that.

·         I like the idea of students creating and critiquing models because that can help them become more critical of models or graphs they see in the news and other non-school situations.

·         I like the messiness of models – how they change and how they are never perfect.  The quest for perfection leads to so much good inquiry and reasoning.

·         I appreciate the inclusion of engineering in the chapter 3 piece.  Pure science is taught in schools and engineering is rarely taught, but there are more engineers than scientists in the world.

Relationship among the readings:

            The chapter 3 piece was more of an overview of all of the scientific practices and what students should be able to do and why it is important that they be able to do those things. The Schwarz article was more of a practical guide to using modeling in the classroom.  It included examples of teachers using models and how students progressed with the models, and what challenges the teachers faced when implementing the modeling unit.  I would be interested to see a Schwarz style article about modeling engineering challenges.  I would have liked to see more concrete examples of student work in the chapter 3 piece to illustrate how students could engage in all the practices.  I wonder if authentic audiences for models are really necessary or if the combination of peer judgment and grade incentives can serve to provide the same level of motivation for students.