Harlow offered four pedagogical resources for teachers to create a
through instructing approach. These four resources are providing students with
correct answers or solutions, guiding students to find a correct answer or
solution, including scientific vocabulary to create an effective model and
encouraging students as creative thinkers. These four teacher resources aligned
with the modified curriculum of the Physics for Everyday Thinking that was
applied and adapted to the course and the goals that the Physics for Teaching
course that was studied in Harlow’s research. This course, a class for
pre-service Physics instructing included “an appreciation for the role of
students’ ideas in the teaching and learning of science and an introduction to
how to teach science through modeling” as goals for the course (p.1104). However,
instructors must be cautious as to how much or how little scaffolding is
offered to students when allowing them to investigate and formulate their
understanding. Harlow calls this a challenging and uncertain task.
Research found that the intersection between organizing
instruction and understanding students’ ideas was a difficult practice for
pre-service teachers. Harlow says that inappropriate use of teacher resources
leads to one effective practice such as organizing instruction but an
ineffective practice such as understanding students’ ideas. Thus, it is
important to consider the goals used by the Physics for Teaching course; an
appreciation for the role of students’ ideas in teaching and learning of
science requires effective teacher resource application and practice of
teaching. Including time to discuss, and appreciate, students’ ideas gives
autonomy to their construction of knowledge. Also, teachers must then build
upon students’ ideas in the classroom and use students’ ideas to give
information to the class.
This article referenced a work by diSessa and NGSS’ Practices for
Science Education. Harlow suggested effective teaching to build upon students’
cognitive processes as experiences as resources. A students’ personal
experience will play an important role as to how knowledge is interpreted and
constructed. A “closer is stronger” analogy is described in which the
relationship of closeness between an individual and an experience the stronger
the influence of the experience will be to the individual. Then, the
development and use of models practice of the NGSS is referenced. The
refinement of models develops an understanding of the representation created
and builds knowledge by discussing its’ language specific properties. This is
another use of an effective teacher resource, that a scientific model includes
scientific language.
The intersection
between organizing instruction and understanding students’ ideas was cited as a
problem for pre-service teachers. What activities or discussions could we hold
in class to better ourselves for this instance? Teachers often resource how
they were taught as a student when faced with a problem they are unsure to
handle. How can we prepare ourselves to not fall into this habit, concerning
not appreciating students’ ideas to build upon further information? Also, what
kind of activities or discussions will lead to that all students in the class feel
that their ideas are appreciated?
Good question about how we can get better at teaching in ways we were not taught ourselves. In the case of the skills mentioned in this article like asking guiding questions instead of telling kids the answer, I think one good way to prepare is to practice formulating good questions, which is something we have been doing a lot in this class. Asking good questions in hard, so hopefully all of the time we spend in this class blogging questions and generating questions in groups will help us become better questioners.
ReplyDeleteI think modeling in itself is a way for students to feel like their ideas are appreciated. If they are constructing this thing with only guidance from the teacher and peers, they will probably feel more ownership over the product they have created. However, I also believe that students should accept that not all of their ideas are going to be the best, and that that is ok. Creating a collaborative classroom environment will help students feel like they can voice ideas or give peer critique/feedback without any negative consequences for "being wrong."
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