4/13 Jenna - Developing Scientific Literacy in the Classroom

Before taking this course, I considered scientific literacy as a person's ability to analyze scientific information. I was thinking in terms of the relationship between the general population and expert scientists; how does someone interpret and make sense of the knowledge that scientists produce in their everyday experience? I thought of scientific literacy as it related to someone's decision to receive a vaccination, to the debate over teaching evolution and/or intelligent design in schools, and to appointing members of Congress to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. But while I could name tons of ways I hoped scientific literacy could inform people's decisions, I hadn't given much thought to how I expected them to develop this literacy. What skills would they need? What experiences would develop those skills? What could science teachers in the US do? - These questions weren't regularly on my mind.

I still think my original idea of scientific literacy is valid, but my current understanding is much broader. In the simplest terms, scientific literacy is the ability to navigate the mangle/tangle of the production of scientific knowledge. It includes the ability to understand vocabulary of the discipline, ask testable questions, conduct experiments and observations systematically, generate varied representations, and to share and critique ideas. Modeling and media use are ways to cultivate these skills within the classroom community. They push science learning beyond memorization of vocabulary, facts, and formulas, to their very creation in a problem space that is authentic to the learners. Plus, they require that learners have a tangible product (like a simulation or a whiteboard), which means students must be thoughtful of the ways they represent their understanding and how they critique the products of their peers.

As I prepare to enter the PhD program at Vanderbilt I've been thinking about how modeling and scientific literacy will be a part of my future work with SURGE Symbolic. In this game players manipulate an avatar's movement across obstacles by changing graphical representations of the movement. Players must transition between multiple representations (motion graphs, dot-traces, verbal descriptions), creating rich layers of understanding across the different levels of interpretation at work. This is a literacy-developing process. Over the next several weeks, I'll be looking at the literature related to graph learning (how people interpret graphs), with my own hope of finding ways that SURGE Symbolic's design can be improved to better support learning and scientific literacy.

4/13 Joey: Communicating Science

I would say that scientific literacy is having the ability to understand how to read, present, and interpret science.  Being literate in science makes communication possible between others.  Just as there are different levels of proficiency when it comes to language literacy, there are different levels of scientific literacy.  Scientific literacy is not something that should be exclusive to scientists.  Scientific literacy is also important for people in other professions to have.  Everyone should be able to see a graph or representation in a newspaper and understand what information is being presented (and hopefully know if it is reliable).    

Media and representations are a huge part of scientific literacy.  Media and representations allow for people to understand the summation of the phenomena being investigated visually.  Charts and graphs are seen in everyday life in newspapers/TV as well as research papers.  Interpreting these figures is essential to understanding what data is being communicated.

Modeling will play a huge role in my classroom.  I really hope to make it central to my students learning experience.  I will definitely encourage students to make representations and revise them.  I will  also encourage students to use multiple forms of representations.  Physical, representational, computational, and mental models all have different affordances and drawbacks.  However they can all be revised and revision is a key part in the modeling process.  Having different model types will allow for rich discussion about concepts and let students explore science in unique ways.  Although in the traditional approach of teaching students can still acquire knowledge, modeling really lets students engage in actual scientific practices and I feel they will get a lot more out of it.

How many revisions are necessary to make before you move on to new content?

If everyone creates individual unique models for every concept, how will you as a teacher address all of them?

4/13 David B Scientific LiIteracy and Modeling

     Scientific literacy contains multiple components of thought and production. First, scientific literacy is the ability to explain, argue and revise concepts. This includes elaboration of vocabulary building into the relationships that exist in and between concepts and theories. Scientific literacy for example, may be described as exploring electron orbitals and detailing the relationships the nucleus of an atom has with the electrons and their orbital shells. Then, being scientifically literate also includes using higher level thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation and synthesis in discussion or writing and are especially critical during the revision process. Finally, scientific literacy involves making observations and then planning, organizing and testing hypotheses. These parts of scientific literacy are fluid in a process of engaging in science and science practices. Effective and efficient investigation or inquiry may also be described as scientific literacy.

     Media and representations are tools and resources for creating scientific literacy. These tools allow students to interact and engage in the relationships between parts of a concept. A better understanding of the relationships that exist may build vocabulary but will also offer ways that students may describe concepts during the explanation portion of scientific literacy. Also, media and representations allow students to cite these things as evidence during the defense of explanation and during the revision process. These tools may be used as an aid during investigation or inquiry.

     Modeling in my class will serve as a means to build scientific literacy. Students will engage in models to create a better understanding of the relationships that exist in concepts and theories. Modeling may also be used as a means to investigate a thought or idea. Students will use models as activities then discuss what they observed. Students will apply these observations through higher level thinking skills in the defense of concepts and the revision process. Modeling will be a practice that is engaged in throughout the course. Students will have many opportunities to engage in this practice and then hold discussions afterwards both in small groups and as a whole class. The type of models and representations used depends on the type of school district and classroom where I teach. All classrooms will allow opportunities for cooperative learning that will be used in modeling.

4/12 Steve: Literacy in the classroom

• What is scientific literacy? Scientific literacy is the knowledge necessary to negotiate the mangle of science.  Science is complex, and there are many processes, customs, and terms that govern the “doing” of science.  Once who is scientifically literate know how and when to apply these many processes, customs, and terms when investigating a scientific phenomenon.   
• What are the roles of media and representations in scientific literacy?  Many scientific advancements are of interest to the general public.  This can be for many reasons: business, health, consumerism, etc.  Media has the difficult job of communicating scientific information to others in a clear and informative way.  Different forms of media are better for different scientific information.  Graphs show quantitative data well. Videos show processes and can animate complex motions.  Diagrams show layout and snapshots of events.  All of these different forms of media are important to scientific literacy.  It is not enough to know how to make and interpret all the different forms of media, one must also know which to select to communicate optimally.  This makes it a difficult task for educators of scientific literacy because representing science is a very complex task.  Furthermore, scientific facts can be manipulated by clever representations to trick people, and understanding media well enough to catch those tricks takes a lot of hard work.     
• What role will modeling play in your classroom?  Modeling will have a big role in my classroom.  I will be teaching engineering and physics, so many topics will be ripe for modeling.  I intend to use some agent based modeling program for many of the force and motion concepts.  Computer models are a great way for students to understand the relationship between forces and motion.  Computer modeling allows students to conduct a wide variety of experiments quickly and inexpensively.  I really like what the article for this class said about how the most important thing for modeling is to have students make connections between the different aspects of a phenomenon like the graphs, the simulation, and real life.  I want to make sure to include those kind of discussions in my classes next year.
• Questions:
• Can we assemble a list of all the great modeling online resources / games out there in class?  This class’s article mentioned several of them but are there others we should know about? 
• How often should real-world demonstrations / labs be included to build student trust in the simulations?  

4/13 Dan - Modeling and Scientific Literacy

What is scientific literacy?
To me, scientific literacy is the knowledge and the ability to use scientific concepts and processes. That includes (but is not necessarily limited to) the ability to ask questions that can be answered empirically, identify variables that can be isolated, make predictions about the effect of relationships between variables, design experiments to test these predictions, communicate the results of those experiments, and critique others work.

What are the roles of media and representations in scientific literacy?
Science is often working to understand or investigate aspects of our world that are complex and hard to observe with our own senses. Using media and different representations in classrooms, like computational or physical modeling, offers and avenue to explore the fundamentals of these aspects. Whether it is through games, as described in the reading for this week, or a simple diagram, using different media and representations gives students access to complex topics and ideas in ways that are relatable and engaging. When used appropriately, they can also make clear the connections between the concepts that students are learning intuitively and the specific language used throughout the scientific community. This is an important aspect of scientific literacy.

What role will modeling play in your classroom?As I have said before, it is hard to project how significant a role modeling will have in my classroom. I think a lot of that answer depends on the context of my school and classroom, wherever that will be. I can say, however, that modeling will be a part of my classroom to whatever extent I am able to build it in. Through the readings and discussion in this course, I have come to see how we can use this approach to not only teach students important information in more meaningful ways, but also to help them understand that science is not just a body of information. It is a set of practices, a way of thinking, that is constantly evolving as it uncovers new information. It is interactive and dynamic. That is not something that can be learned through definitions and memorization. It has to be put into practice. Asking students to develop, compare, and critique models as a way of predicting and testing is an engaging way to help them understand that difference.

4/6 Jenna - Modeling Teachers' Perspectives on Implementation

The three articles for this week are compelling cases for modeling in science classrooms. They talk about modeling as engaging students in a task, increasing student interest and discussion, and improving scientific questioning. Although they talk mostly of using models to teach mechanics and assessing students with the Force Concept Inventory, I think that the more important learning that is going on occurs in the metacognitive domain. Many of the authors talk about how they and their students co-construct what meaningful data and experimental design looks like, develop multiple representations of systems, and use Socratic dialogue to push thinking further. As skills develop, students have more agency in constructing these meanings on their own. While the authors concede that they do not cover as much content in their courses, the metacognitive skills they cultivate in students through modeling activities have universal power, and are arguably more important than the content.

I thought that the articles provided a good overview of the affordances and constrains of modeling instruction that we have been discussing all semester. We've expressed our concern over time limitations, content coverage, accountability to standards, and student fluency with practices and technology. Braunschweig's article was pretty thorough at situating these concerns, but his inclusion of student reflections highlighted why modeling is such an important design choice for science instruction. However, I also felt that these testimonials were a bit stiff and generic; honestly, I felt like they sounded like advertisements, aimed at teachers who were on the fence about using modeling.

I'm not sure if I'll be teaching in a science classroom in the future, but I do see modeling as having a large role in my future work in Vanderbilt's PhD program as I work on SURGE Symbolic. In this game, students create and manipulate multiple representations of motion as they move an avatar across their screen. I'll be interesting in seeing how students move between representations as they use the game and how other modeling activities and questioning discussions are used to support learning in classrooms. The articles for this week all mentioned white-boarding as opportunities for students to present their models and arguments to the class; I'm curious how these opportunities can be embedding in a modeling game.

• In the articles, scientific modeling is a collaborative endeavor: students work in groups to design experiments, discuss arguments, and critique presentations, and the teacher facilitates these processes. Could these processes be done on one's own (i.e., can students work on scientific modeling individually, with the same success)?  
• These articles don't seem to use programming for modeling, and only vaguely mention computational models in relation to creating mathematical models. How do you see coding and/or graph-fitting at work in your future practice?

4/6 Joey: Building Block (classes) and Modeling

I thought the readings were really insightful, especially some of the quotes from students in regards to why they enjoyed modeling better than traditional lab work.  The research and test score improvement seen with modeling was exciting for me because I have never really seen statistics like that before.  One thing I didn’t really think of before reading these articles was the idea of how block classes can benefit the modeling process.  In East Nashville they do block scheduling and that is where I work now so it is very relevant.  One major affordance of modeling in conjunction with block classes is that there is more continuity and less interruptions between concepts and lab work.  The readings highlighted how beneficial it is for students to be able to discuss ideas and come up with their own idea about how to investigate scientific phenomena, which is right on point with the readings we have had thus far.  Even the students were pushing back on the idea of a prescription lab where students follow written instructions and fill out worksheets.  The students seemed to really enjoy the inquiry and freedom that came with modeling as it gave them more ownership of the materials.  I really like the testimonials and think I will use the whiteboards or something similar to get students discussing, sharing, presenting, and revising ideas.  I do wonder how difficult it is to develop a feel for how to lead a Socratic discussion effectively? Also,  Pacing seems like it might be difficult too as there are so many different discussions and ways class can go.  How do you explore everyone’s ideas while making sure to cover the necessary content?