Yesterday, at an educational training, I sat down to lunch with a woman in charge of a large Head Start program in the Pacific Northwest.  Through our small talk, she learned that I had been a secondary science teacher for six years, and then informed me that her program was going to focus on science during the next school year.  I was excited to think of the possibilities of an early-childhood education program with a science focus and listened as she expressed concern that she hadn’t yet managed to convince her staff of the value of a science-focus.  Lunch ended before we could finish our conversation, but I’m still thinking about it a day later.

Obviously I am biased, but I am a strong advocate of a scientific (in the sense of “occupied or concerned with science”) approach to teaching at all levels.  My reasoning for a scientific approach is not because I have complete faith in the primacy of the scientific method as a way knowing, but because I believe science (in its broadest sense as “systematized knowledge in general” or “knowledge gained by systematic study”) to be an interdisciplinary study.  Art, Music, Language, Literature, the various Social Sciences, and Mathematics would benefit from what I would term, a scientific approach to teaching, or perhaps, a scientific approach to curriculum.

Below I share what I believe are the crucial components to a “scientific approach to teaching”.

1. Foster a sense of wonder

I would challenge all educators to become familiar with Rachel Carson’s short work, The Sense of Wonder.  All science, all true knowledge and understanding, begins with a sense of wonder, an intense curiosity about “why” and “how”.  Too often, our teaching at all levels focuses on the “who, what, and where” of the world around us and treats the potentially awe-inspiring matters of “why” and “how” as simply another “what” to memorize.    A scientific approach to teaching encourages learners to wonder about “why” and “how”.

2. Encourage observation

A sense of wonder is grounded in a keen awareness of one’s surroundings.  Scientific knowledge is based in empirical data, data gathered from experience and observation.  Encourage learners to attend to details and use their senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell whenever appropriate.  Challenge learners to record these details qualitatively and quantitatively.  A scientific approach to teaching gives learners many appropriate opportunities to use their senses and record their observations.

3.  Push for analysis

Wonder grows with understanding and understanding comes of analysis.  Quantitative analysis is the heart of much of what we traditionally consider the realm of science and mathematics.  Quantative analysis also reaches deep into the realms of the social sciences, of economics, psychology, sociology, and many others.  But qualitative analysis is also valid; it has a place in the sciences, the social sciences, and is especially important in the arts and literature.  Provide time for learners to revisit their observations and search for patterns, in whatever form they may take.  Push learners classify, connect, and count.  A scientific approach to teaching pushes learners to seek for patterns.

4. Require communication

Like most things in life, wonder is best appreciated when shared.  Our languages provide us with means of communication, but human language is far from our sole source of expression.  Prod learners toward precision in their descriptions of the world around them and the findings of their analyses.  But also instruct learners on the use of ambiguity in the creative expression of emotion and personal experiences.  A scientific approach to teacher requires learners to communicate their learning.

I see a scientific approach to teaching as a way to guide learners in the process of transforming the concrete objects and artifacts in the world around them into the abstract concepts that inhabit the human mind.  Each step in the process is crucial.  Without a sense of wonder, the learner will have no desire to continue the journey.  If a teacher fails to take the time to sufficiently ground the learner in concrete observation, the learner will be lost in unrecognizable terrain.  The skills of analysis are what will enable learners to chart future courses for independent learning, while the powers of clear communication and creative expression are what will bind the learner to the rest of the human race.

So how about it?  Do you agree, disagree?  What would a scientific approach to teaching look like in a Pre-K science lesson or  a college art history class?  I’d love to know what others think.

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This past week I held Skype calls with 14 out of 16 of the students enrolled in my online “Teaching with Technology” course.  I have two more scheduled for next week.  I wanted to have a video call over Skype with each student early in the course for several reasons.

1. Since I grade on a contract system, I like to have individual conferences with my students to clarify course expectations.  A video call is the best option I have in an Internet course.
2. I’m trying to expose my students to as many free tools as possible, when they are appropriate to course goals.  Skype seemed a natural fit for hosting a 2-way video call.
3. I really want to see my student’s faces at least once.

Today I made a second response to a commenter on this post. I’d been meaning to respond to the post for at least a week, but since I haven’t been very active with blogging lately, I hadn’t gotten around to it. The comment challenge finally gave me motivation.

In my comment to Sameer, I recommended another blogger as resource to offer suggestions about blog discussions. However, I want to respond a little more in a post. My personal experience running a “blog discussion” in class comes from last semester when I set up a class blog for my Teaching with Technology course. I used the blog for two class discussions, one on internet safety and one on copyright issues. I felt a class blog discussion would be an appropriate approach for a number of reasons.

1. It extended class discussion outside of class.
2. It ensured that every student participated in the discussion.
3. I didn’t have to spend time teaching my students the conventions of threaded discussions (seriously, my students in the fall didn’t do well with threaded discussions).
4. Multiple sections of students could participate in the same discussion.
5. It modeled the use of a instructional technology that they could employ in their future classrooms.

To manage the discussion, I posted a prompt on the topic with links to certain reading materials. Then I required each student to read the prompts and the associated materials and post a response by midweek. Then I required students to revisit the conversation the day before class and respond to at least one classmate’s comment. Everyone made at least one post and the majority of students managed to make both posts. I felt that, on the whole, the quality of student discussion was good and I would use the tool again. If you are interested, you can see the discussions here and here.

Here is another post from my forgotten blog. This is probably the most important thing I learned from my experience in Baltimore, maybe even in my entire teaching career.

In Baltimore, at least when I taught there, middle school students had to apply to high school. The best students were skimmed by the “city-wide high schools” and the rest were relegated to zone schools. At the zone schools the drop out rates were so high that the freshman classes are larger than the sophomore, junior, and senior classes combined.

For my eighth graders, the period between applying for high school and receiving their acceptance letters was a time of terrible anticipation. During this time, a student of mine, “Suzie”, announced to her class that she had been accepted to Baltimore City College, one of the best of the city-wide schools, but that she wasn’t going. Knowing Suzie’s grades and test scores, I recognized her announcement as an attempt to save face, but smiled encouragingly. However, James began to lecture her about the importance of an education; telling her she had to go. “If I got into City,” he said, “I’d bust my work.” Suzie quickly admitted that she hadn’t been accepted at city, though she had gotten into one of the less competitive city-wides. The class went back to work, but that moment stayed with me. It wasn’t until then that I realized that James, despite appearances, valued education highly, but saw it as an unattainable goal.

I just finished reading “Self-Efficacy”, an article by Albert Bandura. The article is more real to me because I have known James. “There are countless attractive options people do not pursue because they judge they lack the capabilities [I would add opportunities] for them.” This is a sad reality for inner-city children. I believe one of the most important ideas with which we can equip our children, either as parents or as a society, is a sense of self-efficacy.

Fortunately for James, one of our administrators took him under her wing and helped him to transfer from the zone high school to a city wide after ninth grade. When I last saw him, he was on the football team and planned to be the first in his family to graduate high school. I’ve lost track of him, but I hope he made it.

Today I commented on a blog post about the sad state of education in America. I began my career as an educator in Baltimore City as a member of the Teach for America 1998 Corps. Baltimore, with a graduation rate of only 38.5% is surely one of the saddest educational systems in the nation. I fulfilled my two year commitment, worked as hard as I could to instill high expectations, and left feeling inadequate to the task.

I wrote the following post nearly a year ago on the first blog I ever tried to keep. I suspect it has never been read before, and today it felt relevant to me.

The quote above made me think of my first placement as a teacher. I mentioned a few posts back that I am an alumna of the Teach for America program, selected largely because of my success as a student. By the time I graduated university, I was no longer an academic attention-seeker; I preferred to sit quietly and go unnoticed in the back row of any lecture hall. Still, I was diligent with a strong self-image and had considerable difficulty in my first placement as an 8th grade physical science teacher in inner-city Baltimore. I was a much better teacher my second year than my first, but I still felt inadequate.

Linda Darling-Hammond and others have criticized TFA for placing unqualified teachers in the classrooms that need qualified teachers the most. There is some truth to this criticism; I admit that I was not “highly qualified” to teach in an inner city school. However, the uglier truth is that the certified teacher who worked in my classroom before me had stopped teaching. Every day students came to her class to watch movies, usually R rated. Unqualified though I was, I was better than the alternative, and science test scores went up both years that I taught there.

Darling-Hammond argues that teacher quality is the most important variable in the education production function and tends to define teacher quality as pedagogical content knowledge. In her studies, she uses Praxis test scores, education courses, certification or some combination of these variables to serve as proxy variables for teacher quality. I passed the Praxis, even the pedagogy section, without ever having taken an education course, which lead me to suspect that there was either a flaw in the test or that value of education courses was highly overrated. Based on my personal experience, I think both explanations have value. As soon as I started teaching, I enrolled in a graduate program in Curriculum and Instruction. Some of the courses were helpful and all of them were easy. I felt that the skills that I learned in my courses could have been taught on the job in a good professional development workshop.

One of the most pivotal moments in my teacher training came when I was being observed during my first year teaching. One of my instructors was sitting in the back of my classroom, observing my lesson when the fire alarm went off. She hurriedly packed her belongings and then stared at me aghast as I continued teaching my lesson without interruption. I really believe that she thought I was oblivious and that I would allow my students to be consumed by flames. I watched for her confused reaction when the announcement that my students and I knew would come, came,”Please disregard the fire alarm.” This scenario repeated itself, as it usually did, three or four times during the course of my 55 minute lesson. At the end of my lesson, my instructor asked if this often happened. “Almost daily,” I replied. She looked at me, horrified, and asked, “How can you teach like this?” I remember thinking, “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching me?”

As you might imagine, I don’t have a lot of confidence in traditional teacher training programs.

I am working on a PhD in Instructional Psychology and Technology. Technology and Psychology don’t always seem to have a lot to do with one another, but sometimes the connection between the two seems a little more clear. I had an experience this week that made me consider the role of technology in motivation.

This past week I witnessed the most appalling display of grade-grubbing that I have every seen. Three students came to my department’s graduate student lab to confront their teacher about an assignment for which they had received 75% of the points available. Their instructor had offered them the opportunity to revise the assignment, but instead, the three students took time to plan their argument for full credit on the assignment. Their tone of voice toward their instructor was disrespectful. Our department’s grad lab serves as a common office for all graduate student instructors in the department so I was there for the entire, ugly incident.

The instructor was obviously taken aback by the students’ reactions, but she responded calmly and respectfully to their arguments. Eventually, she asked the students, “Do you honestly feel you deserve full credit for this assignment?” The most vocal student hesitated for a split second , ” . . . Well, in any other class . . . “, before remembering her argument, which included three parts, none of which I found to be compelling reasons to give them full credit.

1. They had met minimum project requirements

2. They had decided to put less effort into the assignment because they were busy with other classes

3. The content of the class (Educational Technology) wasn’t important to know

Frankly, I wanted to tell them how obnoxious their behavior was and ask for their names so that I could make sure they never teach my children. Someday, during a parent conference perhaps, karma will repay them for the disrespect they showed their instructor, but I worry about the attitude toward learning that they will teach their students.

One of the two courses that I teach for the department is Educational Psychology and this week’s topic just happens to be motivation. I doubt the students in question would be able to recognize the irony of displaying such an obvious performance goal orientation in a “mastery” course. Additionally, I fear that extrinsic motivation is widespread among teacher candidates and I worry that extrinsically motivated teachers will result in even more extrinsically motivated students.

I’m frustrated that the grade-grubbers felt that educational technology wasn’t important to know because I believe that technology can play an important role in motivating students to learn. Usually when people talk about technology and motivation, they are referring to a novelty effect, that students become more interested in learning tasks because the technology being used is an exciting change from the normal routine. This isn’t the type of motivation that I mean.

The real benefit of educational technology lies in its ability to change the process of learning. By teaching students to use technology to answer their own questions, we can encourage a deep rather than a surface-level approach to learning. Many advocates of educational technology play the role of apologists and perpetuate the idea that technology is “just a tool” to be employed to learn valuable content. True, technology is a tool, but so is English, so is calculus. Some tools have more value than others; Roman numerals have proved less valuable than Arabic numerals. However, the networking technologies available over the Internet are among the more valuable tools available to us. The individual applications (Diigo vs. Del.ico.us, for example) are constantly changing, but I think we should acknowledge that the principles behind these applications are as worthy of instruction as the principles of grammar.

Content can be valuable, but the focus of education shouldn’t be so much about learning content, it should be about learning processes and tools that allow individuals to find, evaluate, use and create content. Maybe then we’d have fewer grade-grubbing students and more lifelong learners.