Let’s stop “doing science”!

• In what ways would you teach an LfU-based activity to explore a concept in math or science? Draw on LfU and My World scholarship to support your pedagogical directions. Given its social and cognitive affordances, extend the discussion by describing how the activity and roles of the teacher and students are aligned with LfU principles.

One of the resources that I had recently come across, with the help of a classmate in this class, was also mentioned in lesson 3 on canvas, realworldmath.org. It is a great resource to take learning outside of the classroom and falls right in line with Lfu principles. This website provides certain lessons and activities to help with the delivery of content and is embedded with inquiry in it. I would use the lesson on Measurements for grade 8 students to understand Surface area unit of their curriculum.

This lesson on Measurements on realworldmath.org fulfils the three steps of Lfu model listed by Edelson in her article. “The goal of the Lfu model is to overcome the inert knowledge problem by describing how learning activities can foster useful conceptual understanding that will be available to the learner when it is relevant” (Edelson, 2001, pg. 356). This lesson on Measurements, along with the other lessons on realworldmath.org, help students overcome the inert knowledge problem by creating an atmosphere for students to see how useful this learning can be. First step that is described in Edelson’s article is to motivate. Using the lesson on Measurements- first example of complex area will motivate my students to ask themselves, what would the surface area of a complex area like this would look like. My students will be curious about finding area of surfaces that are not just one shape (a square, rectangle, triangle) but a combination of shapes. My students will only have knowledge of how to find surface area of basic shapes before looking at this problem. At this point, students will be asked to observe and try to see if it is possible to find area of a surface that is not explicit ally a shape that they can name. This will fall under the second step of Lfu of constructing knowledge. After this inquiry-based task, students will receive direct communication to help them reach the solution; where the students who did not figure out on their will be assisted with realizing that it is a combination of squares and rectangles. The third step of Lfu says that students should be able to apply their knowledge, which students will do at this point and divide this shape into squares and rectangles and find the surface area for themselves. Students will be asked to reflect on this problem in the end where students will be expected to have understood that the area of a surface can be determined if the surface can be divided into shapes that we know of.

“If we conceive of both science and learning as social endeavors with shared intellectual ownership, how should we assess students’ progress toward “thinking like scientists”, or “doing science”? (Radinsky, Oliva, & Alamar, 2010, pg. 620). This quote triggered a memory in my memory-lane where I was observing an elementary school teacher before doing my teaching degree to get some volunteer hours in a classroom. She was a great teacher with great teaching techniques but I still remember her using the words, “put your math away now, we are going to ‘do science’ now”. I remember these words did not settle well with me back then but I did not know what was so wrong with saying “do science now”. “In traditional science classrooms, content and inquiry skills are taught separately through separate learning activities” (Edelson, 2001, pg. 356).

Edelson did an amazing job at defending today’s science teachers feeling torn apart with the amount of pressure put on them from the administration to incorporate technology and inquiry while delivering a high density of content in a classroom; and all of that without any real support to help teachers achieve all of this. Edelson makes a great point by noting that traditional science teachers think that content and inquiry skills must be taught separately, which is why they would refer to “thinking like scientists” as “doing science”, in my opinion. ‘Doing science’ indicates that a student must ‘do science’ for the given period of time and then forget about it once they leave the classroom, leave the learning behind because that is where they ‘do science’. On the contrary, when the students are motivated to “think like scientists”, they are forced to take that with them outside of classroom because it becomes a part of their thinking process. We need our students to take learning outside of the classroom, virtually and physically. Lfu is a great teaching framework that provides us with tools that can help teachers encourage students to take their learning outside of the classroom.

Edelson, D.C. (2001). Learning-for-use: A framework for the design of technology-supported inquiry activities. Journal of Research in Science Teaching,38(3), 355-385

Radinsky, J., Oliva, S., & Alamar, K. (2009). Camila, the earth, and the sun: Constructing an idea as shared intellectual property. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(6), 619-642.