I actually found an article by Professor Kruse that I found interesting to read. To read it please click here. In this article I found a lot of the ideas involving Nature of Science (NOS) have some overlap. This article states that "NOS instruction should be both explicit and reflective." I very much agree with this statement because it should be very clear and to the point, but students should also be able to reflect on their learning and the concepts being taught to them. Students must also reflect on their understanding of content. Unless you explicitly explaining the ideas behind NOS, students will not clearly grasp the concept of the ideas of NOS.
Teaching to the Nature of Science is a fairly difficult thing to do, but it benefits students greatly. It will require good teacher planning skills and a lot of effort to keep students actively and mentally engaged. It is well worth the little extra work and effort though.
Another interesting thing to read in this article was a few examples of how this has been used in a middle school classroom. It was interesting to see a few ideas that can be used to get a better understanding of how this can be used in a K-5 classroom like I'm going to be teaching in.
For other journals about NOS, please go to the link above and explore the sites articles.
I don't completely agree with the statement: "Unless you explicitly explaining the ideas behind NOS, students will not clearly grasp the concept of the ideas of NOS." I think you can unintentionally provide students an accurate or inaccurate view about how science works. I think this is especially true when working with younger students. You don't have to explicitly tell students that the nature of science involves collaborative work, adjusting our previous ideas, and does not involve step-by-step procedures. Yet, I belive you do have to actually teach in a manner that promotes an accurate depiction of the nature of science for students to understand. I by no means think that explicitly telling older students is a bad idea--I think reinforcing with explicit language is a good idea.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the point that explicit instruction is necessary for the students to understand the nature of science. Students that are exploring and coming up with ideas about an issue will not inherently tie those actions to what real scientists do. The stereotype of the scientist in the lab mixing things together is embedded into the heads of the students and part of this is driven by television and movies. The "mad scientist" is generally depicted in a white lab coat and has created something that will take over the world. As we have discussed in class, real scientists spend most of their time making observations and then reflecting on them to come up with ideas. If students are not explicitly told how their actions compare to the actions of real scientists, the notion of what real science is will continue to be incorrect.
ReplyDelete