Evidence Based Science Education

This blog will examine research and evidence as it relates to science education and science education issues. It is an attempt to bring together the science of education and the practice of education.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Active Learning

One of the things that most, if not all research, on education agrees on it is that learning must be active. But what does this mean? How do the revised Colorado science standards encourage active engagement of students?

Active engagement of students means that students have to interact with knowledge in a deep and meaningful way, instead of being the passive recipient of knowledge. For our brains to function best, they must engage new thoughts and ideas within our current knowledge and most importantly make connections to that knowledge. This is where active engagement comes in. Does this does not mean that teachers should never give students an answer, have them read from a book or from the web, or lecture? No, these techniques have their place in our schools and classrooms, it is the amount of information the students are supposed to process, how long students are supposed to concentrate, and what you have students do with the knowledge afterward that makes the difference.

Exposing students to an idea or having them hear about an idea does not necessarily engage the brain and make the necessary neural connection for the idea to have meaning and for the idea to be “internalized”. For this to happen students need to time to talk about the idea or to explore the idea further either through a hands-on experience or through a simulation. Then students’ understanding of the idea or concept needs to be challenged with thought provoking questions or situations that challenge the idea. Students need to see evidence that the idea is true or that works in multiple situations. The key is that students must be involved in meaningful ways.

There are many tried and true education techniques that get at active engagement such as inquiry learning, hand on activities, field trips, problem based learning, project based learning, think, pair, share, using essential questions, researching and writing, concept mapping, class discussions and Socratic seminars as well as some new ones like using “clicker” questions in class and computer simulations. Like any education tool or technique there are appropriate and inappropriate uses for any these, and just because you use one of these techniques does not guarantee students are actively engaged.

The new Colorado science standards not only support active learning by students but require students to be actively engaged in meaningful ways to master content. Wording in the evidence outcomes of the standards such as: “Students will develop, communicate, and justify an evidence based explanation...” or “Students will gather, analyze and interpret data on…” require that students have deep understanding of concepts that only comes with active cognitive engagement with those ideas. When students are actively engaged in learning students they use higher order thinking skills and they retain more information. Active engagement make learning more fun so students typically enjoy active engagement cutting down on discipline problems.

No comments:

Post a Comment