I think the issue of "coverage" is most interesting here. Regardless of the methods used to teach science, shoudl teachers spend more time of fewer areas of content or should they spend less time on more content. In the case of SHS, it seems the science courses spend more time on fewer problems/ideas in science.
There's a tradeoff; the in-depth exposure probably has more influence on students' long-term memory, but there's an increased chance students completely miss out on some important ideas.
My sense is that professionals or college profs in the specific domains are best qualified to answer that question. What do students need to know before going off to college? How many components of a domain do students necessarily need exposure to before entering college? Is it more important that they know fewer components *very* well?
I'm struggling with this issue in my ed psych. class for teachers this semester. We are covering over a dozen chapters that each contain dozens of ideas in the course of the year, and I worry that as a result they will remember very little one year from now. I'm doing the best I can to give them practice using these ideas, but it's hard work. I often wonder if choosing four or five important ideas and spending 4-5 lessons on each would be a more productive use of time.
I often wonder if choosing four or five important ideas and spending 4-5 lessons on each would be a more productive use of time.
Actually, this is where I think the skills of the teacher can become very critical to advancing in-depth understanding. You know the material that needs to be covered to give your students the breadth required so it becomes very important for you to find a way, some way, any way, of using present lessons and material to reinforce the material that you've already covered. If you're looking at experimental design of pyschology then contrast why the design of this lesson is different from the one of last weeks lesson. Certainly, this is a lot of work and it is easier to cover the material required for breadth but by exercising some brain sweat you can impart the lesson while also reinforcing a larger lesson, or pattern, or refining their skills at analysis.
The problem with taking on only 4-5 topics and doing them in depth is that the student arrives at the next level completely unaware of other, equally relevant, topics.
Yes, and *which* 4-5 topics to choose is a subjective judgment. I could come up with a list of five things teachers should know about psychology, for example, but I'm sure my list would look very different from many others' list.
Similarly, ten high school science teachers might come up with ten different lists of five things their students should know about chemistry.
The ideas you just described, by the way, are in line with what I'm thinking at the moment. I tend to latch on to one or two big ideas every few weeks and try to give the students practice thinking about these ideas in relation to the new information that we discuss during each lesson. The goal is that they get exposure to the hundreds of research findings/theories I have to discuss and at the same time the students have many opportunities to master some particular skills and knowledge that I think are important. I don't know that I do a good job of this, but it's something...
The problem, as I see it, is that high school students have so much to learn, that it really is a waste of time for them to "discover" some knowledge in depth. Their time is better spent getting overview knowledge of all of the things that they don't know. They're simply not intellectually prepared to do worthwhile in-depth study, and the opportunity cost of embarking on such a project means that a lot of breadth get's neglected.
Now, for a class like you're teaching, well you're the teacher so you're the one who has command of the breadth of material and you have a pretty good idea how the different aspects all relate to one another, kind of like a puzzle. The students are still unaware of the puzzle boundaries. So, are the students really prepared to "discover" anything worthwhile about the indiviudal pieces? If it's an intro course, then I contend that they're not. However, a skill that they really need to develop is that which underlies synthesis - you can train your students to see how the pieces fit together into relationships. This is what I'm saying and what you're trying to do. They get the breadth of instruction that they require, but because they're ill-equipped to do in-depth work they instead concentrate on understanding the breadth while also seeing the inter-relationship. This training of the mind will serve them well in the long run.
The trick for the teacher is to not skimp on the breadth of instruction, but to find a way to convey that information but doing so in a fashion that serves an auxiliary purpose - kill two birds with one stone. You can't take time away from breadth instruction in order to explain the inter-relationship of the disparate topics to each other. You have to reinforce both purposes with the same exposition.
I seriously doubt the high school faculty is doing this. Rather, I get the impression that they're shortchanging students on a vast amount of overview knowledge and instead concentrating on some topics, but because of student shortcomings, what the students gain will be very costly in terms of time and effort and which could be gained with much less cost later in the student's academic careers. The opportunity cost here is too severe, in my opinion.
And, almost by definition, high school level course are intro courses -- earth science, biology, chemistry, physics. Students come in with almost no domain knowledge in any of these courses. Fortunately, they will be repeated again at the undergrad level for BS majors, but even at that level the lab component s are more lessons in being able to follow scripted lessons than conduct actual science experiments.
It's not a matter of direct instruction versus activity instruction. Science requires both. It's a question of balance and coverage. Kids don't become scientists just by memorizing textbooks and listening to lectures.
And, they certainly don't become scientists by following someone's pre-scripted activity with the minimal domain knowledge they possess. You've given a false dilemma -- DI is hardly about memorizing textbooks. DI is, however, about automaticity. Not recognizing the difference and why automaticity is so important to future academic success tells me a lot about why you have a "activity-based" bias. We would be in agreement if activity based science courses led to automaticity in foundational domain knowledge, but by their very nature (the trade-off Chris C alludes to) they frequently don't.
Likewise, they don't know enough to design studies and analyze results without looking at material in text books and listening to lectures. Science requires both.
At some point in their science careers this will be true; however, the prerequiaite is ufficient domain knowledge. At some point students have acquired enough so that what was once fun diversions can now be benefitted from for learning the hands on part of the scientific method.
The DI people have lots of studies with a videodisc science program they developed which had little to no hands-on activities. When compared to students in a traditional curriculum (more hands on) and inquiry curriculum (lots of hands on), the videodisc students always came out on top. In many cases, the lower half of the videodisc studnets outperformed the upper half of the more hands-on students.
So let's pretend we know for a certainly that using instructional time playing with hands-on activities (necessarily at the expense of more direect instructional time) is in any way beneficial to novices.
I would be as skeptical of a science curriculum that minimized lab work as I am of one that does nothing but lab work.
Yes, but then again you are hardly a novice now are you. You are making the same classic mistake that almost all modern educators make. You are basing your analysis on the opinion of an expert (yourself) with lots of domain knowledge who is not the intended audience of the curriculum.
So, if we wanted to teach a bunch of experts intro level science, I'd agree with you -- lab it up. However, teaching novices is an entirely different situation.
And with all due respect, as far as I know, neither Chris C or Jenny D has ever developed an instructional program that was effective in teaching science to low performing and average students (teaching smart kids is much more permissive). That's where the rubber hits the road. In contrast, the DI people are one of the few that have been able to teach novices effectively on a consistent basis. They may not have proven the answer quite yet, but at least they got the question right -- which is what science is all about.
Two thoughts on this after judging a high school science fair last weekend.
1. Several of the judges kept using the term "demonstration" to distinguish between hypothesis testing and doing a test where the result was already known (no real hypothesis expect that the world works the way it works). I wonder how many of the "hands-on" and "teamwork projects" at the SHS science is really a series of demonstrations.
2. Another judge who is a biology professor was discussing how her undergraduates students did not want to do any field work and that many of them actually did not like touching plants or animals or anything considered "dirty." I wonder if a student can get through the large high school without touching any plants or biological samples or what would be the difference between the LHS and the SHS.
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