Philosophy of Teaching Science
As someone who is about to embark on a career of teaching science, I find it useful to stop for a moment and consider some of the topics that have graced newspaper headlines in recent weeks. To name a few: global warming, steroid use by athletes, bioterrorism, the geography of one of Saturn’s moons, bird flu, and the list goes on. Why then, should students be taught science? Certainly, we can hope that some students will be inspired to take on science as a career. However, realistically, the majority of our students probably will not pursue this path. Instead, what we can be sure of is that all of our students will live in a world in which science plays an integral role in daily life. By teaching students science, we will be equipping them with the knowledge and skills needed to develop into scientifically literate adults, people capable of thinking critically about the scientific issues facing the world both today and in the future.
If science is indeed an important part of education, then what is the best way to present science to students? What skills and dispositions must a science teacher have to be effective? Finally, how can we assess the progress a teacher has made in guiding her students towards scientific literacy?
Above all, I believe that an effective science teacher must be passionate about the natural world, and excited about sharing her passion with students. A teacher who does not find science fascinating, can never expect to create a classroom filled with the energy and enthusiasm needed to foster student interest and discovery. A good science teacher should model the process of life-long learning. Science is a constantly changing discipline. Thus, to be successful, a teacher must constantly explore new ideas in science and think about ways to bring those concepts to life for her students. She should read widely and engage her students in discussions of current events relating to the scientific world. When I look back on my own education, I am grateful that a number of my former science teachers made it a point to get us reading about and discussing modern developments in science. This emphasis that they placed on the impacts science has on modern society really helped make the subject come alive for me.
In addition to being passionate, an effective science teacher must also be skilled at bringing lessons to life for her students. Students need to be provided with a base reservoir of facts and scientific concepts. However, they also need to get experience actually “doing” science. Science is a process-based pursuit. In real life, scientists are constantly asking questions, researching ideas, designing experiments, evaluating the results of their experiments and using the information they have gained to ask yet more questions. To really learn about science, students need to get practice asking questions, making hypotheses and carrying out experiments. Thus, to be effective, a teacher must be thoughtful about the lessons and labs she uses. She should design labs that will give her students the sensation of discovery, and she should also sometimes provide students with the opportunity to design experiments for themselves. Furthermore, I believe that it is important for students to get practice working with partners on lab exercises. These days, science is a group effort. Professional scientists almost always work as members of teams. Thus, it is important for students to learn how to work well together.
To bring science to life, it is important that teachers engage their students in a variety of activities that showcase how science is relevant to the real world. One of my most memorable field trips from high school involved visiting an island in the Chesapeake Bay with my AP Biology class. There we had the chance to learn about ecology up close. We interacted with scientists and people who depended on the Bay for their livelihood. We even got to go fishing! I think that by taking us out into nature to see science at work, my teacher really made us appreciate the topics that we were learning about in class. Science really is everywhere, though many students may not think about how many of their daily activities involve it.
A frequent conclusion among students is that science is a difficult subject, and not worth the effort it would take to learn it well. Thus, an important job of science teachers it to make students aware that while science may be difficult, it is also highly relevant to their lives and thus worth the time and effort needed to master it. I believe that all students can succeed in science, but to do so, they need support and individual attention from teachers. Although it may be challenging to achieve with large classes and a complex curriculum to cover, teachers should strive to incorporate personalized instruction into their classes. This can be done by scheduling conferences with students to discuss their progress, and by offering students the opportunity to individualize their educations through open-ended assignments and projects.
Because individual students may learn in different ways, it is important to provide a class with a diversity of learning experiences. Along with labs, field trips, and lectures, a science teacher should also get her students reading and writing about science on a regular basis. Rather than solely focusing on the textbook, I think that students should be provided with a large variety of science texts to read. Examples might include: popular books relating to topics being studied, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, and perhaps even professional journal articles for more advanced classes. A good science teacher should also get her students writing about science. She should teach them how to write as scientists (a kind of technical writing that most students will not learn in English classes), giving them practice writing lab reports, summaries of what they are learning, and longer research papers. Finally, in addition to using a variety of teaching methods in her own classroom, a science teacher should also be open to working with colleagues in other disciplines to develop integrative units. Many science topics can easily be tied to math, art, history and literature, and units incorporating multiple subjects are likely to seem more meaningful to students.
All the passion and creativity in the world will not result in successful learning unless students are able to feel both physically and emotionally safe in the classroom. Therefore, it is essential that a science teacher be foremost concerned with creating a healthy learning environment for her students. She must be able to manage student behavior so that no one in her class feels bullied or threatened. Also, she must encourage students to present ideas and ask questions, without fear that their thoughts will be looked down on. Science teachers also have the unique concern of keeping their students safe during laboratory exercises. A successful science teacher will train her students in proper lab safety techniques, such as wearing gloves and goggles when using chemicals, and how to properly use razor blades and Bunsen burners.
Finally, a science teacher must be able to effectively assess student progress, and use that assessment to better target her teaching to meet each student’s needs. Teachers should employ a variety of assessment methods, including portfolios, individual conferences and, of course, tests. When assessing student work, an effective science teacher will offer both positive feedback and constructive criticism. When working on projects, professional scientists are continuously asking for feedback from colleagues and then revising their work. With this in mind, a science teacher should ask students to critically think about their own work and the work of their peers. She should also sometimes offer students the opportunity to revise their assignments. In addition to using effective assessment techniques when looking at student assignments, a teacher must also be self-reflective. She should be open to feedback from both students and colleagues, and be constantly working to improve her lessons so as to foster greater student achievement.
I think that one of the primary goals of science education should be to get students to look at the world in new ways. I like the thought that by learning about how the world works, students may approach it differently. For example, when walking to school, a student who has just taken biology may look at a tree and suddenly see not just a tree but rather an ecosystem. Perhaps the student will start to contemplate the various organisms that live in and on the tree: mycorrhizal fungi that live in symbiosis with its roots, birds that nest in its branches, insects that live in its bark. I think that one way teachers can know that they are successfully opening up the world of science to students, is if students start noticing and asking questions about the natural world and our interactions with it.
The greatest thing that a science teacher can do is to give her students the ability to be informed thinkers and make informed choices. What students learn about genetics in introductory biology may give them the knowledge base that they need to understand topics such as cloning, genetic testing, and genetic engineering, all things those students might have to think about later in life, be it for personal reasons, or because they want to understand issues that they can influence through voting. Similarly, what students learn in earth science, will give them a good background from which to contemplate important topics such as global warming and resource consumption.
There are some ways that teachers can tell if they are successfully bringing science to life for their students. One way, is to listen carefully to the questions that students ask over the course of a year, observing if there is an increase in complexity of thought. Similarly, by starting a discussion of current events in science near the end of the school year, and discovering that students have far more to say about topics then they did at the beginning of the year, a teacher will be able to see that her students have progressed in their critical thinking skills.
Finally, what students gain from a good science course should stay with them long after the class is over. When I become a teacher, I do not expect that, once they leave my class, most of my students will remember the tiny details of the concepts I have taught. However, what I do hope is that they will remember the big picture: the major themes and governing principles of science, and the process of scientific inquiry. With this backbone of scientific knowledge, I think that students will be well prepared to evaluate what they read and hear about, think critically about arguments presented to them, and seek out further information when they face questions about the scientific world. In other words, I hope that I can give my students the skills they will need to continue thinking and learning throughout their lives. For science teachers, or really for all teachers, I think that this should be the ultimate goal.