Episode #1 title: UE2 120628 1038 T2 Reflecting on NoS Metacognition Prompts
(Loose) transcript: [00:00:00.00] Michelle: What did you reflect on yesterday?
Joan: I reflected on the B questions, the nature of science.
Michelle: Oh! So did I. Okay. I only got, I didn't do 'em in order.
Joan: I just went down the list on. So I said science is grappling with ideas and understanding in our natural world and we're constructing how energy moves from our cup experiment, what is happening, and how to represent it.
[00:00:26.15] Michelle: I like grappling. Beautiful word. Um, let's see, (reading question:) do you ever feel you're being led to a specific answer? No, absolutely not. We have plenty of time to mull things over, and we revise and doubt and, you know, it's kind of refreshing this year to actually at the end get an answer...
Joan: Yeah.
[00:00:54.27] Michelle:...as opposed to last year.
Joan: Yeah.
Michelle: Um, number one (reading:), how does the work we've done (?)? I said some of the times we're replicating what scientists do. Like yesterday when we did the three probe thing, I thought that that was, you know, we collected data and analyzed and what not. Um, most of the time I feel like it's more of an 'aha' moment. I guess that's scientific, too. More of what, we're focused a little more on the inquiry, discovery-type methods. And then for number two,...
[00:01:37.15] Michelle: (reading:) What role does building the, you know, I said, man, I think that's kind of pivotal.
Joan: I said building a conceptual model helps us understand, step by step, what we are trying to understand. Just thinking through something, oh I said, makes me feel like a scientist.
[00:01:53.27] Michelle: Oh, that's a good one.
Joan: You know, I was thinking, my daughter works, uh, in uh, for Harvard in part of the medical research, and she's on the administrative end of things, but it's, I was thinking it's interesting how much of research is grappling with problems and then just, you know, brainstorming and coming up with ways that they think might help something...
[00:02:20.01] Joan: And then, you know, and, so it's kinda interesting. Because when you said you'd be surprised, you know, like, we're teaching the scientific method, you do this, you do this, you say. They don't really follow that so much, because, especially with, she was, um, uh, part of surgical research, and so a lot of it is discovery while you're, and then they...
[00:02:47.13] Joan:...and trying it out and seeing it, and I know some of it's on rats, but it's a lot of, I have this idea and going and just trying it out and things like that. So it's kind of interesting how the.
Michelle: See I would think at that level if you're medicine and you're Harvard, I would think it would be like, come up with the idea, write a grant to get your funding, and then totally pursue that, and if you get a little offshoot, then I guess that's the next grant.
[00:03:26.12] Joan: Right. Yeah, it's all about grants. That's huge. Yeah. Yeah, and those have been drying up.
Michelle: Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure.
Joan: But it is kinda interesting that I think sometimes what our idea of scientists and what happens is kind of two different things.
[00:03:52.03] Michelle: The stereotype.
Wendy: We want kids to understand the basics of how to ride a horse, and then once they know how to ride the horse, they can go out in the discipline and explore and do things the way they want.
[00:04:00.09] Joan: Well you know now.
Wendy: (inaudible)
Joan: Well but even with the way the MSP is set up, for a while we were just stuck on the scientific method, and now we're going into field studies, we're going into observations, and that's more what the science community would say. That it's all those things, not just that one way of doing things.
Commentary: As with the other episodes I've blogged about today, the episodes in this post were clipped from a longer discussion about the metacognition prompts that the teachers had answered the previous afternoon. Michelle (closest to camera on right), Joan (in middle on right), and Wendy (closest to window on right) do most of the talking, and Adria (on left) joins the table toward the end of the episode but doesn't say anything.
A number of things stuck out to me about this clip:
- Michelle seems to be one of the louder, more persistent voices in the "give-us-answers" camp. We see her referring to getting answers again here.
- She says she feels like a scientist when she is doing and analyzing experiments. And maybe when she has 'aha' moments, although she connects this to scientific practice in what feels like an afterthought to me. [In other words, I think if she were asked, "When (in UE2 on Wednesday) did you feel most like a scientist?," she would answer, "When we were doing an experiment."]
- Joan says that she feels like a scientist when she's thinking through something, or when she's grappling with an idea.
- Joan connects her own sense of when she feels like a scientist to what 'real scientists' do, saying it's not actually about the scientific method, it's about a lot more than that. I get the sense that in the statement, "But it is kinda interesting that I think sometimes what our idea of scientists and what happens is kind of two different things," "our idea of scientists" ~ "the scientific method" and "what happens" ~ "more than that."
- When Wendy says, "We want kids to understand the basics of how to ride a horse...," I think she's advocating for teaching the scientific method -- it's the 'simple' version of what scientists do, and it's digestible for kids. All that other complicated stuff is for those who have mastered the simple stuff.
Episode #2 title: UE2 120628 1038 T2 Constrained by tests
(Loose) transcript: [00:00:00.00] Joan: Well but even with the way the MSP is set up, for a while we were just stuck on the scientific method, and now we're going into field studies, we're going into observations, and that's more what the science community would say. That it's all those things, not just that one way of doing things.
[00:00:21.07] Wendy: I think it's because of the testing, I think.
Joan: Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy: The WASL (?) has been around, what, eight years maybe, ten? Collect that kind of data from students...are we really heavy on inquiry, are we really heavy on content? I think they're learning that wow, we're treating scientists or thinking science is just this.
[00:00:50.00] Joan: Yeah.
Wendy: Because of these tests.
Joan: But that's one thing...the test really has (inaudible).
Wendy: Yeah, because the teachers are saying, No we're going to be doing scientific inquiry because this is what they're going to be testing. This is what science is and we're going to do all of these...
[00:01:06.26] Wendy: ...and in doing the professional development class I was doing, I had a lot of teachers coming up to me and saying, "How can we turn our curriculum materials into a controlled experiment?" And I'm like, you can't. Why would you want to?
[00:01:20.16] Joan: Yeah.
Wendy: Because that's what they test on the MSP (inaudible). But I'm like, That's not what science is about, it's about exploring and investigating and observations and field studies and, you know, all of that.
[00:01:34.18] Joan: Yeah.
Wendy: But that's not what they're testing, so how can you teach it?
Michelle: Yeah.
Wendy: Let it go.
[00:01:41.00] Joan: But it's good now that they have included field studies and all that. So now it isn't such a narrow vision.
Wendy: Yeah. They're easier (?).
Joan: Yeah.
[00:01:49.03] Michelle: It is still kinda frustrating that I'm thinking back to last year. I teach sixth graders, but last year I did a leadership class. And it was all seventh and eighth graders. And of course the eighth graders had taken the science WASL, and I was like, okay, so like, how was it?
[00:02:14.13] Michelle: And a bunch of 'em went, What was the answer to the car question? And I went, Explain to me what the car question was. And basically what the scenario is is a kid walks over. A car has been driven and it's parked, and you lean against it.
[00:02:35.12] Michelle: And the question was, when you feel the heat, was it convection, conduction, radiation, or whatever? You know, and I'm like.
Joan: Wow.
Michelle: That is so unfair. I mean, if you're gonna go back to that, then give us the nice little set curriculum so we make sure there's a heat unit in there so that these kiddos are ready. But.
[00:02:57.25] Joan: It's already in their standard, so that's, yeah.
Wendy: I bet you if you went (inaudible) to the standards, it is verbatim.
Joan: Yeah, it would be addressed in there.
Michelle: Really?
[00:03:05.26] Wendy: The questions on the sixth grade science WASL, MSP, whatever, how many stars are in the solar system?
Michelle: How many what?
Joan: Stars.
Wendy: Stars are in our solar system?
[00:03:16.07] Wendy: One, millions, or billions?
Adria: (inaudible)
Wendy: One, millions, or billions?
Joan: Those are the choices.
[00:03:24.13] Wendy: One, millions, or billions? Kids go, this is a trick question. I said, go have fun with it. And it is, if you go to the standards, it's verbatim.
Joan: It's right there.
Wendy: Verbatim. Right out of the standards.
[00:03:43.01] Joan: Yeah.
Wendy: Students should know that the sun is our only star in the solar system.
Michelle: Really?
Joan: The other thing that I think a lot of people forget is that OSPI puts out a tests and items specification. It tells you what's gonna be on this year's test...
[00:03:58.08] Joan: ...so you know, when you look at that tests and items specification, you, you pretty well know, you know, what's going to be on that test.
Michelle: That's from the OSPI website?
Joan: Yeah.
[00:04:10.06] Michelle: And what's it under?
Joan: Test and items specifications.
Wendy: It tells you what kind of items.
Joan: Well it tells you what standards, you know, it's on there like the standards...
[00:04:19.10] Joan: ...so it lets you know, like, what they are going to be hitting. So like, it had on there something about plants, which is part of the standards, too, but it's, some of those standards are like in the first and second grade standard band.
Wendy: It's not just fifth grade.
[00:04:41.27] Joan: Not just fifth, so it helps you, gives you (inaudible) knowing what. So in the library, I make sure that I create lessons around what I see in the tests and items specifications. They may not be asked verbatim, but.
Michelle: What the, what concepts will be.
[00:05:06.15] Joan: Yeah, what's gonna be tested.
Wendy: Just in order to make sure you cover all the content, and making sure the kids have heard it, right? Not experience it, not learn it, not drill it, not whatever. But even just heard it. One of our teachers went down and made flashcards of questions of all the fifth grade standards...
[00:05:22.07] Wendy: Like the one (inaudible).
Joan: Yeah.
Wendy: Just did some multiple choice, just did some fill in short answer, you know, what (inaudible) you could ask. And they were just flash cards that we did, you know, two or three questions and we talked about them in the morning real quick.
[00:05:35.09] Wendy: And just discussed em, just so kids, even if one kid remembered them, at least we'd gone through all of (inaudible). It's certainly not the way we should teach science, but.
Michelle: You gotta cover your bases, too!
Wendy: Yeah, and then a question like that one doesn't come up and then...
Commentary: This episode (#2) immediately follows Episode #1, in which the teachers (or perhaps just Joan) expressed what I consider to be relatively sophisticated views of the nature of science: she articulates that science is more than the scientific method. She goes on to say that she's empowered to teach this way of thinking about science to her kids, now that the MSP 'allows' for it.
Even though I'm encouraged by Joan's sophisticated ideas and by the MSP broadening its view of the nature of science, I'm discouraged by the test-driven constraints that I sense (in particular) are felt deeply by Wendy and Michelle. I'm struck by Wendy's statement: "Not experience it, not learn it, not drill it, not whatever...It's certainly not the way we should teach science, but..." All this talk about the MSP, closely following the teachers talking about their views on the nature of science, reinforces my conviction that state standards and tests and all kinds of other systemic things disempower teachers. And I wonder whether these systemic things constrain the kinds of learning that can happen in PD courses -- or at least the kinds of learning that teachers think is relevant to their classroom practice. If it's not in the standards -- or if it's not what's tested -- does it have no meaning, pragmatically?
No comments:
Post a Comment