Teachers Struggle with Goals for Student Notebooks

On Wednesday of Week 2, Lezlie deWater gave a guest presentation on student science notebooks in the afternoon of E2. It kicked off with a book club discussion of two articles, one on Inquiry (Science, May 2011) and one on Drawing (Science, Aug 2011). During the small group discussion of the Inquiry article, Debra and Madonna (along with Jean and Wendy) in Group 2 talk about their mixed feelings on notebooks and student thinking. Leslie Atkins has joined their table and offers her opinion as well. 

For the first 40 seconds of the clip, Debra talks about feeling obligated to have students use science notebooks ("I feel like I am married to the idea that you have to have a journal") since she feels it is her responsibility to prepare them for college or industry. Madonna jumps in at 0:50 to counter Debra, saying that it is "not only the minimum here (points to notebook) but then are we pushing the minimum in terms of mental exploration (gestures to head)". Leslie interjects, saying that in her mind the important thing is for students to communicate scientific ideas to each other, not keep a perfect ledger.
Madonna then changes tack from her earlier point (caring about mental exploration) and speaks about very high achieving students she has worked with who have terrible notebooks, and how it is difficult to work with these sort of people in industry. At the end of the episode, though, Madonna acknowledges that there is a tension with the notebooks:

[00:02:14.19] Madonna: There is kind of a play of both. There is something to be said for actually physically writing stuff down, but maybe we focus to much on the production.

Debra, in response to Madonna, references Leslie, and says:

[00:02:29.02] Debra: But what I think I hear you saying is that if we can get them nailed down on the skill of thinking, of being able to communicate their thinking, then it doesn't matter what format."


In this episode, Debra and Madonna alternatively emphasize the importance of student thinking while they also express concerns about preparing students in the structures and formatting they perceive is needed for college and future careers.  The questions they are struggling with seem to be: Do we need to prepare students to do formal scientific documentation that will be expected of them later on? Will teaching students to think and communicate be sufficient for them to be able to tackle any type of scientific documentation in the future? By focusing on formal structure in the notebooks, are we masking our assessment of students' actual understanding of the physics? Are science journals/notebooks necessary and if so, what style is best for my classroom?