Effective Science Instruction: What Does Research Tell Us

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Effective Science Instruction What Does Research
Tell Us?

• Dave WeaverRMC Research Corporation

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Research Results Converge Reading

• Reading50 years of research
• Effective reading instruction requires a balanced
  blend of
• Phonemic awareness
• Decoding
• Vocabulary development
• Reading fluency, including oral reading skills
• Reading comprehension strategies
• Any single approach is inadequate

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Research Results Converge Mathematics

• National Math Panel Report
• Effective mathematics instruction requires a
  balanced blend of
• Computational fluency
• Conceptual understanding
• Problem solving
• Any single approach is inadequate

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What About Science?
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Science Is Different FromLanguage Arts and Math

• Language Arts ( Reading) and Math
• Are skills created by people
• Involves learning established conventions
• Science
• Understanding how the world works
• How to create new knowledge
• Life in the world creates a working understanding

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Importance of The Learning Theory in Science

• Working knowledge is entrenched and difficult to
  overcome
• Sometimes called Private Universe
• Key concepts must be internalized
• Sometimes called Big Ideas or Enduring
  Understandings
• Requires greater attention to the learning theory
  embodied in the instructional materials

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Most Current Publication

• Banilower, E., Cohen, K., Pasley, J., Weiss, I.
  (2008). Effective science instruction What does
  research tell us? Portsmouth, NH RMC Research
  Corporation, Center on Instruction.
• Posted in documents section of the OEL website

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Key Points fromEffective Science Instruction
What Does Research Tell Us?
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Reform vs. Traditional

• Traditional instruction
• Teacher delivered information and independent
  student work
• Reformed instruction
• Small groups of students participating in
  hands-on activities

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Debating Which Is Best Misses The Point!

• Current learning theory focuses on students
  conceptual change, and does not imply that one
  pedagogy is necessarily better than another.

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Elements of Effective Science Instruction

• Eliciting Prior Understanding
• Intellectual Engagement
• Use of Evidence
• Sense-Making
• Motivation

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Eliciting StudentsPrior Understanding

• Students come with ideas and beliefs that can
  either facilitate or impede learning
• Their Private Universe
• Instruction is most effective when it
• Elicits students initial ideas,
• Provides them with opportunities to confront
  those ideas in light of new evidence,
• Helps them formulate new ideas based on the
  evidence, and
• Encourages students to reflect upon how their
  ideas have evolved.

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Intellectual Engagement

• Students must do the intellectual work and the
  thinking
• Must involve meaningful experience that engage
  students intellectually with important science
  content
• Activities must be explicitly linked to learning
  goals
• Students must understand the purpose of the
  instruction
• Must engage with ideas, not just the materials

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Use of Evidence

• Lessons must provide multiple opportunities for
  students to
• Make claims and conjectures
• Back up their claims with evidence
• Use evidence to critique claims made by other
  students
• Science discourse

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Sense-Making

• Lesson must provide opportunities for students to
  make sense of the ideas with which they have been
  engaged in order to draw appropriate conclusions
• Closure
• Reflection
• Meta-cognition
• Application to new situations

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Motivation

• Types of Motivation
• Extrinsic Motivation (Accountability)
• Deadlines, competition, tests, grades
• May actually be detrimental
• Intrinsic Motivation
• Stems from intellectual curiosity, personal
  interest or experiences, desire to resolve
  discrepant events or cognitive dissonance
• Appropriate blend is needed

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Research On Effective Science Instruction is Also
Converging

• Considerable evidence from research shows that
  instruction is most effective when it elicits
  students initial ideas, provides them with
  opportunities to confront those ideas, helps them
  formulate new ideas based on evidence, and
  encourages students to reflect upon how their
  ideas have evolved.
• (Horizon Research, 2008)

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Untrenching Their Private Universe

• Without these opportunities, students may fail
  to grasp the new concepts and information that
  are taught, or they may learn them for purposes
  of a test but revert to their preconceptions
  outside the classroom
• (National Research Council, 2003, p. 14)

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Effective Science Instruction
Elicit Prior UnderstandingIdentify InitialIdeas
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The new OEL observation rubric was designed to
address this vision of effective science
instruction.
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Reference

• Banilower, E., Cohen, K., Pasley, J., Weiss, I.
  (2008). Effective science instruction What does
  research tell us? Portsmouth, NH RMC Research
  Corporation, Center on Instruction.
• National Research Council. (2003). How people
  learn Brain, mind, experience, and school. J. D.
  Bransford, A. L. Brown, R. R. Cocking (Eds.).
  Washington, DC National Academy Press.