The Science Continuum P-10

1
The Science Continuum P-10
Learning Teaching Branch Office for Government
School Education
2
Maths and Science Strategy

• Challenges identified at the Maths and Science
  Roundtable
• improve the quality of teaching and learning in
  mathematics and science,
• raise the profile of mathematics and science in
  the community, and
• increase the rates of student participation in
  mathematics and science.
• Key focus for classroom teachers? student
  engagement in science learning

3
Science Continuum Purpose
OUR EDUCATIVE PURPOSE
LEARNER
Science Continuum P - 10
What is powerful to learn?
What is powerful learning and what promotes it?
How do we know it has been learnt?
4
Powerful learning in science

• restructuring existing ideas

• awareness of purposes linking practical
  activities to science ideas

• reflection and metacognition

• thinking laterally and creatively

• connecting to everyday experiences issues of
  science in society

• sharing intellectual control

5
Science Continuum P-10 Design
6
Focus ideas
Eg. Friction is a force

• Student everyday experiences
• Scientific view
• Critical teaching ideas
• Teaching activities
• Further resources

7
Student everyday experiences

• Conceptions that students commonly bring into
  classrooms and experiences that lead to these

• Alternative meanings students have often
  constructed from initial teaching

These have important implications for learning
and teaching behaviours.
Teachers need to find these in their own
classrooms.
8
Challenge the answer
Solids The particles are close together, stay in
one position, but do keep vibrating.
Liquids The particles are close together, but
keep swapping places, they keep moving.
Gases The particles are a long way apart, move
very quickly, bounce around the container,
collide hard with each other and the walls.
9
Challenge the answer

• Some Year 7 student challenges
• Why do particles always move keep colliding?
• Wouldnt water fall between the holes in the
  particles of a cup?

10
Challenge the answer
Why do atoms in gases float and not us?
How can particles make us?
How do the particles get stuck together?
Why doesnt a hole in a solid fill up if they are
always moving?
Are the particles hard or soft, what shape are
they, are they coloured?
Why cant I feel or see a table vibrating?
11
Scientific view

• Statements of acceptable science relevant to many
  common conceptions are hard to find

• The language and the level of explanation are
  intended to be age and audience appropriate

• There are links to other critical teaching ideas
  and to a glossary

12
Critical teaching ideas

• These are intended as foci that are revisited in
  any teaching sequence as well as across topics
  and year levels

• They flow from insights into learning as well as
  from science.

13
Teaching activities pedagogical purposes

• The pedagogical purposes provide a learning agenda

• They are entry points for what may be significant
  changes in practice

14
Teaching activities pedagogical purposes

• Collectively these are ways of teaching important
  aspects of the nature of science

• They provide opportunities to hear stories from
  other teachers and to share and reflect on
  initial experiences, which is critical for
  teacher learning

15
Science Continuum Maps

• sourced from The Atlas of Scientific Literacy,
  AAAS
• not aligned to the VELS
• hyperlinked same concept in different
  contexts critical teaching ideas that support
  development of the context

16
Further resources

• Digilearn
• Primary Connections
• Sample Science (coming)

17
Audit
OUR EDUCATIVE PURPOSE
LEARNER
What is powerful to learn?
What is powerful learning and what promotes it?
Science Continuum P - 10
Victorian Essential Learning Standards
Principles of Learning and Teaching
How do we know it has been learnt?
Assessment
18
Moving forward
School Science (a typical science classroom) World Science (science in practice)
Problems are well defined and devised by teachers curriculum designers or publishers Problems are ill-defined and identified by practitioners problem identification is as important as problem solution
Focus is on communicating content, facts or on testing established theories Focus is on finding out the unknown or generating theory
There is assumed to be a right answer to a problem (failures are attributed to methodology) Failure is important as an outcome of testing a theory experience is the greatest teacher
Science content is discrete based on technical rationality with systems being considered in isolation or clustered as traditional disciplines Content is integrated and holistic. Social, economic and ethical issues are significant considerations with reliance on skills of persuasion and argument
Watters Diezmann (2003)