Module B: Human development

Scenario: Anne (2)
Anne couldn’t believe her luck when her former school invited her back to fill in a maternity leave position. Seven years on and she is now a permanent teacher at this old private college and about to embark on an overseas exchange for a year. The school has a significant boarder population with students drawn from the city and rural areas. Anne has developed a reputation as a great teacher, with her students achieving high grades and routinely making the top 10% of the state / territory cohort. Similarly her International Baccalaureate students have achieved outstanding results. Anne is looking forward to her travels and is excited about bringing back new ideas from overseas, as well as a little personal travel. Recently Anne’s school has opened a boarding house for rural Aboriginal Students, upon her return Anne will be taking on the role of coordinating this equity initiative. She has enjoyed teaching the students in this program for the last year. While it does entail extra work in preparing work to support the students and after school tutoring, she finds it very rewarding. Ann is hoping to develop some ideas on her study tour of Canada about how to help students from different cultural backgrounds develop empathy and understanding for each other, and learn from each others experiences and ways of viewing the world.

In this blog I am referring to the theories learned in the Module B and to the 8th provocation: "To what extend is teaching an intellectual pursuit?"

Anne has invested a lot of time and energy in establishing a boarding house for rural Aboriginal students. One of her main concern is to be able to cater for the different populations of students in the school. The goal of her trip to Canada is to gather information about different cultures and values and their implication in teaching and learning in the classroom. She also would like to learn more about how Canadian Indians are integrated in school and how the Canadian school system has recovered from the Canadian Indian residential school system (see article:Canada apologizes for 'killing the Indian in the child). She is particularly concerned about making her teaching meaningful for Aboriginal students and promoting good relationships between students from different background in order to maintain a positive and stimulating learning environment.

The historical similarities between Canada and Australia when it comes to inclusion of indigenous students in a strong western dominant culture is particularly relevant for Anne. The goal of her study tour is to build extra- knowledge and understanding of multiculturalism in a social constructivism manner. Canada is recovering from the failure of the forced attempt to assimilate Aboriginal People in Canada into European-Canadian society with compulsory boarding school. Following the closure of the schools in the 1960s and the official government apologies, many school in Canada have integrated Native studies including Aboriginal cultures, crafts languages, spirituality, knowledge of nature, and tours to indigenous heritage sites (Wotherspoon, R. 2006).

During adolescence, students undergoes huge psychological and social development involving the search of their identity and their place in the society (Erikson's stages of psychosocial development: Identity versus confusing, Krause chapter 3, page 110). Students' search of their self strongly depends on the social context of the individual, and adolescents are very sensitive to feedback from others and to comparison with others (Harter, Krause chapter 3, page 106) . A multicultural context can have a positive and enriching impact on the building of the students' identity but it can also be a challenge for Aboriginal students living in a boarding school separated from their families and their culture. This situation is also found in boarding schools in Canada, where students are often separated from their families and communities located in remote areas away from cities' high schools. Activities increasing empathy and perspective-taking skills are necessary to promote prosocial behaviour. It could be approach in a social constructivist manner (Piaget and Vygotsky) through conversations or shared problem solving tasks or activities. The feeling of community and collaboration in classrooms increases through offering more chances for students to talk together.                                                                   
Developing a positive self-concept is also essential for learning at this stage. Subjects have to be related to their life in order for students to feel valued and engaged. Learning is relevant if it refers to one's culture. Aboriginal students are not valued in a school system based on white middle class value. In order to respect multiculturalism and for indigenous students to achieve development of self-efficacy, the teacher needs to take the role of the culture broker between curriculum and students as it is mostly a curriculum based on western concepts (Aikenhead, 1996). Planning, teaching, and assessing have to be inclusive and culturally appropriate. The link between self-efficacy and student outcomes is powerfully illustrated in a study of indigenous Australian students in which self efficacy beliefs were found to play an important role in school outcomes (Purdie et al, 2000).

Anne's trip  to Canada will be an intellectual pursuit as she will be researching the Canadian education model about positive outcomes of inclusion of indigenous culture and values into the curriculum as well as techniques for developing  feelings of community and collaboration in a multicultural classroom.

References:

Aikenhead, G.S. (1996). Science education: Border crossing into the subculture of science. Studies in Science Education, 27, 1-52.
 

Canada apologizes for killing the 'Indian in the child' (Jun 11, 2008) http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/americas/news/article_1410655.php

Krause ch 3 p. 98-146 : Emotional and moral development.


Purdie, N. Tripcony, P. Boulton-Lewis, G Fanshawe, J and Gunstone, A (2000). Positive Self-identity for endogenous students and its relationship to school outcomes. Canberra. Department of Education. Training and Youth Affairs. 
 

Wotherspoon, R (2006). Teachers' work in Canadian aboriginal communities. Comparative Education Review, 50 (4), 672-694.

How can I engage my students?

Yesterday's lesson was about the periodic table of element, a lesson delivered to year 8 students in their chemistry class. How dry can this be? In the initial lesson on the subject, using lots of tools from her treasure chest, the teacher (my practicum mentor) managed to engage students in the subject and have raise their interest for the lessons to come.

The 2 hours lesson was carefully planned and broken down into 15mn-20mn small activities. She used a backward design and and inquiry based lesson. Starting with an assessment for learning in the form of a quick individual quiz, the following animated discussion demonstrated the initial engagement of the students. A coloring activity was then given to students to identify the different categories from the periodic table and color them in bright colors. Working in group of 5, the next task was to build a time-line using fluorescent paper, pictures and a short documentation about history of the table. The group separation technique (student were allocated a number from 1 to 4 which would become their group number) allowed students from different level to mix, share and complement their knowledge with the intention of developing social learning and community building.

This lesson illustrated beautifully a constructivist approach. During the initial assessment, students raised lots of key questions and subsequent activities were directed to answer some of these questions. Teaching was delivered through collective activities, discussions, hands-on practice, attractive audio-visual material and reading for a maximum learning retention.

It was a good example of a very successful lesson!

Tackling misconceptions

In this video (Veritasium), the author questions the effectiveness of teaching with videos like the Kahn academy's videos (Khan Academy and blogpost ELPCG1, entry4: Forget about Kumon!). He conducted a research to explore the problem.

In the first part of the experiment, students are shown a video presenting a scientific problem. They are then tested on this particular topic (test 1). In a second step, the students are presented with a second video explaining the theory and thereby revealing the correct answer. They are then submitted again to the same test (test 2). The results show that even after being presented with the correct answer, the number of students responding correctly is the same for test 1 and for test 2.

The assumption here is that when exposed to a scientific concept, people have preconceive ideas. They don't pay attention to the video giving a scientific explanation because they think their own idea is correct. They actually end up being reinforced that their preconceived idea is correct.

How can we tackle the problem of misconception? The students would pay more attention if their preconceived ideas were presented in a video. So in a second experiment, the author presents students with the same problem video and submit them to the pre-video test. They then show them a second video containing misconceptions about the scientific concept. The students were then tested again. In this experiment the number of correct answers was double after watching the video with the misconception.

So what happens there? When a scientific video is presented in a clear and concise manner, student believe they are learning, but they actually don't engage with the content on a deep level. They don't realize that what is presented is different from their previous knowledge. But given the opportunity to challenge their preconceived ideas, students were being engaged at a deeper level.

Forget about Kumon!

The Kahn academy (Khan Academy) is an educational video website. It is a free online collection of around 2200 microlectures of approximately 10 mn each on Youtube. The subjects range from mathematics to history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and economics. It also contains about 100 web-based-exercises based on skill level and performance.

Kahn's idea started when he was tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad . One day, he had to tutor his cousin remotely, so he decided to post a video on You-tube. Her response was very positive. She actually preferred the YouTube version than being tutored in person. Five years later, the YouTube-hosted tutorials were scoring a total of more than 35,000 viewers per day.

Kahn is an excellent teacher and his videos are a fantastic collection of clear and concise lessons on a large variety of subjects. They are presented in a way as if you are sitting next to someone taking you through a problem on a sheet of paper.

This is a fantastic example of using IT to aid education. And best of all, it's free and readily available.

Pictures of the 21st century

The definition from http://www.ncreLorg/engauge/skills/vislit.htm of visual literacy is “the ability to interpret, use, appreciate and create images and video using conventional and 21^st century media in a way that advance thinking, decision-making, communication and learning”. This means not only images of objects, but also images of ideas.

In the 21^st century learning, students live in and use an environment which is highly visual. Ron Bleed (http://educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI4001) emphasizes the importance of blogs, digital images and video in a world where literacy doesn't only refer to texts and words but also to digital imaging.

That leads me to the 6^th provocation:

What will (biology) students (from the 21^st century) want and need from me?

The visual aspect is particularly important when teaching cellular and molecular biology. We are dealing with a world invisible to the naked eye, which make it difficult to understand. In his article M. Flannery explores the importance of information visualization in Molecular biology and Genetics. 3D images of proteins are available to all on the Web http://www.ncbi.nih.gov. Software capable of converting enormous quantities of data into images on the Web or elsewhere using a downloadable programming environment (Visualizing Data from Ben Fry: http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/fry/chromosomes/13-icp/) are used to visualize the human genome and represent all information known about chromosomes.

Students need to learn to use or at least to be aware of these kind of information-visualization. They are the technique of the future and they are the only way to analyze large amount of complex data.

The issue of using these kind of technologies in education is that mastering these technologies can be a quite difficult task for students as well as for the teachers. It raises questions of teacher's development as well as combining software education and biology into a curriculum with an already high content.

reference:

Flannery, M. Thinking in pictures. The American Biology Teacher, Vol 68, no 5, p299-303.

Students of the future

The potential for use of IT in secondary education is enormous. Biological phenomena are easily exploited through these approaches to enhance research as well as education. The majority of biological, chemicals or environmental parameters can easily be recorded.

The benefits of computer assisted learning have been shown in many studies (Gardner et al.). In their article (Information technology in biology teaching: challenges and opportunities) Newton et al., discusses the cognitive benefit of using technology in biology. Students benefit from an intellectual partnership between the machine and themselves. The computer is a very powerful tool which can assist the student in the accomplishment of a task. It reduces the chore of processing data, of construction and exploration of graphs from experimental studies. The student still remains responsible for formulating the questions and for interpreting the results.

The effectiveness of using technology are also evident in the use of exploratory or inquiry-based softwares. These approaches are aimed to develop skills used for investigating and the interpreting data and results. Students' skills in decision-making and data-analysis are increased and result in higher level of learning.

References:

Gardener, J., Morrison, H., Jarman, R., Reilly.C., and McNally, H. (1992) Pupils' learning and access to information technology. Belfast: School of Education, Queens University of Belfast.

Newton, Leonard R.(1997). Journal of Biological Education, Vol. 31 Issue 4, p274-281.

Searching for the golden site

The safeguard of the biosphere and sustainable development depends upon strong science research, education, and resources to support the increasing demand for biological scientists and students, as well as the scientifically-literate public.

In recent years ICT development have considerably helped science teachers. By providing a quick and easy access to scientific information, it has help reduce the lag between scientific advance and its inclusion in the curriculum. In addition, it also has broaden the range of educational tools available. Computer learning packages, interactive and non-interactive information websites, communication via the web and collaborative projects, all of them provide an educative potential available to all student in a variety of formats catering for all kind of different learning styles.

Today's problem with using ICT in biology is not anymore the lack of information but the surplus or unnecessary excess of information. Part of student education will be to teach them the skills for selecting, evaluating and organizing information.

Where do we start with good science websites?

In their article, Jack O'Gorman and Amy Gullen (2010, Reference on the Web: Science Blogs and Tweets, http://www.booklist.com/) reviewed several excellent resources for biology teacher and students willing to keep up with developments in science. Networks and aggregators are fantastic sources for locating unlimited information. Since summer 2010, the number of sites assisting to locate good science blogs and twitters has literally exploded.

A network is a “cluster of blogs that group together for a specific purpose”.

Three very usefull networks are recommanded by the authors:

• PloS Blogs (http://blogs.plos.org/plos/) from the Public Library of Science
• ScienceBlogs (http://scienceblogs.com) one of the top science blogging
• Scientopia (http://scientopia.org/blogs/) groups around 25 blogs arranged by subjects including Biology and Environment, Brain and Behavior, Education and Careers, Humanities and Social Science and Politics.

An aggregator is “a directory of blogs, a one-stop shop to look through many different kinds of blogs”. Valuable scientific resources can be found on the following:

• Science Blogging Aggregated (http://scienceblogging.com)covers writing from media organizations, science publishers and scientific organizations like Scientific American, National Geographic, Smithsonian, The lay scientist or Panda's thumb, as well as some bloggers' collective.
• Science Pond (http://sciencepond.com)a twitter aggregator for science topic.