Waymade College of Education’s
Sunshine Science Club and Enviro-nuts Club’s
Monthly magazine
EXPRESSION
Volume 1 Issue 3
April 2009
Monthly magazine
EXPRESSION
Volume 1 Issue 3
April 2009
Contents/ Atricles
§ A few tips for children to combat stress through diet… - Ms. Bhavana Chauhan, Lecturer, SM Patel College of Home Science
§ Social Values of Mathematics Ms. Rucha Desai , Lecturer, Waymade College of Education, Vallabh Vidyanagar
§ Teaching of Science, Mathematics and Technology - Ms. Shamsha Emanuel, Lecturer, Waymade College of Education, Vallabh Vidyanagar
Article 1
A few tips for children to combat stress through diet…
Ms. Bhavana Chauhan,
Lecturer, SM Patel College of Home Science
March and April are examination months! Hence, I’m sure most of the parents and teachers will agree with the famous proverb ‘Health is Wealth’. There are some tips on diet in stress. Firstly we need to understand that a well balanced diet is crucial in preserving health and helping to reduce stress. Certain foods and drinks act as powerful stimulants to the body and hence are a direct cause of stress. This stimulation, although quite pleasurable in the short term, may be quite harmful in the long run. We will look at a few of them:
Caffeine: This is found in coffee, tea, chocolate, Coke, etc. It causes the release of adrenaline, thus increasing the level of stress. When taken in moderation, coffee can increase your alertness, increased activity in the muscles, nervous system and heart. Consuming too much caffeine has the same effect as long term stress. Be careful in reducing the coffee or caffeine consumption. Reduce the consumption slowly over a period of time. Children have a wrong concept that these drinks help in keeping awake. Thus instead of this opt the GREEN TEA/ Lemon Tea which has a soothing taste and the added benefit of loads of antioxidants.
Sugar: Sugar has no essential nutrients. It provides a short-term boost of energy through the body, resulting possibly in the exhaustion of the adrenal glands. This can result in irritability, poor concentration, and depression. Keep your blood sugar constant. Do not use sugar as a "pick me up."
Salt: Salt increases the blood pressure, deplete adrenal glands, and causes emotional instability. Avoid junk foods high in salt such as wafers, peanuts,papad,papdi. pickles, sausage, etc.
Fat: Avoid the consumption of foods rich in saturated fats. e.g. cheese, butter, packet s like kurkure, chips, etc Fats cause obesity and put unnecessary stress on the cardiovascular system.
Foods to Eat
Eat a meal high in carbohydrates: Carbohydrates trigger release of the brain neurotransmitter serotonin, which soothes you. Good sources of carbohydrates include rice, pasta, potatoes, breads, air-popped popcorn and low-cal cookies. Experts suggest that the carbohydrates present in a baked potato or a cup of spaghetti or white rice is enough to relieve the anxiety of a stressful day.
Eat Food High In Fiber: Stress result in cramps and constipation. Eat more fiber to keep your digestive system moving. Your meal should provide at least 25 grams of fiber per day. Fruits, vegetables, sprout and grains are excellent sources of fiber. For breakfast, eat whole fruits instead of just juice, and whole-grain cereals. e.g. Roasted chana, grains as snacks, upma, poha etc.
Eat More Vegetables: Your brain's production of Serotonin is sensitive to your diet. Eating more vegetables can increase your brain's Serotonin production. This increase is due to improved absorption of the amino acid L-Tryptophan. This may help your child`s concentration.
Foods to Avoid
§ Coffee and other caffeinated beverages: If you are currently addicted to coffee, drink black tea; it has less than a third of the caffeine of coffee, and none of the harmful oils.
§ Fried foods and foods rich in fat are very immune-depressing, especially when stress is doing that, as well.
§ Reduce animal foods. High-protein foods elevate brain levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, both of which are associated with higher levels of anxiety and stress.
§ Foods to avoid are processed foods, artificial sweeteners, carbonated soft drinks, chocolate, fried food, red meat, sugar, white flour products, preservatives and additives.
Healthy Munches
If you find that you absently munch when you’re stressed, or have a pattern of snacking at certain times in the day or week, you can replace chips, cheese puffs and other less-healthy munchies with carrot sticks, celery sticks, salads, sunflower seeds or other more healthy choices. (Even popcorn is a better choice if you leave off the butter aside.
Thus enjoy examination with healthy dietary practices. ALL THE BEST!
Contributed by, Ms. Bhavana Chauhan, Lecturer, Food and Nutrition Department, S.M.Patel College of Home ScienceVallabh Vidyanagar
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Article 2
Social Values of Mathematics
Ms. Rucha Desai , Lecturer, Waymade College of Education, Vallabh Vidyanagar
Mathematics is generally considered as a dry and abstract subject. Students find it difficult to learn and at times teachers too find it difficult to teach. Why such kind of situation arises?
There are some questions which need to be answered at this stage. Why should everybody learn mathematics? What is the importance of this subject in life and school curriculum? How does it make any contribution in the development of an individual?
Teaching of Mathematics is not the process of mere syllabus transaction in mechanical manner. The subject has vast and rich educational values.(viz practical value, disciplinary value, cultural value-social, moral, aesthetic, intellectual etc.) The need of the time is to teach mathematics in an integrated manner to inculcate values which in a way make teaching-learning process joyful, interesting and meaningful. Social values of mathematics have great significance in the development of society. It also contribute in making an individual worthy citizen of the nation. Following description talks about the above mention topic.
Mathematics plays an important role in the organization and maintenance of our social structure. Society is the result of the inter-relations of individuals. It consists of big and small groups and there are sub-groups within each group. Mathematics enables us to understand the inter-relations of individuals and the possibilities of various groups.
Society is a phenomenon of balancing and counter-balancing of various forces. Mathematics helps in creating a social order in this phenomenon. It regulates the functioning of society in many ways. Social conditions like justice, fairplay, healthy competition, symmetry, harmony, etc. have often to be described in mathematical terms for the purpose of clarity.
For smooth transactions, exchange, trade, business and bargaining, mathematics becomes a useful tool. It has helped in knitting the vast society into a family. When dealings between individuals are given mathematical touch, it leads to social progress, prosperity and welfare.
Mathematics helps in the formation of social norms and their implementation. The dominance of materialistic outlook in our society is the chief attribute of maths. Our monetary dealings are a major domain of our social dealings and relations. We earn a social status by virtue of our economic status. Economic security and social security goes hand in hand with each other.
The idea of manpower planning partly originated from mathematics. The statistical data and the census provide bases for short-term and long-term planning for the welfare of the society.
Ms. Rucha Desai , Lecturer, Waymade College of Education, Vallabh Vidyanagar
Mathematics is generally considered as a dry and abstract subject. Students find it difficult to learn and at times teachers too find it difficult to teach. Why such kind of situation arises?
There are some questions which need to be answered at this stage. Why should everybody learn mathematics? What is the importance of this subject in life and school curriculum? How does it make any contribution in the development of an individual?
Teaching of Mathematics is not the process of mere syllabus transaction in mechanical manner. The subject has vast and rich educational values.(viz practical value, disciplinary value, cultural value-social, moral, aesthetic, intellectual etc.) The need of the time is to teach mathematics in an integrated manner to inculcate values which in a way make teaching-learning process joyful, interesting and meaningful. Social values of mathematics have great significance in the development of society. It also contribute in making an individual worthy citizen of the nation. Following description talks about the above mention topic.
Mathematics plays an important role in the organization and maintenance of our social structure. Society is the result of the inter-relations of individuals. It consists of big and small groups and there are sub-groups within each group. Mathematics enables us to understand the inter-relations of individuals and the possibilities of various groups.
Society is a phenomenon of balancing and counter-balancing of various forces. Mathematics helps in creating a social order in this phenomenon. It regulates the functioning of society in many ways. Social conditions like justice, fairplay, healthy competition, symmetry, harmony, etc. have often to be described in mathematical terms for the purpose of clarity.
For smooth transactions, exchange, trade, business and bargaining, mathematics becomes a useful tool. It has helped in knitting the vast society into a family. When dealings between individuals are given mathematical touch, it leads to social progress, prosperity and welfare.
Mathematics helps in the formation of social norms and their implementation. The dominance of materialistic outlook in our society is the chief attribute of maths. Our monetary dealings are a major domain of our social dealings and relations. We earn a social status by virtue of our economic status. Economic security and social security goes hand in hand with each other.
The idea of manpower planning partly originated from mathematics. The statistical data and the census provide bases for short-term and long-term planning for the welfare of the society.
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Article 3
TEACHING SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND TECHNOLOGY
Ms. Shamsha Emanuel, Lecturer, Waymade College of Education, Vallabh Vidyanagar
To understand Science, mathematics, and technology as ways of thinking and doing, as well as bodies of knowledge, requires that students have some experience with the kinds of thought and action that are typical of those fields. Teachers, therefore, should do the following:
Start With Questions About Nature
Sound teaching usually begins with questions and phenomena that are interesting and familiar to students, not with abstractions or phenomena outside their range of perception, understanding, or knowledge. Students need to get acquainted with the things around them—including devices, organisms, materials, shapes, and numbers—and to observe them, collect them, handle them, describe them, become puzzled by them, ask questions about them, argue about them, and then to try to find answers to their questions.
Engage Students Actively
Students need to have many and varied opportunities for collecting, sorting and cataloging; observing, note taking and sketching; interviewing, polling, and surveying; and using hand lenses, microscopes, thermometers, cameras, and other common instruments. They should dissect; measure, count, graph, and compute; explore the chemical properties of common substances; plant and cultivate; and systematically observe the social behavior of humans and other animals. Among these activities, none is more important than measurement, in that figuring out what to measure, what instruments to use, how to check the correctness of measurements, and how to configure and make sense out of the results are at the heart of much of science and engineering.
Concentrate on the Collection and Use of Evidence
Students should be given problems—at levels appropriate to their maturity—that require them to decide what evidence is relevant and to offer their own interpretations of what the evidence means. This puts a premium, just as science does, on careful observation and thoughtful analysis. Students need guidance, encouragement, and practice in collecting, sorting, and analyzing evidence, and in building arguments based on it. However, if such activities are not to be destructively boring, they must lead to some intellectually satisfying payoff that students care about.
Provide Historical Perspectives
During their school years, students should encounter many scientific ideas presented in historical context. It matters less which particular episodes teachers select (in addition to the few key episodes presented in Chapter 10) than that the selection represent the scope and diversity of the scientific enterprise. Students can develop a sense of how science really happens by learning something of the growth of scientific ideas, of the twists and turns on the way to our current understanding of such ideas, of the roles played by different investigators and commentators, and of the interplay between evidence and theory over time. History is important for the effective teaching of science, mathematics, and technology also because it can lead to social perspectives—the influence of society on the development of science and technology, and the impact of science and technology on society. It is important, for example, for students to become aware that women and minorities have made significant contributions in spite of the barriers put in their way by society; that the roots of science, mathematics, and technology go back to the early Egyptian, Greek, Arabic, and Chinese cultures; and that scientists bring to their work the values and prejudices of the cultures in which they live.
Insist on Clear Expression
Effective oral and written communication is so important in every facet of life that teachers of every subject and at every level should place a high priority on it for all students. In addition, science teachers should emphasize clear expression, because the role of evidence and the unambiguous replication of evidence cannot be understood without some struggle to express one's own procedures, findings, and ideas rigorously, and to decode the accounts of others.
Use a Team Approach
The collaborative nature of scientific and technological work should be strongly reinforced by frequent group activity in the classroom. Scientists and engineers work mostly in groups and less often as isolated investigators. Similarly, students should gain experience sharing responsibility for learning with each other. In the process of coming to common understandings, students in a group must frequently inform each other about procedures and meanings, argue over findings, and assess how the task is progressing. In the context of team responsibility, feedback and communication become more realistic and of a character very different from the usual individualistic textbook-homework-recitation approach.
Do Not Separate Knowing From Finding Out
In science, conclusions and the methods that lead to them are tightly coupled. The nature of inquiry depends on what is being investigated, and what is learned depends on the methods used. Science teaching that attempts solely to impart to students the accumulated knowledge of a field leads to very little understanding and certainly not to the development of intellectual independence and facility. But then, to teach scientific reasoning as a set of procedures separate from any particular substance—"the scientific method," for instance—is equally futile. Science teachers should help students to acquire both scientific knowledge of the world and scientific habits of mind at the same time.
Deemphasize the Memorization of Technical Vocabulary
Understanding rather than vocabulary should be the main purpose of science teaching. However, unambiguous terminology is also important in scientific communication and—ultimately—for understanding. Some technical terms are therefore helpful for everyone, but the number of essential ones is relatively small. If teachers introduce technical terms only as needed to clarify thinking and promote effective communication, then students will gradually build a functional vocabulary that will survive beyond the next test. For teachers to concentrate on vocabulary, however, is to detract from science as a process, to put learning for understanding in jeopardy, and to risk being misled about what students have learned.
Science Teaching Should Reflect Scientific Values
Science is more than a body of knowledge and a way of accumulating and validating that knowledge. It is also a social activity that incorporates certain human values. Holding curiosity, creativity, imagination, and beauty in high esteem is certainly not confined to science, mathematics, and engineering—any more than skepticism and a distaste for dogmatism are. However, they are all highly characteristic of the scientific endeavor. In learning science, students should encounter such values as part of their experience, not as empty claims. This suggests that teachers should strive to do the following:
Welcome Curiosity
Science, mathematics, and technology do not create curiosity. They accept it, foster it, incorporate it, reward it, and discipline it—and so does good science teaching. Thus, science teachers should encourage students to raise questions about the material being studied, help them learn to frame their questions clearly enough to begin to search for answers, suggest to them productive ways for finding answers, and reward those who raise and then pursue unusual but relevant questions. In the science classroom, wondering should be as highly valued as knowing.
Reward Creativity
Scientists, mathematicians, and engineers prize the creative use of imagination. The science classroom ought to be a place where creativity and invention—as qualities distinct from academic excellence—are recognized and encouraged. Indeed, teachers can express their own creativity by inventing activities in which students' creativity and imagination will pay off.
Encourage a Spirit of Healthy Questioning
Science, mathematics, and engineering prosper because of the institutionalized skepticism of their practitioners. Their central tenet is that one's evidence, logic, and claims will be questioned, and one's experiments will be subjected to replication. In science classrooms, it should be the normal practice for teachers to raise such questions as: How do we know? What is the evidence? What is the argument that interprets the evidence? Are there alternative explanations or other ways of solving the problem that could be better? The aim should be to get students into the habit of posing such questions and framing answers.
Avoid Dogmatism
Students should experience science as a process for extending understanding, not as unalterable truth. This means that teachers must take care not to convey the impression that they themselves or the textbooks are absolute authorities whose conclusions are always correct. By dealing with the credibility of scientific claims, the overturn of accepted scientific beliefs, and what to make out of disagreements among scientists, science teachers can help students to balance the necessity for accepting a great deal of science on faith against the importance of keeping an open mind.
Promote Aesthetic Responses
Many people regard science as cold and uninteresting. However, a scientific understanding of, say, the formation of stars, the blue of the sky, or the construction of the human heart need not displace the romantic and spiritual meanings of such phenomena. Moreover, scientific knowledge makes additional aesthetic responses possible—such as to the diffracted pattern of street lights seen through a curtain, the pulse of life in a microscopic organism, the cantilevered sweep of a bridge, the efficiency of combustion in living cells, the history in a rock or a tree, an elegant mathematical proof. Teachers of science, mathematics, and technology should establish a learning environment in which students are able to broaden and deepen their response to the beauty of ideas, methods, tools, structures, objects, and living organisms.
Science Teaching Should Aim to Counteract Learning Anxieties
Teachers should recognize that for many students, the learning of mathematics and science involves feelings of severe anxiety and fear of failure. No doubt this results partly from what is taught and the way it is taught, and partly from attitudes picked up incidentally very early in schooling from parents and teachers who are themselves ill at ease with science and mathematics. Far from dismissing math and science anxiety as groundless, though, teachers should assure students that they understand the problem and will work with them to overcome it. Teachers can take such measures as the following:
Build on Success
Teachers should make sure that students have some sense of success in learning science and mathematics, and they should deemphasize getting all the right answers as being the main criterion of success. After all, science itself, as Alfred North Whitehead said, is never quite right. Understanding anything is never absolute, and it takes many forms. Accordingly, teachers should strive to make all students—particularly the less-confident ones—aware of their progress and should encourage them to continue studying.
Provide Abundant Experience in Using Tools
Many students are fearful of using laboratory instruments and other tools. This fear may result primarily from the lack of opportunity many of them have to become familiar with tools in safe circumstances. Girls in particular suffer from the mistaken notion that boys are naturally more adept at using tools. Starting in the earliest grades, all students should gradually gain familiarity with tools and the proper use of tools. By the time they finish school, all students should have had supervised experience with common hand tools, soldering irons, electrical meters, drafting tools, optical and sound equipment, calculators, and computers.
Support the Roles of Girls and Minorities in Science
Because the scientific and engineering professions have been predominantly male and white, female and minority students could easily get the impression that these fields are beyond them or are otherwise unsuited to them. This debilitating perception—all too often reinforced by the environment outside the school—will persist unless teachers actively work to turn it around. Teachers should select learning materials that illustrate the contributions of women and minorities, bring in role models, and make it clear to female and minority students that they are expected to study the same subjects at the same level as everyone else and to perform as well.
Emphasize Group Learning
A group approach has motivational value apart from the need to use team learning (as noted earlier) to promote an understanding of how science and engineering work. Overemphasis on competition among students for high grades distorts what ought to be the prime motive for studying science: to find things out. Competition among students in the science classroom may also result in many of them developing a dislike of science and losing their confidence in their ability to learn science. Group approaches, the norm in science, have many advantages in education; for instance, they help youngsters see that everyone can contribute to the attainment of common goals and that progress does not depend on everyone's having the same abilities.
End notes
Children learn from their parents, siblings, other relatives, peers, and adult authority figures, as well as from teachers. They learn from movies, television, radio, records, trade books and magazines, and home computers, and from going to museums and zoos, parties, club meetings, rock concerts, and sports events, as well as from schoolbooks and the school environment in general. Science teachers should exploit the rich resources of the larger community and involve parents and other concerned adults in useful ways. It is also important for teachers to recognize that some of what their students learn informally is wrong, incomplete, poorly understood, or misunderstood, but that formal education can help students to restructure that knowledge and acquire new knowledge.
In learning science, students need time for exploring, for making observations, for taking wrong turns, for testing ideas, for doing things over again; time for building things, calibrating instruments, collecting things, constructing physical and mathematical models for testing ideas; time for learning whatever mathematics, technology, and science they may need to deal with the questions at hand; time for asking around, reading, and arguing; time for wrestling with unfamiliar and counterintuitive ideas and for coming to see the advantage in thinking in a different way. Moreover, any topic in science, mathematics, or technology that is taught only in a single lesson or unit is unlikely to leave a trace by the end of schooling. To take hold and mature, concepts must not just be presented to students from time to time but must be offered to them periodically in different contexts and at increasing levels of sophistication.
Ms. Shamsha Emanuel, Lecturer, Waymade College of Education, Vallabh Vidyanagar
To understand Science, mathematics, and technology as ways of thinking and doing, as well as bodies of knowledge, requires that students have some experience with the kinds of thought and action that are typical of those fields. Teachers, therefore, should do the following:
Start With Questions About Nature
Sound teaching usually begins with questions and phenomena that are interesting and familiar to students, not with abstractions or phenomena outside their range of perception, understanding, or knowledge. Students need to get acquainted with the things around them—including devices, organisms, materials, shapes, and numbers—and to observe them, collect them, handle them, describe them, become puzzled by them, ask questions about them, argue about them, and then to try to find answers to their questions.
Engage Students Actively
Students need to have many and varied opportunities for collecting, sorting and cataloging; observing, note taking and sketching; interviewing, polling, and surveying; and using hand lenses, microscopes, thermometers, cameras, and other common instruments. They should dissect; measure, count, graph, and compute; explore the chemical properties of common substances; plant and cultivate; and systematically observe the social behavior of humans and other animals. Among these activities, none is more important than measurement, in that figuring out what to measure, what instruments to use, how to check the correctness of measurements, and how to configure and make sense out of the results are at the heart of much of science and engineering.
Concentrate on the Collection and Use of Evidence
Students should be given problems—at levels appropriate to their maturity—that require them to decide what evidence is relevant and to offer their own interpretations of what the evidence means. This puts a premium, just as science does, on careful observation and thoughtful analysis. Students need guidance, encouragement, and practice in collecting, sorting, and analyzing evidence, and in building arguments based on it. However, if such activities are not to be destructively boring, they must lead to some intellectually satisfying payoff that students care about.
Provide Historical Perspectives
During their school years, students should encounter many scientific ideas presented in historical context. It matters less which particular episodes teachers select (in addition to the few key episodes presented in Chapter 10) than that the selection represent the scope and diversity of the scientific enterprise. Students can develop a sense of how science really happens by learning something of the growth of scientific ideas, of the twists and turns on the way to our current understanding of such ideas, of the roles played by different investigators and commentators, and of the interplay between evidence and theory over time. History is important for the effective teaching of science, mathematics, and technology also because it can lead to social perspectives—the influence of society on the development of science and technology, and the impact of science and technology on society. It is important, for example, for students to become aware that women and minorities have made significant contributions in spite of the barriers put in their way by society; that the roots of science, mathematics, and technology go back to the early Egyptian, Greek, Arabic, and Chinese cultures; and that scientists bring to their work the values and prejudices of the cultures in which they live.
Insist on Clear Expression
Effective oral and written communication is so important in every facet of life that teachers of every subject and at every level should place a high priority on it for all students. In addition, science teachers should emphasize clear expression, because the role of evidence and the unambiguous replication of evidence cannot be understood without some struggle to express one's own procedures, findings, and ideas rigorously, and to decode the accounts of others.
Use a Team Approach
The collaborative nature of scientific and technological work should be strongly reinforced by frequent group activity in the classroom. Scientists and engineers work mostly in groups and less often as isolated investigators. Similarly, students should gain experience sharing responsibility for learning with each other. In the process of coming to common understandings, students in a group must frequently inform each other about procedures and meanings, argue over findings, and assess how the task is progressing. In the context of team responsibility, feedback and communication become more realistic and of a character very different from the usual individualistic textbook-homework-recitation approach.
Do Not Separate Knowing From Finding Out
In science, conclusions and the methods that lead to them are tightly coupled. The nature of inquiry depends on what is being investigated, and what is learned depends on the methods used. Science teaching that attempts solely to impart to students the accumulated knowledge of a field leads to very little understanding and certainly not to the development of intellectual independence and facility. But then, to teach scientific reasoning as a set of procedures separate from any particular substance—"the scientific method," for instance—is equally futile. Science teachers should help students to acquire both scientific knowledge of the world and scientific habits of mind at the same time.
Deemphasize the Memorization of Technical Vocabulary
Understanding rather than vocabulary should be the main purpose of science teaching. However, unambiguous terminology is also important in scientific communication and—ultimately—for understanding. Some technical terms are therefore helpful for everyone, but the number of essential ones is relatively small. If teachers introduce technical terms only as needed to clarify thinking and promote effective communication, then students will gradually build a functional vocabulary that will survive beyond the next test. For teachers to concentrate on vocabulary, however, is to detract from science as a process, to put learning for understanding in jeopardy, and to risk being misled about what students have learned.
Science Teaching Should Reflect Scientific Values
Science is more than a body of knowledge and a way of accumulating and validating that knowledge. It is also a social activity that incorporates certain human values. Holding curiosity, creativity, imagination, and beauty in high esteem is certainly not confined to science, mathematics, and engineering—any more than skepticism and a distaste for dogmatism are. However, they are all highly characteristic of the scientific endeavor. In learning science, students should encounter such values as part of their experience, not as empty claims. This suggests that teachers should strive to do the following:
Welcome Curiosity
Science, mathematics, and technology do not create curiosity. They accept it, foster it, incorporate it, reward it, and discipline it—and so does good science teaching. Thus, science teachers should encourage students to raise questions about the material being studied, help them learn to frame their questions clearly enough to begin to search for answers, suggest to them productive ways for finding answers, and reward those who raise and then pursue unusual but relevant questions. In the science classroom, wondering should be as highly valued as knowing.
Reward Creativity
Scientists, mathematicians, and engineers prize the creative use of imagination. The science classroom ought to be a place where creativity and invention—as qualities distinct from academic excellence—are recognized and encouraged. Indeed, teachers can express their own creativity by inventing activities in which students' creativity and imagination will pay off.
Encourage a Spirit of Healthy Questioning
Science, mathematics, and engineering prosper because of the institutionalized skepticism of their practitioners. Their central tenet is that one's evidence, logic, and claims will be questioned, and one's experiments will be subjected to replication. In science classrooms, it should be the normal practice for teachers to raise such questions as: How do we know? What is the evidence? What is the argument that interprets the evidence? Are there alternative explanations or other ways of solving the problem that could be better? The aim should be to get students into the habit of posing such questions and framing answers.
Avoid Dogmatism
Students should experience science as a process for extending understanding, not as unalterable truth. This means that teachers must take care not to convey the impression that they themselves or the textbooks are absolute authorities whose conclusions are always correct. By dealing with the credibility of scientific claims, the overturn of accepted scientific beliefs, and what to make out of disagreements among scientists, science teachers can help students to balance the necessity for accepting a great deal of science on faith against the importance of keeping an open mind.
Promote Aesthetic Responses
Many people regard science as cold and uninteresting. However, a scientific understanding of, say, the formation of stars, the blue of the sky, or the construction of the human heart need not displace the romantic and spiritual meanings of such phenomena. Moreover, scientific knowledge makes additional aesthetic responses possible—such as to the diffracted pattern of street lights seen through a curtain, the pulse of life in a microscopic organism, the cantilevered sweep of a bridge, the efficiency of combustion in living cells, the history in a rock or a tree, an elegant mathematical proof. Teachers of science, mathematics, and technology should establish a learning environment in which students are able to broaden and deepen their response to the beauty of ideas, methods, tools, structures, objects, and living organisms.
Science Teaching Should Aim to Counteract Learning Anxieties
Teachers should recognize that for many students, the learning of mathematics and science involves feelings of severe anxiety and fear of failure. No doubt this results partly from what is taught and the way it is taught, and partly from attitudes picked up incidentally very early in schooling from parents and teachers who are themselves ill at ease with science and mathematics. Far from dismissing math and science anxiety as groundless, though, teachers should assure students that they understand the problem and will work with them to overcome it. Teachers can take such measures as the following:
Build on Success
Teachers should make sure that students have some sense of success in learning science and mathematics, and they should deemphasize getting all the right answers as being the main criterion of success. After all, science itself, as Alfred North Whitehead said, is never quite right. Understanding anything is never absolute, and it takes many forms. Accordingly, teachers should strive to make all students—particularly the less-confident ones—aware of their progress and should encourage them to continue studying.
Provide Abundant Experience in Using Tools
Many students are fearful of using laboratory instruments and other tools. This fear may result primarily from the lack of opportunity many of them have to become familiar with tools in safe circumstances. Girls in particular suffer from the mistaken notion that boys are naturally more adept at using tools. Starting in the earliest grades, all students should gradually gain familiarity with tools and the proper use of tools. By the time they finish school, all students should have had supervised experience with common hand tools, soldering irons, electrical meters, drafting tools, optical and sound equipment, calculators, and computers.
Support the Roles of Girls and Minorities in Science
Because the scientific and engineering professions have been predominantly male and white, female and minority students could easily get the impression that these fields are beyond them or are otherwise unsuited to them. This debilitating perception—all too often reinforced by the environment outside the school—will persist unless teachers actively work to turn it around. Teachers should select learning materials that illustrate the contributions of women and minorities, bring in role models, and make it clear to female and minority students that they are expected to study the same subjects at the same level as everyone else and to perform as well.
Emphasize Group Learning
A group approach has motivational value apart from the need to use team learning (as noted earlier) to promote an understanding of how science and engineering work. Overemphasis on competition among students for high grades distorts what ought to be the prime motive for studying science: to find things out. Competition among students in the science classroom may also result in many of them developing a dislike of science and losing their confidence in their ability to learn science. Group approaches, the norm in science, have many advantages in education; for instance, they help youngsters see that everyone can contribute to the attainment of common goals and that progress does not depend on everyone's having the same abilities.
End notes
Children learn from their parents, siblings, other relatives, peers, and adult authority figures, as well as from teachers. They learn from movies, television, radio, records, trade books and magazines, and home computers, and from going to museums and zoos, parties, club meetings, rock concerts, and sports events, as well as from schoolbooks and the school environment in general. Science teachers should exploit the rich resources of the larger community and involve parents and other concerned adults in useful ways. It is also important for teachers to recognize that some of what their students learn informally is wrong, incomplete, poorly understood, or misunderstood, but that formal education can help students to restructure that knowledge and acquire new knowledge.
In learning science, students need time for exploring, for making observations, for taking wrong turns, for testing ideas, for doing things over again; time for building things, calibrating instruments, collecting things, constructing physical and mathematical models for testing ideas; time for learning whatever mathematics, technology, and science they may need to deal with the questions at hand; time for asking around, reading, and arguing; time for wrestling with unfamiliar and counterintuitive ideas and for coming to see the advantage in thinking in a different way. Moreover, any topic in science, mathematics, or technology that is taught only in a single lesson or unit is unlikely to leave a trace by the end of schooling. To take hold and mature, concepts must not just be presented to students from time to time but must be offered to them periodically in different contexts and at increasing levels of sophistication.
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