Tim Allison:  A Virtual Portfolio

Time Management -- Knowledge or Process?

Metareflection:

    Which is more important:  for students to know facts, or to understand a process?  This is a discussion which has been brought up several times by my colleagues, and is one which I believe each teacher must settle in his or her own mind.  As teachers, it is our job to cover the curriculum.  It is also our job to ensure that our students understand it.  The reflection (below), in response to the Millar and Driver article, was a step in my development as a teacher, in terms of my way of addressing these issues.

    In addressing the issues around this question, one must propose the following:  that content can be learned through the process, thus avoiding the worries about covering both.  This is the goal, I believe, behind inquiry-based learning, in which students learn the content to some extent through doing an activity related to it.  This conforms to Gallas' proposition (p. 16), that "the very private musing of a child...may eventually be transformed through reflection, dialogue, and finally collaboration into a question, and, ultimately, a theory about the world."  In short, process begets content knowledge.  In the same way, in Volkmann's article, the contrasting views of the two science teachers (Juan and Luke) are split along the lines of content vs. process.  Juan, the new teacher, prefers to teach process (although there is some debate over whether his students are learning the necessary content); while Luke, the more experienced teacher, prefers to teach content, but risks having his students lose interest in science.  There is a fine line which must be walked, here, as it is clearly important that we, as teachers, cover the content, but at the same time, our students should be interested in what they are learning.  Yager (p. 3) suggests the following:  that we encourage students "to test their own ideas...[and engage in] self-analysis, collection of real evidence to support ideas, and reformation of ideas in light of new experiences and evidence."  If we do this, as he suggests, our students will be able to learn the material through the process, and will have a more enjoyable experience in the learning of science.

Original Reflection

    Millar and Driver make quite an interesting argument for teaching content in science classes. That being said, however, I believe they overemphasize the importance of content almost to the point of ignoring the importance of what they call “process”. Science in schools should be a balance of “process” and “content”, in such a way that (i) students remain interested, (ii) content is learned well, and (iii) processes are reinforced. Ideally (I say this unsure of how difficult or even possible it would be to implement it), one would be able to teach through hands-on work (“process”) that would be interesting for the students, and at the same time would allow them to learn content.

    I do believe that the authors are correct in their suggestion that everyone uses the processes they discuss every day; and we all know how to take these steps, although we seldom think of how we are using them, or even that we are using them. What needs to be taught in science classes in schools (in terms of process), as they point out, is simply how to use the same processes that we use daily, but in a scientific context. We don’t need to completely re-educate people on how, for instance, to observe. They can already do that. We need to teach what to observe. Thus, this is not a very big step. Take, for instance, certain parts of the process, like observing, classifying and describing. Any high school student would be able to describe their best friend. Similarly, they would be able to classify objects as, for example, a tree, grass, a bird, and a frog. This involves the processes of observation and classification. It is simply a matter of observing and classifying in a bit more detail to move from {tree, grass, bird, frog}; to {Black Spruce, Green Foxtail, White-winged Crossbill, Wood Frog}. In the same way as we naturally observe, classify, and describe things, most children start experimenting at a very young age. It is their way of exploring and learning about the world around them. I have often heard the story of an experiment that I conducted at the age of about 2 years. In an experiment with spectacular results, I stuck a pair of my mother’s tweezers into an electrical outlet. I learned very quickly about the results of a short circuit. Simply put, we begin learning from experiments at a very young age, and through this hands-on sort of work (“process”), we can learn about anything and everything. Science merely takes things one step farther, and once we have learned to make our own process a little more accurate, or scientific, we are well on our way. This is the role of “process” in a science class: to teach students how to use the skills they have in a scientific way.

    Obviously, content is a very important part of science. It is important, though, that students learn the content, though, and not simply memorize it until the final exam is over. True learning will not occur in the typical high school science class, because the traditional method of teaching science is to have the teacher stand at the from of the room and drone on about something for which the students have no practical application, and in which they are not interested. The courses from my own academic career that I can remember the best were those that involved stimulating, hands-on work (“process”) that was related to the class material. This is the work through which students can learn the most, because they are not simply hearing, or even listening, but they are doing.

    In summary, while I will agree with the authors that “science in schools has an enabling rather than an alienating function and has a critical role to play in a liberal education” (p. 58), and that content is an important part of science education in schools, I find that they lean awfully heavily on content, perhaps to the point of promoting the traditional (boring) approach to teaching science, rather than active learning. As they do suggest, active learning is the best way for students to really learn in science; and active learning “[involves] pupils in such activities as observing…classifying, hypothesizing…inferring, experimenting, problem-solving…modelling….” (p. 56) In short, it involves the process to which Millar and Driver seem to be so vehemently opposed.