Tim Allison:  A Virtual Portfolio

Communicating Effectively

Effective communication between teachers and students and between teachers and parents is vital to effective learning.  As science teachers, however, the language in which we communicate is often very different from that to which our students are accustomed.  As Bakhtin (p. 294) pointed out, "language in not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker's intentions; it is populated -- and overpopulated -- with the intentions of others.  Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one's own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complex process."  Students' understandings of terms such as 'work,' 'power,' 'heat,' and 'living' may be far different from the scientific contexts in which these words are used.  While the workshop for which I received the certificate displayed below focussed on the use of communication with parents, and with students for the purposes of classroom management, there was some discussion of how we, as teachers, communicate class material to our students.  As Gilbert, Osborne, and Fensham (p. 625) point out, it is often possible for a student to "listen to, or read a statement in science and make sense of it by using the everyday interpretation of the word."  This may lead to an alternative understanding of the material, as with the student in their study who explained that glass was made up of grains of sand.  The student had misinterpreted the term 'particle' by using an everyday definition.  In the scientific meaning of the term, a particle is much smaller than a grain of sand.  "The aim of all science education is that a learner should obtain a coherent scientific perspective (Ss) which he understands, appreciated [sic], and can relate to the environment in which he lives and works" (Gilbert, Osborne and Fensham p. 630).  It is, then, the teacher's responsibility to effectively communicate with his (or her) students in such a way that they are able to achieve  a unified science view.  This will allow students to operate in a scientific context without the hindrance of language which is held by the greater scientific community to be 'inappropriate' or 'misconceived.'  It is why it is of the utmost importance for me, as a science teacher, to be able to communicate effectively with my students.