New ways of teaching and observing science class

Good instruction in science classrooms looks different than good instruction in other disciplines.

Identifying good science instruction during classroom observations isn’t the same as identifying good practices for English or social studies. Nonetheless, principals tend to rely on general indicators of good instruction such as topic selection, student engagement, and frequent checks for understanding. Although these are important for any context, they’re less than sufficient for identifying good science instruction. Science teachers need to use science-specific instruction practices due to the nature of the content and what we know about how people learn science.

This perspective is backed by two recent major reports: A Framework for K-12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) and The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Both call for science instruction that focuses on what students are doing in the classroom. In so doing, they redefine the teacher’s role by giving teachers responsibility for creating curricula that foster in students the actions and thought processes that lead to meaningful science learning. Thus, the focus on science teacher observation needs to be on students.

Indicators of good science instruction

Below we provide a set of indicators that are backed by the framework and the Next Generation Science Standards and are associated with high quality science instruction. Principals can use these indicators to guide them during observations of science teachers, even if they are not science specialists themselves. Table 1 (above) provides specific questions for each indicator that principals and others who observe science teachers can use both during and after classroom observations.

#1. Teachers create a need to learn.

The first indicator of good science teaching is that the teacher has created a need to learn in the students. This indicator requires that teachers do more than write the daily objective on the board. Instead, a teacher must provide a structure to the lesson that motivates students to want to learn. Student motivation may be either extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic motivators include assignment deadlines, classroom competitions, and assigning points for work. Intrinsic motivation, in contrast, usually stems from intellectual curiosity. Teachers often use extrinsic motivators inside the classroom. Unfortunately, research suggests that extrinsic motivation may actually be detrimental to student learning because students focus more on completing the task or getting the right answer rather than understanding the material (NRC, 2000). Fostering each student’s intrinsic desire to learn should be a goal for every teacher.

When principals observe science classrooms, they should focus on what students are doing and learning.

One way to create a need to learn is by using discrepant or puzzling events. Used at the beginning of a lesson, these demonstrations often spark curiosity, create a sense of wonder, and encourage students to generate potential explanations about underlying causes. When students want to understand the potential cause for what they see inside the classroom, they tend to be more motivated and intellectually engaged.

#2. Teachers make student thinking visible.

Students don’t enter a science classroom as empty vessels; they come with their own ideas about how the world works based on past experiences. For example, many students believe that heavy objects fall faster than light objects or that the heart is responsible for creating blood (Wandersee, Mintzes, & Novak, 1994). Students often need to abandon these ideas before they can understand the theories, laws, and models of science. Teachers must know how students think about the content and why they think that way, which means science teachers must be able to make student thinking visible on a regular basis.

Teachers must do more than give an occasional quiz or have students use hand signals to indicate understanding. Teachers need to give students opportunities to provide answers and explanations for their answers through words, mathematical representations, and pictures. Teachers then need to use student answers and the reasons for their answers to identify common alternative conceptions about the content. Teachers can use this information to design lessons that confront these alternative conceptions, help students abandon them, and eventually adopt conceptions or ways of thinking that are consistent with a scientific worldview. Without these opportunities, students often “fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them to pass a test but then revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom” (NRC, 2000, p. 14).

One way to make student thinking visible is to have students predict the outcomes of labs or demonstrations. This gives a teacher valuable information about the status of prior student knowledge including areas where student thinking doesn’t align with a scientific worldview. After the lab or demonstration, teachers can return to these predictions and help students reconcile their understanding of how the world works with what they just observed.

Another approach is to use assessments consisting of one or more two-tiered items (Keely, Eberle, & Farrin, 2005). Two-tiered items require that students answer a question and then provide a reason for their answer. These items give students an opportunity to explain their thinking. Teachers can use this type of assessment to diagnose misconceptions at the beginning of a unit, modify instruction during a unit, or determine if students can explain and apply a concept at the end of one.

#3. Students engage in activity before delving into content.

A third indicator of good science instruction is giving students the opportunity to explore a natural phenomenon before being formally presented with scientific facts, formulas, theories, or other formalized content to be learned. In the activity before content (ABC) approach (Cavanagh, 2007), students engage in labs and other scientific practices at the beginning of a unit. In a traditional approach to science instruction, students often do labs at the end of a unit. Using a lab at the end of a lesson or unit often only demonstrates or verifies a concept that was introduced earlier. This approach fails to provide intrinsic motivation for understanding science content and relegates students to the role of passive observer. Alternatively, when labs are at the beginning of a unit, students are able to explore the content at the heart of the lab.

The ABC approach provides several advantages for students learning science. First, all students share an experience, which the teacher and students can discuss when the teacher more formally introduces the content. A teacher can feel confident that certain examples will be meaningful for all students, as they’ve all had the same experience. The second advantage is that the ABC approach makes it easier for students to understand and retain new vocabulary. Students engage in experimentation without knowing the formal scientific terms for a phenomenon they observe in class. Instead of having vague and abstract notions of what a word means, they can ground the new term in a past experience. A third advantage is that the ABC approach more closely resembles the actual practice of scientific inquiry: Historically, investigations have been used to identify scientific facts and drive the creation of theory — not the other way around.

#4. Students participate in the practice of science.

The new framework and the Next Generation Science Standards recommends that K-12 students engage in scientific practices as they learn content. Scientific practices are the behaviors and thought processes that scientists use to further scientific knowledge. When students engage in these practices, they learn important content as well as how to develop new scientific knowledge. Students must learn how to engage in scientific practices in more productive ways over time (NRC, 2012). Learning content isn’t enough; students also must develop the knowledge and skills to participate in these practices. An important indicator of good science teaching, therefore, is giving students repeated opportunities to engage in scientific practices. Although the framework outlines eight practices that students need to learn, we focus on five of them here because they’re easy to observe.

Practice A. Asking scientific questions, and Practice B. Planning and carrying out investigations.

A basic practice of a scientist is formulating empirically answerable questions about phenomena. Once a question is identified, a scientific investigation needs to be designed and carried out in order to answer it. Scientific investigations can be conducted in the field, the laboratory, or by accessing an existing database. At early stages, where students aren’t familiar with these practices, the teacher should question students and let them plan and carry out the investigation to answer the question. The teacher will guide students to decide what should count as data, what data to collect, and how to collect it. As students become more familiar with the habits of mind required to plan and carry out investigations, the teacher can provide less scaffolding. Eventually, students develop the knowledge and skills to formulate their own questions and plan and carry out their own investigations with less teacher support. At this stage, the teacher’s role is to provide content guidelines that frame student investigations.

Students need to understand what counts as evidence in science, how to transform data into evidence, and the criteria used in science to evaluate the validity or acceptability of explanations and evidence.

Practice C. Analyzing and interpreting data.

Scientific investigations provide data that must be analyzed to derive meaning. Scientists use a wide range of tools including but not limited to tabulation, graphical interpretation, and statistics to identify patterns or trends in data. While students are encouraged to analyze data they collect, students also can analyze data collected by others. In this way, students can analyze data from natural phenomena that don’t lend themselves to collection within a classroom. Examples of these types of phenomena include weather and climate patterns, animal population records, volcanic eruptions, and astronomical phenomena.

Practice D. Engaging in argument from evidence.

Scientists engage in argument from evidence in order to propose, support, critique, and refine ideas. Scientist must be able to identify weaknesses in lines of reasoning and determine the best explanation for a natural phenomenon based on evidence. Scientists also need to be able to defend their explanation with evidence and examine the validity of explanations proposed by others based on available evidence. Students therefore need to understand what counts as evidence in science, how to transform data into evidence, and the criteria used in science to evaluate the validity or acceptability of explanations and evidence. In the classroom, students can be encouraged to engage in argument from evidence as they craft, share, and critique arguments during a lab or other activity.

Practice E. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information.

Scientists must be able to communicate orally and in writing. Scientists also must be able to derive meaning from scientific texts, such as articles or chapters, and presentations, such as symposia and lectures, in order to evaluate the validity of the information presented by others or to incorporate the ideas of others into their own research. Therefore, students need opportunities to learn how to read, write, and speak in a manner that’s consistent with the norms and standards of the scientific community. Inside the classroom, teachers can give students opportunities to obtain, evaluate, and communicate information by encouraging them to conduct text-based research, give presentations, and write reports.

#5. Negotiating meaning.

Perhaps how meaning is derived in science instruction can best be described as falling along a continuum based on who’s responsible for negotiating meaning. At one end of the continuum, where the teacher is responsible for negotiating meaning, the teacher decides what content is important, how to explain it or represent it, and how it connects to other key ideas. On this end, the teacher does most of the thinking and talking inside the classroom, while students are more or less passive observers. For example, when a teacher prepares and gives a lecture, the teacher must think deeply about the content in order to prepare the lecture and then as he or she presents it, the content becomes more and more ingrained over time. This is not an ideal framework for student learning. Students don’t need to think about the content as they listen and take notes, leading to limited opportunities for them to negotiate meaning. At the other end of the continuum, when students are responsible for negotiating meaning, students must think deeply about the content during a lesson and about what they know and how they know it. They must determine what is and isn’t relevant and decide how to explain or represent what they know so other people can understand it. The teacher must take an active role in the process through skillful questioning and scaffolding.

As with the other indicators of good science instruction, students can be encouraged to negotiate meaning by using a wide range of methods. One method is through the argumentation strategies discussed earlier. Another strategy is through advocacy for social or political change. For example, students might analyze different types of alternative fuel sources and, as part of their assignment, write a letter to an elected official in their community advocating for adoption of a specific type of energy. In both cases, students are required to make a case for their point of view based on analysis of their evidence.

Timing

Principals don’t need to see evidence of the five indicators every day. But, over the course of a school year, they should see a preponderance of evidence showing the presence of these indicators. For example, a teacher may have students plan an investigation on day one, do the investigation on day two, and share their analysis and conclusions with the classroom community on day three. Indicators for planning, carrying out, and analyzing investigations are all present in the classroom, just not on the same day.

A lecture-only format in the classroom is not ideal, but students do need to learn the formal vocabulary, facts, laws, and theories that scientists work with on a daily basis. This may mean that, after students have carried out an investigation, the teacher provides a short lecture on the formal, mathematical relationship between two phenomena or gives students an opportunity to refine their vocabulary and take notes.

This means principals should plan for an extended observation of a teacher if they want to see the indicators of good science teaching. This allows the principal to engage with the class on a more frequent basis and to determine if multiple indicators are present. Spending one day in a teacher’s classroom may only show evidence for one indicator. This is also why the questions for students we included at the end of each indicator are so important. Student answers to these questions are likely to shed light on the relationship of the observed class period to other lessons. Thus, a principal may be able to use student responses to find evidence for indicators that they did not see.

Finally, if the goal of observation is to improve teaching, then principals also must ensure that science teachers have access to good-quality professional learning. Just as science teachers need to use science-specific instruction practices because of the nature of the content, science teachers also need science-specific professional development.

Coupling high-quality observations with detailed feedback that leads to excellent professional development is the right course for schools to follow if they want to improve science instruction.

References

Cavanagh, S. (2007). Science labs: Beyond isolationism. Education Week, 26 (18), 24-26.

Keely, P., Eberle, F., & Farrin, L. (2005). Formative assessment probes: Uncovering student ideas in science. Science Scope, 28 (4), 18-21.

National Research Council (NRC). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

National Research Council (NRC). (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. Washington, DC: Author.

NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next generation science standards: For states, by states. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Wandersee, J.H., Mintzes, J.J., & Novak, J.D. (1994). Research on alternative conceptions in science. In D. Gabel (Ed.), Handbook of research in science teaching and learning (pp. 177-210). New York, NY: Macmillan.

CITATION: Hutner, T.L. & Sampson, V. (2015). New ways of teaching and observing science class. Phi Delta Kappan, 96 (8), 52-56.