Perspectives of Hands-On
Science Teaching

"The teacher, acting as the director of research, with students working as science-research teams always has been a great way to teach science" (Small & Petrek, 1992, p. 30). Some see group work as particularly important in science classrooms. In addition to developing social skills and facilitating classroom management, working in teams reflects the way science is practiced. Science itself is a collaborative, cooperative enterprise. As Johnson and Johnson (1991) observe, just scan the list of articles in any issue of Science or other scientific journal and count the number of authors associated with each article. Scientists work in teams. As Rutherford and Ahlgren (1990, p. 189) point out, "the collaborative nature of scientific and technological work should be strongly reinforced by frequent group activity in the classroom." So, how do you facilitate group work in the science classroom?

Teacher Responses

• In order to involve all members of a group in a hands-on learning activity, one should assign roles for the children. For example, one student may be the recorder, another could be in charge of materials, and another may actually perform the activity. The roles should be rotated or reassigned so that each child can be involved in every part of the process and so that each child may have a chance to play their favorite role. Kathleen Costello, 3rd grade teacher, Holy Spirit School, Columbus, OH

• The challenge in education today is to effectively teach students of diverse ability and differing rates of learning. In my experience with a multi-age, racially mixed, elementary classroom, this can be achieved through cooperative learning and cross-age tutoring. In cooperative learning, all contribute to the group effort because students receive group rewards as well as individual grades. High achievers deepen their understanding and lower achievers gain a sense of accomplishment through contributions to the group problem. Cross-age tutoring allows tutees to receive individualized instruction and work with positive role models. Grouping students in this way eliminates dull, repetitive programs which, by nature, lead at best to minimum competencies. In a day raining of reinforced racial and social-economic isolation and racial prejudice in our schools and the alienation toward school among lower achieving students, group learning may be the only proven effective port in the storm.

  Strategies for implementing a group learning environment are many. Those which I have used successfully are:

  1. Decide the size of the group. I typically use from two to six students, depending on the nature of the task and the time available.

  2. Assign students to groups, preferably by your heterogeneous grouping rather than by student ability or student self-selection. Do not change group assignments with each new task, rather allow time for each group to get to know each other through the work of several tasks. I may change grouping as little as once a month.

  3. Arrange the room so that groups can work together without disrupting other groups.

  4. Plan instructional materials to promote interdependence. Give only one copy of the materials to the group.

  5. Assign roles to assure interdependence. I give job titles such as summarizer, researcher, recorder, encourager, and observer.

  6. Structure individual accountability as well as a group assessment in which individuals' rewards are based both on their own scores and on the average for the groups as a whole.

  7. Discuss desired behaviors. Request that students take turns, use personal names, listen carefully to one another, and encourage everyone to participate.

  8. Monitor student behavior. Circulate around the room to listen and observe groups in action. Note problems in completing assignments and working cooperatively.

  9. Allow opportunities for groups to orally report their findings to the whole class.

  10. Give feedback to each group about how well the members worked with one another and accomplished tasks and how they could improve. Sally Parker, The Montessori House, Tampa, FL

Developer Thoughts

• First of all, the room environment can be constructed so that it fosters the cooperative learning approach. Instead of putting desks in rows, put them together to make laboratory tables. Or better yet, get rid of most of the desks and put in tables. Also, there are many group-learning activities that can be done in a "different" academic setting that will enable students to learn how to work together.... Doing science experiments is more fun in a group, even in a twosome, because you can share equipment and knowledge, learn how to make charts and graphs together, discuss the outcomes of the experiments, and come to conclusions together. The teacher can also suggest roles each member of a group can play such as one person reading the instrument, another recording the data, another physically starting the experiment, etc. Dianne K. Hyer and Roger C. Eckhardt, Students Watching Over Our Planet Earth (SWOOPE ), Los Alamos National Laboratory

• Teachers should organize small groups to do the science activities. Our research and feedback from teachers in over one thousand classrooms have found very little problem getting students in small groups to cooperate. The problem has been associated with larger groups with limited equipment. The teacher may assign specific tasks to the students such as data keeping and various aspects of carrying out the experiment. Jerald A. Tunheim, Project SMILE (Science Manipulatives in the Learning Environment), Dakota State University, Madison, SD

• In a hands-on approach to teaching science, some basic factors contribute to the success of students working in groups. Review the checklist to assess whether you attend to these factors.

  Team Task

  • Do you evaluate a task to determine if it actually lends itself to a team approach? (If students can do the task just as well on their own, why should they work in a group?)

  • Do you provide enough structure and support for teams to complete the task independently and successfully? (Is the structure and support in the form of clearly stated, written, and illustrated, or tape-recorded instructions, rather than in the form of your constant intervention?)

  Team Interdependence

  • Do you structure the task so that all members of a team must be involved to successfully complete the task? (You can provide such structure by limiting supplies so that teammates must share them, requiring one product from each team, providing different information to each member of the team, and requiring that all members share the information to complete the task.)

  • Do you require teammates to assume some level of responsibility for the understanding and performance of others on their team?

  • Do you allow for teams to assess their effectiveness at working together as a team?

  Time Jobs

  • Do you select jobs that are appropriate for the age of the student?

  • Do you select jobs that will promote team interdependence? (If you assign a team reporter rather than randomly calling on members of a team, why should the other members of the team be attentive and involved?)

  • Do you clearly describe the responsibilities of each job and review the descriptions as necessary?

  • Do you monitor whether students are effectively performing their assigned jobs?

  Team Memberships

  • Is the size of the team appropriate to the age of the students? (Students are able to work effectively in teams of two in kindergarten and first grade, and in teams of three in grades two through six. The larger the team, the less each student can interact with the other students and the more it takes for each student to contribute to the work of the team.)

  • Do you thoughtfully assign teams rather than allow students to select their teammates?

  • Do you vary the composition of each team?

  • Do students remain in the same team long enough to develop interdependence and the ability to resolve conflicts, but not long enough to become bored with one another? Gail Foster, BSCS (Producers of Science for Life and Living: Integrating Science, Technology, and Health), Colorado Springs, CO

Notes from the literature

• "If we expect students to work together, we must teach them social skills just as purposefully and precisely as we teach them academic skills" (Ostlund, 1992, p. 32).

• Toh and Woolnough (1993) investigated the effect of giving explicit knowledge on student acquisition of the following process skills: planning, performing, communicating, and interpreting. They found that giving instruction in planning and communicating were indispensable for helping students work on open-ended investigations.

• The following three categories of social skills can help students work together: cluster skills which help students form groups, task skills which help students accomplish their goals, and camaraderie skills which help group members like each other. In developing social skills stress one at a time. The teacher should model, explain, and elicit examples of appropriate behavior for the skill. For example, in promoting the skill of involving all group members in an activity, students in a group can be given different color chips. When they encourage another student to participate they can place their chip in a pile. At the end of the activity, the number of chips contributed by each person can be counted to determine how effective they were in using this behavior (Ostlund, 1992).

• "Hands-on laboratory work is the classic cooperative learning activity. A group of students working together on an experiment or activity, following instructions with a variety of duties and tasks requiring students to cooperate, is the prototype of cooperative learning" (Ossont, 1993, p. 30).

• Cooperative learning is a model of teaching where students work together to achieve a goal or complete a task. The goal or task can be reviewing for a quiz, solving a problem, or doing a laboratory activity. The importance of working together is stressed, and this is the challenge for the students and the teacher (Hassard, 1992).

• Ossont (1993) found cooperative learning was very useful in a middle school class - made up of students with severe social problems - where any effective learning seemed impossible. He explains that cooperative learning is beneficial to this age group because "students at the height of adolescent fervor are required to sit quietly in rows for many hours a day.... Cooperative learning offers the chance to combine academics and socialization - elements that are equally important in our student's eyes" (Ossont, 1993, p. 28).

• "An effective way to manage a classroom of active students when teaching indoor gardening tasks is to organize a cooperative learning 'jigsaw' in which each cooperative group becomes 'expert' at a particular technique or gardening skill. Each expert can later teach his or her skill to another group of students or work with other expert group members to present a short demonstration to teach the skill to the whole class" (National Gardening Association, 1993a, p. 5). Examples of tasks that could be performed are planting seeds, planting bulbs, thinning seedlings, transplanting seedlings, making cuttings, and planting different fruit and vegetable parts (ex. potato eyes, carrot tops). The teacher needs to make sure materials are present, give the experts questions they should answer, and have a folder at each station giving the task definition, instructions, and cooperative group roles (captain, materials monitor, checker, recorder, and presenter).

• "Ideally, although it is not always possible, each cooperative group should include students with a complete range of ability, learning style, personality, and gender. Arranging students in diverse groups is especially difficult at the beginning of the year, when students' relative strengths and weaknesses are not yet apparent. For the first ten weeks, I randomly set up groups of three to five students. Then, once I have more insight about individual students, I can use it to set up more balanced groups. For convenience and to minimize time spent moving desks around, I try to assign seats so that group members are near each other" (Ossont, 1993, p. 28-29).

• When teachers intervene to assist working groups, even when requested by students, the intervention usually ends with the teacher giving directions. The intervention produces far more teacher talk than student talk (Oakley & Crocker, 1977).

• It is important to not give too much guidance and to not over help the students. In a case study of a teacher attempting to implement a hands-on, problem solving approach, Martens (1992) found that the teacher's desire for students "to get the right answer" produced teacher behaviors which eliminated opportunities for problem solving.

Summary

Helping students work in groups facilitates hands-on learning and directly engages students in the processes of science. "Doing science" requires learning skills associated with communication and cooperation as well as procedures associated with inquiry. In some cases it is beneficial to assign roles (with "job titles") to members of groups and to consciously establish heterogeneous groupings. It also seems important to communicate explicit expectations for both individuals and groups and to structure activities so interdependence is essential to successfully completing the assigned tasks. It is also important, however, to not provide too much direct guidance to groups; collaborative problem solving is to be encouraged over "getting the right answers."

Various cooperative learning strategies seem particularly useful in science classrooms. Variants of the "Jigsaw" approach, for instance, give all students the opportunity to be "experts" and contribute to group learning. For more background on cooperative learning and its many forms, refer to Using Cooperative Learning in Science Education by Patricia Blosser (1992).

In general, once students learned how to work productively in groups, one should resist the temptation to jump in too early and put the students on the right path. An essential part of the learning is finding out how to identify a path of inquiry and negotiate the path in collaboration with others.

Posted to the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory's
Pathways to School Improvement Internet server on July 10, 1995.

Contact: info@ncrel.org

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