Critical Issue:
Providing Hands-On, Minds-On, and Authentic Learning Experiences in Science

ISSUE: A new vision of science learning is emerging - one that calls for instructional strategies far different from most traditional conceptualizations. The new paradigm for science learning emphasizes engagement and meaning in ways that are not consistent with past practices. The anticipated outcome Of this new approach to teaching is a higher level of student achievement in the sciences. This constructivist teaching and learning models calls for learning that is:

• Hands-On: Students are actually allowed to perform science as they construct meaning and acquire understanding.
• Minds-On: Activities focus on core concepts, allowing students to develop thinking processes and encouraging them to question and seek answers that enhance their knowledge and thereby acquire an understanding of the physical universe in which they live.
• Authentic: Students are presented with problem-solving activities that incorporate authentic, real-life questions and issues in a format that encourages collaborative effort, dialogue with informed expert sources, and generalization to broader ideas and application.

This approach to teaching and learning enables students to participate fully in a learning community where the teacher is not the only source of knowledge and information. It encourages full involvement in a community of learners that includes other students, parents, teachers, and outside experts. Technology becomes a tool, supporting the learning process as students seek new knowledge and understanding. The challenge is to define the new approach to teaching and learning with sufficient clarity that it becomes a useful vision for educators as they make decisions about instructional materials, activities, and strategies for teaching.

OVERVIEW: Traditional patterns of science education have remained largely unchanged for most of the last century. In fact, the organization of the curricula for high schools has remained essentially constant since the "Committee of Ten" met in 1892 and established the sequence of instruction for the disciplines within science. Very often, science instruction in the lower grades has lacked a clear focus and has been provided by teachers ill-prepared to deal with science content. The natural curiosity of children, eager to understand their surroundings, is often diminished by instruction that discourages inquiry and discovery. In the upper grades, science instruction becomes increasingly textbook-centered. Even though laboratory experiences (or demonstrations) usually are included, students are rarely encouraged to use scientific methods to solve problems relevant to their perception of the world.

The typical pedagogical pattern reflects an authoritarian, didactic approach to classroom management. The reason may be that many teachers have never encountered a learning experience in which they constructed meaning from the experience. Similarly, the professional preparation of most administrators has not provided experience with this type of learning. It is little wonder, therefore, that many classrooms present an environment in which students learn by rote and repetition from teachers who exercise authoritarian control over the learning process. Many educators who would like to change this approach lack the support of colleagues, administrators, and parents, who only remember a more traditional approach.

The comparative performance of America's children on science achievement tests clearly demonstrates the failures of the current delivery system. Without significant transformation of the curricula, strategies, and methods used in our classrooms, science learning will not improve. Moreover, the reform of science education must address the needs of all children, but it will do so only with the support of teachers, administrators, policymakers, business and community leaders, and the general public.

Many of those working to improve science education have collaborated to create a challenging vision for instructional design. Their vision builds on these beliefs:

• Thinking skills, especially higher-order skills, must be learned through practice.
• A curriculum based on constructivist theory is well-suited to the teaching and learning of science. (For resources, see NCISE, 1991, and NCTM, 1990.)
• Learning assessment must be built into the process of instruction.

Robert Kansky, associate executive director of the Mathematical Sciences Education Board, discusses how assessment becomes an integral part of instruction (QuickTime slide show, 451K). Excerpted from the videotape, Gateway to the Future: Exploring Science Through Technology (Great Lakes Collaborative, Midwest Consortium for Mathematics and Science Education, & NCREL, 1993). A text transcript is available.


• All students should have access to meaningful, engaged learning in science.

Collectively, these characteristics are the basis for a redefinition of traditional science programs. With these elements in place, instruction will become hands-on, minds-on, and authentic. Programs will do more to attract students, hold their interest, and challenge them to attain the higher expectations demanded by the eight national education goals outlined in the Goals 2000: Educate America Act (1994).

GOALS: The reforms in science education are necessary to improve and enhance the science learning for all students. Once these reforms are in place and implemented, the following goals should be realized:

• Students will be actively engaged in constructing their own understanding of science, technology, and the world in which they live.
• By practicing good habits of research, students will systematically learn the process skills needed to participate in meaningful scientific investigation of natural phenomena.
• All students will gain an understanding of the knowledge and concepts that enable students to pursue the continued study of science.
• Science programs will relate common learning skills and processes to all of the disciplines of science as well as to other disciplines.
• Teachers will use a variety of alternative assessment tools to allow students to demonstrate their understanding of science by solving authentic, real-life problems.
• An informed citizenry will grow in its understanding of the relationship between human actions and the principles of ecological balance in their environment.

ACTION OPTIONS: Achieving long-term, systemic science education reform contains challenges for students, parents and community members, teachers, school administrators, and policymakers.

Students:

• Take advantage of every opportunity presented to engage in the process of "doing" science.
• Develop the skills needed to seek information and solve problems.
• Keep an open and questioning mind, and constantly seek new knowledge and understanding.
• Learn to work with others, to share responsibly for acquiring new knowledge and understanding with peers, and to value new experience as an opportunity to inquire and learn.

Parents and Community Members:

• Support teachers by establishing high expectations consistent with those required for successful learning. Demand high standards for learning and achievement for schools and students.
• Encourage and nurture the natural curiosity that children have about nature.
• Provide opportunities for learning in the home, allowing students to participate in activities that stimulate inquiry and investigation.
• Ensure that all expected "homework" is completed, providing support and assistance as needed and appropriate.
• Create partnerships between schools and community facilities and resources that provide students with access to knowledge and experiences that extend and complement learning experiences in schools (e.g., museums, zoos, natural life preserves, science centers, aquariums, planetariums, botanical gardens).

Teachers:

Barbara Neureither, science teacher at Holt High School in Holt, Michigan, states three important points in science education (Audio comment, 262K). Excerpted from NCREL's videoseries, Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference 3, Children as Explorers (NCREL, 1991). A text transcript is available.

• Commit to a professional development program that will enable you to change instructional strategies, adapting them to new methods for teaching. A thorough understanding of constructivist approaches to learning should be part of that program.
• Create more opportunities for students to engage in science learning that is authentic and patterned after the methods that scientists use.
• Understand the standards established for curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and use them as guidelines for making instructional decisions.
• Establish high achievement standards for all students and be certain that every effort is made to provide effective learning opportunities for each student.
• Model attitudes that foster inquiry, acquisition of new knowledge, and lifelong learning.
• Seek ways to relate the learning of science to other disciplines and use technology to enhance and extend classroom experiences.

School Administrators:

• Become informed about the change process that will be needed to create a science classroom that provides active, hands-on, minds-on, authentic learning for students.
• Help restructure time and facilities, the acquisition of resources, and the professional development of teachers.

Veronica Garcia, vice principal at Anson Jones Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, explains how students and teachers are assigned to teams and how this teaming at her school is beneficial for teaching and learning (QuickTime slide show, 451K). Excerpted from NCREL's videoseries, Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference 3, Children as Explorers (NCREL, 1991). A text transcript is available.


• Establish supervision systems that expect and support teacher performance that is consistent with the principles of active, engaged learning for all students in every science classroom.

Policymakers:

• Create policies and laws that enable significant reform of the structure and organization of schools (e.g., length of school day and year, greater flexibility in accreditation, encouragement and support for innovation).
• Exercise patience in pressing for reform.
• Provide funding for resources and training to implement reform.
• Do not impose mandates that amount to "tinkering" rather than reform.

IMPLEMENTATION PITFALLS: Under the new vision of science teaching and learning, teachers must alter significantly the types of instruction that they have used in the past. First, they must understand that simply "studying the content of science" is not the same as learning science. While knowledge of facts is important, facts must be learned within the context of authentic experience. Science teachers must rethink their traditional role as "knowledge deliverer" and accept a new responsibility as facilitator, coach, and coordinator of experiences. Science teachers will need more planning time and more instructional time than is usually allocated to make these changes.

One of the benefits of this new type of science learning will be the opportunity to learn principles and processes without being limited by traditional subject matter boundaries. Those who make policy regarding the accreditation of learning for promotion and admission to higher levels will have to adjust their thinking away from traditional subject/credit practices. New criteria will be needed. Such a change will help establish the new model, and without it, traditional patterns will prevail.

Text material will always be needed to support science instruction. However, teaching based on this new view will require instructional materials that are far different from most of those currently available. These materials will not all be delivered through print media. Publishers must encourage the preparation of materials that foster inquiry, describe authentic problems, and incorporate technology. Until such resources are readily available, practitioners will have to seek out nontraditional materials.

Administrators, parents, and community members must accept this reform as a better way of learning science. Without informed support, the needed policy changes, organizational restructuring, and greater emphasis on science learning will not be realized. The transformation of science education will require major commitments from all sectors of the greater school community.

DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW: One premise of traditional instructional design strategies calls for linking curriculum and teaching methods so as to provide the most efficient means for the greatest number of students to acquire the greatest amount of knowledge. Much of schooling has been built upon this belief - a theory of control that requires teacher-centered classrooms. It assumes that properly managed instruction enables most students to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to continue to learn. Practice and repetition, with frequent tests of recall and recitation, characterize this approach. This approach is the only one that many parents (and educators) have ever known, and their level of comfort with this model will make it very difficult to supplant.

The science curriculum revolution of the early 1960s added content and new fields of study to science programs. America needed to increase the level of knowledge to reach its new goal of putting a man on the moon. While most of the curriculum reformers of that period would argue that process was always included, actual practice generally reduced hands-on activities in favor of more and more complex and abstract concepts. Many of today's educators entered the field during this period and still believe in focusing on content.

Many educators argue that future success for students is contingent on their ability to read, write, and compute, and therefore these skills deserve the greatest emphasis. The curriculum and instruction strategies generated by this belief may place science outside of the "basics" - except for certain facts and processes. In such a scheme, the time allocated for science instruction may not hold the same priority as reading, writing, and mathematics. Science should be taught from a textbook rather than being hands-on, minds-on, and authentic.

ILLUSTRATIVE CASES:

Roosevelt Middle School: A Sense of Place--The Red Tail Ridge Wetlands Project

Activities Integrating Science and Mathematics (AIMS)

Developmental Approaches to Science and Health (DASH)

Foundational Approaches to Science Teaching (FAST)

Physics Resources and Instructional Strategies for Motivating Students (PRISMS)

CONTACTS:

Midwest Consortium for Mathematics and Science Education
North Central Regional Educational Laboratory
1120 Diehl Road, Suite 200
Naperville, IL 60563-1486
(630) 649-6500, fax (630) 649-7600
> Internet e-mail: info@ncrel.org
WWW: http://www.ncrel.org/msc/msc.htm

Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for
Mathematics and Science Education
The Ohio State University
1929 Kenny Road
Columbus, OH 43210-1079
614-292-7784, Fax 614-292-2066
Internet e-mail: info@ENC.org
Internet web site: enc.org
For materials and resources for the science classroom, use the ENC Resource Finder.

National Science Foundation
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230
703-306-1600

American Association for the Advancement of Science
1333 H Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20005
202-326-6400

National Research Council
National Science Education Standards Project
2101 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20418

References

Date posted: 1995