background and theoretical frameworks
When I first began student teaching, I felt most comfortable with and believed strongly in the use of direct instruction as my method of instruction in the secondary science classroom. In direct instruction, students are exposed to essential content via the active and direct presentation of information by the teacher (Rosenshine, 1995). As Huitt explains, attributes of direct instruction include prompting of previous and relevant knowledge; predominant use of teacher-directed instruction with less student seatwork; implementation of examples, visual prompts, and demonstrations by the teacher (to mediate between concrete and abstract); and constant assessment of student understanding (2009, p.3). I recalled my own experiences in my high school and college science classrooms - nearly all of my instructors used a direct instruction, lecture style of teaching. Thus, when I began teaching, I believed (as many teachers do, Sewell notes) that “all [I] have to do is impart new information and if the student is paying attention or is motivated, they will learn what has been taught” (2002, p. 24).
As I began to reflect on my observations of students’ work, the interactions I observed in the classroom, and on my own teaching practice, however, I realized that I often had trouble discerning at what level each of my students understood the material that I presented. Most students would fastidiously copy down the notes during class, but only the same few students would answer questions, ask for further clarification, relate topics to previous knowledge or everyday life, or present their own ideas or beliefs about a topic. As I explain in my Problem of Practice paper (2013), “even when I paused, provided five seconds of wait time (Bybee, 2009, p.242), and verbally noted something like ‘I see that two (or three or four) of you have an idea that you would like to share, but I want to give the rest of the class an extra second to think,’ I still would not usually get a more robust number of students to raise their hands.”
This led me to question: to what extent were all of my students ‘getting’ what I was teaching? How could I tell? If I did not hear from all students, I could not really tell what students knew or were thinking. Maybe my students had always succeeded at memorization, regurgitation, and (thus) standard assessments - but I wanted more from my students. Were they seeing the connections and story I was weaving from class period to class period? Were they connecting their learning in the classroom to their everyday lives? Were they finding science a fun and interesting subject of study? Or were students just trying to memorize the scientific facts and vocabulary to pass the next test? I realized that I wanted my students to develop the ability not only to learn the vocabulary and facts of biology but also to apply this knowledge to answer challenging questions, connect their developing biology knowledge to their everyday lives, see science as an expanding rather than static field of study, and understand how scientists perform scientific inquiry to help build our ever evolving scientific knowledge base.
As I began to reflect on my observations of students’ work, the interactions I observed in the classroom, and on my own teaching practice, however, I realized that I often had trouble discerning at what level each of my students understood the material that I presented. Most students would fastidiously copy down the notes during class, but only the same few students would answer questions, ask for further clarification, relate topics to previous knowledge or everyday life, or present their own ideas or beliefs about a topic. As I explain in my Problem of Practice paper (2013), “even when I paused, provided five seconds of wait time (Bybee, 2009, p.242), and verbally noted something like ‘I see that two (or three or four) of you have an idea that you would like to share, but I want to give the rest of the class an extra second to think,’ I still would not usually get a more robust number of students to raise their hands.”
This led me to question: to what extent were all of my students ‘getting’ what I was teaching? How could I tell? If I did not hear from all students, I could not really tell what students knew or were thinking. Maybe my students had always succeeded at memorization, regurgitation, and (thus) standard assessments - but I wanted more from my students. Were they seeing the connections and story I was weaving from class period to class period? Were they connecting their learning in the classroom to their everyday lives? Were they finding science a fun and interesting subject of study? Or were students just trying to memorize the scientific facts and vocabulary to pass the next test? I realized that I wanted my students to develop the ability not only to learn the vocabulary and facts of biology but also to apply this knowledge to answer challenging questions, connect their developing biology knowledge to their everyday lives, see science as an expanding rather than static field of study, and understand how scientists perform scientific inquiry to help build our ever evolving scientific knowledge base.
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