Effective Science Instruction: What Does Research Tell Us?

1. Effective Science Instruction: What Does Research Tell Us? Dave WeaverRMC Research Corporation RMC Research Corp.

2. Research Results Converge: Reading • Reading—50 years of research • Effective reading instruction requires a balanced blend of: • Phonemic awareness • Decoding • Vocabulary development • Reading fluency, including oral reading skills • Reading comprehension strategies • Any single approach is inadequate RMC Research Corp.

3. Research Results Converge: Mathematics • National Math Panel Report • Effective mathematics instruction requires a balanced blend of: • Computational fluency • Conceptual understanding • Problem solving • Any single approach is inadequate RMC Research Corp.

4. What About Science? RMC Research Corp.

5. Science Is Different FromLanguage Arts and Math • Language Arts (& Reading) and Math • Are skills created by people • Involves learning established conventions • Science • Understanding how the world works • How to create new knowledge • Life in the world creates a working understanding RMC Research Corp.

6. Importance of The Learning Theory in Science • Working knowledge is entrenched and difficult to overcome • Sometimes called “Private Universe” • Key concepts must be internalized • Sometimes called “Big Ideas” or “Enduring Understandings” • Requires greater attention to the learning theory embodied in the instructional materials RMC Research Corp.

7. Most Current Publication • Banilower, E., Cohen, K., Pasley, J., & Weiss, I. (2008). Effective science instruction: What does research tell us? Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. • Posted in documents section of the OEL website RMC Research Corp.

8. Key Points from:Effective Science Instruction: What Does Research Tell Us? RMC Research Corp.

9. Reform vs. Traditional • Traditional instruction • Teacher delivered information and independent student work • Reformed instruction • Small groups of students participating in hands-on activities RMC Research Corp.

10. Debating Which Is Best Misses The Point! • “Current learning theory focuses on students’ conceptual change, and does not imply that one pedagogy is necessarily better than another.” RMC Research Corp.

11. Elements of Effective Science Instruction • Eliciting Prior Understanding • Intellectual Engagement • Use of Evidence • Sense-Making • Motivation RMC Research Corp.

12. Eliciting Students’Prior Understanding • Students come with ideas and beliefs that can either facilitate or impede learning • Their Private Universe • Instruction is most effective when it: • Elicits students’ initial ideas, • Provides them with opportunities to confront those ideas in light of new evidence, • Helps them formulate new ideas based on the evidence, and • Encourages students to reflect upon how their ideas have evolved. RMC Research Corp.

13. Intellectual Engagement • Students must do the intellectual work and the thinking • Must involve meaningful experience that engage students intellectually with important science content • Activities must be explicitly linked to learning goals • Students must understand the purpose of the instruction • Must engage with ideas, not just the materials RMC Research Corp.

14. Use of Evidence • Lessons must provide multiple opportunities for students to: • Make claims and conjectures • Back up their claims with evidence • Use evidence to critique claims made by other students • Science discourse RMC Research Corp.

15. Sense-Making • Lesson must provide opportunities for students to make sense of the ideas with which they have been engaged in order to draw appropriate conclusions • Closure • Reflection • Meta-cognition • Application to new situations RMC Research Corp.

16. Motivation • Types of Motivation • Extrinsic Motivation (Accountability) • Deadlines, competition, tests, grades • May actually be detrimental • Intrinsic Motivation • Stems from intellectual curiosity, personal interest or experiences, desire to resolve discrepant events or cognitive dissonance • Appropriate blend is needed RMC Research Corp.

17. Research On Effective Science Instruction is Also Converging • Considerable evidence from research shows that instruction is most effective when it elicits students’ initial ideas, provides them with opportunities to confront those ideas, helps them formulate new ideas based on evidence, and encourages students to reflect upon how their ideas have evolved. • (Horizon Research, 2008) RMC Research Corp.

18. Untrenching Their Private Universe • Without these opportunities, students “may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom” • (National Research Council, 2003, p. 14) RMC Research Corp.

19. Sense-MakingReflect Upon How Ideas Have Evolved Intellectual EngagementExperience to Confront Initial Ideas Motivation is the Driving Force Use of EvidenceFormulate New Ideas Based on Evidence Effective Science Instruction Elicit Prior UnderstandingIdentify InitialIdeas RMC Research Corp.

20. The new OEL observation rubric was designed to address this vision of effective science instruction. RMC Research Corp.

21. Reference • Banilower, E., Cohen, K., Pasley, J., & Weiss, I. (2008). Effective science instruction: What does research tell us? Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. • National Research Council. (2003). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. J. D. Bransford, A. L. Brown, & R. R. Cocking (Eds.). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. RMC Research Corp.