I was looking at some assessments the other day, along with a discussion of "Do you need to know any content to be able to ask any question that purportedly assesses the Nature of Science?"... And although I don't want to go down that very interesting avenue today it did get me thinking about how we develop the capabilities with students.
There are some great resources out there to support teachers in ensuring the Nature of Science "is the overarching strand" -my first stop would always be the TKI science online website, http://scienceonline.tki.org.nz/, and then the Science Learning Hub, https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/. Staying in New Zealand we have the NZAPSE website with activities and articles and of course the Royal Society website as well. All these have resources to teach different topics. Some are better at promoting the science capabilities or the Nature of Science but all need something more (in my humble opinion) and that's a teacher being deliberate!
A wee while ago, in chatting with some Year 9 teachers, they talked about what they'd like to see in fresh students eager to learn! It wasn't content (which I sort of was expecting to hear) but enthusiasm and understanding about science... knowing what words mean such as compare, investigate, analyse and being ready to enjoy science for what science is. They were wanting to see children who had also had a lot of science but not so much the what. This excited me! Imagine students who are asking questions, observing closely, inferring, critiquing one another, being aware of how science works, knowing bits and pieces giving them confidence to learn more, aware of science in their contexts, real world applications... the list is endless!
However for this to happen, and here's the aim for this post, teachers need to do more than simply do great science! We need to be deliberate about the vocab we use and ensure that students understand what those words mean in a science context. We need them to know that "although this is the 'water cycle', what's important here is the 'cycle' bit... we use this word in life cycles and rock cycles too... so what is the purpose of a cycle? What are the bits that help us identify it's a cycle?" A couple of years ago NZCER people came and shared with the science team some research they had been doing. I forget the fine detail but basically they found juniors could draw a butterfly life cycle fine but seniors couldn't draw the huhu bug life cycle even with all the information they needed shared with them. The students weren't aware that it's actually a cycle, a life cycle, and this one's about butterflies or frogs and can be applied to the huhu too.
So what does it mean to observe? What do I need to be doing to be observing? Is looking enough? Is a glance an observation? How do I critique? What is an explanation and how will I know I've explained (and I'm thinking about in a science context)? What is evidence? Is it just my thinking? What if I misinterpret the data... Ice melts because it's in my hand. When it's in the freezer, it's not in my hands so stays solid. When I hold it in my hand, it melts therefore my explanation is 'when ice touches skin it melts'... Teacher might ask 'So what's different? Could it be temperature?' No, it's just skin, skin must have some special property that melts ice... (and yeah, I know it's not a perfect made up example but I hope you get the idea)? Where to next?
This term as you teach lessons, focus on that Nature of Science element that the science capabilities reflect to a certain extent... What are the children learning about how science works? What words are important for them to understand and use (I'm thinking both science knowledge or content vocab, for example, solutes and solvents, as well as science processes like investigate, examine, measure, analyse)? How are you developing that science lens? Will children be asking more questions, investigating, discussing deeper, critiquing on another's thoughts? Will they know how science looks, which maybe quite different to how art looks? And the result of all this will be students who have sceptical dispositions, inquiring minds and the confidence to challenge.
Keep sciencing on!
Paul
