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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science
Learning and Teaching, Volume 4, Issue 2, Article 12 (Dec., 2003) Man-Tak CHAN and Ping-Wai KWOK Facilitating active learning through a thematic science curriculum
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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science
Learning and Teaching, Volume 4, Issue 2, Article 12 (Dec., 2003) Man-Tak CHAN and Ping-Wai KWOK Facilitating active learning through a thematic science curriculum
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Conclusions and Implications
The evaluation of the thematic unit of "Clean Water" confirmed that students participated in their learning actively. Three curriculum features accounting for promoting active leaning atmosphere in the lessons were identified, namely, "relevancy to learners' daily lives", "developments of problem-solving and thinking skills, and the "STS approach" in teaching science. This study also draws implications to science education and science teacher education.
First, developing students' skills and cultivating positive attitudes are far more difficult than teaching content knowledge. Traditional science lessons would hinder students' thinking and skill development by inducing recipe-type experiments and transmitting authoritative scientific knowledge to learners. Results of this study revealed that the strategies and activities adopted in this thematic unit could effectively facilitate active learning in the laboratory, particularly in the domains of skill development and attitude cultivation. The message was that students should be the decision maker or the owner of their learning. The role of teachers should be changed from a knowledge transmitter to a learning facilitator. The findings provided evidence that most students had good potential in scientific investigations and solving problems when they were provided with the ownership of learning, the freedom of experimental designs, and adequate time and equipment. The demand for apparatus and equipment was not at all problematic because it was found in this study that most students could get good experimental results in their own designs by using typical laboratory equipment and some simple domestic tools. Shortage of time was the real problem. Time taken for allowing students to design and perform undirected investigations was far more than that required by recipe-type experiments. It seems very efficient to cover the topic of distillation by just demonstrating the setup and the experiment of a condenser. Such an experiment usually takes about 10 to 15 minutes. In the lessons observed in this study, the practical time for students to design setups, try out experiments and modify the methods to collect condensed water was about one hour. Teachers interviewed also expressed that the time constraint was a major obstacle to the implementation of student-centered modes of learning. This problem falls back to the "content and process" debate of science education emerged in the 1980s. The assertion is that students will learn more skills and knowledge through student-centred activities even though less content is taught. The conception of "learning how to learn" is to develop students' interests and skills to acquire knowledge on their own. In the era of knowledge explosion, school curricula can no longer cover sufficient knowledge for students to live in the years after formal education. Allowing more time for engaging students in open-ended investigations would help them to develop skills, attitudes and interests to learn independently in the future. Layton (1992) advocated science knowledge to be learned through practical actions. It follows that the time constraint will not be a great barrier if shifting the emphasis of learning from the content to the process. Thematic science curricula are ideal contexts for actions that "may be attempts to teach or to learn the knowledge, applications of the knowledge in practical or technological situations, or explorations at a deeper level of the knowledge itself" (Fensham, Gunstone & White, 1994, p.4). Similarly, science education reforms in US schools since the 1990s also adopt a 'less is more' notion. According to Bentley (1995), many science programs in the USA "organise content around conceptual themes, with fewer topics treated in greater depth" (p.24).
Another implication of this study was that science lessons should take more forms of open-ended investigations on real-world problems. Typical textbook patterns rarely give rooms for students to think and to make decisions on what procedure they should proceed. Cookbook-recipe type learning activities are built on the traditional paradigm assuming that students can come up with valid scientific laws and conclusions through straightforward induction procedure (Garrison & Bentley, 1990). Following this line of thinking, the teacher-control mode of learning has long been dominating classroom activities in the school. From the results of this study, deep learning, especially thinking and creativity developments, can effectively be achieved by adopting more student-centred activities like peer group discussions, debates, negotiations and open-ended investigations. Then, the role of teachers should change from a knowledge transmitter to a learning facilitator. As a result, adequate teacher preparation is crucial in the implementation of such thematic science curricula. Teachers must accept the paradigm change of their teaching profession. Decision-making authority on the subject content should be devolved to student level to a certain extent. But the importance of teachers should not be de-emphasized. Taking the distillation scenario of this study for example, students would never discover the running water method of standard condenser themselves if the teacher had not followed up the problem of warming water in test tubes encountered by students (Figure 4). Teachers' capability of providing prompt reaction is very important in follow-up discussions. To be competent to cater for the needs of different students, teachers should be equipped with good communication skills for leading discussions and debates, adequate curriculum knowledge for integrating science across themes and disciplines, subject knowledge and skills for inclusion of values and social connections of science, etc. All these are great challenges to most teachers nowadays. In addition to the reform efforts on science education, science teacher education should also be restructured to equip teachers with adequate knowledge and skills to cope with the new challenges of the teaching profession.
Copyright (C) 2003 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 4, Issue 2, Article 12 (Dec., 2003). All Rights Reserved.
