Conference Material

Rubenstein 1999 Keynote Address

Science and School-Aged Students

How should you engage and empower your students? How can you take the same processes that I've been talking about and incorporate them into your teaching? This is where your note-taking should start. So far, this has been an introduction about how I think as a scientist and how I think as a teacher. I began with generalities and then switched to specifics derived from examples that I use. I modeled the process of the scientist and the science teacher. Now let's step back and deconstruct what I've been telling you and put it into your context. A context that I understand because I work with teachers. I'm on the executive committee of E=MC², a Princeton area systemic initiative. I also train many teachers. Many of the students in my class, by the time they're done, want to go into teaching. I also serve on Princeton University’s Teacher Preparation Program’s advisory committee and I’ve also been a member of my children’s local School Board. So I do know something about banging heads against walls when it comes to initiating systemic change.

The next step is to move away from the quick and simplistic demonstration of processes. I could demonstrate to my students the dynamics of populations on the computer more quickly if I simply changed all the parameters one at a time in a systematic fashion. Unfortunately they would not learn much. I would have already fine tuned the simulations to illustrate particular pedagogical points. However, to learn the content and the nature of doing science they have to explore on their own. So I have to move away and let them explore. By doing so, I accentuate the ‘minds-on’ experience.

Now comes the toughest one. The one I still wrestle with every time I teach. Its the trade-off between focusing a student's perception, taking away some of the freedom to choose a compelling problem, and liberating the problem posing phase of doing science. If I am going to help a student to learn how to ask questions and to parse those questions into testable parts with predictions, I have to be in command of the subject matter. I have to be in charge of what's going on in that classroom. If I let every student pick every problem that they want to study, I'd be thinking on my feet all the time. I'd be exhausted intellectually. Thus, there is always a tension between the compelling problem a student actually wants to know about and the one that I can shape into a vehicle where I use my disciplined training and thinking as a model that will guide student thinking. That's a trade-off that is not easy to balance. I hope that this issue will come up in your discussions during the next few days. When you get curriculum from manufacturers and from the school districts themselves, a lot of thinking will have gone into shaping and focusing the exercises so that the resources are there to do the hands-on part. But we don't want to abandon the minds-on part which is often the most fun. Model building, problem posing with predictive elements, needs your guidance so some focusing of perception is required. But determining just how much is tough.

Next, meld facts and process. Don't separate them. It's not about content or process. The two go together. If there's anything I've illustrated to you, it's that the wealth of past experience underlies the process. How many of you as teachers know what happens in the years before a student arrives in your class? How many of you know what a students has mastered? Year-to-year integration becomes critical for melding process with content. Students may not recall all facts they have learned, but they're there in the deep recesses of their minds and can be drawn upon to solve the simple parts of problems..

Abandon the drudgery to enrichment model teaching. To a large extent, the science in kits have done this. Has it been done in mathematics? Have we gotten away from the notion of simply mastering manipulative techniques to actually solving problems and thinking in a quantitative ways. I don't necessarily think we have. I think we're moving there, but I don't think we're there yet. I think science teaching may be ahead of mathematics teaching in this regard.

One of the reasons I say this is that, for many years, I would go into the high school and teach AB calculus. I did this, in part, because it wasn't until I was a sophomore in college that I realized that calculus was useful. We know it's about rates of change, it's about dynamical systems. How many of us however, ever really wrestle with untangling dynamical systems in our daily lives? And if we do, we don't do it quantitatively. In calculus class we learn the tools and we learn techniques. And I for one found that I got tired of predicting the ballistic trajectories of missiles or of trying to minimize the amount of cement that went into building a swimming pool.

I couldn't understand why I, or any other teenager, wanted to solve these problems. It wasn't compelling. I just learned it, I got my good grades, and I was done. It wasn't until I got to biology in college that I said, "My goodness, I can't solve problems about the design of a limb or the ability of a body to minimize the rate of heat loss unless I use mathematics." So I make a yearly pilgrimage into the senior calculus class. And I asked students in the AP Biology class to join the class and explore how to solve simple biological problems.

We start with the biological concept that natural selection is a great tinkerer that optimizes many aspects of biological structures and functions. As a result, solving for maximums and minimums using derivatives could give us insights into how natural selection ‘shapes’ adaptations. For example, they were studying breeding behavior, so I asked them how we could put calculus to use to solve a problem on ‘what size territory should a bird defend, especially when the environment is of poor or of high quality?’ They looked at me as if I had said something in Greek. To help get them started I asked, ‘what would be the benefit of having a territory? What would be the costs of having a territory?’ And, as good students do, they would write a list of possible reasons, in English, of course. At least we were moving.

By composing the list, they were starting to pose the problem. But the hard part of combining the costs and benefits still lay ahead. And they didn’t have a clue as to how to begin. So I asked one of them to come to the board and draw some graphs. That proved to be easy since they could visualize how costs and benefits would change as the size of the defended territory changed. Now all we had to do was generate some equations to describe the curves the student drew. Letters with subscripts represented the functions and that made it possible to subtract costs from benefits to see if there were territory sizes where net benefits existed. I suggested they take the derivative to find the optimum territory size. They were frozen since there were no numbers. Finally, they took the derivatives in the abstract using letters with primes, extracted a general rule, and got a ‘feel’ for how to combine biology and mathematics. By eventually writing down some specific numerical formulations of the generalized equations, they got tangible results that made the abstract relationships more real. Ultimately, they were able to reason from biological and mathematical first principles through to using their calculus in a meaningful way. It can be very powerful to simultaneously learn techniques and apply them to solving problems that they were studying elsewhere in the curriculum.

Also, choose exercises that students can touch, see, feel, and use their senses to explore. In the realm of life sciences study ecology and behavior when they're young. Don't focus on problems related to cell or molecular biology because they are too abstract. Students can't see this world. To them the objects are a collection of symbols connected by lines on paper. They will be better able to attack such problems when they're older, when they can understand what the diagrams represent.

Next, alter your style of testing. Think about the example with the wolves in Yellowstone. What was the test? What was being assessed? It was their ability to convince me that they understood the dynamics well enough to persuade me as a manager to follow their proposed policy. It wasn't a written test. I didn't ask them specific questions. I could evaluate what they knew by the quality of their presentations. In essence, I knew the end point that I wanted them to arrive at before I conceived of the exercise. I structured the investigation to make the end result the assessment vehicle. Match your goals to your style of questioning.

And lastly, make your scientists and parents partners in the process. Because parents can provide the support from the bottom up, and scientists can supply support from top down, the process of teaching and learning that I am espousing will remain creative. There are many prescriptions to do this, but I’ll concentrate on my favorite. I'm going to talk about the prescriptions for the teachers first, and then the prescriptions for the scientists.

The key is to identify important ideas to explore (Figure 23). Find those compelling problems that will engage your students. Then search for activities with potential and focus them into explorations. Now many of you will do this in your own classrooms with the assistance of solid curricular guides or science kits. The key, however, is not to lose the sense of wonder that comes with exploring compelling problems. This is where partnerships with scientists can become important because scientists can connect and align the inquiry approach of science teaching to content areas. This is the first crucial bookend that makes the teaching to learning process function as real science.

Now stand back and let your students explore. Help should be available to them and it is most effective when it takes the form of coaching and coaxing that uses the Socratic method. Help translate and transform student observations into testable questions, those ‘if-then’ predictions. After they test them, help students persuade others that they have the right answer. And then lastly, help students extract generalizations, or general rules, from their observations. This is the other bookend that's tied to content that most of us in the classroom do not do.

We too often stop when students have met the standards stated in the teachers’ guides. Unfortunately, we do not give students the opportunity to reflect upon what they have learned. Rarely do we give our students time to take the findings of an experiment performed in the classroom and put it into the context of the real world. Do we ask students to make comparisons? Do we ask them to perform those disconfirmatory tests that I have been talking about? Oftentimes, we do not because we don't have time. The curriculum is too full. In essence, if they do well on an exam, we are satisfied and we move on to another subject or to another unit.

But I would argue these two content laden bookends are as important as the dynamical processes which, for the most part, teachers have already mastered. The ability to stand back and coach and let kids explore are activities most teachers are comfortable doing. But can we enrich the project by identifying the real key ideas? And can we draw upon an ever growing knowledge base for comparisons and generalizations? That's where increased content becomes critically important.

Let me illustrate this need with an example. Last week, we had a workshop involving Princeton faculty from the University’s Environmental Institute and the Materials Institute and the teachers from the E=MC² districts – West Windsor-Plainsborough, Lawrence, and Ewing. The purpose of the workshop was to stimulate more scientists to begin working with classroom teachers. Teachers with kits in these districts came forward and explored the kits with the scientists. It was not only an eye opener for all the scientists that were there, it was exciting.

The teachers were really in control of the evening. They did a splendid job in captivating the scientists and provoking them to start thinking about increased ways to link content with the process. The group that I was in explored the kit "Water on Earth". Its aim is to teach students about the properties of fresh and salt water, about water movement on, and below the land, and the dynamics of estuaries. The teacher leading the exploration was an extraordinarily gifted teacher, tremendously enthusiastic, and shared with us the processes simulated by the kits and the projects that she had developed to optimally use the kits.

The first project she showed us was the use of ‘before and after’ drawings. Pre- and post- assessment techniques were clearly demonstrated. She had the kids draw the sea bottom and an alluvial plain over which water flowed, both before and after the unit. And the pictures were completely different. It was an instant snapshot that showcased what the 6th graders had learned, ranging from connecting relationships to displaying an understanding of content and vocabulary. It was an excellent way to demonstrate to the students that they had mastered the material.

Another of her units was to make a hill from soil composed of different components, and then pour water over it. Faculty repeated the project many times and got different results even if they were careful to duplicate their treatments. This is what you'd expect because there is a chaotic fractal dimension to this process. Then she shared with the faculty observations and hypotheses generated by the students when they did the same experiment. Their insights and scientific reasoning were very mature. It was illuminating to see that the students really wanted to know why sometimes one big channel formed whereas under other conditions, many small channels were created. Their hypotheses to account for the differences were generally on the mark.

What impressed the scientists most was how sophisticated these 6th graders were in asking interesting questions and the ability of the teacher to guide them through a disciplined way of coming up with answers. But we all then wondered if the teacher had a real stream near her school. She said, "Yes, I do." And we all said, " Do you take the kids down to the stream?" And she said, "No, I don't." And we all said why not? And she said, "Can you imagine my school board letting me take 25 6th graders down to that stream with just me supervising?" We said what about an aide? No, she said "aides are assigned to my classroom at a different hour and I only have the aide for half of the period anyway, so I can't do it." What about parents, we asked, to which she responded "I have to organize the parents two weeks in advance and I'm not always that far ahead."

One structural problem after another prevented her from really enriching the exercise. She couldn't link this wonderful unit with the real world. How then, do we get past such barriers? Here was an opportunity to make generalizations, to let the students see the applicability of what they were deducing and then examine those principles it in the real world. If they could go on a field trip we could make comparisons. Enrichment of this type would enable students and teachers (or parents) to ask about the function of plastic retention barriers at construction sites, for example. Children should now be able to see actual runoff, siltation and particle sorting and hosts of other interesting principles and appreciate their environmental consequences. If they could repeatedly examine the stream they could compare what happens when it rains excessively or when it rains only a little. Due to structural constrains, however, the teacher missed an opportunity to reinforce consequences for all the processes her students saw in the little tub.

The third experiment that she did simulated the behavior of estuaries. For this one, I stood back as a scientist and just wanted to watch the pedagogy. The teacher had already set a small fish tank on an angle so the water formed a wedge. The water was blue colored and it was supposed to be salty. We were then told to dribble yellow colored water into the blue water and examine the consequences. Then just before we began, she said, "Oh, I’m sorry, it’s backwards." And we all said, "It’s what?" "It’s backwards. Trust me. Just wait a second."

What happened is that the fresh water was on the bottom and we were going to pour the salt water into it, just the opposite of what was called for. Now I, the scientist, think that such a reversal would have been perfectly fine. Estuaries are dynamic and tides force salt water into fresh water when they 'rise' and the reverse when they 'fall'. It really doesn’t matter which water goes in the tank first. She cared, however, so she changed it around and we poured the fresh water into the salt water. To me this re-adjustment represents a missed opportunity to allow students to explore on their own, even if it isn’t the protocol that is called for.

We continued with the experiment and it was fascinating. The water mixed and produced a thin band of green whether we added it slowly or not. In a real estuary, the waters mix continuously and the only reason tongues of salt and fresh water stays separate is that new water continuously flows. Clearly we didn't explore this exercise as fully as we might have in terms of the dynamics of real estuaries. This is where scientists can come in. Scientists can provide support for the notion that exploration, if a little looser can yield other unintended patterns that will motivate students to find patterns that encourage them to generate really novel hypotheses as explanations. These new puzzles will complicate the process, but they're real and rich and students and teachers can untangle them with a bit more effort.

The workshop took an unexpected turn when the teacher said, "You notice there's a little bit of yellow creeping underneath the blue?" We all looked at that and were as puzzled as she was. That shouldn't happen. Fresh water should remain on top. Indeed at the back, there was a little bit of yellow creeping under the blue. All six of her groups of students, spotted this phenomenon and they hadn’t a clue as to why it happened. She asked us, as scientists, if we could tell her why that happens. We couldn’t– nor should we. Remember the ‘Black Box Experiment?’ We could, however, ask questions and generate hypotheses with predictions that could help her solve the problem.

One hypothesis proposed was that the colored water may have been charged. Since the experiment was done in a plastic tank, maybe adhesion bound some of the yellow coloring to the tank’s bottom surface. If so, she could do the experiment in a glass tank. Or she could put some soil on the bottom to change the bottom's adhesive properties. Another scientist suggested that perhaps the effect could be an optical illusion, since the tank had curved sides and edges. Light could be bending around the edges so that the yellow is not really underneath. Using straight edged tanks could test this hypothesis. Or, perhaps, just lifting it up and looking up from the bottom would provide a test. Since there was no yellow on the bottom when we lifted the tank the effect probably was an optical illusion.

Although this test was only suggestive, the experiment highlighted two observations that are interesting. One was the teacher stopped the investigation. Continuing to pursue what the students wanted to know was not part of the unit. Her solution to the puzzle was to ask the experts. The other was that although the experts didn't know the answer, they just modeled what they do best: they asked questions; they picked and probed; they generated ‘if-then’ statements; and even tested them when possible.

This teacher-scientist interaction illuminated both the strengths and the weaknesses of the kit centered teaching process. They showed that content matters and that the scientific process doesn't stop. Once large amounts of material are mastered a teacher's comfort level goes up, improving his or her ability to pose the questions about what is not understood.

Figure 24 illustrates the prescription for scientists. It comes in two forms: 'dos' and 'don'ts'. Let's start with the ‘don'ts’. First, scientists should not provide excessive detailed knowledge to a teacher about a topic even if they try to do so it in uncomplicated ways. Muddled facts in equals muddled facts out. There's no way that all the extra material, most of which will be superfluous, is going to register. Why burden teachers with 'stuff' that they can't use as background?

Second, don't be the expert and try to fix the curriculum. There are usually good reasons why the curriculum is the way it is. The school district has put together a K-12 integrated system that they believe makes sense and our job is not to reorganize it.

And lastly, don't get hung up on bringing ‘bells and whistles’ into the classroom. Don't come in with fancy equipment to make the measurements faster and easier. Reliance on gadgetry is not self-sustaining. When scientists take them out of the classroom, teachers and students alike are deprived of being able to reproduce the process and results.

Now to the ‘dos’. Scientists should listen and observe. They should connect the classroom to the real world and they should model the process of science. This is what the Princeton faculty did at the workshop and it was effective. Every one of the faculty members was enthusiastic about the dynamics that had developed between themselves and the teachers. Eye opening experiences with the kits enabled then to see potential in modeling science and enhancing content. Many signed on to get involved in the local schools.

The scientists’ role, however, is not limited to working with teachers. Scientists can transform the culture of the community outside the classroom. Scientists can become advocates for science at school boards. They can work with science subject area supervisors, they can encourage their institutions—be they universities or companies—to provide resources, time and intellectual support to make science visible and thus of high value to the public, taxpayers and parents. As people with credentials, if scientists are seen to care about the systemic change in local schools, community support will increase.