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A major concern of teachers is getting their students to understand the concepts and lessons that are being taught. When the teacher makes a lesson plan, most of the focus is based on the un... See More

A major concern of teachers is getting their students to understand the concepts and lessons that are being taught. When the teacher makes a lesson plan, most of the focus is based on the understanding of the students being taught. For the purposes of STEM, this material will use science to illustrate these points. How can teachers help students to interact more and understanding key concepts as well as, what the potential flaws in the study may be? The National Science Education Standards (Content Standard G) emphasize that students should understand the power and limitations of science, the use of scientific knowledge in decision making, and science as an important part of culture (Hanuscin & Lee, p. 64, 2009). This is a difficult topic to cover because students usually look at science differently from the “real world” and they do not realize that science is life. For example, Biology is defined as the study of life. For this article, fourth, fifth, six graders were observed to see what their understanding was before the inquiry-based instruction was used. Most students have an inaccurate view of the subject of science and what science means to the world. Researchers interviewed fourth-grade students who believed that their textbooks contain unchanging scientific truth and that science has little room for creativity because it is a straightforward procedure. Students also believed that science is based solely on what can be observed directly (Hanuscin & Lee, p. 64, 2009). Many elementary schools in the grades prior to fourth grade teach students science through observation. For example, many students have had the assignment of planting a seed into soil, watering the soil, and placing the seed onto a window seal for the sunlight to shine on the plant. Over time, the plant will appear through the soil and the students learn that plants grow with soil, water, and sunlight. The negative side of that teaching is most of the emphasis is based on observation of the plant’s growth and not on the work done, along with observation that allowed the plant to grow. Also, a plant grows that same way every time and the students can begin to think that all science works that way, but that is not the case. Some plants can grow with no or minimal sunlight. A study was performed on sixth grade students where one class used traditional teaching methods and one class used inquiry-based study. For the study the class that used inquiry-based teaching did so the nature of science instruction. Students in the inquiry-based teaching demonstrated a substantial improvement in their understanding of the lesson than in the class that used traditional methods. At the conclusion of the instruction, students were able to explain that scientists can change their explanations and ideas because of new evidence (Hanuscin & Lee, p. 65, 2009). That can be accomplished by teachers inviting students to express their own ideas about science and scientists, and ask questions like, “What might cause scientists to change their ideas?” or “How do you think scientists determined what dinosaurs looked like if they only had the bones?” (Hanuscin & Lee, p. 65, 2009). These questions can help students understand the concepts and materials, while allowing the teachers to examine their understanding of the materials. A possible criticism of the study is that the design asks for a lot of critical thinking and for the students to ask multiple questions. While this is helpful in some cases because the students can hear different perspectives from their own but that also can be confusing to students that don’t fully understand the lesson or are just being introduced to the new material. Students’ beliefs about science were not related to gender and ethnicity; however, low-achieving and low socioeconomic status students exhibited less sophisticated beliefs about the nature of science than their peers, which could be related to their opportunities to learn science (Hanuscin & Lee, p. 64, 2009). Does this style of teaching help this group of students and why didn’t the article mentioned if these kids were involved and if it were an effective method for the students? The goal of teaching is to help the students grow mentally and continue to develop and this may be a useful way of accomplishing this task. References Hanuscin, D. L., Lee, E. J. (2009). Perspectives: Helping Students Understand the Nature of Science. Science and Children, 64-65. https://s3.amazonaws.com/nstacontent/sc0903_64.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIMRSQAV7P6X4QIKQ&Expires=1542049598&Signature=BcjCoL788rnZVlJ8JO1%2fnTtrT0g %3d

Helping students understand the nature of science

Hanuscin, D. L., & Lee, E. J. (2009). Helping students understand the nature of science. Science & Children, 46 (7), 64-65. This article introduces the responsibility of teachers briefly an... See More

Hanuscin, D. L., & Lee, E. J. (2009). Helping students understand the nature of science. Science & Children, 46 (7), 64-65. This article introduces the responsibility of teachers briefly and tells us that one of the science teaching goals is to help students understand the “nature of science”. Students should learn the nature of science and understand the power and limitations of science. And according to the research, student’s ideas about science are easily influenced by several factors like social images, scientist and school science experience. The author also used many related examples to show that school science experience had a great influence on student’ beliefs about science. This article also tells us that the nature of science should be a purposeful and explicit part of classroom lessons and discussions for students to develop their understanding of science. Some examples show that many younger students do not understand the nature of science, and teachers should find more effective ways to improve their understanding. The last part of the article is about how we can help students learn about the nature of science. In order to teach students in an effective way, the teachers must learn and understand the nature of science first. And the purpose of the science class is to convey information about what science is and how science works. It also introduces various effective ways that teachers can use in the class to help students have a better understanding of the nature of science. In my future class, I will learn and understand the nature of science first and then try to convey information about what science is and how science works. Also, I will use the effective ways like “invite students to express their own ideas about science” to help them develop a better understanding of science.