Teaching science
We are living in a globalized world where technology enables the movement of products and services everywhere. It also changes every country's economy as it also coordinate the movement of jobs from one country to another. Not long ago, people migrate to where the jobs are, today jobs are migrating to where skilled workers live. According to several studies, there are more jobs available as technology requires more skilled workers for society. As some jobs grow, others will disappear as machines can take over manual labor jobs. To survive, people must acquire certain skills in order to retain their job. In the next few years, more skilled jobs will be needed but fewer manual jobs will be available because these jobs will get automated by machines.
To take advantage of the growing technology needs, science education is important. Today, many countries are focusing on training of science in college, but that is too late. According to the latest U.S government study, to promote science education and to prepare students for the globalized world, science education must begin earlier before students reach college. A review of this study identifies some issues involved in teaching students about how technology influences our world today and in the near future.
The study looks at science education in twenty developed countries and found that current education systems do not allow enough time for teaching science in both high school and elementary school. In most European countries, less than ten percent of classroom time was devoted to scientific activities. The U.S, Japan, S. Korea and countries in the Scandinavia did better with seventeen percent. The study concluded that to prepare for the knowledge society, students need to spend twenty to twenty five percent of their study on science activities.
Although some people consider elementary school is too early to start learning about science, but the study has found that younger students at that age are developmentally ready to understand basic scientific concepts. They are more curious and have higher imagination and should be encouraged to learn more about science. Today younger children are exposed to technology with TV, computers, mobile phones and they have some ideas about the way technology works. If encouraged enough, they could excel in science later. A Japanese study has found that there is a strong correlation between number of elementary science classes and number of scientists that they developed in college. In cities that have more science exposures, there are more students study science than others. The study went further to interview fifty of their top scientists and they all confirmed that their interests in science started earlier, during elementary school.
Beyond what children already know, researchers have identified few other factors that affect the development of scientific thinking. First of all, the science subject often dictates students’ success in the classroom. For example, fifth-graders are much better at understanding physical concepts than they are at social reasoning. Additionally, students are more successful at completing tasks where they have to identify a cause, rather than produce a particular outcome.
Because scientific process is complicated, there are many approaches to teaching science. For example, the teacher may asked a question but there are several ways to answer it. The traditional way focuses on correct or incorrect answer. The modern way focuses on understand “Why” students answer that way. Instead of focus on the answer (Right or wrong) the teacher would focus on how students go through a thinking process to make their answers. Instead of give the answer, teacher challenges students to figure out what happened and allows them to use logic and scientific process to come up with the answer. The study concluded that because of the modern teaching method, U.S education fosters more innovations and scientists than other countries.
There are three types of science instructions: The traditional or “direct” method, the “Learning by Doing” method, and the “Discovery” method. The traditional method is where the teacher explains an experiment and its results, then students must memorized them. The “Learning by Doing” is where the teacher raises a question, the students must perform an experiment with guidance from the teacher to explain the results. The best and most challenging is the “Discovery” method where students devise, execute, and interpret their own experiments, often with few inputs from teacher. This is the most effective way in foster creativity but it is limited only to few selected students.
According to the government study: The traditional method where teachers do most of the teaching is the most effective way to help elementary students to learn about science. These young students receive direct instruction and they are better at remembering results and formulas. The “Learning by Doing” where teachers play a supporting roles is effective in high school and college where students learned by “actually doing” than just memorization so they understand the “what” and the “how” of scientific process. The “Discovery” is best suit for students in graduated schools which focuses more on the cause and effects (What, Why, How, Where and When) so they can conduct scientific research.
Of course, no method is perfect and neither researchers nor educators have agreed on what works best. What is obvious is that children's development and their current understanding of the world around them is important. Given enough exposure and guidance, it is possible to develop more scientists by starting the teaching of science earlier. In this fast changing technology world, every country need more forward-thinking, scientifically minded population in the future, and elementary school is the place to start.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
