Instructors:
Richard Steinberg, Professor of Physics and Education at City College
Michael Cook, Math/Science Coordinator at the Bank Street School for Children
Course description:
In this course we will study, in depth, various topics in the physics. Topics will include electric circuits, magnets, and light. For most activities, we will work in groups.
Co-instructors:
Hudson Roditi, Ph.D., Director, Urban Advantage, American Museum of Natural History
Michael Cook, Math-Science Coordinator, Bank Street School for Children
Course Description
In this course, we will study, in depth, various topics in earth science. Topics will include the forms of energy and their movement in the earth's system, the nature of the atmosphere, the role of water in the earth's system, and the properties of earth materials.
Learning will occur through an inquiry process that involves the raising of questions, followed by lab-based investigations of phenomena that include data collection, data analysis, and the drawing of conclusions. Lab investigations will be done in groups, and conclusions will be shared in class discussions. Readings will be assigned after the study of particular phenomena.
Students will keep journals that focus primarily on the science being learned, but will also deal with reflections on the affective side of the learning when this seems appropriate. These will be collected weekly for a response from the instructors.
Textbook:
The required text for this course is Earth Science by Tarbuck etc. Readings will be assigned in this text.
Suggested texts include the NSRC lab book and the Tarbuck lab book.
Assignments and assessment:
Assignments which ask students to articulate their understanding of the concepts studied in the course will be assessed on the level of understanding and on the clarity with which you convey that understanding.
The first course offered by the Kerlin Science Institute, established in 2001 in honor of the late Sally Kerlin ('36) with an endowment from the Kerlin family, took place last July, with twenty-one teachers as the students. It was co-taught by Michael Cook, Math/Science Coordinator at the Bank Street School for Children, and Richard Steinberg, Professor of Physics and Education at City College.
"The goal of the Kerlin Science Institute is to strengthen the teaching of science by having teachers of science, or teachers who teach science as part of their curriculum, learn science through inquiry. So we wanted the participants to learn how to actively create their own understanding rather than taking someone else's dictum as truth. What we were really teaching was scientific thinking," says Michael.
The four-week course was an in-depth, college-level look at one area of science, in this case, physics, specifically, electric circuits, magnets, and light. (Future summer courses will feature a different science each year.) A main task for the students was to investigate the nature of electrical circuits by constructing their own, using batteries, bulbs, and wires. "Through direct observation, we formed models that predicted how the current would behave. For instance, we found there's a dramatic difference between two bulbs connected in a series circuit (in a line) versus two bulbs in a parallel circuit (side by side)," says Michael. "The parallel bulbs were each as bright as a single bulb, but the series bulbs were much dimmer. So we had this mysterious phenomenon of current behaving differently depending on how you set up the circuits."
There are many practical applications of this sort of understanding, according to Michael. When you wire a house or an apartment, you don't have one or two bulbs, but many. The question is what will happen when you wire the bulbs in various ways. "Our most complicated circuits had six bulbs. The permutations are many. If you change your circuit a little bit, your model may no longer work, and you are predicting the wrong thing. Then you have to revise. And that is the beauty of this approach to science; it is really about the revision that constantly takes place in learning," says Michael. It also avoids the punitive aspect prevalent in traditional teaching, the tendency to think, "This is wrong. I must be stupid." Instead, the learner observes, "This doesn't work. I will change my model."
Traditional science teaching makes children passive learners. They are given rules and formulas to memorize, and assigned problems to which they must apply them. It is not as interesting to them, nor do they really understand. Deep understanding comes from developing one's own knowledge. This is much harder to do, and takes longer. "But that knowledge sticks with you in a way being told something or reading it doesn't. This is actually the way scientists do science: they investigate new phenomena no one has rules or models for yet, and build their own models," says Michael. "And this is the way we feel children should be doing science in the classroom. During July, we focused on getting teachers to develop their own scientific concepts, and the course was in some way a model of what we would like teachers to do with the children they teach. (Though the course material may not be directly applicable to what teachers would necessarily do.)"
That course was the first part of a ten-credit Kerlin Science Institute program. Of the twenty-one people in the course (three credits), fifteen went on to take the Fall and Spring seminars (three credits each) in which, building on the July course, they have been assessing science teaching models and, with the guidance of the instructors, proceeding to construct, implement, and evaluate teaching materials. There are two groups, K-4 teachers and 5-8 teachers, and each group meets twice a month with Don Cook, Director of Bank Street's Tiorati Workshop (an environmental science site), and Professor Richard Steinberg, who co-taught the July course. In June 2004, there will be a one-credit session in which students will present their own newly formulated physics curriculums.
"Teaching the July Kerlin Science Institute course had a very profound effect on me, even though I was an instructor," says Michael. "But we all know we learn as we teach. To be allowed to develop your own model of how these phenomena work; what a powerful experience! It must be like what children undergo when they learn language. They're playing with it, trying this and that, and finally one day, they "get it"; they can talk with us. You feel you have a miraculous kind of power when you figure things out for yourself. It's been fascinating and enriching for me, and I am very excited at being able to apply this approach to refining the science curriculum in the School for Children."