Teaching Science 2.0

UWO is starting a new strand in our Master of Science in Education - Curriculum and Instruction degree program.  The program is entirely online, can be completed in about 2 years, and tuition is competitively priced.

The strand, Teaching 2.0, focuses on helping educators develop a vision for “21st Century” teaching.  Participants will explore the intersection between emerging technology and progressive pedagogy.

The world is changing. Globalization has influenced almost every aspect of society. Cell phones, texting, and the web, specifically social tools, have impacted business, politics, and the media and changed the way we communicate. For better or worse, it is inevitable that education will be impacted as well. As educators, we need to develop a vision of education that empowers teachers and students to collaborate, inquire, and create as they explore meaningful ideas.

This is not an educational technology graduate program. It is about more than technology tools. Instead, this strand focuses on helping educators transform their teaching. It is about harnessing these tools to foster creativity, inquiry, and problem solving. It is about exploring a variety of research-based teaching models and assessment techniques. It is about creating a meaningful and progressive curriculum that mixes student passions with educational standards.

Courses include:

MSE Core Courses

Introduction to C&I (3 cr)

Issues in K-12 Education (3 cr)

Educational Research (3 cr)

Improving Classroom Practice (6 cr)  This is a capstone / action research project.

Teaching 2.0 Strand Courses

Learning in a Connected World (4 cr)

Inquiry and Project Based Learning (3 cr)

Assessment (3 cr)

Creativity and Problem Solving (2 cr)

Special Topics (3 cr) The specific content of this course will be determined in collaboration with program participants.

Course Announcement

Last week, I observed a discussion on Twitter related to Dan Pink’s new book, Driven: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. In this book, Pink reviews the psychological research related to motivation and applies it to business. On one side of the discussion, educators were excited about what we can learn about education from this book. On the other side was a strong critique of using business books to inform educational practice.

Pink’s Drive isn’t released (on Amazon, at least) yet, but this Ted Talk should give you a taste. (UPDATE: You can also read an interview with Public School Insights here.)

Pink states, “There is a mismatch between what science knows, and what business does.” The reward and punishment approach works for mechanistic “20^th Century tasks.” However, it doesn’t work for cognitively intense “21^st Century tasks.” This same statement is true in the classroom too. Extrinsic motivators and incentives may work to keep kids quiet, to keep them in their seats, and to compel them to memorize spelling lists and fact tables, but it builds a culture that trivializes learning. However, do we really need to wait for Dan Pink’s business book to tell us this?

Dan Pink is an engaging communicator and can present a well-crafted argument.  He is adept at “popularizing” research.  It is OK to read his book, but don’t forget - there are folks in education, experts even, that have already compellingly made this argument.

For example-

Alfie Kohn wrote about this nearly 20 years ago in the book Punished by Rewards.

In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm.  Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.

Here is one of many examples from the research literature of mastery versus performance orientations and the impact on learning in science:

Pintrich and Sinatra (2003) state that a classroom environment that focuses on promoting mastery goals and dialogue for understanding is critical for learning to occur. The authors found that students hold one of two goals related to school achievement. Students that hold mastery goals focus on learning and understanding content. Students with performance goals focus on demonstrating their ability in comparison to other students. The researchers conclude that students who reported a focus on understanding as their primary goal orientation showed the greatest gains in conceptual understanding.

The students were actively engaged in activities and had an improved understanding of the concepts after the lessons. Students at the University of Michigan who endorsed mastery goal orientations showed a greater gain in their understanding of Newtonian physics than those students who did not endorse mastery goals. Students who espouse performance goals and do not endorse mastery goals show little or no improvement in conceptual understanding. In fact, performance goals without mastery goals have at best no effect on conceptual change, or may even hinder conceptual change. Mastery goals are promoted in contexts where the teachers emphasize learning and create situations where students can make choices and feel autonomous. Recognizing students for improvement can also help promote the adoption of mastery goals. Performance goals are promoted in contexts where teachers use normative grading and recognize students for their performance relative to others.

Dan Pink’s book is based on a wide body of research that has already been published. The premise of the book is that extrinsic motivators do not work for cognitively demanding tasks. That conclusion should be a ‘no-brainer’ for educators as it has been one of the pillars of progressive thinking for decades. But, instead of saying, “Well, duh!” educators will rush out (or online) to spend $20 to read how this applies to business.  What is the allure of books like A Whole New Mind, and Drive? Why do we need business “experts” to tell us what we should already know?

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Pintrich, P. R. & Sinatra, G.M. (2003) The role of Intentions in conceptual change learning. In G. M. Sinatra & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Intentional Conceptual Change. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Linda Darling-Hammond’s new book, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity will Determine Our Future, is a candid and brutal critique of U.S. education policy. Darling-Hammond shows how our educational policy and reform efforts at the state and national level are incoherent, misguided and inequitable. She also provides a roadmap for reform that focuses on teacher development, equity, and ‘21^st Century Curriculum.’ This book is a must read for anyone that cares about the future of education in the U.S.

Unfortunately, the book is “Temporarily out of stock” at Amazon.com, so here is a summary:

In a landslide of data, Chapter 1 chronicles how our education system was developed for an industrial age and has remained stagnant as societal demands have changed. The U.S. is falling behind other countries as they make significant investments in education reform, including removing rigid centralized structures and increasing investments in teacher education and development. The reforms undertaken by high-performing countries involve long-term commitments (not a “Race to the Top”). In contrast, reforms in the U.S. are focused on evaluating students on discrete pieces of knowledge and not on addressing significant inequities in our education system. Schools in low-socioeconomic areas (which also serve a large population of minority students) are often underfunded and have the least experienced teachers.

Chapter 2 focuses on “opportunity gap” by chronicling how inequities in resources and teacher quality impact low-socioeconomic schools. One aspect of this is the differing quality of supports for English language learners, which often involves segregating them into ‘ELL ghettos.’ Chapter 2 closes with a glimmer of hope from small school reform efforts, but also cautions how most educational policies are unfriendly to any structures that are different from traditional schools.

Chapter 3 begins with an overview of standardized testing and the resulting negative impact on instructional practices. In most cases, high-stakes standardized testing in the U.S. has lead to teachers rushing through the curriculum instead of focusing on quality teaching and students who can answer test questions, but can not apply their knowledge and skills. In addition, these accountability reforms have lead to policies that punish low-performing students and schools instead of providing the supports they need. The chapter closes with a detailed debunking of the “Texas Miracle.” Texas is often used as a poster child for using standardized testing for improving student performance. However, these improvements disappear quickly when subjected to rigorous analysis. Comparisons are made to how standardized testing has also decreased opportunities for low-income students in Massachusetts.

Chapter 4 focuses on inequitable funding and the relationship between funding and quality. The chapter details legal efforts and challenges related to arguing for equitable funding. Darling-Hammond provides evidence that builds a relationship between funding and equity and describes how investments in quality pre-school experiences and quality pedagogy have demonstrable impacts.

Chapter 5 contrasts policy in three states by showing that investments in improving teacher quality, development of quality standard, and early-learning experiences has improved achievement and narrowed achievement gaps in North Carolina and Connecticut over the past 20 years. However, a focus on reducing property taxes in California has decimated investments in education and has been devastating for its education system. Chapter 6 compares the inconsistent and often incoherent education reform policies in the U.S. to efforts in Finland, North Korea, and Singapore. These three countries made significant long-term efforts in a number of areas over the past thirty years. Although the efforts in each country are unique, they share these comonalities:

• Equitable funding
• Eliminated tracking systems
• Focused learning standards/outcomes on higher order thinking skills
• Developed national teaching policies to develop stronger teacher education programs
• Supported ongoing teacher learning, including providing 15-25 hours per week for collaborative planning and improvement.
• Pursued consistent, long-term efforts.

Chapter 7 focuses on improving teacher preparation and quality by overhauling teacher preparation, fixing teacher recruitment and retention, and creating opportunities to share teacher knowledge and skill to create widespread expertise that can improve schools.

Chapter 8 provides a vision for what quality schools should look like. Our system should move towards smaller schools that keep students and teachers together for multiple years. This will allow for building strong communities of learners. In addition, inquiry and project-based structures should be used to promote intellectually challenging, personalized and relevant instruction that is assessed through performance-based measures. Teachers and administrators should be collaborative learners as they focus on continual improvement.

Chapter 9 provides a policy roadmap in three key areas to create a high-quality and equitable school system. First, coherent and meaningful learning goals must be created. These learning goals should be complemented by appropriate state and local assessment systems that evaluate students’ abilities to solve problems, and explain and defend their ideas. Second, policies must be enacted to equalize funding. Third, policies should be enacted to improve teacher quality. Increases in funding for recruitment and retention of quality teachers in high-need areas and mentoring programs are needed. Additionally, a reconceptualization of teacher education and professional development is needed to ensure that quality teaching is the “norm,” not the exception. Finally, these reforms for improving teacher quality must be done in concert with reforms to school cultures and structures to focus on collaborative learning.

Linda Darling-Hammond ends the book with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.

I said to my children, “I’m going to work and do everything that I can do to see that you get a good education. I don’t ever want you to forget that there are millions of God’s Children who will not and cannot get a good education, and I don’t want you feeling that you are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.”

The Flat World and Education provides an exhaustively researched call to action for educators and policymakers. However, what sets this book apart is the focus on a coherent and comprehensive policy vision of how to get to where we need to be.

Over the past 18 months, I have been tinkering around the edges of blogging.  This year, I want to get more serious about blogging — and creating a resource for teachers.  I will focus on posting more frequently, with a focus primarily on science education - connections between science “news” and the classroom, translating science education research, and illuminating good classroom practice.  In addition, starting in February I will regularly post classroom examples of formative assessment in science.

To celebrate the beginning of the second week of the “brokenhagen” climate change socialist fest, I thought it would be a good time for me to reinforce the climate denier manifesto.  Taking these 16 statements to heart will serve you well as you join forces with Lord Monckton and Senator Inhofe to obfuscate and vociferate about the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on humankind.

If you doubt the need to join us in this effort, remember Obama’s fascist EPA wants to make it illegal for you to breathe.

A Climate Change Denier Manifesto:

A spectre is haunting the world - the spectre of global warming. All the powers of the world, in the name of a one world government, have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this false spectre.

Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of “climate change?”

To this end, wingnuts of various nationalities have assembled in Copenhagen and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French*, German*, Italian*, Flemish* and Danish* languages.

*Well, not really, since we don’t know them…and everyone should speak English anyway.

Below, we declare our principles and intentions:

1. I will confuse the scientific use of the word ‘theory’ with its casual meaning.
2. I will search the fringes of science for any instances of uncertainty and generalize it to all science.
3. I will ignore multiple sources of evidence in favor of a columnists’ unfounded claims.
4. I will bring up the 1970’s “global cooling” controversy, as proof that scientists are clueless even though more than six times as many research studies predicted warming.
5. I will find a single quote in thousands of pages of text that can be damning when used without context.
6. I will pick my comparison data from wherever I damn well please, even if it happens to be the hottest year ever.
7. I will pretend that scientists have ignored “natural cycles,” because I know the general public doesn’t have the time to read the dozens of studies debunking this claim.
8. I will make up facts and misrepresent data during interviews and op-eds because I know that journalists won’t call me on it.
9. I will deride “qualifications” as elitist.
10. I will repeat fabrications and falsehoods until they become perceived as the truth.
11. I will confound local weather with global climate because, well, it is too darn confusing.
12. When a scientists takes issue with my comments, I will accuse her of being dogmatic and stifling dissent.
13. I will claim that tens of thousands of scientists are in on the hoax so that they can cash in, while hiding my ties to big oil.
14. I will chastise scientists for being  apocalyptic fear mongers while claiming that the solution to the non-problem will destroy life as we know it.
15. I will deny warming on even days and deny human impact on odd days.
16. I will shoot the messenger – He invented climate change AND the Internet.

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For an example of our manifesto in action, please read this, exclusive commentary.  The author should be commended for integrating 13 of our 16 principles.

… The collectivist Left in academia, media and politics got away with imprinting this dogma on the popular mind only because generations of government-school graduates have been successfully stripped of knowledge of history, geology or climate science. There was a time when “science” was a rigorous search for truth that required an open skeptical mind, double-blind studies, multiple repeated experiments, peer-reviewed published data and a strong belief that if you are proven wrong, someone else got it right and the world will benefit. This approach was good enough for Pasteur, Newton and Ben Franklin, but not for today’s crowd.

–

…The real story here cannot be so easily buried. Climate-change prophets threaten millions with poverty if their schemes become law. A preview can be seen in the “man-made dust bowl” of Central California where water has been cut off to one of the most fertile and productive agricultural areas on Earth to “protect” a small fish that one judge thinks might be harmed if the water was used to grow food.

Who cares that those small fish are food for the salmon that west coast fishermen rely on?  I’m with the farmers…for whom do you stand?

P.S.  Seriously, Polar Bears?  Is that the best they can do?  Don’t they know that polar bears eat baby seals?

• TG Daily - Steve Jobs is more popular than Oprah

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  • Junior Achievement surveyed US kids aged 12-17 and asked them to choose the entrepreneur they most admired from a list provided. Surprisingly, teens chose a business legend from the technology sector over fashionistas, Facebook and even the Queen of Daytime. Steve Jobs was selected over Tony Hawk, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Kimora Lee Simmons, Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

One of the most famous quotes in the history of spaceflight is “Failure is not an Option,” by Gene Kranz, Lead Flight Director during Apollo 13.  OF course, he was correct - NASA couldn’t afford to fail when lives were on the line.  This quote also shows up as the title of an education book. Over the years, I have seen the quote in many science classrooms across the country. Is this really the message that we want to send our students?  As former Packer quarterback Jim McMahn said, “…risk taking is inherently failure prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.  Would NASA ever have gotten off the ground if tens of thousands of people, from politicians to engineers to astronauts were not willing to take risks?

In order to learn, we need to take risks.  We need to push beyond our comfort zone.  Too many of our students are so worried about counting points that they are afraid to do anything original - they are afraid to take risks because they are afraid to fail.

Randy Nelson, Dean of Pixar University said, “The core skill of an innovator is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”  We could easily re-write this quote to say, “The core skill of a learner is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”

What would have happened to the people in this video if they would have avoided future failures instead of recovering?

Guest Blogger: Randy Berndt, Rosholt Public Schools (WI)

As a special educator I have used assistive technology in my classroom for a number of years, however it is the technology available to all teachers and students that has changed my classroom this year. A blog, wiki pages and Google Docs have my students writing more, reflecting more, collaborating more, and using critical thinking skills on a daily basis.

I started a blog last year and have continued it this by inviting about a dozen students from another school to join. The blog challenges students to solve social and vocational issues while encouraging them to write more and with less mechanical errors. While my students didn’t seem to mind having grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors on the work they turned in to me, once their work became public they became more diligent about using word processing programs to make sure their writing was (more or less) error free.

A new webpage I created this summer which includes several wiki pages open for student use has my students collaborating more and developing a collective knowledge base. On one of the wiki pages they create problems which other students then check for accuracy, a dramatic shift away from the teacher-generated work they had previously done. On another, they post websites they find to help each other learn biology concepts being taught.

Another collaborative tool we have been using is Google Docs. Using Google Docs, students first provided input for their own grading policy and then developed the policy during a round-table discussion. It was interesting to see the students develop a policy that included how to define and measure appropriate use of class time, how to set attendance standards, and how to grade each other during group work. The collaborative effort also gave students ownership of how their grade would be determined.

It could be argued that all of the things I have done this year could have been accomplished using traditional paper and pencil methods. However based on my observations, I can say that the students (especially my reluctant learners) have been more engaged using technology and are developing life-long skills. Now that I have started using more technology in the classroom, I spend less time at the copy machine and have not only increased my productivity, but my students’ as well.

This is a really well researched and written book.  It is also incredibly depressing.  Here is an interview with the author.

• Kirk Cameron monkeys with Darwin | Salon Life

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  • On that rich-with-gravitas promotional clip, Cameron begins by declaring, “Our kids can no longer pray in public,” a provocative and completely inaccurate assertion, as anyone familiar with the term “public” knows. He then narrows in for the killer point: “A recent study revealed that in the top 50 universities in our country, in the fields of psychology and biology, 61 percent of the professors described themselves as atheist or agnostic.” True, though he fails to point out that the same study found only 23.4 percent of college professors overall declare themselves atheist or agnostic. College: still pretty damn godly!
  • Of course, plenty of people, from Darwin himself to Pope Benedict, have been able to reconcile religious beliefs with a respect for the profound elegance of science.
  • “Hitler’s undeniable connection with [evolution]” and “the absence of any species-to-species transitional forms actually found in the fossil record.” (Apparently Cameron is not on the American Geological Institute’s mailing list.)
  • what 19-year-old wouldn’t clamor for a 19th-century tract amended by someone whose argument for the evidence of God is the existence of the banana?
  • But what’s not funny is what happens when “the opposing — and correct — view” gets into the hands of “our future doctors and lawyers and politicians.” That’s when they realize they’re holding a sneaky defilement of one of the most important books ever written. Nowhere on the front of the “beautiful, full color cover edition” are the words “extremist Christian version.” Because maybe if those targeted 50,000 students knew they were getting their free book from a ministry that advises its practitioners on how to “shut up” a Jew or explain to a homosexual that he’s damned, they might not be so keen on it. They might feel duped and angry at accepting something from a group that proclaims free speech but doesn’t have the courage to put its true intentions right there on the cover.

• :. Oshkosh .:

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• Texas Textbook Hearings | TPMMuckraker

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  • history textbook hearing by the State Board of Education down in Austin, Texas.

    Those are the standards on which — it can’t be repeated enough — publishers base their nationwide textbooks, and the ones that currently contain a clause requiring knowledge of Newt Gingrich.

• The shareholder value voter

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  • conservatism is not just a movement, it’s an industry. In the intersection of science and US policy, there is no better funded industry than climate change denial. It is bankrolled by the most profitable multinational corporations in world history. And to hear the far right talk about it at the recent Values Voters Summit, Jesus must be a major shareholder. 

    GLOBAL WARMING HYSTERIA: THE NEW FACE OF THE “PRO-DEATH” AGENDA

    Dr. Calvin Beisner, National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

    • Why did the President’s science advisor support coerced abortions to protect the planet?

    • Why are top abortion funders underwriting efforts to co-opt evangelicals on global warming?

    • If “people are the problem,” what’s the final solution?

    Cap and trade is about more than saving the planet. It’s the biggest tax hike in American history. It threatens to concentrate massive amounts of power into the hands of central government and international bureaucrats. And its ascendancy marks the rise of a new, more subtle challenge to the culture of life.

    Ultimately, climate change hysteria rests on an unbiblical view of God, mankind, and the environment. Come and hear how the Cornwall Alliance is pushing back–producing ground-breaking studies on Biblical environmentalism, educating pastors and churches across the country, and activating thousands of Christians to rally against the hype through the WeGetIt.org Campaign. Learn why policies to fight alleged man-made global warming will instead cause hundreds of millions of premature deaths throughout this century, and how human liberty, responsibility, and flourishing are the key to a healthier environment.

  • The Values Voters organizers are either unaware, or simply don’t care, that many conservatives, including George Bush, have now stated they accept that climate change is occurring and that some of it might be due to human activity. It’s textbook right-wing denial, married with a heaping helping of hypocrisy to frame climate change as part of a ‘pro-death agenda’ that will cause ‘hundreds of millions of premature deaths’ while implying that it’s the climate scientists who are blinded with hysteria.

• The Climate’s Warm Future Is Now in the Arctic: Scientific American

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  • When the summer sea ice goes, the Arctic will lose the ivory gull, Pacific walrus, ringed seal, hooded seal, narwhal and polar bear—all animals that rely on the ice for foraging, reproduction or as refuge from predators. And the sea ice is going, faster and faster: In the past 30 years, minimum sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has declined by 45,000 square kilometers annually*—an area twice the size of New Jersey is lost each year.
  • Rapid change is coming even for animals once thought to be relatively immune, such as caribou. Whereas the nonmigratory population of the animals on the Norwegian Svalbard Islands is burgeoning thanks to more winter snowmelt exposing a greater abundance of plant life for foraging, caribou in other parts of the Arctic are suffering. In spring, plants are blooming earlier in the year thanks to warmer early spring temperatures, but caribou are still calving at the same time, meaning calves are born after most of the food is available, and therefore fewer of them survive.

• SkyandTelescope.com - News from Sky & Telescope - Stellar Mystery Solved, Einstein Safe

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  • For more than 30 years, Villanova University astronomer Ed Guinan has been plagued, puzzled, and perplexed by DI Herculis. On the surface, this binary star seems pretty much like any other binary star, with two stars going ’round and ’round each other in a predictable, orderly fashion. But there remained a nagging problem that as much as Guinan wanted, he couldn’t just sweep under the rug: DI Her was not behaving in accordance with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

• Researchers discover first rocky planet outside our solar system

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  • “This is science at its thrilling and amazing best,” says Didier Queloz, leader of the team that made the observations.
  • Because the calculated density is so similar to Earth’s, the researchers believe that the planet’s composition is comparably rocky.

    Conditions on CoRoT-7b are much more extreme, though. Because it’s so close to its host star, researchers believe temperatures there could not support life.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.