Lehrer proposes a fourth culture;

“The premise of this movement—perhaps a fourth culture—is that neither culture can exist by itself. Its goal will be to cultivate a positive feedback loop, in which works of art lead to new scientific experiments, which lead to new works of art and so on. Instead of ignoring each other, or competing, or co-opting each other in naïve or superficial ways, science and the arts will truly impact each other. The old intellectual boundaries will disappear. “ J.Lehrer, SEED, January 16, 2008

Interesting stuff, but how do teachers realize this fourth culture in the classroom? One way is through cross-discipline teaching units, working with colleagues, but building such collaborative schemes is a difficult task.

Perhaps there’s another way, something a little more accessible to the average teacher. Perhaps we could become story tellers. I’m currently working on a series to teach measurement and as an experiment, I’ve used a story about my dear grandmother to teach the need for standardized units. It’s the heart rending story of the loss of a favorite recipe. I excerpt it here, you can find the full 5 part article in the feature section. The story is intended to be told while actually mixing dough and is interspersed with measuring hints.

My grandmother was a wonderful woman, naturally, since she was Irish. Like most Irish grandmothers, back in the day, she baked those delicious traditional Irish soda breads. I particularly liked her soda farls, a breakfast staple. I liked them so much, I decided to learn to bake them myself. I found a notepad and pen, and rose with the roosters, ready to record her recipe as she prepared to bake the mornings supply. She began with flour, four fistfuls to be exact, and then added a teacup of buttermilk…wait a minute, “How much buttermilk is in a teacup? “ I asked. “This much”, she said, holding up a cracked and battered teacup. My plan was in ruins, I had no way to record her recipe, the ingredients were measured in units that were inseparable from her. Alas, my grandmother has been gone for these many years, and her ancient teacup and calloused fists are gone with her. I’ll never taste her farls again, and the world is smaller place from the loss, all for the lack of a standard measure.

Stories like this humanize science, and the teacher, and provide a memorable learning experience. I know I can’t pick up a measuring cup, without remembering the incident, may my students will remember units in the same way.

I’ve just read a paper from The Math and Science Partnership Network MSPnet Library. MSPnet is brought to us by the Center for School Reform at TERC and is funded by the NSF. The article I read is titled Effective Science Instruction: What Does Research Tell Us? and it’s well worth the time to read.

The authors begiin by dismiss the mode of learning debate;

Debating the mode of instruction misses the point, however, as current
learning theory focuses on students’ conceptual change, and does not imply
that one pedagogy is necessarily better than another. For example, students
may be intellectually engaged with important content in a dynamic, teacher directed
lecture, or they may simply sit passively through a didactic lecture
unrelated to their personal experience. Similarly, a hands-on lesson may provide
students with opportunities to confront their preconceptions about scientific
phenomena, or it may simply be an activity for activity’s sake, stimulating
students’ interest but not relating to important learning goals.

and they summarize current ideas in education with;

Whatever the mode of instruction, the research suggests that students are most likely to learn if teachers encourage them to think about ideas aligned to concrete learning goals and relate those ideas to real-life phenomena.

Finally, a voice of reason.

The article recognizes five components of effective teaching.

1. Motivation, intrinsic versus extrinsic
2. Eliciting Students, Prior Knowledge,making connections
3. Intellectual Engagement, relating to daily experience
4. Use of Evidence to Critique Claims, critical thinking
5. Sense-Making, building new intuition for a concept

Discussions of each component are provided with examples and are followed by sample lessons.

Most interesting is the discussion of current research. There seems to be teachers trying to use the workshop model and those that stick the direct mode and many other models will have proponents as well, but the research shows that the mode isn’t the critical factor in effective teaching. It’s follow through. Many teachers, will motivate extrinsically, others will do workshops, and yet others will concentrate on critical thinking, but most don’t provide elements for all components.

I have always believed in hands on curriculum supported with classroom discussion under the teachers direction, but now I have a new checklist for my lesson plans. As I have said before, we have to do it all.

I haven’t heard of this program being extended to New York City, but last summer I worked with a technology teacher,Steve May, who was able to participate in something similar at Brooklyn Tech. He turned that 2 week experience into the Young Engineers School, a summer program for middle school students. We spent the month of July helping kids build and launch bottle rockets, build and calibrate a breaking system for model cars, build and test tower structures. The program was enormously successful and easily attract funding to make it a regular part of the curriculum, thanks largely to Steve’s management.

This program was designed for middle school children, but the science and engineering design elements can be scaled to meet the grade level objectives for any age group and a quick search on the internet will reveal an almost limitless number of possible projects. My experience with the program has inspired me and I’m brainstorming several ideas cross curriculum projects both for the science classroom and after school academies. None of them will cost $12.5 million to develop or use. You’ll see them take shape here in the near future.

I have meet students looking for work in a physics lab, who didn’t know what that a nut is also a part of a fastening device; I tutored a student for the LAST who didn’t know what a tide was, let alone why it happened. Both had degrees and new their subject, but that isn’t enough. The teaching of science, and particularly physics, has to lose its ivory tower status. To have a literate population, Science must scratch out a living in the everyday world. I believe there is great potential in interdisciplinary work, particularly with math and technology, but also in ELA and Social Studies.
We have to be able to do it all folks.