Role Play

Role play is a product of ‘play’, ‘games’ and ‘simulation’. In science education role-play may be seen as an interaction between these three components – either in combination or by themselves – and the child who ‘performs’ the activity, resulting in learning outcomes.

It is suggested in this model that there is progressively increasing intellectual rigour involved as you move from play to games to simulations. Again, in this model, all aspects of role-play are derived from ‘play’. Since the initiation and design of role play is driven by the teacher, play takes on an educational function. Some types of role play use techniques derived from drama, which may be adapted for use in teaching science. Role play in science, therefore, is a product of the use of drama, games and simulations.

Why use role-play in science?

The theory behind the use of role play in science teaching and learning – as with ‘active’, ‘experiential’ or ‘child-centred’ learning – is that children are encouraged to be physically and intellectually involved in their lessons to allow them to both express themselves in a scientific context and develop an understanding of difficult concepts (Taylor, 1987). The key to role play, and the reason why role-play can help to make science relevant to many children, is that it is based upon ‘play’. By the time that children begin to be educated in science, they are already very experienced at play, having had their whole lifetime to practise. This play activity is naturally used by children to develop their knowledge and intelligence (Piaget, 1951). The desire to play, and therefore to learn, is a fundamental part of human psychology and is a potentially powerful resource residing in the children themselves.

Field Work

Science teachers should incorporate field work into their curricula because it offers authentic learning experiences for students, giving them greater understanding of the natural and technological world in which they live.

The value of fieldwork in schools

Fieldwork allows students to connect abstract scientific ideas with ‘hands on’ experiences by allowing students to observe animals and plants in their natural habitat. It also promotes a deeper understanding of the investigatory approaches that underpin the whole of science.

Biological fieldwork is important for the future of academic disciplines like ecology, for the science skills base and for the public understanding of science and environmental change.

The cost of not support fieldwork in schools is significant. The ability to address important environmental issues, such as the impact of climate change, will be undermined in the future if there is not a strong skills base in certain areas such as ecology and taxonomy. This will in turn have a significant impact on our ability to understand and manage changes to natural resources in the future.

Barriers to fieldwork in schools

Transport and subsistence costs are a major disincentive within primary and secondary schools. Fieldwork in schools is often subsidised by wealthier parents or by the Local Education Authorities for schools deemed to be in special need. There are significant proportions of students that fall between the two ends of the spectrum.

Difficulties in trying to position fieldwork within an already packed curriculum result in the running of such courses within vacation periods. This has implications for staff time and student motivation. It also means that the fieldwork is not as integrated into the curriculum as it should be.

Risk assessments, and the fear of prosecution should those assessments be found to be inadequate, are major hurdles for teachers. The time scales required for submission of such assessments and the extra burden that the preparation of these place on staff do not encourage teachers to use the outdoor environment as a different medium in which to present the curriculum.

There is a critical shortage of biology teachers with the academic and professional skills to support planning and organising fieldwork in both schools and universities. There are no clear recommendations for outdoor teaching experience of biology fieldwork within the national curriculum for teacher training in science.

 

The Demonstration

An effective demonstration can focus students’ attention, motivate and interest them in a lesson or unit, illustrate key concept and principles, and initiate inquiry and problem solving.

Demonstration involves "showing what or showing how".

Demonstration is relatively uncomplicated process in that it does not require extensive verbal elaboration.

Requirements of good Demonstration:

The success of any demonstration following points should be kept in mind.

1.       It should be planned and rehearsed by the teacher before hand.

2.      The apparatus used for demonstration should be big enough to be seen by the whole class. If the class may be disciplined she may allow them to sit on the benches to enable them a better view.

3.      Adequate lighting arrangements be made on demonstration table and a proper background table need to be provided.

4.      All the pieces of apparatus be placed in order before starting the demonstration. The apparatus likely to be used should be placed in the left hand side of the table and it should be arranged in the same order in which it is likely to be used

5.      Before actually starting the demonstration a clear statement about the purpose of demonstration be made to the students.

6.      The teacher makes sure that the demonstration lecture method leads to active participation of the students in the process of teaching.

7.      The demonstration should be quick and slick and should not appear to linger on unnecessarily.

8.      The demonstration should be interesting so that it captures the attention of the students.

9.      It would be better if the teacher demonstrates with materials or things the children handles in everyday life.

10.   For active participation of students the teacher may call individual student in turn to help him in demonstration.

11.    The teacher should write the summary of the principles arrived at because of demonstration on the blackboard. The black board can be also used for drawing the necessary diagrams.

The Discussion Method

The classroom discussion is one of the most powerful strategies that a teacher can use to facilitate cognitive and affective gains in students.

Jigsaw Strategy

The Jigsaw Strategy is an efficient way to learn the course material in a cooperative learning style. The jigsaw process encourages listening, engagement, and empathy by giving each member of the group an essential part to play in the academic activity. Group members must work together as a team to accomplish a common goal; each person depends on all the others. No student can succeed completely unless everyone works well together as a team. This "cooperation by design" facilitates interaction among all students in the class, leading them to value each other as contributors to their common task.

The Lecture Method

The Lecture method

The lecture method has certain strengths that make it useful for science instruction.

·         A large amount of material can be covered in short period of time

·         An effective means for introducing a unit, clarifying understandings, and defining science term

·         An efficient way to convey information to students who have difficulty reading textbooks and do not read assigned text materials.

·         An inexpensive method of instruction

To ensure a successful lecture, the teacher should use various techniques to make certain that there is a continuous interaction between the teacher and the student audience. The following nine suggestions adapted from Clarke (1987) should be helpful in maintaining student attention.

1.  Emphasize important ideas by changing the rate, volume, and pitch of your voice.

2.  Emphasize important statements by using pauses that allow time for the audience to respond to questions.

3.  Enunciate words clearly.

4.  Avoid repetition of words.

5.  Avoid using such words or phrase as um, er, like well, ah, you know. Uh-huh, and okay.

6.  Maintain eye contact with the audience.

7.  Scan the audience to observe reactions.

8.  Interject humor and signs of curiosity and interest and other indications of your personality.

9.  Keep the flow of visual aids smooth and free from distraction.

Laboratory Work

What is laboratory work?

This type of work permits students to plan and to participate in investigation or to take part in activities that will help them improve their technical laboratory work.

In general, laboratory work can be used to promote the following learning outcomes:

·         Attitudes toward science

·         Scientific attitudes

·         Scientific inquiry

·         Conceptual development

·         Technical skills

Disadvantages of Laboratory Work

Laboratory work is not a panacea for improving science education. Although most science educators promote lab work, this strategy does not necessary produce all of the outcomes believed by many educators (Blosser, 1981; Hegarty-Hazel, 1990) for a number of reasons. Laboratory work that is counter to what students expect does not necessarily produce new conceptions. Laboratory periods are often too short, and students do not complete their lab work (Gardner & Gauld, 1990). Of course materials and equipment are always a problem in some schools where limited resources are available for this type of instruction.

Approach to Laboratory Work

1.     Scientific process skill

A major purpose for including laboratory work is to develop in students a sense for the nature of science. This aim requires that students use inquiry skills to engage in investigation.

2.    Deductive or verification

The purpose for this type of laboratory work is to confirm concepts, principles, and laws that have been addressed during classroom discussion and reading, as well as for students to gain firsthand experiences with them.

3.    Inductive

The inductive laboratory is the opposite of the deductive laboratory. The inductive laboratory provides students with the opportunity to develop concepts, principles, and laws through firsthand experience before these ideas are discussed in the classroom.

4.    Technical skill

Good laboratory techniques are essential for conducting successful laboratory activities and gathering accurate data. Good laboratory work also includes experimental technique and orderliness.

5.    Problem solving

In problem solving laboratory work, students are given opportunities to identify a problem, design procedures, collect information, organize data, and report the findings.

Teaching/ Instruction

Teaching/instruction:

a) Approach: General term. e.g : behaviorist, constructivist

b) Strategies/Method: e.g constructivist: teacher guiding, discussion, experimentation

behaviorist: discussion , experimentation

***although strategies like experimentation is appeared in both approach above,

it is depend on how teachers is going to implement them on students.

e.g experimentation strategies in constructivist approach, it is more open since

only the apparatus are provided but students are required to design the

procedure.

Whereas, in behaviorist, students are provided apparatus, procedure, etc.

c) Techniques: e.g constructivist: questioning technique

Inquiry-discovery approach

1) Structure: problems and materials are given, students are asked to find the

outcome.

2) Guided: problems or questions and materials are given, students are asked to

discover the process and outcome.

3) Open: students are required to discover problems, doing investigation, find the

procedure and outcome.

Constructivism

Students learn by constructing their own knowledge based on their prior knowledge. Therefore, learning occurs as a result of students' own effort. Beside, constructivist approach provide opportunities to cooperate, sharing ideas, experiences and reflecting. In order to make comparison with previous ideas, we need to follow the sequence:

Orientation -> Elicitate of Ideas -> Restructuring of Ideas -> Application of Ideas-> Review Change in Ideas.

Contextual learning

For over twenty-five years, CORD, the internationally acclaimed R & D agency, has been studying how different students learn and how great teachers teach. The result is improved student success through new curriculum and instruction.

CORD calls its highly effective pedagogy Contextual Learning. Sometimes described by theorists as “scientific constructivism,” this Contextual Learning approach incorporates the five teaching strategies embodied in the R.E.A.C.T. acronym - Relating, Experiencing, Applying, Cooperating, and Transferring. 

Science, Technology and Society

Relate to students' daily experiences and investigate problems through discussion.

  
Mastery Learning 

Mastery learning is based on deductive (Behaviorism). For example, in experimentation , students are provided with all those aim, apparatus, random variables, hypotheses.

Focus of this approach is to ensure all students to acquire and master the intended learning objectives.

But what if teachers had re-teaching after 3 times and students still not able to master the knowledge try to  delivered to them???

Then , teachers should give the enrichment activity to the group of students who able to master the knowledge and gather the poor students and try to do something on them (remedial).

** Mastery learning consisting of elements of remedial and enrichment.

Scientific Skills

Scientific skills are involved manipulative skills, science process skills (SPS) and thinking skills.

Science Process Skills (SPS)

a) Basic SPS: Observing (attributing), Classifying, Measuring, Using Numbers, Predicting, Communicating, Using Space Time Relationship and Interpreting Data.

b) Integrated SPS: Defining Operationally, Controlling Variables, Hypothesizing, Experimenting.

*** Scientific Skills is interrelated to Thinking Skills


Thinking Skills


a) Critical Thinking Skills

A person who thinks critically always evaluate an idea in a systematic manner before accepting it.

It includes Attributing, Comparing and Contrasting, Grouping and Classifying, Sequencing (e.g food pyramid), Prioritizing (e.g nutrition), Analyzing, Detecting Bias (e.g teacher asks students to detect bias in an advertisement), Evaluating and Making Connections.

b) Creative Thinking Skills

A persons who thinks creatively has a high level of imagination, is able to generate original and innovative ideas, and modify ideas and products.

It includes Generating Ideas (approach in open enquiry : round robin), Making Inferences, Predicting, Making Generalizations, Visualising (e.g computer simulation), Synthesising, Making Hypotheses, Making Analogies and Inventing.

Thinking strategies are high order thinking processes that involve various steps.

a) Conceptualising
b) Making Decisions
c) Problem Solving

***Beside the thinking skills and strategies, another skills emphasised is
reasoning.

Reasoning is a skills used in making logical, just and rational judgement.


Scientific Attitudes and Noble Values

Scientific Attitudes: being objective, being systematic, being cooperative, being fair and just, daring to try, etc

Moral dilemma: teacher may try to tell a story and see students can think what is right and what is wrong. Beside, teachers also can ask student to detect bias.

Teaching concepts

Examples and non-examples

E.g.:The example of solution is salt water and non-example of mixture is pepper and water.

Besides, the following techniques will be useful for teachers in teaching such as the misconception on Calvin cycle (dark cycle) can only operate in the darkness).

Concpet map

For light reaction and Calvin cycle, indeed both of them had involved many steps and students might lost their mind in examine the relationship between light reaction and Calvin cycle. Using an advance organizer will be effective in teaching; it had been indicated energy from sunlight is used to produce ATP and NADPH while Calvin cycle is using both of them to produce high-energy sugars. Hence, Calvin cycle is light dependent.








Image and analogies

Using the images in teaching the will be useful in introducing the topic photosynthesis.
It shows clearly that the intimate interrelated ship between light reaction and Calvin cycle.








Computer simulation

To review the role of NADPH and ATP in the Calvin cycle that serves to produce starch, using a computer simulation is more effective to describe rather than memorizing a series of equations involved. The goal is to help students to build a relationship on the importance of light reactions in Calvin cycle.

Experiment

In addition, an experiment on the need for light in photosynthesis can be carried out among students.

The plant was kept in the dark for 48 hours. The plant (with leaves covered as shown) was then exposed to sunlight for 6 hours. The covered leaves were then tested with iodine.

It is observed that no blue-black color was observed in the leaf covered with card board stencil. A blue-black color was observed in the control leaf without covered with card board stencil.

light reaction does not convert carbon dioxide into a carbohydrate which is an integral part of photosynthesis.

That means, starch is produced in Calvin cycle. Based on the observation of experiment indicated that starch is not exist in the leaf covered with light-proof paper (iodine, brown color will turn to dark blue in the presence of starch), It is then can be concluded Calvin cycle only produce starch in the presence of light.

Classification of Scientific Knowledge

The scientific method is used to generate a database of scientific knowledge. A generally accepted hierarchy of scientific knowledge includes: 

Facts: an idea or action that can be verified.

Concepts:  rules that allow for categorization of events, places, people ideas, etc.

Principles: relationship(s) between/among facts and/or concepts; used to generate if-then statements.

Laws: firmly established, thoroughly tested, principle or if-then statement.

Theories: set of facts, concepts, and principles those organize multiple findings and allow for description and explanation.

The Theory of Constructivism

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Piaget concluded that there were four different stages in the cognitive development of children.

The Information Processing Approach

The cognitive learning theory is represented as an S-O-R paradigm. The organism is treated as an active processor of information.

The stage theory proposes that information is processed and stored in 3 stages.

The Three Primary Processes

I. Encoding. This when the information in our environment is being sensed, perceived or attended to.

II. Storage. After we encode the information, it is stored for either a short or long period of time depending on how we process or encode the said information.

III. Retrieval. The stored information is retrieved when needed in a certain task.

The Three Main Stages of Information Processing

1. Sensory Memory

  

Human body perceives the environment through the senses. These sensations travel to the brain as electrical impulses or synapses. However, these electrical impulses or synapses must be translated in such a way that the brain can understand. This process is called transduction. Sensory Memory, the first main stage of information processing is affiliated with the transduction of energy. 

In this stage, our mind holds the information for extremely brief period of time, since it receives a great amount of information more than it can hold or perceive. This is the reason why attention is very important on this stage. In order for the information to proceed to the next stage, that information must be attended to, or must be familiarized by the thinker. In addition, the duration is different among the senses, like auditory memory is more persistent than visual memory.

2. Short-Term Memory 

  

This memory is also called working memory because this refers to what we are thinking in a certain moment of time. This stage is created if we attend to an external information, a thought that popped in our head, or both.

The capacity of short term memory is said to be 5 plus-minus. This means that STM can hold 3 to 7 chunks or bits of information. The duration of the information while in the STM is dependent on how we organize or practice/repeat that information. Thus, organization and repetition, plus chunking or grouping, can help the information proceed to the next stage, that is the Long-Term Memory.

3. Long-Term Memory 

This is the final stage of memory wherein the information can be stored permanently until needed. Its capacity is limited and its duration is indefinite.

Take note however that these stages are not like that of machines that once turned on, will do the process 1st step, 2nd step, 3rd step, so on and so forth. The processes are said to be controlled and regulated by an executive processing system, more popularly known as metacognition. Metacognition, in simpler terms, is "thinking about thinking"

Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory

Vygotsky’s theory is one of the foundations of constructivism. It asserts three major themes:

1. Social interaction plays a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development. In contrast to Jean Piaget’s understanding of child development (in which development necessarily precedes learning), Vygotsky felt social learning precedes development. He states: “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological).” (Vygotsky, 1978).

2. The More Knowledgeable Other (MKO). The MKO refers to anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a particular task, process, or concept. The MKO is normally thought of as being a teacher, coach, or older adult, but the MKO could also be peers, a younger person, or even computers.

3. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is the distance between a student’s ability to perform a task under adult guidance and/or with peer collaboration and the student’s ability solving the problem independently. According to Vygotsky, learning occurred in this zone.

Vygotsky focused on the connections between people and the sociocultural context in which they act and interact in shared experiences (Crawford, 1996). According to Vygotsky, humans use tools that develop from a culture, such as speech and writing, to mediate their social environments. Initially children develop these tools to serve solely as social functions, ways to communicate needs. Vygotsky believed that the internalization of these tools led to higher thinking skills.