SCIED 552: Science Teaching and Learning Developing Models of Science Teaching

I tend to think of a Pavlovian response as a sign of a baser nature: who but beasts salivate at the ringing of a bell?  I’m uncomfortable with the simple, tidy antecedent-behavior-consequence model of applied behavior analysis (ABA) for which B.F. Skinner laid the groundwork.  Even as he argues for the use of mechanical reinforcement devices, he writes “The cry will be raised that the child is being treated as a mere animal…” and yet he does little to assuage this concern (Skinner, 1954, pg. 96).  I want to guide my students to an intrinsic love of learning by introducing them to the entrancing mysteries of the natural world. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire,” goes the quote that is often attributed (probably apocryphally) to Yeats.  This quote, perhaps more than anything, has guided my decisions as a teacher.  And yet.

I haven’t learned the bell schedule where we are student teaching, but I know when to expect the bell by watching the behavior of the students in the classroom.  They don’t salivate, but they do, almost as one being, start shuffling papers and zipping pencil pouches about a minute before the bell rings.  Are students and pigeons more alike than I’d like to admit?  Are they bird-brained?  Of course not.  And yet.

The evidence for the efficacy of ABA in the classroom is vast (Martin & Pear, 2015).  ABA techniques are widely used to help students with disabilities make educational progress.  In everyday life, operant conditioning abounds: parents giving screentime in exchange for a child cleaning their room, police giving a driver a speeding ticket, or a boss giving an employee a spot bonus for excellent work are just a few examples.  Principles of behaviorism and operant conditioning are widely used because they can be systematized, easily implemented, and their effects quantified.  Behaviorism applies a scientific method to the process of education—much like the “recipe” that Dewey writes about (Dewey, 1929, pg. 15).  Principles of behaviorism remove some of the art of education and efficiently effect change in behavior and learning—but at what cost?

John Dewey, the father of the progressive education movement, views education as an art, as a science, and as a social and community endeavor.  Dewey puts his trust not in the whip or the sugar cube and not in the direct application of scientific procedures to education, but rather in the training and instincts of the teacher:

“We must distinguish between the sources of educational science and scientific         content.  We are in constant danger of confusing the two.  We tend to suppose that  certain results because they are scientific are already educational science.  Enlightenment, clarity, and progress can come about only as we remember that such results are sources to be used, through the medium of the minds of educators, to make educational functions more intelligent.” (Dewey, 1929, pgs. 22-23).

He believes that the application of scientific principles helps to make a gifted teacher’s individual successes durable and transmittable (Dewey, 1929, pgs. 10-11).  While writing about how to leverage this application of scientific principles, Dewey highlights the importance of “connecting principles” and the linking up of “various findings” which presages the NRC’s notion of “crosscutting concepts” by more than 80 years (Dewey, 1929, pgs. 20-22); (NRC, 2012, pg. 30).

The Framework also discusses how young children initially learn about science “through everyday activities, such as talking with their families, pursuing hobbies, watching television, and playing with friends,” which echoes Dewey’s belief in the community nature of education (NRC, 2012, pg. 24).  NRC further highlights the social nature of science education, writing that “science is fundamentally a social enterprise,” (NRC, 2012, pg. 27).  The NRC’s prioritization of science process alongside and perhaps above science knowledge also feels like an intellectual descendant of Dewey’s work (NRC, 2012, pgs. 27-28), while I’d argue that standardized testing is the intellectual descendant of Skinner.  Finally, I can only imagine that Dewey would see the NRC’s commitment to equity (NRC, 2012, pg. 28) as the fruition of his contemporary, Jane Addams, work at Hull House and throughout Chicago.

References:

Dewey, J. (1929). The Sources of a Science of Education. New York, NY: Liveright.

Martin, G. & Pear, J. (2015). Behavior modification: what it is and how to do it (10^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall.

National Research Council. (2012). A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Committee on a Conceptual Framework for New K-12 Science Education Standards. Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press (Ch. 2).

Skinner, B. F. (1954). The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching. In A. A. Lumsdaine & R. Glasser (Eds.), Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning: The Science of Learning (pp. 99-113): National Association for the Education of Young Children.

The three readings assigned this week were each extremely interesting in their own right, but I think I want to focus here on how they interplay with one another in my mind.

I read these three in order by publish date because I was curious to see how the views on teaching evolved with time. The article by Dewey was honestly incredibly confusing to me because I couldn’t seem to put my finger on exactly what they were advocating for. It seemed at once they both wanted some sort of framework for teachers to be able follow e.g. following their reasoning that “science gives common efficacy to the experiences of the genius” (pg. 11)  while also arguing that it is an art form whose “value is not to supply objectives to him, any more than it is to supply him with ready-made rules…… As an act it is wider than science.” (pg. 75) So which is it? I personally lean towards the second idea that as a teacher, you must draw from a wide variety of sources in order to make your teaching effective and that there is no one-size-fits-all teaching methodology you can learn to make your lessons the best they can be.

Skinner, however, would disagree completely. He seemed to focus solely on the “how” of teaching and teaching implements while Dewey was more a philosophical approach. I loved seeing that Skinner was suggesting this immediate reward machine that isn’t unlike the learning style implemented in apps such as Duolingo – bell included! However, this seems to be the exact sort of blind application of science results to the science of education that Dewey warns about. There are so many issues with blindly throwing technology at education problems as a “solution” and we’ve seen that play out in recent years with some implementations of ipads and laptops in schools too.

After reading Skinner and Dewey, it was interesting to me that the NRC seems to have taken a middle-ground between the two extremes. They provide a loose framework of ideas, goals, etc to be used by teachers in each grade without telling them exactly how they should be taught and implemented. However, they do seem to encourage a discovery/inquiry/lab/hands-on based approach, but my issue with this is the same as another that I have with Skinner’s “solution” which is chiefly funding and equity across schools.

Despite Skinner’s ideal of “Once we have accepted the possibility and necessity of mechanical help in the classroom, the economic problem can be easily surmounted,” (pg 97) the truth is that mindset just hasn’t come to pass. Schools with large amounts of funding can afford electronic lab materials such as velocity sensors, carts and tracks, etc that will definitely make the lab-based learning that the NRC routes an achievable goal. However, schools who don’t have the money to turn the AC on certainly don’t have the ability to fund this kind of activity. Overall, it seems to me that following the NRC guidelines becomes increasingly difficult as funding decreases and which generates a vicious lack-of-funding circle since grants, etc are often given out based on how well a school has excelled at these guidelines themselves.

-Rachael

The first reading I completed for this week was the Skinner article. After completing the other two readings I feel like it was fitting that I read the Skinner piece first. I feel like Skinner’s thinking about teaching and how people learn was the furthest from my current understanding of how people learn and should be taught, compared to the other two readings. Skinner introduces the idea of reinforcement to encourage behavior in a classroom. I think he was onto something and reinforcement can be a valuable tool. However, what I am skeptical about is the behaviors he focused on reinforcing in the classroom. He wants immediate reinforcement of “right” answers. This reinforcement would shape students to be able to solve math problems, memorize information, and report this information back to the teacher but is that really learning? The NRC framework suggests no. I believe the NRC chapter would describe Skinner’s students as novices, “novices tend to hold disconnected and even contradictory bits of knowledge as isolated facts and struggle to find a way to organize and integrate them” (NRC, pg. 25). I believe Skinner’s tool, which dings when the student gets the right answer, would allow the students to have an understanding of isolated facts but they would not be provided with the experience that would allow them to understand the foundational principles needed to tackle novel problems. The NRC suggests that is in fact what experts do. So, that is kind of why I had a hard time buying into Skinner’s article. However, I think I probably overlooked some of the value of his work because I was thrown off by some aspects. For example, both the NRC chapter and the Dewey article elude to the fact that individual students’ needs should be considered. Skinner does not seem to do this. To me it seems like he has a plan that he thinks will work for everyone, almost like he is training a dog how to sit.

I found a lot of parallels between the Dewey article and the NRC article. After completing both readings I was left with the impression that a teacher’s job is never set in stone. The NRC suggests that a teacher should always take into consideration the students’ past experience and adjust lessons to reflect where the students’ thinking is at. The Dewey article seems to be focused more on a higher grain size than an individual lesson or classroom. He seems to say that educators should never be satisfied that they are teaching the correct way or possess the correct teaching philosophy (i.e. teachers and school administrators should have an open mind to learn from educational research). This makes sense to me because during Skinner’s time I am sure his philosophy was much better than what they were doing prior to his work.

The NRC and Dewey also get into the collaboration aspect necessary for learning and doing science. The NRC clearly says that science is a collaborative process, while Dewey presents an objection to “arm-chair science” because of its remoteness. I was not entirely clear on what he meant exactly, but I think he was saying that connections are made when you work with your ideas, likely with the help of others. On the other hand, I have a picture in my mind of Skinner’s devise lighting up red if a student turned to discuss an idea with a peer rather than silently putting it in their device.

All three readings helped me see that we should constantly keep an open mind and learn from the work of prior teachers and researchers.

How do people, particularly students, learn?  This question is fundamental to education in general and science education in particular.  It has a history of competing philosophies which create very different educational environments.  Two of these philosophies – scientific efficiency and child centered learning – have permeated American educational thought since the early 1900s.

Skinner (1954) focuses on the need for immediate reinforcement of responses when students are learning, and the learning machine he has created provides a way for students to receive that reinforcement even in large classes.  His model for learning is a technological extension of memorization through drill and correction.  In modern classrooms, computer programs are used to facilitate learning in this way.  For example, IXL provides ample practice for different math concepts with instant feedback and virtual rewards like unlocking stickers and earning experience points.

In contrast, Dewey (1929) emphasizes the importance of the cumulative and/or the whole in and for education.  In this chapter, he views education as more of an art than a science because he seems to think that science, when poorly understood, may be fractured into individual units instead of valued for the composite that it builds that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.  This fear may materialize in Skinner’s learning machine, which reduces learning to memorization.  The mention of Dewey brings to mind scientific inquiry driven by the interests of the students doing the learning.  This type of learning is more process driven and more organic than the efficiency focused memorization that Skinner supports.

The NGSS Framework states, “Science is not just a body of knowledge that reflects current understanding of the world; it is also a set of practices used to establish, extend, and refine that knowledge.  Both elements – knowledge and practice – are essential” (2012,  p26).  I would argue that the emphasis on knowledge can be traced to strands of scientific efficiency that include Skinner’s focus on improved retention of “facts” which were considered important for students to know, particularly since information was not readily available via Google or Siri.  Similarly, the emphasis on practice can be traced to Dewey and other educators who believed that learning should be centered around the interests of children.

NGSS appears to want to combine knowledge and practice so that students learn particular core content while practicing the “methods” of science.  The goal is that students will grow to be able to apply the practices to new situations and information that they encounter later in life.  It appears to favor Dewey’s approach over Skinner’s because it focuses on process instead of memorization of content.