On Teaching Science: Principles and Strategies That Every Educator Should Know

By Jeffrey Bennett

On Teaching Science is a short, practical guide to key principles and strategies that will help students learn in any subject at any level, but with special focus on the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects. Based on a popular workshop developed by the author, the book begins with brief introductions to the nature of teaching and the nature of science, then consists of four major sections: the one key to student success—namely, that learning requires study and effort; three big picture ideas about teaching; five general suggestions for successful teaching; and seven pedagogical strategies for success in science teaching. Within each section, the author uses a combination of personal experience and research-based studies to discuss both the current state of education in the United States and how it can be improved by individual educators and through suggested systemic changes. Written by an author well-known in science and education circles both for his bestselling college textbooks in four STEM subjects (astronomy, astrobiology, mathematics, and statistics) and for his children's science books that have been read by astronauts aboard the International Space Station, the personal and engaging style of On Teaching Science will appeal not only to teachers, but also to parents and others interested in the educational process. It will likely meet the author's stated goal of contributing to the national conversation about education, by helping readers think about the challenges we must meet in order to improve our educational system.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781937548421

Book preview

Praise for On Teaching Science

On Teaching Science provides a masterful back to basics review of true nuts and bolts of learning and teaching science. Author Jeffrey Bennett skillfully blends a modern view of the nature of science with insights into student learning, forming a how-to manual that would be of good use to any teacher of science, kindergarten through university level. Dr. Bennett takes on the American cultural rise of multitasking, inadequate study habits, and emphasis on unconnected knowledge tidbits. He builds a case for focused study and conceptual learning orchestrated by teachers who model enthusiasm, curiosity, creativity, and hard work. Science teachers at all levels of experience should read this book and rethink how they operate in the classroom and how they set expectations for students.

— Dr. Alan McCormack, Professor of Science Education, San Diego State University, and President of the National Science Teachers Association (2010–11)

Success = more (and more efficient) study time. With this simple yet powerful formula, On Teaching Science is poised to change the national conversation about educational reform. Bennett compellingly argues that educational reforms should be evaluated by whether they increase student effort and study time (and not of the check-the-box kind but the type that requires applying one’s mind). This approach would not only improve students’ academic outcomes but have long-term consequences for the future of our democracy in which citizens need to contend with issues of increasing complexity.

— Dr. Josipa Roksa, Associate Professor of Sociology and Education, University of Virginia, and co-author of Academically Adrift (U. Chicago Press, 2011)

Far and away the best book about teaching I’ve ever read. Beyond just the teaching of science, this book is a must read for every teacher, parent, administrator, and even student. On Teaching Science will be the gold standard to which all other teaching books will be compared in the future.

— Brad A. Shonk, 4th Grade Teacher, 2010 Mississippi Teacher of the Year

On Teaching Science is GREAT. It should be required reading for parents and administrators as well as teachers.

— Dr. Laura L. Duncan, Science Teacher, Boulder High School

A wonderful book, full of useful lessons not just about teaching science, but about teaching and learning in general.

— Dr. Scott Hildreth, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Chabot College

Dr. Bennett provides both experienced and novice teachers with reflective tools and specific strategies that will help us all improve our instruction and ensure student success. On Teaching Science should be required reading for teachers of all subjects at all levels, not just teachers of science.

— Mark Levy, Adjunct Associate Professor of Education, St. Johns University

Bennett directs our attention to the importance of teaching in context and offers rich examples of how that might be accomplished. Even after 35 years in the classroom, I still found new ideas that I can use every day, as well as numerous ideas that will help educators seeking to implement the Next Generation Science Standards.

— Bob Feurer, High School Science Teacher, 2011 Nebraska Teacher of the Year

Filled with insights into how to teach effectively with a truly positive undertone, On Teaching Science also shows how to open students’ minds so that they will want to learn and will understand the true lifelong impacts of education. A must-read for new and seasoned teachers and professors alike, and a book I wish I’d been able to read before I started teaching.

— Dr. Susan Lederer, Professor of Physics, California State University, San Bernardino, and NASA Johnson Space Center

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry proclaimed If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. On Teaching Science shows how to kindle in students that longing to learn about their universe and how to keep them engaged all the way along their journey to science.

— Alvin Drew, NASA Astronaut (STS-118, STS-133)

On Teaching Science is packed with insights on education and how students learn that will make anyone a better teacher. Bennett provides practical steps that can be brought into the classroom at any level to improve student learning.

— Dr. Josh Colwell, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Central Florida

On Teaching Science is a valuable resource for anyone teaching or planning to teach science on the K–12 and college levels. It is a practical, concise guide to teaching in general, and to teaching science in particular, that will also ultimately lead to a greater understanding of science for students of all ages.

— John DiElsi, Dean of Online Learning, Mercy College

Bennett does a great job of distilling what it means to be a great science teacher into a manageable number of big ideas, teaching suggestions, and strategies, applied to both K–12 and higher education. I recommend On Teaching Science to all science teachers — it will support the good things you are already doing and provide ideas for how to do better.

— Lauren Monowar-Jones, Ohio Department of Education, Performance Assessment

Most of us recall our science classes as low-grade theater, in which an earnest teacher would spend an hour each day trying to ladle facts and ideas into our marginally absorbent brains. In On Teaching Science, Jeffrey Bennett steps back and sees what’s really going on in education. His insights can fine tune this process, and turn a lumbering old Chevy into a Maserati. Time spent with his book can — as they say — change the world.

— Dr. Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute

On Teaching Science provides such a great refresher of key teaching principles that I’d recommend every teacher reread it at least once every five years. It will always help you refocus your efforts as you teach today’s children.

— Debbie Biggs, STEM Teacher Leader, Clarke County Public Schools

Every education college/department should make On Teaching Science a required reading for teachers. It is fantastic!

— Patricia Tribe, CEO, Story Time From Space, and former Director of Education for Space Center Houston

Additional reviews posted at OnTeachingScience.com

Also by Jeffrey Bennett

For Children

Max Goes to the Moon

Max Goes to Mars

Max Goes to Jupiter

Max Goes to the Space Station

The Wizard Who Saved the World

For Grownups

Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications for Our Future

Math for Life: Crucial Ideas You Didn’t Learn in School

What Is Relativity? An Intuitive Introduction to Einstein’s Ideas, and Why They Matter

High School/College Textbooks

Using and Understanding Mathematics: A Quantitative Reasoning Approach

Statistical Reasoning for Everyday Life

Life in the Universe

The Cosmic Perspective

The Essential Cosmic Perspective

The Cosmic Perspective Fundamentals

Published by

Big Kid Science

Boulder, CO

www.BigKidScience.com

Education, Perspective, and Inspiration for People of All Ages

Book web site: www.OnTeachingScience.com

Distributed by IPG

Order online at www.ipgbook.com

or toll-free at 800-888-4741

Editing: Joan Marsh, Lynn Golbetz

Composition and design: Side By Side Studios

Figures 3, 4, 5, and Excerpt Figure 2.2 adapted from Bennett, Jeffrey, Donahue, Megan, Schneider, Nicholas, and Voit, Mark, The Cosmic Perspective, 7th edition (2014). Printed and electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Copyright © 2014 by Jeffrey Bennett

Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department at Big Kid Science.

ISBN: 978-1-937548-40-7

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 What Is Teaching?

2 What Is Science?

3 One Key to Student Success

Learning requires effort and study.

4 Three Big Picture Ideas about Teaching

Big Picture Idea 1

You can’t actually teach anything to anybody; you can only help people learn for themselves.

Big Picture Idea 2

Brains are brains. We may know more as we get older, but we still learn new things in the same basic way.

Big Picture Idea 3

People have known how to teach successfully for thousands of years.

5 Five General Suggestions for Successful Teaching

General Teaching Suggestion 1

Above all, try to ensure that your students study.

General Teaching Suggestion 2

Provide structure and assignments that will help your students study sufficiently and efficiently.

General Teaching Suggestion 3

Teach for the long term by focusing on three linked goals for science teaching: education, perspective, and inspiration.

General Teaching Suggestion 4

Have high but realistic expectations, and spell them out clearly.

General Teaching Suggestion 5

Be human.

6 Seven Pedagogical Strategies for Success in Science Teaching

Strategy 1

Begin with and stay focused on the big Picture.

Strategy 2

Always provide context.

Strategy 3

Emphasize conceptual understanding.

Strategy 4

Proceed from the more familiar and concrete to the less familiar and abstract.

Strategy 5

Recognize and address student misconceptions.

Strategy 6

Use plain language.

Strategy 7

Challenge your students.

7 Putting It All Together

Appendices

Appendix 1: How to Succeed Handout

Appendix 2: Sample Syllabus

Appendix 3: A Dwarf Quiz

Excerpts 123

Excerpt 1: What Makes It Science?

Excerpt 2: Evolution in the Classroom

Acknowledgments

Detailed List of Headings and Notes

Figures and Tables

Index

About the Author

Visit the Web Site

Introduction

Human history becomes more and more

a race between education and catastrophe.

— H. G. Wells

If you haven’t already done so, I hope you’ll take a moment to read the quote from H. G. Wells above. Think about what it means to you, both as a person and as an educator. I’ve chosen to open with this quote because I suspect that it will ring true to anyone involved in education, and especially to those in science education. Science and technology have put vast power into our hands, but with power comes responsibility, and responsibility requires understanding. I believe that many of the most serious challenges to our survival as a civilization stem from the fact that so many people, including far too many policy makers, do not understand the challenges well enough to face them wisely. As teachers and educators — and this latter category includes not only those making education a career, but also parents, community leaders, and students who are considering teaching as a career — our most important job is to change this dynamic, so that we as a civilization can successfully understand and address the many challenges to our future.

Of course, we have many other jobs as well. At the same time that we must educate the broader public, we must also train the next generation of experts and innovators. With younger children, whether our own or those we teach, we need to provide the inspiration that will make them want to learn enough so that they can make their own contributions to a better future. As students get older, we must provide them with the preparation they need to move along to each next step in achieving their long-term goals. In high school that means preparing students for college, while also making sure that those who don’t go to college still learn enough to participate as educated citizens in our democracy. In college, it means preparing students for the coursework that will follow in their major courses, along with teaching them the practices they’ll need for their careers, while at the same time giving them the critical reasoning skills that they will need to succeed in the modern world.

The good news is that, despite the wide variety of settings in which we may work, I believe that a few simple ideas can help all of us become better teachers. This short book is my attempt to summarize these ideas in a way that will (hopefully) make it easy for you to apply them in your own work. Please note that this is not a book based on the latest educational research; indeed, as I’ll discuss later, most of what I’ll be telling you has been known and practiced by great teachers for thousands of years. Nor is this book designed to tell you how to teach your specific subject matter, or to provide you with specific activities or resources. Rather, my aim is simply to offer a few general reminders of principles that you’ve probably thought about before and that are crucial to student learning, in hopes that by thinking about them again, we’ll all be able to make a greater contribution to winning the race between education and catastrophe.

Because this book is meant to be a relatively short set of useful ideas, it could in principle be organized in many different ways. I’ve settled on an approach that I hope will make the ideas a little easier to remember, which is to use a sequence of odd numbers for my major topic areas, as follows:

• After a brief discussion of the definition of teaching and the nature of science, I’ll focus on what I believe to be the ONE key to student success.

• Next, I’ll present what I call THREE big picture ideas about teaching.

• Then we’ll turn to FIVE general suggestions on how to be a successful teacher.

• Finally, I’ll offer SEVEN more specific pedagogical strategies that I believe can help in any teaching, but especially in the teaching of science and math.

This book is adapted and expanded from a talk I’ve given primarily to college faculty and most commonly to faculty teaching astronomy or physics. As a result, most of my examples are drawn from those areas. Nevertheless, I will try to keep the examples general enough so that you’ll be able see how similar examples could apply to your own teaching. Special notes call out ideas that might apply more specifically to particular educational levels or subjects. I therefore hope that you’ll be able to adapt these ideas to your own teaching, no matter what grade level or subject area you happen to be teaching.

Please also note that while most of my specific suggestions are aimed at those readers who teach courses in science (or the other so-called STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), I hope that the general discussion will be of interest to readers who are involved with science teaching more indirectly, including parents, school administrators, policy makers, community leaders, and research scientists. Indeed, I hold out at least some small hope that the ideas in this book will help contribute to the national conversation about education by helping readers think about the challenges we must meet in order to improve our educational system.

On a final introductory note, I have created a web site for this book, OnTeachingScience.com. I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll find a way to make this an interactive site, where you will be able to post your own comments or additional suggestions to accompany those I’ve offered in this book. Please visit the site to see if it is useful to you.

With that, it’s time to begin. I hope you will find the short time needed to read this book to be time well spent.

1

What Is Teaching?

If you’re going to be a teacher, a good starting point is to have a working definition of what it means to teach. This is harder than it sounds. If you look in a dictionary, you’ll find a number of alternate ways of defining the word teach, most of which boil down in one way or other to something along the lines of to impart knowledge. But this is clearly inadequate as either a definition or a goal for teaching, because if all we did was impart knowledge, then each generation would learn only what the previous generation imparted to them; in other words, our civilization would never advance. So I’ll offer you what I believe to be a better working definition:

Teaching The transmission from one person to others

of knowledge and of the means to acquire additional knowledge.

It’s the second part of this definition that presents the greater challenge. Any good storyteller can transmit knowledge to an audience, but a teacher must also inspire the members of an audience to create their own, new stories. Indeed, while any particular course will focus on some specific set of subject matter, I’d argue that our primary goal in teaching is less for students to remember the particulars of a course than for them to learn how to learn, so that they’ll be successful in future endeavors.

It’s worth noting that this definition of teaching poses a measurement problem, because it means that true success in teaching can be measured only by evaluating the long-term success of your students, meaning their success long after they’ve left your course. In essence, the assignments and exams that we can grade in the short term can at best tell us only some reasonable probability as to whether we’ve been successful teachers. This measurement problem should not stop us from trying to evaluate teaching success, but it means we must be careful to recognize the limitations of any evaluations that we use.

2

What Is Science?

Since this book focuses on the teaching of science, it would be useful to know exactly what science is. It’s not easy to define science in a concise way; indeed, scholars who investigate the history and nature of science do not always agree on exactly what constitutes science. Nevertheless, it’s clearly critical that we help students understand the basic nature of science and of how to distinguish science from nonscience, so I’ll offer an approach that I’ve found to be successful with a variety of audiences. This approach begins by focusing on the

Reviews for On Teaching Science

[Stacey Mattison · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some helpful points. I made a fair number of notes and highlights to come back to when needed.