The Art of Teaching Primary School Science

Vaille Dawson, Grady Venville, Vaille Dawson, Grady Venville

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000393415
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica della scienza e della tecnologia

The long-awaited second edition of The Art of Teaching Primary School Science has evolved to meet the demands of schools in our rapidly changing society. Recognising that children have an innate curiosity about the natural world means that teaching primary school science is both rewarding and critical to their futures. The focus of the chapters reflects the deep expertise in curriculum and pedagogy of the chapter authors. Included are chapters on the nature (wonder) of science and how children learn as well as the nuts and bolts of teaching: planning, pedagogy and assessment. In addressing the teacher education AITSL professional standards for teaching, there are chapters on digital pedagogies, differentiation and advanced pedagogies such as problem-based learning. Finally, there is a section on STEM education that explains how an integrated approach can be planned, taught and assessed.

This book is both accessible to all preservice and practising teachers and up-to-date in providing the right mix of theoretical and practical knowledge expected of this generation of primary school teachers. Teacher educators worldwide will find this an essential resource.

Part I

Understanding the art of teaching primary school science

1
Engaging learners in the wonder of science

Catherine Milne

Goals

The goals for this chapter are to support you to:

• Have some fun learning about science
• Understand the role of practices, such as observing, in the doing and knowing of science
• Understand that theories and laws, which form the basis of scientific explanations, are creative constructions that are always limited by data

Australian Professional Standards for Teachers—Graduate Level:

• Standard 1: Know students and how they learn (Focus area 1.2)
• Standard 2: Know the content and how to teach it (Focus areas 2.1, 2.4)

Introduction

So many people in science and science education talk about the wonder of science and yet fail to engage learners in the joy and wonder of science. At the same time, learners are rarely placed in the role of science makers and this often means that they do not see science as part of their lives and identity. For me, your mission as educators of science is to ensure that your learners have the chance to do both.

Across the world, and in Australia, there is value in acknowledging the powerful and productive systematic knowledge systems used by learners from all kinds of cultural backgrounds in their everyday lives. By systematic knowledge I mean ‘a collection of understandings that is organised in some way’ (Milne, 2011, p. 8). I hope you will agree that the knowledge systems I explore in this chapter, Eurocentric science and Australian Indigenous knowledge systems, fulfil those requirements.

The practices that matter

You may wonder why I want to focus this chapter on practices. How would you define a scientific practice? In this chapter, you will have lots of opportunities to use various practices that help us to wonder about the world and understand science. Susan Hekman provides a useful definition of practice as, ‘human activity centrally organised around shared practical understandings’ (2010, p. 13). So, how can we use this definition? Consider the following two descriptions. Which one explicitly involves the practice of observing?

1. You are out for a run and you start to feel tiny drops of water hitting your arms. You say to yourself, ‘It's raining!’
2. You stand at the kitchen sink washing your breakfast dishes.

Did you select description number one? How does this example fit with Hekman's definition of practice and now our definition of a practice? Let's think this through. Your body has senses, such as seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting, that are activated as you experience the material world and you feel drops of water on your skin. You make a knowledge claim or inference, ‘It's raining!’ So, you engaged in two practices, didn’t you? You observed the drops and you inferred that it was raining. Observing and inferring constitute shared practical understandings.

Consider a practice like observing. Humans do it, but they can only do it if they engage with the material world in some way. Practices, like observing, need to be taught and learned. Of course, science educators have always known this because, in the case of observing, use is made of activities that encourage students to actively observe, like doing a laboratory activity. In order to be an observer, learners are encouraged to use their senses to make knowledge claims that form the basis of facts (see also Milne, 2011, 2020).

I am making an argument here that observing is an important practice for school science and should be given more time. If you look at the Australian science curriculum, it is stated that, ‘From Foundation to Year 2, students learn that observations can be organised to reveal patterns’ (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2020, np). However, the practice of observing is not explored in any great depth and the ability to observe seems to be taken for granted. I challenge you to consider the argument that, as a practice, observing forms the basis of all forms of systematic knowledge, including Eurocentric science and Indigenous knowledge.

Historically, it is from observing that facts emerge. As far back as 2400 years ago Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384–322 BCE), argued in his book, On the Generation of Animals, that observing provided the facts needed for the development and support of theory (Milne, 2020).

An example of Indigenous systematic knowledge that comes to mind is fire-stick farming or anthropogenic fire management (Bird et al., 2008; Jones, 1969). Rebecca Bliege Bird and her colleagues reported on how informed burning off by Martu Aboriginal people in the Western Desert of Western Australia served, over time, to create a landscape of greater plant and animal diversity. Rhys Jones (1969) argued in his paper for the Australian Natural History Museum that exploration of the literature of ethnographic studies would confirm that systematic burning was a universal strategy used by Aboriginal groups all over Australia to farm the natural environment. In response to the devastating bush fires that plague contemporary Australia, a result of Eurocentric approaches to land management and climate change, there have been calls in Australia for a national approach to the use of this strategy. Let's explore the relationship between practices, science and fire-stick farming a little more through Snapshot 1.1.

SNAPSHOT 1.1: A skill that fire-stick farming and science both value

Bliege Bird and her colleagues (2008) describe the sequence of the described relationship between the Martu Aboriginal people of the Western Desert in Western Australia and Triodia species of spinifex, a hammock forming bunch grass. Observe the image of spinifex. How many different species of Triodia can you find in Figure 1.1? In this case, what practice are you using?

Figure 1.1 Triodia spinifex.

(Creative Commons. Hesparian. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Triodia_hummock_grassland.webp)

As the Martu describe it, they focus on the succession of plants and how they use cold burning to manage the environment in that part of Australia. The stages are shown as follows.

As you follow this sequence what practices would you say are used by the Martu people as they decide when it is time to burn?

Did you note in Snapshot 1.1 how important the practice of observing was for deciding the time to burn? For me, everyday observing is a fundamental practice that forms the basis for all forms of systematic knowledge. Was this one of the practices you noted? Two other practices that you might have mentioned are communicating and collaborating because if you are going to set up a fire sequence, you need to communicate with everyone else involved and everyone needs to collaborate to achieve the best outcomes. Bird and her colleagues (2008) argued that fire-stick farming is a form of ecological management that requires planning and organisation to achieve the synchronised group action. These practices are also emphasised by the Indigenous organisation, North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSM) (3 Hand Studios and NAILSM, 2014) in their video of fire-stick farming called Savanna Burning. This video also highlights the need for collaboration between two forms of systematic knowledge: Western science and Indigenous knowledge, in order to protect the land of Australia.

These practices, observing, engagement with everyday experiences, communication and collaboration, are fundamental practices for the development of any form of systematic knowledge. They also should be the basis for science education because students should be taught in school to value their capacity to make thoughtful and powerful observations. These observations form the basis for other practices and skills that are important for science, such as questioning, making claims, conducting investigations, generating data and making arguments or explanations. Unfortunately, too often in school science, the focus is on students rote learning or confirming an expected outcome from an experiment, rather than observing the world and using those observations to wonder and build knowledge.

Everyday observing and engagement

Martin Wagenschein, a German science educator from the 1950s, argued that learning concepts alone is the wrong way to go about learning science. According to Wagenschein (1983/2008), understanding only comes from engaging with the material and living world. Let's go back to our rain example, you go outside and drops of water fall from the sky on to your body. You think to yourself, ‘It's raining!’ With this experience, you have created a phenomenon of raining from the interaction between your body and the water falling from the sky. But this phenomenon would never have been created if you had not experienced the world. Of course, a few other things also have to happen, don’t they? You have to observe that water is falling from the sky and understand that this phenomenon belongs to the concept of rain, that is, drops of water falling from the sky. Experiences like this, engagement with the natural world, are the basis of how science historically emerged as a discipline and is how we should teach science.

Purposeful observing and communication to make a claim or ask a question

Say you said to a friend something like, ‘That lemon is really sour’. How are you able to make such a knowledge claim and what information is communicated with that statement? I would assume that you cut a lemon and tasted it by placing your tongue on the cut surface. The claim that the lemon is sour implies your expectation that anyone within hearing distance of your statement will share your understanding of the meaning of the term, sour. But if you were working with young people, perhaps you could check the various words which they use to describe their observation of the taste of a lemon.

SNAPSHOT 1.2: Using different senses for observation

How do children make observations and knowledge claims, using their senses? Or how do you for that matter? Try this. Go outside and sit somewhere like a park on a lovely warm sunny day. For two minutes observe as many things as you can and then at the end write down as many of the observations you made as you can remember. Now close your eyes and observe for two minutes and then write down as...