The purpose of this site is to promote the use of the Discovery Approach to teaching science.
Mauri Gould is a science teacher with 26 years experience teaching in high school plus over 15 years teaching and building interactive science exhibits at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley. He is coauthor of "Physics: An Experimental Science" by White, White & Gould and lead member of the team that developed Energy Activities for the Atomic Museum in Oak Ridge, Tennessee for the Department of Energy. The activities were translated into Spanish and one million copies of activities were distributed nationally. They were highly praised for their discovery approach to learning science. Mauri Gould also helped develop a course on Discovering Physics at the Department of Physics, Clark University.
What is the value of teaching science in elementary school? Science is not just a collection of facts, but a method of learning how the world works. Science is based on cause and effect. Learning science should help develop critical thinking and looking for data and experiments which support our ideas. Superstition, bigotry, and dishonesty obviously have no place where science is taught properly.
Children have an enormous amount of curiosity when they first enter school. This curiosity can be used to motivate them to learn how to read, how to do math, and how to do science as well. It has been found that by the fourth grade many students are already turned off by school. Teaching science can help give students an incentive to learn. As an example, my younger son was having much trouble learning to read from the simple book they were using in school. At the time I had an amateur radio station and he wanted to learn how to use it. I explained to him that he would first have to read in order to pass the test to obtain the required FCC license. He agreed and we spent the next half hour learning how to read the book and that was the end of that problem. It is difficult to believe ,but he learned to read in about 30 minutes because now he was motivated. Motivation is the most important part of learning anything at any age.
What are the qualifications needed to teach science in elementary school using this approach? One example stands out in my mind because it demonstrated to me that extensive knowledge does not by itself make a good teacher. This teacher had a very extensive knowledge of biology, but when I visited his class the students were bored and even a forthcoming field trip did not raise any interest. After he learned how to use the discovery method, I visited him again and the change was dramatic. He had a new lease on life and his class was alive and interested. Of course it takes some time to get used to this method, but it does not require a background in science.
What is wrong with the way many teachers teach science?
After you finish reading this Web site, I hope you will overcome any fear that you may have. Once you get your feet wet you will enjoy the experience and it will make your teaching more fun and rewarding to you and your students. I hope you will be able to use e-mail to ask me for help if you should need it.
I remember an incident when I was taking physics in college that showed that the teacher did not have the foggiest notion what science was all about. He had the class do an experiment the answer to which we already knew would be two from his lecture. So in effect we were supposed to prove what he already knew and told us about. The equipment we were using could only give an approximate answer, but several of my buddies decided to fudge the data and came up with exactly 2.0. It could have happened by chance, but they told me that they had worked backward from the answer and so the data was changed to make the answer come out 2.0. The rest of us didn't come close to that. The professor took their result to believe that they were superior physics students and from that day forward gave them the best equipment he had. So they were rewarded for their dishonesty. That is not the way science is supposed to work. I did another experiment in this same class where the result absolutely came out wrong. I showed him the result and he said I must have done something wrong and to repeat the experiment. i sid and got the same poor result so he said he would do the experiment himself and I could watch him. He got the same result that I did. What do you think he did? Nothing, he just said he did not know why and just remember what it should be.
What happened is called a discrepant event, that is, something did work out the way that was expected. Real scientists use these events to check their theories, not to dismiss out of hand.
What is the discovery method or problem solving method?
As a first question I would ask them to make a boat out of a 10-12 inch square piece of aluminum foil which will hold a pencil. Then challenge the class in small groups to make a boat that will hold the most sand or something else. Once they have done so, the results can be tabulated on the board and the best shape presented. Notice you do not have to know the answer. This question should raise many questions such as to which design would go the fastest.
Now back to the Titanic. Bring some ice cubes and some small pieces of wood to school. Ask the students to make an hypothesis (a guess) as to which of the materials will float with the most part of it out of the water. Have the students place their best guess on the blackboard. Now they have a motive for finding the correct answer. You will need some basic stuff much which you might borrow from the students such as pails or trays to hold water. This example might get a little messy, so you may want to try something less wet.
If it is fall, you might ask students to bring in leaves of different trees and plants. Then have the students classify these leaves any way that then can that makes sense to them. Place these classifications on display and have the students discuss their relative merits. The names of the plants, if known, can be placed, but it is not necessary. The students might be able to use the Internet to try to identify the plants.
Note that the work is mostly done by the students, and it is up to them to come up with good guesses or hypothesis for what is going to be the results of the experiment. If things go wrong with the experiment, it is up to the class to try and find the answer by doing a different experiment. It is not your responsibly to do so. Encourage your students to ask questions about the real world around them and to do experiments as how they could go about testing their theories and ideas. Remember you are not the Encyclopedia of Science. Encourage them to look thinks up in the library or internet. Let them share their knowledge with the class and encourage the class to question their explanation. The tests you give should not be just a rehash of facts. Have them to reason some problem out based on their experimentation. No tests are better than poor ones. Your observations on how they do in class is most important.
What is the cost of the program?
Resources and Links
Problem of the Month
Have each student work by him or herself and make their own list. Then ask the students to put the observations on the board. Then ask the class to see what generalizations can be made from the observations. The student who makes a statement has to show how he or she arrived at the statement. The class can then agree or disagree. Note that the rules are obtained from the data and not by the teacher telling them anything.
The United States ranks very low in comparison to the rest of the industrial world in science and mathematics at a time when science and technology are increasingly important to raising the standard of living for an increasing population. It is also important to understand the results of unbridled development of technology on the environment and the health of the population. Almost all newspapers publish a daily horoscope, which is obvious nonsense, but if they were to try to suspend it, a large number of people who believe in it would demand that it be put back. Even a president's wife consulted an astrologer for advice. Some people still believe in fortune tellers and people bet billions of dollars on gambling without realizing how poor the odds are in their favor.
It is important to understand that you need not have a science background, but only a willingness to try. I have developed many concrete ideas and experiments for teaching science by the Discovery Approach. Most of the ideas at this site have been tested with hundreds of teachers at NSF Institutes held at the Lawrence Hall of Science. I visited many teachers in their classrooms and saw how well this method works. The best part is that it does not require extensive knowledge to use the method, but an open mind. You will learn, as the students learn, how to develop critical thinking and how to go about engaging students in how the natural world works.
Many, but not all, elementary teachers, ignore science because they feel inadequate for the task. Others adopt the method by which they were taught, namely, they lecture or sometimes demonstrate a few experiments and then explain what they have done. The students then are supposed to copy the results in their notebooks and in effect memorize the results of the demonstration or lecture and are tested later on what they remember. Research has shown that even the best lecture teaches very little and the retention is even less. Yet this is the method most teachers at all levels use.
It would take a book to explain all the details of this method, so I can only give the broad outline here. Each month I will elaborate and answer questions so the method will gradually become your own. The teacher's role is to be a director of problem solving rather than a fountainhead of knowledge. She can select an aspect of science that she thinks the students might be interested in by asking questions such as to why did the Titanic sink? Students will naturally say it sunk because it hit an iceberg. I bring this subject up because of the enormous popularity of the motion picture. This question could lead to the question why does a ship float? Some students will say that wood floats and therefore boats have to be made of wood float. Others will say that the Titanic was made out of steel but it still floats. So now the class will wonder why a metal boat floats? The teacher's role is to guide the students to ask how they could find out why.
The cost of the program should be nominal, but it depends a great deal on the kind of problems you and the class decide to work on. Much of the stuff is available in supermarkets or in junk shops or can be borrowed. The PTA can sometimes be prevailed to give you some money. Also talking to the principal about your program can usually bring forth some funds and over a period of time you can accumulate quite a supply. Do not let cost deter you from trying out the program.
Each month I will post a problem of the month which you may want to use. The timing may change as I see how the program is used. I am following my own advice and trying out this page as an experiment. I will later post some interesting sites as I find good ones. You can help by giving me this information so it can be posted for others to use.
Get two small permanent magnets. Radio Shack sells them for very little. Make a list of all the things you can learn by experimenting with first one magnet and then with two. The problem is how many observations can you make.
Please send your questions, comments, and corrections to Mauri Gould, [email protected]
Updated 3/April/2002.