Higher Order Thinking in Science Classrooms: Students’ Learning and Teachers’ Professional Development

252 Pages·2004·1.8 MB·English

by  Anat Zohar (auth.)

HIGHER ORDER THINKING IN SCIENCE CLASSROOMS:
STUDENTS’LEARNING AND TEACHERS’PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Science & Technology Education Library
VOLUME 22
SERIES EDITOR
William W. Cobern, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA
FOUNDING EDITOR
Ken Tobin, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
EDITORIAL BOARD
Henry Brown-Acquay,University College of Education of Winneba, Ghana
Mariona Espinet,Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
Gurol Irzik, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
Olugbemiro Jegede,The Open University, Hong Kong
Reuven Lazarowitz,Technion, Haifa, Israel
Lilia Reyes Herrera,Universidad Autónoma de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia
Marrisa Rollnick, College of Science, Johannesburg, South Africa
Svein Sjøberg,University of Oslo, Norway
Hsiao-lin Tuan,National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan
SCOPE
The book seriesScience & Technology Education Libraryprovides a publication forum
for scholarship in science and technology education. It aims to publish innovative books
which are at the forefront of the field. Monographs as well as collections of papers will
be published.
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Higher Order Thinking in
Science Classrooms:
Students' Learning and Teachers'
Professional Development
by
ANAT ZOHAR
School of Education,
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
A C.I.P. Ctalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-1853-4 ISBN 978-1-4020-1854-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/ 978-1-4020-1854-1
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
©2004 Springe r Science+ Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2004.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording
or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception
of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered
and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix
PART 1 - STUDENTS’ LEARNING
CHAPTER 1 - DESCRIPTION OF THE TSC PROJECT…..……………..1
CHAPTER 2 - PEDAGOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN TEACHING A
THINKING STRATEGY AS AN EXPLICT EDUCATIONAL
GOAL………………………………………………………….……...13
CHAPTER 3 - “TO KNOW OR NOT TO KNOW” - THE ELUSIVE
NATURE OF LEARNING A THINKING STRATEGY……….……29
CHAPTER 4 - TEACHING THINKING SKILLS AND SCIENCE
KNOWLEDGE: TWO COMPETING OR TWO COMPLEMENTARY
GOALS?................................................................................................41
CHAPTER 5 - ASSESSING STUDENTS’ REASONING ABILITY
FOLLOWING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TSC
PROJECT ……………………………………………………….…….55
PART 2 - TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Introduction to Part Two…………………………………………………...83
vi Higher order thinking in science classrooms
CHAPTER6- TEACHERS’ THINKING IN PREVIOUSSTUDIES…...85
CHAPTER 7 - EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT AND RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………...99
CHAPTER 8 - TWO POSSIBLE PEDAGOGIES FOR TEACHING
HIGHER ORDER THINKING: TRANSMISSION OF
INFORMATION VERSUSKNOWLEDGECONSTRUCTION….121
CHAPTER 9 - TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE TREATMENT
OF STUDENTS’WRONGANSWERS…………………..….…….139
CHAPTER 10 - TEACHERS’ BELIEFS ABOUT LOW ACHIEVING
STUDENTSAND HIGHER ORDERTHINKING…………...……157
CHAPTER11-TEACHERS’METACOGNITIVE DECLARATIVE
KNOWLEDGE AND THE TEACHING OF HIGHER ORDER
THINKING...................................................................………….....177
CHAPTER 12 - ASSESSING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
FOLLOWING PRE-SERVICE AND IN-SERVICE COURSES......197
CHAPTER 13 - WHAT DID WE LEARN?............................................. 211
References 221
Index 231
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Educational research and practice are carried out within communities of scholars
and practitioners. Accordingly, this book would not have been born without those
whose wisdom and support nourished my work.
Pinchas Tamir who was first my thesis advisor and then my colleague guided me
in my first steps as a researcher. Deanna Kuhn taught me refined research methods
and insightful theories. Nava Ben Zvi believed in the Thinking in Science
Classrooms (TSC) from the time it was still a vague idea. Her support was crucial in
my ability to transform the dream into reality. My graduate students Noa
Schwartzer, Yael Margalit, Flora Nemet and Yehudit Weinberger invested much
work and thought as they struggled with the daily ups and downs of research and
development. The teachers who participated in the research that is described in this
book deserve special thanks for their generous willingness to share their classroom
experiences and their thoughts for the sake of the TSC project and the studies that
accompanied it. Gratitude is also extended to all the students who participated in
these studies.
I would like to thank Ken Tobin, David Perkins, Tina Grotzer, Bill Cobern and
two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this
book. These people were extremely generous in devoting time and thought to my
project. Their experience and wisdom helped me in polishing my ideas and my
writing.
Financial support for these projects came from two sources. The Israeli Ministry
of Education supported the development of the TSC learning materials and the TSC
professional development courses. The James S. McDonnell Foundation, in the
program: Cognitive Studies for Educational Practice (CSEP) supported much of the
research that is described throughout the book.
Last but not least I would like to thank Noam Zohar who is my best friend and
closest advisor for his consistent emotional and intellectual help.
I feel privileged to be surrounded by so many who got involved in my work.
Their involvement was a source of pleasure and challenge that carries strong impact
upon the final form of this book.
INTRODUCTION
The first seeds for this book were planted when I was a high school student. I
attended what was considered one of the best schools in a large city in Israel. The
reason it was considered a good school was that student matriculation scores
averaged among the highest in the country. If you graduated from this school you
had an excellent chance of being accepted into the best departments of the best
universities. But, I hated to go to school. It was so boring.
I remember sitting in class, looking at my watch, then looking again and again
and the hand of the clock would not move. The feeling of boredom was suffocating.
I understood that I needed to get all these facts into my head and learn the correct
tricks for writing correct answers in homework assignments and tests. I was a good
student because I was obedient and knew how to play by the rules. But the things I
did in school just never connected to any of the “real” components of my world and
to the things that really mattered to me. A high wall separated the things I learned in
school from my everyday life and my inner world.
The different school subjects did not even connect to each other. In eleventh
grade we had a wonderful chemistry teacher and a terrible physics teacher. My
whole class enjoyed chemistry and most of us did very well. Nobody could really
understand the physics teacher’s explanations. In solving our homework problems,
most of us simply played with the symbols in the equations and substituted them
with numbers, without really knowing what they stood for. One semester, I met with
a group of friends after school to prepare for a dreaded physics test. That afternoon
we had finally bothered to open the physics book, probably for the first time that
semester. I remember the shock we felt by the discovery that we were actually
familiar with some of the topics. It had never occurred to us that the mysterious,
incoherent formulas written by the physics teacher on the blackboard in an amazing
speed, and then erased before we ever managed to copy them, actually referred to
the same atoms, electrons and electric cells that made so much sense in chemistry. It
turned out that for several weeks we had actually been studying the same topic in
chemistry and in physics. Amazingly, none of us had noticed that fact.
ix
x INTRODUCTION
What was so special about chemistry? Although taught in a teacher-centered
way, each lesson was an intellectual adventure. It usually started with some puzzle,
a riddle we did not initially know how to solve. Chemistry lessons awakened our
otherwise sleepy minds. Finding the answers for the riddles engaged us in active,
stimulating thinking. I understood high school chemistry so well that I hardly had to
put any effort into the Introduction to Chemistry course I later took in college.
Unknowingly at the time, that chemistry teacher became my role model when I later
became a teacher.
It wasn’t until graduate school however, that I was fortunate enough to go
through a learning experience that totally captured my mind and stimulated my
intellect. The Masters program I took in genetics was rich in discussions that
required rigorous argumentation and critical thinking. My thesis involved inquiry
that required deep thinking and creativity. For the first time in my life as a student,
school had stretched and challenged my intellectual abilities. It was a difficult but
rewarding experience. It is rather tragic, however, that I had to wait until graduate
school to have such an experience.
The seeds for this book continued to grow as I accumulated positive learning
experiences that consolidated my model for good learning and teaching. While
working on my Masters, I became a part time science teacher at a large
comprehensive secondary (seventh to twelfth grade) school in Jerusalem. I taught
grades seven to nine and was intrigued by what was going on inside my students’
heads. I remember having the metaphor of my students’ minds as parts of an electric
circuit – perhaps because at the time, electricity was one of the topics I taught. My
mental image of their heads could be described as a complicated network of light
bulbs and wires. Each new concept they learned was another light bulb turned-on.
As the year unfolded many new lamps shined in areas that had been dark before. As
a teacher, sensing this light was a pleasurable feeling. However, there was also a
disturbing component to this metaphor. I somehow felt that too often, I witnessed
light bulbs that were not connected by any wires. In other words, I felt that my
students did acquire many pieces of knowledge, but these were disconnected and
isolated pieces. If during a test you would ask them to “turn on the switch” of one of
the light bulbs, they were able to do that. Many of them were diligent students who
could recite what I had taught. But I felt that they had no idea about how these
pieces of knowledge connected to each other. I wondered what were the logical
relationships among these pieces of knowledge, what evidence supported them, how
they could be explained and how they connected to the authentic conceptual
network that my students brought with them, based on their everyday out of school
experience. In addition, I was disturbed by the lack of intellectual stimulation in my
classrooms. I was transmitting information and students were obediently reciting it.
But there was no glow in their eyes. Frankly, I was a little bored myself. I was also
terrified of stepping into the role of the boring teachers I knew so well from my own
childhood. I started to look for some new ways to teach the required science
curriculum, ways that would help in repairing the deficiencies I was experiencing.
As I designed my science lessons, I looked for activities that would stimulate my
students’ thinking. Sometimes the only change was a brief question that I would
pose in the course of a “regular” lesson, taught primarily in a transmission of
information approach. On other occasions, the whole lesson was transformed as
INTRODUCTION xi
tasks requiring thinking became the core of the lesson. However, the topics of the
lessons always matched the designated curriculum. Naturally, these lessons became
rich with discussions both among the students, and between them and me. The noise
in my classrooms grew with my students’ enthusiasm. I was gradually changing my
mode of instruction. I had to invest much time and energy in preparing these
lessons. My students’ enthusiasm was my reward. At that period, a fellow teacher
complained to the principal about the noise that came out of my classroom. The
principal called me into her office in order to scold me for the lack of discipline in
my class. After I explained what I had been trying to do, she visited some of my
lessons. To her credit I must say that she then gave her blessing to my noisy
classroom.
After four years of teaching 7-9 grades I started teaching in grades ten, eleven
and twelve and was assigned to teach the advanced placement biology class.
Students in this class had chosen biology as their elective. I had to prepare them for
the upper level matriculation exam in biology. Obviously, a very large amount of
information must be covered in order to succeed in this exam. I felt an obligation to
“cover the curriculum” so that my students would be well prepared for the test. But
my “thinking” lessons required time! Nevertheless, I was reluctant to go back to a
transmission of knowledge model of instruction. I decided to involve my students in
this dilemma. I purposely designed and taught two consecutive lessons in two
extreme ways: one was an “invitation to inquiry” about the classic Messelson and
Stahl experiment in genetics. Students seemed to be highly involved in the activity
and appeared to be enjoying themselves. The second lesson was teacher-centered: I
lectured and my students took notes.
Following these two lessons I raised the issue of how we should arrange our
future studies. Students reflected upon the way they had felt during these two
lessons. We then went over the syllabus together and calculated the amount of time
required in order to cover the remaining topics. I told them that we had to make a
decision between two alternatives: One was to cover all these topics in class. We
would be able to do so if I were to lecture while the students listened and took notes,
just as we had done in the previous lesson. The second alternative was to spend
some of our time on “thinking” lessons that might be similar to the invitation to
inquiry they had experienced in the earlier lesson. I explained that if we were to use
this method we would clearly not be able to cover the entire curriculum in class. The
balance of the curriculum, however, the students could learn on their own.
At first many students were reluctant about the second alternative. They were
worried about having to do too much homework and raised a specific concern about
issues that may be too difficult for them to understand on their own. Others however
supported the suggestion, saying that they were sick of boring lessons and were
therefore willing to do additional work at home in order to have a more interesting
time in school. We then negotiated possible terms for our future way of studying. I
promised that since we would spend more time on each topic, more of the work
would actually be completed in class. Consequently, the amount of homework could
be reduced. Since the biology curriculum is spiral in the sense that the accelerated
biology curriculum includes topics that are studied in earlier grades in a more
shallow way, I also said that I would help with the self-learning by choosing for that
mode of learning precisely the topics they were familiar with from their earlier