Science as Practice

As I read Ch. 5 in Science Elementary Education, I was intrigued by the main idea of "science as practice" originally presented by John Dewey.  As stated in the very beginning of this chapter, science should be practice in order for students to actively engage in science in order to build skills that will allow them to compete in the modern marketplace.  Personally, I believe the idea of using skills in school to create humans who will work to change the world should be a goal for all teachers.  With this being said, I was excited that even science could be taught as practice with the goal of bettering the future in mind.

Furthermore, as I was reflecting on the material, I began to understand how "science as practice" can not only develop better science-related skills for the United States but also engage a variety of students to learn science through inquiry.  The four strands of science in the chapter on pg. 92 demonstrate a model for science as practice.  In strand 1, students are taught to not only learn the facts, theories, and laws of science but also learn to develop connections between concepts in order to develop a higher order of thinking.  Students will become more critical thinkers and apply these skills to other subjects, and eventually life outside of the classroom.  Though this strand sounds somewhat obvious, I think the connections made to science and non-science concepts is sometimes hard for teachers to remember to do with the requirements of the curriculum.  Interdisciplinary work can be done in science, and should be to develop stronger students.  In strand 2, students are supposed to generate scientific evidence through investigations.  Investigations and inquiry go hand-in-hand when considering a science inquiry classroom, and students taught to create their own investigations will have a much deeper engagement with the subject matter.  When students are actively working on experiments and observations, they learn self-direction and the understanding of pulling information from the data collected.  In strand 3, the idea of scientific knowledge is discussed.  Students must be provided with interdisciplinary work, but must also know specific subject language, behavior, models, examples, etc.  Students must learn to develop a scientific schema for their science work.  When students create this schema, they are able to explain their findings in a more accurate way, and truly work "as a scientist".  Lastly, strand 4 mentions science as a club, similarly to other theories that state a classroom as an "exclusive club".  A teacher must teach the rules of the "club" and engage his or her students in the activities of the "club".  Particularly in science lessons, students should learn how to construct and present personal viewpoints in science to others, be willing to ask and answer questions, and stay skeptical so investigations are done objectively. (Pg. 93)  Much of the idea of science as practice is identified in these four strands, as they can be used as a template for a teacher looking to engage, manage, and create an interesting scientific environment.

The chapter goes on to discuss particular scientific skills that support and add to the idea of "science as practice" in the classroom.  As I was reading, I found that many of these skills and attitudes are not only mentioned in our own Science Methods classroom, but also put to use during our in-class activities.  Some skills include observing, classifying, measuring, communicating, inferring, predicting, experimenting, etc.  All of the skills mentioned above have been a topic of our in-class discussions and provide useful examples of how these skills must be developed in our future classrooms.  One interesting note regarding these scientific skills is that many of them may be applied to various other classroom subjects and activities.  Observing, classifying, measuring, and predicting are useful in mathematics instruction while inferring, communicating, predicting, and observing are useful for social studies activities.  These skills are useful in many areas in an elementary classroom and are also great life skills that return to the idea of educating for students to become beneficial citizens of the world.