Marc S. Schwartz

Engineering Competitions in the Middle School Classroom: Key Elements in Developing Effective Design Challenges

Engineering challenges that involve both the design and building of devices that satisfy constraints are increasingly employed in precollege science courses. We have experimented with exercises that are distinguished from those employed with elite students by reducing competition and increasing cooperation through the use of tests against nature, large dynamic ranges in performance, initial prototype designs, and alternative methods of recording and presenting results. We find that formulating easily understood goals helps engage students in fascinatingly creative processes that expose the need for a scientific methodology. Such challenges engage male and female students equally, helping to erase the gender disparity in familiarity with the technology and skills common to physical science.

Students' Understanding of Conservation of Matter, Stoichiometry and Balancing Equations in Indonesia.

This study examines Indonesian students’ understanding of conservation of matter, balancing of equations and stoichiometry. Eight hundred and sixty‐seven Grade 12 students from 22 schools across four different cities in two developed provinces in Indonesia participated in the study. Nineteen teachers also participated in order to validate the 25‐question survey used with all students. Significant differences in student success in answering specific questions occurred when comparing high‐achievement and low‐achievement schools. However, in general, student understanding of this fundamental principle in chemistry was low. The study found that the average score for all students on the survey was 41%. The findings suggest that students are most successful in solving problems used by teachers and textbooks that are algorithmic‐based (i.e., stoichiometry). As there were no strong positive correlations between student performance on conceptual questions and algorithmic questions, we suggest that further research should focus on teaching practices and curricula that support the development of the students’ conceptual understanding.

Useful Metaphors for Tackling Problems in Teaching and Learning.

Textbooks and lectures are typically structured around the belief that students learn the same way they would climb a ladder: straight up, one step at a time. Marc Schwartz and Kurt Fischer propose a pyramid and webs of pyramids as far more appropriate and useful metaphors.

Empowerment in Science Curriculum Development: A Microdevelopmental Approach.

This study characterizes how learning and teaching differs as the responsibility for choosing curriculum goals and the strategies to reach those goals shifts between teacher and the students. Three different pedagogical approaches were used with 125 seventh‐grade and eighth‐grade students. All three curricula focus on electromagnetism, and were taught by two teachers in different schools over a two‐week period. When students had control over the strategies employed to reach goals, their engagement stayed high. All three curricula advanced student understanding to some degree; however, large and significant gains were seen only for the pedagogy in which teachers set the specific learning goals and students had control over how to achieve them. Microdevelopment, a principle by which short‐term learning recapitulates the stages seen in long‐term developmental growth, is found to be a useful framework for curriculum development and for analyzing changes in student understanding. In general, initial “tinkering” activities are best followed by attempts at representing phenomena, only then to be followed by abstract conceptualization. On balance, we find that students benefit most from freedom to control the procedures that they generate in response to well‐structured goals presented by the teacher.

The Birth of a Field and the Rebirth of the Laboratory School

We describe the emergence of a new field, Mind Brain and Education, dedicated to the science of learning, as well as the roles researchers, policy makers, and educators need to play in developing this collaborative effort. The article highlights the challenges that MBE faces and the strategy researchers and educators in Texas are developing to meet these challenges. In particular, through the creation of a Research Schools Network, educators and researchers are creating an infrastructure to identify and test ideas critical to educators. This network builds on Deweys laboratory school by creating new responsibilities and partnerships. To this end we identify four critical objectives: develop a clear vision; build trusting relationships; set a standard for rigorous research and scholarship; and, promote meaningful assessment tools.

Interviewing: An Insider’s Insight into Learning

Interviewing is often thought of as a research tool, but by shifting focus, teachers can use “interviewing” to support two important classroom goals: clarifying student understanding, and in turn providing students with opportunities to organize more meaningful structures of understanding. We provide an operational definition for levels of understanding and a hierarchical framework (similar to Robbie Case’s developmental framework) for evaluating changes in student understanding during the interview process. From a very different perspective, the student’s insights are viewed from the brain’s central organizational principle; brains learn about patterns in the world in order to make reliable predictions about its environment. Thus, new insights are new patterns that students recognize and can test against reality within carefully constructed classroom activities or during the interview process. Pattern recognition and changes in neural activity offer an additional dimension for understanding the dynamic interaction between the teacher/interviewer and the student, which we also explore in detail.