In this second week of class, we examined the relationships between community and inquiry, and inquiry skills. I agree with much of the writing about the process skills. I was surprised to learn of the organizations that were drafting these documents: Department of Labor, and Universities. In my Science classrooms, I have tended to emphasize processes and skills over details and facts. I have focused mostly on the scientific processes involved in each topic covered, rather than overall processing skills of critical thinking and analysis. With a renewed emphasis on more generic skills, I may be able to improve student understanding and transfer of knowledge.
I am concerned that such a transition will be difficult to achieve and out of favor with administration. It seems that we are in a crisis of assessment. With so much emphasis on preparing students for the standardized assessment, there has been much persuasion to offer only the knowledge that they will see on those tests. This year, as Pennsylvania is tracking graduation by cohort, we have even greater pressures to reward completion rather than learning skills.
In the alternative setting, it has been a difficult process to include such skills and community into the coursework. Our courses are designed around a credit retrieval model. Completing the course, receiving the credits, and moving on to new courses is highly encouraged and often distracts from the goal of deeper understanding or transfer knowledge.
I have started the process of including learning activities beyond the direct instruction and assessment offered by our courseware, but much work in this matter remains. At current, the majority of our coursework includes online instruction that emphasizes facts instead of processes and offers little opportunity for the generic process skills desired by the readings in Topic C of this week.
Another key discussion point this week was on community. I agree with the benefits of community, especially when relating to science and the scientific community. The ability to collaborate and interact with colleagues is a key part of modern science, with examples in the International Space Station and CERN. I am uncertain how to develop community in an asynchronous environment in which students interact only with faculty, and student-student interactions are considered distractions from the learning process. In the discussion board, classmates spoke of developing the many small communities of each single student and teacher, but I wish to pursue greater community and collaborative investigations. My current thoughts are to offer "science day" to students. Students may choose to take a break from the computer coursework in order to participate in a science investigation or activity. Many of these will be based on inquiry activities.
Due to the nature of our program, these activities will be disjointed and not consistent with any particular student's current coursework, but I hope that they will still offer the opportunity for students to interact with each other and engage the process skills that this week's topics covered.
My lasting concern is still how to overcome the persistence of completion vs learning. How do you transform a program that rewards so heavily on procedural completion, credit achievement, and graduating within the four year high school span into one that encourages dialog and inquiry?
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