Tara, our teaching assistant, began the class discussion for today with a review of
the critical aspects of Project Based Instruction (PBI) as defined by the
readings for 9/8 (Baron et al and Krajcik & Blumenfeld). The six most important components of PBI discussed
were the driving question or challenge, scaffolding, collaboration, creation of
a tangible product, ample assessment opportunities throughout, and authenticity
or a “real-world” situation.
The importance of PBI as opposed to traditional laboratory and mathematics approaches was emphasized with the above "Ted Talk" video of Dan Meyers entitled “math needs a makeover” and the following quote from Ausubel
It
should seem rather self-evident that performing laboratory experiments in
cookbook fashion, without understanding the underlying substantive and
methodological principles involved, confers precious little meaningful
understanding, and that many students studying mathematics and science find it
relatively simple to discover correct answers to problems without really understanding
what they are doing.
The class then discussed what it would mean for the
Petrosino case study of an astronomy class to follow the “How People Learn”
text. The How People Learn framework is
focused on four classroom environments: knowledge centered, learner centered,
assessment centered, and community centered.
Knowledge centered environments focus on student understanding of content, not just their memorization and requires
meaningful engagement. Learner centered
environments draw on students’ prior knowledge, skills, and cultural
experiences. Assessment centered
environments provide feedback on assignments whether these assignments are
tests, worksheets, or assignments. The
feedback does not necessarily have to be tangible though. For example, a teacher can jot down notes to
themself on student productivity or have a conversation with a student or group
of students. A community centered
environment creates connections between the school and the outside world. Connections are made between the home,
school, after-school programs, and experts.
Perhaps even more importantly, community centered environments form a
community within the classroom and give students individual roles that draw on their
strengths. Great classrooms incorporate
all four of these components.
Petrosino’s data collection methods were then reviewed with
a focus on the type of data collected.
He used interviews (with the teacher, students, and colleagues), email
correspondence, field notes of classroom observations, classroom artifacts
(copies of the lecture, notes, handouts, computer programs, and class
projects), and he focused on the photometry topic of the unit only instead of
analyzing all topics covered. These
methods are qualitative, not quantitati/div>
Lastly, the class looked at whether the unit the teacher in
the case study taught followed the How People Learn framework. The majority of the class felt that the unit
was knowledge centered because students actually used software and telescopes
instead of learning about them. The
concern was brought up, however, that there was a focus on skills in the class
rather than understanding but after some discussion there was a consensus that
the ability to learn new skills is important and an ability the kids must have
for future careers. The class taught
them HOW to use technology which prepares them for their future jobs that we
may not even be able to picture yet.
Most importantly, the students understood by the end what a scientist is better than students that
did not take this course.
Each
day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what
goes on in class. Today’s blog is
brought to you by Rebecca.
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