Into the Strenuous Briefness

iheartstem:

I was just covering this today!! This will definitely be used as a review for my kids next week!

firstclassroom:

classroomcollective:

Scientific method foldable

Guess what my general level kids are doing next week?

I’m going to preface this by assuring the OP that this is not intended to be a personal criticism, and I’m always excited to see teachers exploring ways to make science more accessible for their students. I think that this “scientific variables” foldable is great!

But I’m less excited about the scientific method foldable. I don’t know what grade these foldables are intended for, but in secondary science we are really trying hard to move away from teaching the “scientific method.” What we ought to be focusing on is the nature of science.

It might seem like an insignificant change in phrasing, but it’s really not. Science is a way of knowing, not a list of steps. Yeah, you generally start with a problem/question and a hypothesis. Sometimes after you gather info you revise your hypothesis before actually testing it. Sometimes you can’t really “test” a hypothesis; you can only model/research/make predictions. Sometimes the only conclusion you can draw is unrelated to the original hypothesis so you have to start over. Scientists share constantly, not just at the end. Etc, etc, etc.

I’m sure that all of that is well known by most teachers. But most teachers don’t teach that; they teach this finite sequence of steps that scientists take. And it’s simply not accurate. Scientists are creative, flexible, innovative thinkers, and there’s no single correct “method” for approaching a scientific problem. This is why I teach “think like a scientist” instead of the scientific method.

(via )