Science Teachers Should Innovate!

Have you ever thought about where the way in which we educate comes from? Have you ever thought about all the problems it carries with it? If you haven't, or if you have, check out this video and you too will begin asking similar questions.

School is modeled after factories? You can't be serious. Our education system is outdated, outperformed, and under-cared for. Plain and simple, most every aspect of education needs changing. This week in Education Technology I found a video that I believe is just plain enough, specific enough, and vague enough that we as teachers and educators should use to model our classrooms and curricula. 

Innovation! Anyone catch how many times he used that term? No matter, innovation in education is the next and only step we as teachers can take to overcome the system's short comings. We, as science teachers, may be in a better position than any other to re-innovate the school system.

Innovation in the Science Classroom

Science in itself consists of observation, hypothesis, experiment, and then collecting and interpreting data to confirm our hypothesis. Let's use this in our classrooms! However, we must remember that the primary goal of our research process should not be that the students achieve great grades. No, the goal is that the students actually learn as well as develop intrinsic motivation in their learning. So let's observe our students, hypothesize a new curriculum, experiment by applying it in our classroom, collect data on their learning, and interpret whether our data supports better learning in this new curricula.

What about the specifics?

• Observation
• Start implementing class discussion and student-led activities. Allowing them to be creative and take responsibility in their own learning will show you just how well each student learns and how intrinsically motivated they are.
• Hypothesis
• This is where the innovation comes in. Get creative. Make everything student centered. Maybe you shouldn't remain at the front of the room and instead create learning groups to encourage group discussion while you walk around interacting with each group. You could assign weekly lectures to students, giving them little instruction and allowing them to creatively share the information. If you feel comfortable enough, maybe even get rid of the textbook! (GASP!)
• Experiment
• Implement this new curricula. Just stick to it. Don't forget to continue observing and record ideas, notes, and data.
• Collect and Interpret Data
• This is where it gets tricky for most of us. We think "what better way to collect data than to test them?" But you should've been collecting data all along! Your data may not be numbers that can be correlated, but it should show positive growth in your students learning and their intrinsic motivation. Just a hint, one the greatest indicators of this growth would be students becoming more involved. This means more questions and more creative solutions!
• Was your hypothesis confirmed?

Let's start the innovation revolution in the science classroom!