Struggling with students applying concepts meaningfully? Socio-Scientific Inquiry

Problems:

-Students have a hard time transferring science concepts into their everyday lives (and adult lives). 

-Many reasonable people doubt science see National Geographic issue titled "The War on Science"

-Student engagement

One Solution: Socio-Scientific Inquiry (SSI), which is a form of project/problem based learning.

Here's my overview of SSI...(there are hands-on inquiry based lab that are embedded throughout the following steps).  SSI does not throw out high quality lab based instruction.  SSI helps put all those activities into a broader context. 

1.) Engage students with an entry event or video. 
Here is an example of an entry event for a unit "What is the appropriate use of genetic information?" 

2.) Present a driving question. 

Examples include: 

"What role should nuclear power play in a state's reduction of greenhouse gas emissions?"

"What is the appropriate use of genetic information?"

"Should there be an excise tax on meat?"

"Which application of nanotechnology is most worthy of funding?"
"What role should the government play in requiring vaccinations?"

3.) This is where SSI diverges from conventional PBL...  Have an elaborate jigsaw activity where students play different roles within society and generate well evidenced arguments that address the driving question from those positions.

Here is a rubric for developing a presentation, taking notes, and forming a person position statement.
Student must also plan questions to ask other roles after those roles present their position.  Here is a hard scaffold to facilitate students generating questions. 

4.) Student presentations from their assigned roles. See example here of a presentation put together by group of freshman posing as evolutionary biologist against a meat tax. 

5.) Students then formulate their personal positions related to the central question.  They find an audience for that position and address it to that audience.  This insures a high percent of participation of students in creating writing for a real audience.

Complete units available online are at
Meat tax unit materials from the student perspective: tinyurl.com/inmeattax
Genetic laws unit only culminating activity: tinyurl.com/genelaws
Genetic laws unit in entirety: tinyurl.com/genomelaws

Research Experience for Teachers Reflections

I enjoy "Sharpening my Sword" during the summer.  For the last five summers I have been fortunate enough to be able to work with science graduate students at the University of Notre Dame.  These have been National Science Foundation (NSF) funded. Projects I've worked on include...

1.) Groundwater monitoring and protection. (NDeRC)
2.) Zebrafish eye development. (NDeRC)
3.) Biomass to biofuel catalyst research. (ND Energy RET)
4.) Optical trapping of nanoparticles. (ND Energy RET)
5.) Radionuclide interactions with the mineral environment. (ND Energy RET)

Each of these summer research experiences has been (or will be) translated into improving my curriculum and day to day teaching practices.  For other RET opportunities visit here.  

Being a part of these projects has broaden by science knowledge and made me much more confident in teaching a variety of scientific concepts, while gaining in my lab skills and exposure to different instrumentation and means of data collection.  While I find learning the content renewing, I am very interested in the graduate student-advisor relationship and communication.  It is enlightening to me to observe the processes of scientific inquiry in real time.  I wonder if there is such thing as "best practices" when it comes to grad student-faculty advisor interactions.

Here are some of my predictions of best practices of an advisor/grad student relationship...

1.) The advisor has a general awareness of what is going on in the lab. (Communicates with grad student 3-5 times a week).
2.) Having an experienced grad student in the lab (to help remove any small unnecessary obstacles).
3.) Advisor and grad student offices are physically near each other (to facilitate #1).
4.) Graduate students are encouraged to think out loud and describe the confidence they have in their data and experiments.

These would be some of the things I'd look for if I were to do a study on the advisor/grad student relationship.  This enlightens my teaching because I can use these ideas to enhance the scientific culture of my classroom.

I am trying to post to twitter daily with #ndret to give an overview of what I am doing.