Week 11 (But It's Week 12? idek) Ray Lewis

Design, Make, Play; Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators

            How DESIGNING, MAKING, AND

PLAYING RELATE TO THE LEARNING

GOALS OF K-12 SCIENCE EDUCATION, Helen Quinn and Philip Bell

            Quinn and Bell give a comprehensive synthesis of the DMP structure alongside the Framework of a holistic and interactive K-12 science education. An intimate relationship between science skills and Engineering skills is emphasized and even defined a little more, especially with respect to the classroom demands that this framework synthesis demands.

            Quinn and Bell acknowledge the need for a Classroom culture change, a shifting of focus to a holistic and comprehensive learning environment lined with diversity of skillset equipment rather than singular skill development—more specifically, a move from every student performing the ‘same task at the same time’ to each student performing each unique skill role that encompasses the Engineering tasks, as it associates with the science skill building as well. This is a very important concept because the social roles of Engineering process and science is an important neglected component that is addressed in this framework. The ‘guess and check’, argumentative nature of the previous few frameworks we have discuessed give important attention to this social aspect as well. The expectations of skill sets of students in Engineering practices in this K-12 framework is clearly articulated—and incorporating the capacity for group dynamicism is essential to create an accurate reflection of the experiences experts have in these fields.

Towards a More Authentic Science

Curriculum: The contribution of

out‐of‐school learning

Martin Braund and Michael Reiss

            Braund and Reiss use this clip to explain that Science Education, to this point, has missed the crucial part of authentic context and environment for science learning and the acquisition of a skill set in the relevant conditions. ‘School science’ is presented in a distinct manner from ‘real world science’ and the applicability of schoolwork and school material decreases because it did not occur in an environment reflective of ‘real world science’. Therefore, this piece gives another ‘framework’ (as we have been calling these recently) with clear steps, describing out-of-classroom contexts and the indespensible role they play in Science Education.

            Making an exerted effort to increase the extended practical work beyond the current limits of practical lab work is really compelling and, I think, extremely important. There exists many limits in the lab classroom that restrict the extent to which students can observe phenomena dictated not only by ecology but also physics, chemistry, etc. (this is a strong point made in the reading). Particuarly I think about first column elements and water. Maybe that is just my own personal desire to see stuff blow up. But it is indeed representative of what we can do with out-of-classroom context learning.