Course assignment - Reflection 6

This week we read a chapter about service learning. What is service learning? A more specific definition of service learning is a research-based teaching method where guided or classroom learning is applied through action that addresses an authentic community need in a process that allows for youth participation and provides organized time for reflection on the service experience and demonstration of acquired skills and knowledge (Kaye, 2010). In other terms, service learning is a teaching method that allows students to perform community service in order to learn knowledge and acquired skills connected to the curricular objectives. Students then are involved in planning and implementing service activities. As we have read in chapter 1, these activities can range across all curriculum fields beginning from kindergarten to post-secondary education, some examples are: putting together a community canned food drive in health class to emphasize healthy eating for kids, middle school social studies students doing research on their local social service food bank agency and developing a plan to better supply and meet the needs of the community, younger students working to plant vegetables in a community garden, students developing a proposal for their school to reduce the carbon footprint, and students helping the elderly (Kaye, 2010). From a student’s point of view, they become engaged in the ecosystem and become more diverse through the practice of citizenship. Regardless of students’ strengths or weaknesses, service learning lets them be intellectually invested and motivate them to learn in and out of the classroom. Therefore, service learning allows students to carry on their learning and become fruitful. Service learning differs from community service because it allows for student ownership and reflection in an academic nature by relating to the curriculum to provide emphasis on service activities. From a teacher’s point of view, it is important to design a plan that identifies the need, considers the community and what best works in your classroom, student participation in the entire process, researching the underlying issue, the purpose of the content, and fulfilling academic standards (Kaye, 2010).

Three different types of service:

1.     Direct service – is face-to-face interactions that directly involve the recipients. Students in direct service learn about caring for others who are older or younger than them, have different experiences, or working with refugees. Students develop problem-solving skills by following a sequence from beginning to end and seeing the big picture of a social justice issue (Kaye, 2010).

2.     Indirect service – are indirect activities where students do not see the recipients however their actions benefit the environment or community as a whole (Kaye, 2010). Through indirect service students learn through cooperation by working in teams. Some examples from the reading are donating books to a preschool literacy program, stocking a food pantry, and donating clothes to families living in shelters.

3.     Advocacy – creates awareness of or promotes action on an issue of public interest. This type of learning must be authentic, meaning it must respond to genuine community needs (Kwak, Shen, & Kavanaugh 2002). Through advocacy students provide a voice for those who can’t speak for themselves. Examples of advocacy activities are public speaking, promoting a town meeting, and writing letters. Advocacy ensure student engagement in their community allowing them to participate in civic citizenship and diversity sceneries.

4.     Research – involves students finding, gathering, and reporting on information in the public interest (Kaye, 2010). Research-based service learning permits students to gather information and make discriminating judgements. An examples of research-based service learning is students gathering information to conduct a survey on water or soil contamination.

After reading this chapter, I discovered that I would want to know some things about my own community. I want to know about how to make sure safety is optimal at schools and what to do about promoting a better safety program in schools not just during “safety week” but throughout the school year. The reason I bring this up is, I have been working with a community in EPISD and parents are constantly complaining about the lack of EPISD officers patrolling around their elementary and middle school. Also, parents have witnessed adults drinking and doing drugs on the street corners by the schools and using abandon homes in the neighborhood to distribute their drugs. A proposal idea for me would be based on how to get the community involved and provide better safety and health promotions. A concern I have is, what happens when service learning grows from mixed motives and conflicting emotions between diverse populations? How can that conflict be resolved between two or more individuals that do not agree with the community?

Kaye, C. B. (2010). The complete guide to service learning: Proven, practical ways to engage students in civic responsibility, academic curriculum, & social action. Minneapolis, MN: Free Spirit Publishing.

Kwak, C., Shen, J., & Kavanaugh, A. (2002). An Overview of the Practice and Development of Service-Learning. Educational Horizons, 80(4), 190-194. Retrieved from http://0-www.jstor.org.lib.utep.edu/stable/42927127

Course assignment - Reflection 5

Problem-based learning has been used for over 40 years. Problem-based learning (PBL) is characterized as an instructional method that initiates students’ learning by creating a need to solve an authentic problem. During the problem-solving process, students construct content knowledge and develop problem-solving skills as well as self-directed learning skills while working toward a solution to the problem (Hung, Bailey, and Jonassen 2003). The problems usually consist of a description of observable phenomena, situations, or events. Problem-based learning was first developed in medical education in the 1950s (Hung, Bailey, and Jonassen 2003). PBL was implemented to provide a foundation for students’ unsatisfactory clinical performance. In the 1980s, the wider spread of PBL in the United States was accelerated by the GPEP report (Report of the Panel on the General Professional Education of the Physician and College Preparation for Medicine) sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges (Muller, 1984). PBL has become a prominent pedagogical method in medical schools and health-science-related programs throughout the world, including North America, the Netherlands, England, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and India (Hung, Bailey, and Jonassen 2003).In medical education for instance, these problems often take the form of a description of a patient, presenting a complaint with a number of signs and symptoms (Schmidt 1994).

In the 1990s the adoption of PBL in education outside of the medical field occurred in K-12 grades. Since then PBL has been used by a number of scholars and educators. PBL is effective in a variety of content areas – mathematics, science, history, literature, engineering, and microeconomics (Hung, Bailey, and Jonassen 2003). A proposal idea can be based on how to implement problem-based learning in engineering classes. Also, how to effectively use PBL in technology designed lessons. Another proposal idea is how to find multiple approaches to problem solving with relation to real world significance in science.

In science education, the problem may consist of the description of the behavior of a block of wood on an incline plain (Schmidt 1994). Groups of students are tasked to discuss problems and elaborate on undefined explanations for the phenomena in terms of some underlying process or mechanism. Most of the learning occurs within small groups rather than lectures. While working on the problem, the group is guided by a teacher or tutor. The teacher or tutors task is to stimulate a discussion to provide students with some subject-matter information that is necessary to evaluate the progress being made and to monitor the extent to which each student contributes to the group’s tasks. The progress then should be based on the knowledge that students acquire around the problems rather than the discipline so how is PBL learning assessed?

The PBL learning process normally involves the following steps (Hung, Bailey, and Jonassen 2003).

• Students in groups of five to eight encounter and reason through the problem. They attempt to define and bound the problem and set learning goals by identifying what they know already, what hypotheses or conjectures they can think of, what they need to learn to better understand the dimensions of the problem, and what learning activities are required and who will perform them.

• During self-directed study, individual students complete their learning assignments. They collect and study resources and prepare reports to the group.

• Students share their learning with the group and revisit the problem, generating additional hypotheses and rejecting others based on their learning.

• At the end of the leaning period (usually one week), students summarize and integrate their learning.

PBL can be used in a wide variety of student populations such as those who are gifted and talented or special needs students throughout all grade levels. To sum up PBL learning, the steps are:

1. Problem identification

2. Identify the information

3. Generate possible solutions

4. Identify most viable “best” solution

5. Report best solution to the class.

Hung, W., Bailey, J. H., and Jonassen, D. H. (2003). Exploring the tensions of problem-based learning: insights from research. In Problem-Based Learning in the Information Age, edited by D. Knowlton and D. Sharp, pp. 13–23. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Joyce, B., Weil, M., & Calhoun, E. (2011). Models of teaching. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Schmidt, H. (1994). Problem-based learning: An introduction. Instructional Science, 22(4), 247-250. Retrieved from http://0-www.jstor.org.lib.utep.edu/stable/23369986

Course Assignment - Reflection 4

Scientific inquiry is a process that involves generating questions, designing investigations, making predictions, finding answers to questions, gathering data, and using evidence based on conclusions to explain the phenomena. The priority is for learners to be engaged in scientific questioning and exploration. This is when learners are able to obtain evidence and connect the explanations to scientific knowledge. It is also important for students to be given the opportunity to construct or critique the evidence through formative and summative assessment. Teaching in a manner that ensures scientific inquiry along with the times that are changing. It is evident that we are living at a time when technology plays an important part of our daily lives. In this reading we are introduced to the four objectives in the process of scientific inquiry.

The first objective is made to help students understand the process of science investigation. What stands out about scientific inquiry is the fact that it allows for flexibility. There doesn’t have to be just one particular method, there can be different types of methods to ask and solve questions. Long ago we viewed science as something that only consisted of experimentation however, we must consider that science also uses other techniques such as observations, surveys, and other non-experimental approaches. The evidence learners collect can change their perceptions about the world and increase their scientific knowledge (National Research Council, 2000). The second objective ensure that students receive the opportunity to practice and fine tune their critical-thinking skills. The reading points out that this step is important not just in science inquiry but also for making informed decisions on a daily basis. The third objective is based on the purpose for scientific research. This action is vital because it affects how all learners understand the world around them. Scientific research provides a foundations for improving our choices about personal health and the health of the community through investigation. Lessons in this module encourage learners to think about the relationships among knowledge, choice, behavior, and human health (BSCS, 2016). The fourth objective, makes certain that students think in terms of scientific inquiry objectives as they grow to be fruitful throughout their lives. Students are able to critically think, problem solve, partake in self-reliance, and reason. As it has been noted, our fast paced and changing world requires elementary and secondary students to acquire the skills to be life-long learners. The Next Generation Science Standards, have already outline the science practices for us through the 3 dimensions essential for creating and guaranteeing students partake in inquiry throughout grades K-12.

Scientific inquiry is a revision made to teach the nature of science in a way to understand (Lederman & Lederman, 2004):

• ·       that science involves creativity
• ·       that it is socially and culturally imbedded 
• ·       that science knowledge is adaptable to change
• ·       the difference between observation and inference
• ·       the difference between laws and theories
• ·       that science is based on observations of the natural world.

My concern is whether scientific inquiry is more effective when doing group work or individual work? Or does it depend? I just had the thought that depending on the lesson or activity one method would work best. A research proposal idea can be based on helping students better understand life cycles through the use of scientific inquiry. Many students want to study about how their bodies function, the solar system, and about other living mammals; this means they want to understand the nature around them therefore the scientific process can help.

BSCS. (2016). Doing Science: The Process of Scientific Inquiry. Retrieved from https://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih6/inquiry/guide/nih_doing-science.pdf.

Lederman, N.G., and Lederman, J.S. (2004). Revising instruction to teach nature of science. The Science Teacher 71(9):36-39.

National Research Council (2000). Inquiry and the national science education standards: A guide for teaching and learning. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.