The first article I read was How to Teach Students to Think Like Scientists, by Eric Brunsell. The beginning of the article discusses how the activities the author was viewing may have been fun, but they weren’t true experiments. They didn’t hold much educational value. And while being understanding of the fact that these “experiments” were based off of Halloween-related activities, the fact of the matter is that many of these activities are carried out in similar forms year round, simply without the Halloween emphasis. This issue made me relate back to previous class discussions where we talked about how you should never do anything in the classroom that doesn’t have some sort of educational value—for example, don’t just show a movie to show a movie. If you want to show a movie in class for some reason, tie it in with class material (ex. showing Osmosis Jones while learning about cells in science).
Another aspect of this article that I connected to through our class discussions was the article’s discussion of the scientific method and it’s many varieties and misconceptions. It wasn’t until our class discussion about the scientific method that I realized I had learned many different versions of it throughout my education. I was also surprised at just how easy it was to disprove what people commonly think about the scientific method—especially the main idea that science is always a step-by-step, uncreative process that can only be done in one certain way. The article articulated this well, and our class discussion made it even easier for me to connect with the idea of how flexible the scientific method truly is.
I found the second article I read to be extremely interesting—Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School, by Alison Gopnik. I knew there was a push for earlier education of children, but I had no idea that it was so pronounced. I am a big believer in supporting creativity in students, and I often think it is something that doesn’t get enough credit. I really enjoyed how the article touched on how the demand for more of a direct instruction environment may take away a student’s ability to think for themselves. I’m glad the studies involving presenting toys to the students in two different ways were included because it made the idea much more concrete to me, and I think that having evidence for this idea really helps to make it concrete to people who may just assume that pushing direct instruction on students early on can only benefit them. The article makes a point in saying that this method of implementing direct instruction early on in a student’s education may hinder their ability to discover unexpected information and draw unexpected conclusions—that’s a skill they can take with them for the rest of their lives, so why would we want to take that away from them? When the instructions were presented to the students in a more direct fashion they simply attempted to do what the teacher did, without much curiosity or exploration to possibly find a better way to make the toy do what they wanted it to. If students come to think that this is the best way to learn they will never push themselves to think outside of the box and find better, more efficient ways to accomplish things.
