NATURE OF SCIENCE - PARTICIPATING & CONTRIBUTING
A dive into Engaging in Science through Participating and Contributing…
The Participating and Contributing Strand
Te ao Māori Lens
There doesn’t seem to be much mention of culture, let alone Māori culture or influence within this article. This is quite a let down, as our teaching is and should be underpinned by Te Tiriti o Waitangi at all times, and as educators we should be culturally responsive in all aspects of our practice. Within the article, there are only two links that actually show cultural diversity, despite being based around Aotearoa’s curriculum. The entire article takes a very ‘Western’ approach to science, avoiding politics and culture, and not including a Te ao Māori viewpoint on science at all.
Classroom Teaching Lens
There seem to be many resources available to enable teachers to cover this strand in their classrooms, that suit all learning types. A mixture of hands-on and online resources, and connections to Connected articles to easily integrate into core subjects. In order to approach and engage this strand with tauira, the learning needs to have relevance and connection, building their scientific knowledge from personal choice making first, and then introducing more complex issues; that are still relevant to them and their learning.
Leading Science Development Lens
There is still much resistance to be seen regarding teaching science, especially when trying to change perspectives and go from ‘fair testing’ and ‘fact-driven, rote-learning, teaching only what is comfortable’ to Nature of Science, capability and skill-focused teaching and learning. Not to mention the current curriculum changes and moving to a more structured way of teaching. Adding another layer of science where teachers are facilitating teaching content and trying to enable students to engage in ‘participating and contributing’ in science sounds near impossible. But, all we can do is try our best.
Science Capabilities in Action
Te ao Māori Lens
Mātauranga Māori and local curriculum have proven to be great ways of showing and using these capabilities, drawing from the value of interconnectedness and the natural world around us. These are also evident in pūrākau, which many have underlying or relative scientific themes.
Personal Learning Lens
Science is something that is constantly moving, evolving, changing. It is very fluid, and the learning and teaching of it is much the same. Less focus on just learning science facts or reading from textbooks, graphs and charts, and more on actually doing and engaging with the act of science. Experiencing what it is to be a scientist.
Classroom Teaching Lens
The science capabilities make it easy to integrate science with other subjects, often creating more meaningful and valuable learning. The importance of the language used with tauira, too. When observing, explicit language such as “I notice…”, the difference between observation and inference with the word “think”, making it known that “it” isn’t a scientific word, and discussions need to be specific and explicit. The difference between “drawings” and “diagrams”, and how students take that in. These are important aspects that I don’t want to forget, and that I would like to explicitly bring into my classroom practice.
Leading Science Development Lens
Before the students can understand the capabilities and ultimately engage in science, our teachers need to know and be aware, too. Scaffolding professional development by focusing on the capabilities one at a time, building confidence in them, and doing an activity with them based on said capability that they can then take into their classroom and teach. Engaging them, but not having them feel like they have to reinvent the wheel. This is something that I will be actively facilitating once I am back at school, alongside my colleague, Jane.
Science and Culture Help Estuary and Build School Kaitiakitanga
Te ao Māori Lens
The combining and integrating of mātauranga Māori to scientific practices was so important to bring cultural responsiveness in, making this project relevant to all students by deepening their scientific knowledge and connecting them to their local and ancestral area. They have taken Western science and added Māori worldview to it, making it even more relevant to their students and community. Creating kaitiakitanga, guardianship, over the estuary made it even more important to the students, as they had further purpose for engaging in the learning and the project.
Personal Learning Lens
This project was fantastic to learn more about, as I aim to implement something similar at my school – a miniature Living Labs. It hit home to hear that the teacher, Chris Dixon, had a similar start to myself when going into the programme; that is, not coming from a science background. The project exemplifies how important it is to acknowledge diversity and interconnectedness between different cultures, as that can lead to richer learning experiences.
Classroom Teaching Lens
This project is a great example of how we can utilise our local area and teach our students that science doesn’t just happen in a lab or a research facility. There are so many different ways to engage with science. The outdoors is a fantastic classroom for science, and can allow students to not only enhance their scientific knowledge and literacy, but also see the positive impact they are having on the environment through projects like this, teaching them to be more aware of environmental factors.
Leading Science Development Lens
By creating and initiating this project, Chris Dixon has shown great scientific leadership that has brought not only science and culture together, but also community. This could inspire other teachers to focus on their local curriculum and seek opportunities to integrate science into their community, providing opportunities for their students to take on the role of kaitiaki and have a positive impact on their community.
Personal Learning Lens
Everyone is capable of doing great things, and everyone has something to contribute. These were really important reminders from this article, and points that our students should be taught to embody. This project that high school students managed to successfully complete is mind-blowing, and shows just what happens if we have faith in our students and let them have agency in their learning.
Classroom Teaching Lens
There are more opportunities out there than you may realise for extending and engaging science. Think outside the box, and be ambitious. Let your students take the wheel, with your guidance.
Leading Science Development Lens
Knowing where to let students lead their own learning is important to recognise, giving them ownership can make the learning and the project much more valuable and engaging. This is a great example of creating science citizens where they engage in problem-solving with real responsibility.
Personal Learning Lens
It was inspiring to read about a school getting fully involved in their community and environment to have a positive impact on their local area, and intertwine it into relevant and engaging learning. The students are seeing the positive impact that they are having, and how it’s helping their community and the environment.
Classroom Teaching Lens
Being able to integrate this project across curricula is great, and how they have made learning opportunities for every year group at their school to engage in science that is not only local to them, but also having a noticeable and trackable difference. This is creating science citizens, and really engaging students in science.
Leading Science Development Lens
The way that this school has utilised the learning and results taken from the wetlands to link to their NCEA internal assessments shows dedication to the Nature of Science and giving their students authentic scientific experiences. Encouraging students to lead initiatives to help with litter, hold workshops and community days to involve their local community also works towards creating future leaders and problem-solvers, by giving them genuine responsibility with looking after the wetlands.
Te ao Māori Lens
It was great to see that this article highlighted the importance of Te ao Māori within scientific investigations, as we saw that the knowledge that Ngāti Mutunga brought to the study lined up with the results and contributed directly towards the study of frogs that ecologist Patrick Stewart was conducting.
Personal Learning Lens
It was fascinating to learn more about our native and introduced frogs, and how through mātauranga Māori, they are used as bioindicators to see how healthy an area is. Utilising mātauranga Māori alongside traditional scientific protocols is so important to get a full perspective on what’s really happening in our environment.
Classroom Teaching Lens
This project shows that there are fantastic opportunities to get in touch with local scientists, environmental organisations and iwi to take a look at both native and introduced species that could be present in their local environment, and conduct research on them in the same way the Kimihia Kermit team did with frogs, giving them experience and exposure to observational surveys and potential technology that helps species monitoring.
Leading Science Development Lens
This article is a great way to inspire teachers to look for opportunities to work with communities on collaborative projects that have an impact on the local environment, not only involving their own students, but parents and community members too. It could be done as a school-wide initiative or a classroom-based initiative where students have opportunities to engage in authentic science investigations with members of the community, and thus integrate mātauranga Māori into their teaching.
Comments
Post a Comment