SED 3270 THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE

Case Study 2: The Student Who Thought He Failed

(From Jack Hassard’s The Art of Teaching Science)

The Case

Ashley Brinkley, a physics teacher in a large comprehensive high school, is known for her
innovative approaches to teaching. After attending an in-depth conference and study group titled
"Implementing Cognitive Theory into the Science Classroom," she decides that she is going to
implement one of the ideas into her teaching approach. At the conference, Brinkley discovered that
determining and helping the students detect their current ideas on the concepts to be taught is an
important place to begin instruction. At the conference, it was suggested that a simple activity or a
demonstration presented to the students would enable them to demonstrate their ideas verbally
and publicly. Brinkley planned a demonstration of falling objects. The idea was to let students
identify the forces (by making a diagram and labeling it) on the falling object. After doing the
activity and having the students make their diagrams, Brinkley carried on a discussion with the
class. During the discussion, she noticed one of the students was quite upset. The student was
embarrassed that he didn't label the diagram "correctly," and felt inferior to the students sitting near
him. Brinkley noticed that a couple of other students felt the same way.

The Problem

What should Brinkley do? What should she say to these students? To the whole class? Should she
abandon this new approach?

Your Answer:
Name: Dianna Kyle A. Tagalog Year & Course: 3 BSE -Sci

Effective education may begin by starting with a clear knowledge of what students bring to the
learning process.

Ms. Brinkley’s new discovery and initiative to incorporate it into her approach to teaching is a
form of a pre-assessment procedure to gauge pupils' knowledge, abilities, or attitudes before
beginning teaching. In theory, it assists teachers in determining where to begin instruction and
gives baseline data from which to track students' learning progress. Clearly, tapping students'
past knowledge, experience, skill levels, and possible misunderstandings is a very critical point
for teachers to tailor individual student learning requirements given the diverse learning styles
they may have.

This approach may be very advantageous to learning whereas it helps stimulate students'
attention and offer a metacognitive basis for self-monitoring and self-regulation by assisting
students in connecting new learning to previously acquired information and understanding.
While some of Ms. Brinkley’s students were embarrassed about not being able to label the
diagram correctly, she shouldn’t worry because her method was designed to find out students
prior learning and her students’ reaction is just one of the many emotions she had can get from
her learners. Rather than worrying, she must reassure her students that it is okay to not know
some concepts in the upcoming lesson because they will be learning and filling in the gap
together in the process.

According to the modern perspective of learning, people develop new information and
understandings based on what they already know and believe. In Ms. Brinkley’s case, she must
pay attention to the inadequate understandings, incorrect beliefs, and naive interpretations of
concepts her learners bring to the topic as a logical extension of the assumption that new
information must be produced from current knowledge. To put it another way, since new
learning is built on a foundation of prior information, it makes sense for teachers to find out what
pupils already know. In the same way that teachers may benefit from this, students may also
gain an advantage since they can get a sense of what they're about to study. It can be utilized as
advance organizers to activate past knowledge, preview information, and direct students'
thinking about it.

In a nutshell, Educators like Ms. Brinkley must just ensure that their students are learning and
that they are utilizing this method in ways that are beneficial and worth the effort by staying true
to its goals and possible advantages.