The questions we need to ask
Yasmin Jayathirtha
What problems does a teacher with more than 25 years of teaching experience face? Starting or trainee teachers may feel-NONE! You not only know the subject, you are very familiar with the material you need to teach, you know the examination. Having taught many students you know what problems they may encounter.
This very experience becomes a handicap; how do you respond with freshness to each class and how do you keep from getting bored? How do you remember the times that you found learning new stuff difficult?
Personally, I am interested in science in general and chemistry in particular. This means that I have always read about new developments in science and gathered doable experiments to illustrate concepts that are taught. Since I had been a research scientist earlier, I knew the importance of framing and asking questions. I had all the tools needed to make my classes productive and interesting. And students did find my classes interesting – I could link together concepts from various fields and recommend books to read and tell interesting anecdotes. Then, some years ago, I got challenged and that changed the way I taught and what I considered a good class.
My colleague, Usha Mukunda, said to me, “You know, the problem is that you are too good at your subjects.”
“How is that a problem?”
“Well, you explain things very clearly and can make it interesting. How do students learn for themselves or grapple with difficult ideas?”
A friend, also interested in chemistry and education, shared some books with me. They were a treasure trove, most of them being laboratory manuals detailing small-scale chemistry. While I had explored using smaller test tubes and dropper bottles in the lab to make lab work safe and accessible to younger children, these books expanded my repertoire greatly. But it was not the lab manuals that posed the challenge; there was a book titled Teaching Science as Continuous Inquiry. This book had many interesting things to say about naming, data and measurement, a way of reasoning, and so on.
“Interesting” I thought “but I have thought of these ideas before.” Then I read the chapter on Science, Silence and Sanctions!
Suppose you had to sit all day every day answering questions. Suppose those questions were fired at you very rapidly, possibly at the rate of two or three questions per minute. Suppose you had to try to start an answer within one second. Suppose that when you did give an answer, the person asking the question either reacted to the answer or asked a question within nine-tenth of a second. How do you think you would feel? Probably you would begin to suffer from what we might call “question shock.”
The author went on to detail analysis from more than 800 recordings of science lessons from various types of schools in the US, and these were the times a teacher waited. If an answer did not start within one second, the question was repeated or rephrased. When an answer was given, a teacher would either ask another question or comment on the answer, within a second or less. This means that the students rarely ask questions. ‘It takes time to interpret experience, and it takes time to express complete thoughts. When wait times are so short, the students’ answers tend to be fragmentary. And their thoughts have a corresponding tendency to be incomplete.’
Strong words and I was sure the data was wrong. One second, such a short time. I started timing myself and I am ashamed to say that I hardly waited more than that. If a student didn’t answer immediately, I started rephrasing the question. I deliberately started counting in my mind ‘one one thousand, two one thousand…’ and usually by the time I was hitting five I was uncomfortable, but by the time I reached ten, some student would have hesitantly started to answer.
The third challenge came from another book Teaching and Learning Secondary Science. The chapters were interesting but the real new learning came from the appendices which had two activities called ‘your own nature of science profile’ and ‘where do you stand.’ These activities consisted of various statements on science and you had to give each a number ranging from +5 (strongly agree) to -5 (strongly disagree) and placing the answers in a table showed where you stood on viewpoints such as Relativist/Positivist, Inductivism/Deductivism, Process/Content … I found that my viewpoints were fairly balanced except in Process/Content where it lay almost completely on the Process side. This brought to the forefront of my mind some of the difficulties my students faced. I would teach them the process or concept and tell them to learn the content, and they didn’t yet have the skills to do so.
The last challenge was a very recent one. On 1st August 2015, I listened to a talk by Professor Samdhong Rimpoche, who was addressing the school on its 25th year celebrations. He talked about the modern world and how we need to change to lead a sustainable life. He went on to say that the market looks on us as consumers and so does our education system. He joked that the Department of Education is now Human Resource Department and told the children ‘do not become a human resource.’
All that I have read and listened to have got me thinking about my skills. What skills do I need to make the children self-learners? What of my learning do I need to hold back to allow the students to learn? What sensitivities do I need to bring to the classroom so that intelligences different from mine can flourish? And finally, what expectations of mine make the children into a resource rather than a person?
Interested in the books?
To read Teaching and Learning Secondary Science: Contemporary Issues and Practical Approaches by Jerry Wellington visit http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/tusharscience-2013.pdf
Teaching Science As Continuous Inquiry by Mary Budd Rowe published by MacGraw-Hill (1973) is not as easily available. A letter to the publisher could help.
The author works with Centre for Learning, Bengaluru. She can be reached at yasmin.cfl@gmail.com.
