Connected Science: Strategies for Integrative Learning in College (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253009391 ISBN 13: 9780253009395

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Informed by the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL), Connected Science presents a new approach to college science education for the 21st century. This interdisciplinary approach stresses integrative learning and pedagogies that engage students through open-ended inquiry, compelling real-world questions, and data-rich experiences. Faculty from a variety of disciplines and institutions present case studies based on research in the classroom, offering insights into student learning goals and best practices in curriculum design. Synthetic chapters bring together themes from the case studies, present an overview of the connected science approach, and identify strategies and future challenges to help move this work forward.

About this title

About the Author

Tricia A. Ferrett is Professor of Chemistry at Carleton College and founder and former director of the Carleton Interdisciplinary Science and Math Initiative.

David R. Geelan is Senior Lecturer in Science Education at Griffith University, Australia.

Whitney M. Schlegel is Associate Professor of Biology and Founding Director of the Human Biology Program at Indiana University.

Joanne L. Stewart is Professor of Chemistry at Hope College.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Connected Science

Strategies for Integrative Learning in College

By Tricia A. Ferrett, David R. Geelan, Whitney M. Schlegel, Joanne L. Stewart

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2013 Indiana University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-253-00939-5

Contents

Foreword: The Scholarship of Integrative Teaching and Learning \ Mary Taylor Huber and Pat Hutchings, 
Part I. Connected Science: Why Integrative Learning Is Vital, 
1 Fostering Integrative Capacities for the 21st Century \ Tricia A. Ferrett, 
2 From Student Learning to Teaching Foundations \ Tricia A. Ferrett, 
Part II. Courses That Foster Integrative Learning, 
3 Public Health and Biochemistry: Connecting Content, Issues, and Values for Majors \ Matthew A. Fisher, 
4 Designing to Make a Difference: Authentic Integration of Professional Skills in an Engineering Capstone Design Course \ Gregory Kremer, 
5 Integrative Learning in a Data-Rich Mathematics Classroom \ Mike Burke, 
6 Navigating Wormholes: Integrative Learning in a First-Year Field Course \ Bettie Higgs, 
Part III. Structures That Support Integrative Learning, 
7 Linking Integrated Middle-School Science with Literacy in Australian Teacher Education \ David R. Geelan, 
8 SCALE-UP in a Large Introductory Biology Course \ Robert Brooker, David Matthes, Robin Wright, Deena Wassenberg, Susan Wick, and Brett Couch, 
9 Reuniting the Arts and Sciences via Interdisciplinary Learning Communities \ Xian Liu, Kate Maiolatesi, and Jack Mino, 
10 Pedagogies of Integration \ Richard A. Gale, 
Part IV. Broader Contexts for Integrative Learning, 
11 Integrative Moves by Novices: Crossing Institutional, Course, and Student Contexts \ Tricia A. Ferrett and Joanne L. Stewart, 
12 Facilitating and Sustaining Interdisciplinary Curricula: From Theory to Practice \ Whitney M. Schlegel, 
Appendix: List of Key Works Used in the Development of the Interdisciplinary Program in Human Biology, 
Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Fostering Integrative Capacities for the 21st Century

Tricia A. Ferrett

I open with two stories to help frame the purpose and contributions of this book. These stories will provide concrete anchors for a more extended discussion of an approach to undergraduate science education—"connected science" learning and teaching.

Alice's Senior Biochemistry Thesis

Several years ago a student from Africa did her senior thesis on the design of new drugs for HIV AIDS. Alice had a strong biochemistry background, and she was drawn to the moral purpose of her topic. As she evaluated the pros and cons of first- and second-generation drugs, she learned not only about research on chemical structure and function relationships at the molecular level but about side effects and drug effectiveness in the human body. It was clear—human issues, not just scientific ones, were guiding research in the science of AIDS. Alice worked mostly alone, with my guidance as a chemistry instructor. As instructed, she became immersed in the scientific research literature and began to integrate her prior learning of chemistry. But while she was drawn to the human context, she was never entirely at ease with bringing it into her thesis. She had been explicitly asked to "do the chemistry deeply." One day Alice said, "what about if I do just a little bit of context in the introduction?" Alice was good at reading faculty signals; she knew to keep the human stuff off to the side. When I suggested she steer her paper and conclusions in a creative and synthetic direction that grabbed her, she was tentative at first. What would that mean? Would she be sacrificing the science in doing so? Is that allowable for the senior thesis? In the end, Alice chose to propose a specific next-generation drug that overcame some difficulties encountered in earlier versions. Once she hooked onto this approach, she blossomed with a larger purpose to her work. Her motivation and creativity rose. Her scientific thinking was strongest here. Alice stepped over the threshold to create something that was uniquely hers—the structure and rationale for a new HIV drug.

Jeff's First-Year Study of Sustainability

Jeff was a first-year student in a learning community facilitated by Xian Liu and Kate Maiolatesi that integrated first-semester English language and literature with an introduction to sustainability studies. In teaching an honors course integrated across disciplines, the two instructors were committed to creating an atmosphere of community. They began with a kayak trip on a local river, where students were introduced to the concepts of complex ecological systems, aquatic ecology, and each other. In the trip, Jeff and his classmates began to develop a sense of each other's needs while engaging in the science. As the course progressed, Xian and Kate gave the students the option of doing a community-based project at one of two local sites—the community food bank's vegetable farm or an alternative high school. Half the students chose to work on the farm, which donates healthy produce to a local food bank used by low-income families. Other students worked as consultants for the high school director, researching how to make the campus green, the energy renewable, and the lunches healthy. Both options combined science, sustainability, community service, and links to social justice. At the end of the semester, Jeff believed that the learning community worked so well, in part, because students quickly became friends and spent deep time together learning in part through real-world experiences. Once Jeff came to understand the complexity of issues around sustainable living and the scientific concepts underlying personal choices, he wanted to take this to the next level. Fortunately, his college was preparing to offer a formal sustainability studies program. His excitement built as he discussed his next steps with Kate and Xian. Jeff proposed the development of a campus "sustainability center." The instructors agreed to have a cohort of students design a two-room green building to house the program and its classroom while linking to the community through demonstration projects and an onsite organic farm. Their vision also included teaching some introductory science labs at the farm. The green building would be accessible to those outside science and the program. The instructors and students imagined a busy, cool place to hang out, work, connect, and learn—a "science in action" community place.

What do these stories have to teach us about the promise and practice of college science learning, and its role in preparing students to live, work, lead, and learn in the complex and changing world of the 21st century? The first story departs subtly from traditions for college science teaching in order to move toward a more connected science. A senior worked on an "integrative" capstone exercise—integrative within the discipline, that is. Working alone, she drew from the original scientific literature, approaching the science with a critical eye while integrating and applying chemistry she had learned. Yet she was unpracticed with regard to letting a larger purpose steer her science learning. The integrative nature of her topic was notably understated in the final product. Her hesitation to include "context" shows the barriers to integration that instructors create when we project compartmentalized disciplinary norms onto our curriculum and students. Admirably, Alice displayed a deep engagement with her science and took her learning to a new level through the creative move of application.

The second story stretches a bit further toward a vision of the possible for science learning and teaching—a vision that connects science learning in more concrete and intentional ways to human issues. In Jeff's story, nature itself integrates issues related to sustainable futures first. On the human side, science informs our choices, but human nature comes into play when making those choices, as do political and economic needs. A sustainable lifestyle depends on the laws of conservation, recycling matter and energy, biodiversity, adaptation, population dynamics, and carrying capacity. From the beginning, students in the learning community are given the permission and support to connect, explore, and guide this work with purpose. The fact that their work matters to someone else produces higher student engagement, motivation, and commitment. Furthermore, this learning community has dismantled not only the intellectual boundaries between disciplines but physical boundaries as well. The classroom has become more porous and linked to the community. The learning community is critical in producing an environment in which the students' engagement, scientific understanding, and integrative capacities grow individually and together, over the semester. This book articulates scholarly evidence of student learning for a more coherent approach to undergraduate science education, which we call connected science learning and teaching. This approach borrows from, builds on, and synthesizes elements from prior and existing science reform movements and projects while articulating a unique educational philosophy that emphasizes the building of integrative capacities in our students. We show, very concretely, how the elements of connected science come together in various contexts and settings, and how a more systematic and scholarly examination of how this happens and with what outcomes can strengthen work in these directions.

Why Connected Science?

Why is connected science important in higher education today? The need to prepare students to engage with complex problems facing our global society in the 21st century is argued eloquently, with regard to general education ideals, by the Essential Learning Outcomes from the Liberal Education and America's Promise campaign of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U, 2007). These general education ideals articulate four categories of learning outcomes: knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world, intellectual and practical skills, personal and social responsibility, and integrative learning. One of these categories, integrative learning, involves "synthesis and advanced accomplishment across generalized and specialized fields" (p. 3). Across the three other categories, there is also a persistent emphasis on engaging the big questions, both contemporary and enduring, for local and global communities through a focus on projects, problems, and issues. Connected science fits naturally into this larger framework for a 21st-century liberal education for college students. Furthermore, our students must "not only interpret the world, but take up a place within it as citizens, at work, and as whole persons," as is argued in A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping a Life of the Mind for Practice (Sullivan and Rosin, 2008), from the Carnegie Foundation. This "requires teaching for practical reasoning, a long tradition that has been overshadowed by the advance of specialized theory and abstract analysis," say William Sullivan and Matthew Rosin. The book discusses an engineering course in which students grapple with the perspectives of engineers in other cultures and a human-biology course that deals with the science and ethics of death. We concur with the general argument for a stronger marriage between the abstract and the practical in higher education. These engineering and human biology examples qualify as connected science.

This is an opportune time for connected science. For science educators, preparing our students to engage with complex problems by "practicing" analysis and action in the real world is critical at this point in earth and human history. As students like Jeff and Alice confront the science-rich issues of climate change, disease, and sustainability, there are overwhelming reasons to connect their science learning to human experience and "practical reasoning." This does not mean compromising on the rigor of the science or the depth of students' understandings about the natural and physical world. It also does not mean stepping away from the impressive standards for objectivity, process, and evidence that science has developed over the last few centuries. It does mean that we have a chance to further engage student interest and motivation to learn, drawing on their and our passions, experiences, and aspirations. Connected science will allow us to learn science together with our students, applied to things that matter in a larger sense. We can more often choose to learn science "for something"—in service of a cause—so students gain concrete experience in dealing with difficult multidimensional problems. Connected science also aims to base student learning of science on the science of human learning, make use of interdisciplinary and integrative content and pedagogies, and build programs that support in-depth approaches over time. I will elaborate below on integrative learning, its relationship to connected science, and more specific student learning goals for connected science. We, the authors of this volume, want to help students learn science knowledge and processes—and to practice complex analysis and sometimes act on this analysis in the world around them. As teachers, we don't mean to thin out the science learning, but rather to deepen and add more texture through integration, application, practice, and action.

Historical Foundations for Connected Science

Aspects of connected science teaching and learning at the college level are not entirely new, in aspiration or in practice. In my own life as a scientist and teacher, I have developed a strong attachment to the language of former Carleton College president and Antarctic explorer Larry Gould (1945): "[T]he true spirit of liberal or humane studies is not inherent in any special or sacred field. There are quite as great cultural values to be derived from the study of chemistry or geology as from that of Latin or Greek, if inspired teaching guides the students" (np). Gould's leadership gave the sciences a place at Carleton as a liberal art. Gould helped our college begin a move from "science and the liberal arts" to "science and the other humanities." This move linked science to the human domain, on more even footing with academic disciplines that are more traditionally connected to the study of human endeavors.

Several decades later, "issues" courses at liberal arts colleges sprang from the 1960s call for "relevance" in higher education (Hudes and Moriber, 1971). More than 40 years ago, Isidore Hudes and George Moriber wrote eloquently about the need to "make young people aware of ... problems faced by everyone in society ... by developing a course around those areas which are expected to dominate mankind for the next decade and beyond" (p. 162). Even in 1971, these authors were calling for college science courses that were interdisciplinary in nature and centered on environmental pollution, conservation, population control, and ecology. By 1989, Project 2061 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 1989) argued that science literacy was crucial for all citizens who live in a world increasingly filled with science and technology and an array of problems facing humanity. This call to connect science learning to compelling issues of societal concern came well before the world became as connected and globalized as it is today. The "science for all" movement led to courses for majors and nonmajors that helped students become conversant with public issues with a significant science context.

With the more recent focus on engaging students from underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, the "science for all" notion has expanded to include a much-needed diversity dimension (Seymour, 2002). Several US reports articulated visions for this movement (NSF, 1996; NRC, 1996, 1999), including a call to discover which teaching techniques were most effective in engaging a more diverse set of learners. These issues of social justice deeply motivate a number of STEM reform movements, including our work in connected science.

This sense that undergraduate science education must respond more directly to the needs and problems of humanity has only grown in the last 20 years (Hake, 2000). For example, numerous reports from educators and scientists in the United States call for more interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the undergraduate science curriculum (PKAL, 2002). Again, the argument is that we need to prepare students, as citizens and scientists, to address the local and global problems of the 21st century. For almost two decades, communities of innovation have grown and developed around the development of teaching science "in context" or with pedagogies that more closely mimic authentic scientific inquiry and active learning. Groups like SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities), ChemConnections, Bio-QUEST, Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL), and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)—all of which have created or supported projects that teach science in a real-world context relevant to students—have contributed to substantial progress in the areas of faculty development and curriculum design. In addition, a range of "pedagogies of engagement" in science (Mestre, 2005) are being used and studied: guided inquiry (POGIL, 2013), problem-based learning (PBL, 2013), learning communities (LC National Center, 2013), team-based learning (TBL, 2013; Michaelsen et al., 2004), peer-led team learning (PLTL, 2013), case studies (National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, 2013), and others. A recent article does a nice job of comparing three of these "pedagogies of engagement in science"—PBL, POGIL, and PLTL—and synthesizes results in a format useful for instructors who are making pedagogical decisions in their own contexts (Eberlein et al., 2008). Finally, PKAL's "Pedagogies of Engagement" project (Narum, 2008; PKAL, 2008) has worked with "pedagogical pioneers" in STEM fields in order to design professional development opportunities for existing networks of faculty and web resources that disseminate and synthesize reform lessons—from a pedagogical perspective, and has established a partnership with the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) to facilitate delivery of resources for faculty (SERC, 2013).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Connected Science by Tricia A. Ferrett, David R. Geelan, Whitney M. Schlegel, Joanne L. Stewart. Copyright © 2013 Indiana University Press. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0253009391
• ISBN 13: 9780253009395
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Ferrett Tricia A., Geelan David R., Schlegel Whitney M., Stewart Joanne L.