Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SF7-O027
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD RULES: AN EFFICACIOUS APPROACH TO
SCIENCE INSTRUCTION
M. W. Cole 1
1 Central New Mecico College, MSE, United States.
The goal of effective science education is to transform science students into
creative deep-thinking life-long science learners. Unfortunately the traditional
methods of science instruction, namely lecture based science instruction, falls
short of achieving this goal and all too often creates “bulimic science learners”.
Bulimic learning is characterized by the student’s knowledge gain via
memorization of discrete science elements and/or application of memorized
recipes for problem solving which ultimately yields a narrow bandwidth for
deep-science understanding/learning. It is deep science understanding that
ultimately spawns new science knowledge, hence it is critical to innovate,
evaluate, and promote science instructional pedagogies that enable & nurture
such deep science thinking in the next generation of scientists. We present a
review of the evidence-based research in combination with our original research
findings which demonstrates that applying the scientific method to scienceteaching
practice promotes a positive gain for students’ mastery of critical
thinking, long-term information retention and depth/breadth of science
understanding competence. The strategies which compose an effective
scientific method-based pedagogical approach include, but are not limited to:
(1) Reduction of instructional cognitive load, (2) Integrated instructional science
core competency, (3) Student engagement, (4) Peer collaboration, (5) Utilization
of interactive simulations to solidify concept understanding, (6) Monitoring
student thinking and (7) Delivering rapid feedback. Examples of the above cited
strategies will be presented, discussed and evaluated. In addition, the
challenges for implementing effective research-based teaching into college
science courses within the constraints of higher education institutions will be
highlighted.
Keywords: science competency, science learning, scientific method
Presenting authors email: melanie.willcole@gmail.com