Lesson Imaging in Math and Science

Anticipating Student Ideas and Questions for Deeper STEM Learning

Michelle Stephan, David Pugalee, Julie Cline, Chris Cline

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781416622857
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Science & Technology

From respected voices in STEM education comes an innovative lesson planning approach to help turn students into problem solvers: lesson imaging. In this approach, teachers anticipate how chosen activities will unfold in real time—what solutions, questions, and misconceptions students might have and how teachers can promote deeper reasoning. When lesson imaging occurs before instruction, students achieve lesson objectives more naturally and powerfully.

A successful STEM unit attends to activities, questions, technology, and passions. It also entails a careful detailed image of how each activity will play out in the classroom. Lesson Imaging in Math and Science presents teachers with

• A process of thinking through the structure and implementation of a lesson
• A pathway to discovering ways to elicit student thinking and foster collaboration
• An opportunity to become adept at techniques to avoid shutting down the discussion—either by prematurely giving or acknowledging the "right" answer or by casting aside a "wrong" answer

Packed with classroom examples, lesson imaging templates, and tips on how to start the process, this book is sure to help teachers anticipate students' ideas and questions and stimulate deeper learning in science, math, engineering, and technology.

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Chapter 1

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STEM Literacy: The Nature of STEM Teaching and Learning

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Mathematics in the work place makes sophisticated use of elementary mathematics rather than, as in the classroom, elementary use of sophisticated mathematics.
—Lynn Arthur Steen, Quantitative Literacy

Before getting into lesson imaging and its implementation in STEM classrooms, let's take a moment to think about the desired outcomes of a standards-based STEM program with a strong inquiry instructional model. STEM has become a buzzword used by many in hopes of capturing the synergy behind the demand for qualified workers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and many schools have thus embraced the term to describe their programs or their curricular emphasis. STEM magnets and charter schools are popping up with great frequency, attempting to capitalize on the national trend and the increased funding. Adopting a tag, however, doesn't necessarily mean that schools have significantly changed their practices or curriculum in the ways necessary to prepare students for college-level STEM studies or the technical entry-level STEM job market. A meaningful view of what STEM education means is central to developing ideas about effective teaching and learning. This chapter provides one way of conceptualizing STEM education, with the intent of establishing some common perspectives that will guide the development of strategies for effective lesson imaging and teaching.

The Four Pillars of Learning

UNESCO's four pillars of learning (Nan-Zhao, 2008; Zollman, 2012) provide a useful framework from which to develop powerful ideas about STEM teaching and learning:

1. Learning to know
2. Learning to do
3. Learning to live together
4. Learning to be

These four pillars promote a continuum on which STEM literacy can be characterized, and they will move us toward a common vision of what it means to have STEM literacy.

Learning to Know

The first pillar, learning to know, involves increasing students' literacy in each of the four content areas: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These content area literacies are central to the development of lesson imaging as a planning tool to promote effective instruction. As with most publicly popular terms, definitions of content literacy are so diverse that it is hard to pinpoint just one. Regardless, being literate in each of the four content domains serves as the crux of lesson imaging for STEM education, and we will thus define what these literacies mean for us in the context of this book.

Scientific literacy involves constructing the content and process skills necessary to understand the natural world. Beyond having a conceptual understanding of the world, being scientifically literate also means being able to "use the methods of science; apply science to social, economic, political, and personal issues; and develop an appreciation of science as a human endeavor and intellectual achievement" (Hurd, 1958, p. 13). The most important aspects of scientific literacy involve knowing the content and practices of science well enough to make informed decisions about the natural world around us. For example, individuals who are scientifically literate can understand both positive and negative implications of building a nuclear facility in their town and can make reasoned, factual arguments for and against such a proposal.

Technological literacy goes beyond the ability to simply use digital devices—it is the "ability to use, manage, assess and understand technology" (International Technology Education Association, 2007, p. 7). Being technologically literate involves using the scientific method employed by engineers and scientists to create new technologies and being able to assess both the value of a technology and the potential harm it might create—in other words, determining whether a technology is worth pursuing.

Engineering literacy involves knowledge of and facility with the design method that is employed in creating and testing new innovations and understanding the implications of such products.

Mathematical literacy refers to the "capacity of students to analyze, reason and communicate effectively as they pose, solve and interpret mathematical problems in a variety of situations involving quantitative, spatial, probabilistic or other mathematical concepts" (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2007, p. 304).

It is clear that STEM literacy includes knowing the content of the discipline at more than a rote level, being able to employ the scientific method or engineering design process when exploring a domain or designing new tools, and assessing and communicating the impact of any findings on the natural world.

Learning to Do

Teaching and learning in STEM extend beyond an emphasis on memorizing content. STEM literacy also involves learning to do, the second pillar of learning. Employing inquiry-guided instructional methods gets students involved in ways that incorporate the higher cognitive skills that are indicative of 21st century learning. Exploring innovative problems provides interesting and challenging opportunities for students to develop problem solving, optimization, and visualization in mathematics, science, and engineering contexts (Binkley et al., 2012).

The emphasis on 21st century skills in the United States and on those skills necessary to better understand the global environment, as envisioned by the European Commission (Delors, 2013), requires teachers to move beyond a restrictive view of skill development to one that moves learners to be self-confident in their learning and capable of dealing with life's challenges, both professional and personal. STEM teaching and learning should thus involve active engagement, where students learn by doing in ways that involve setting goals, formulating hypotheses, and predicting outcomes as students organize, prioritize, research, formulate, test, and verify their ideas.

Learning to Live Together

Ideally, a critical outcome of effective teaching would be learning to live together, the third pillar of learning. As an ancient Chinese proverb says, "Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand." Unfortunately, communication and team collaboration skills are generally not considered in the critical instructional planning stage.

When students are involved in sustained engagement, they also take part in collaborative inquiry. This advances a shared knowledge and facilitates the development of meta-skills, higher-level thinking processes that emerge from sustained engagement and collaboration (Binkley et al., 2012). These skills are critical to inquiry teaching.

Collaborative skills do not develop in isolation. Effective teaching involves making deliberate choices about how collaboration will happen in the classroom. In the long term, the development of these skills promotes the type of collaboration and cooperation that increases a sense of community.

Learning to Be

A well-organized inquiry environment promotes the type of STEM learning that results in students' development of self-regulation and self-determination. In other words, students develop the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills that are part of the lifelong learning process—they are learning to be. Puttnam (2015) challenges teachers to support the development of "educational assets" that allow youth to "solve problems, tackle challenges, work in teams, and learn how to communicate" (pp. 122–123). This kind of learning leads to autonomous and fulfilled learners—a hallmark of inquiry teaching.

We may think of this type of autonomy as a productive struggle, one that fosters understanding, encourages setting goals that are attainable and worthwhile, and gives students a sense of empowerment. According to Warshauer (2015), instructional approaches that consider students' struggles and support and guide their thinking toward a productive resolution strengthen students' disposition toward tackling challenging tasks, ultimately leading to persistence and understanding.

What Does This Look Like?

The vision of STEM literacy exemplified through UNESCO's four pillars of learning raises a clear challenge: teaching has to be different in order to accomplish such powerful outcomes.

A New Standards Vision

The Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards both provide a context for revisualizing how knowledge and understanding are constructed. Figure 1.1 illustrates the synergy among these process skills (Cheuk, 2012).

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FIGURE 1.1 Commonalities Among Science, Mathematics, and English Language Arts

Source: From "Relationships and Convergences Among the Mathematics, Science, and ELA Practices," by T. Cheuk, 2012, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University. Copyright 2012 by Tina Cheuk. Reprinted with permission.

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Keep in mind that the learning outcomes desired from strong, inquiry-focused instruction and vibrant, connected instruction will be evident. Instruction will build on literacy and mathematics by calling for earlier and more frequent work with informational texts, writing with an emphasis on analysis and presentation, the construction of viable arguments, and critique of the reasoning of others. Modeling, which is emphasized in the secondary grades, involves analysis and decision making—validating conclusions through comparisons with the situation or problem context and then improving the model or reporting on one's conclusions and reasoning. This emphasizes the choices, assumptions, and approximations that are present in the cycle (Stage, Asturias, Cheuk, Daro, & Hampton, 2013).

One way of thinking about the connection between STEM literacy and the mathematics, science, and engineering standards is the idea of operationalized inquiry (Stage et al., 2013), which is related to the eight practices of science and engineering (Committee on Standards for K–12 Engineering Education & National Research Council, 2010):

1. Asking questions and defining problems
2. Developing and using models
3. Planning and carrying out investigations
4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and computational thinking
6. Constructing explanations and designing solutions
7. Engaging in argument from evidence
8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

The standards present the profession with thinking and cognitive processes that challenge educators to consider both their teaching practice and their lesson content, promoting a model of teaching and learning that espouses a broader and richer view of what it means to be literate in STEM.

A Dynamic Teaching Process

Lesson imaging provides a powerful tool for teachers to consider the dynamic and multifaceted nature of the instructional process effectively. For teachers to anticipate how their plans will unfold and how students will engage in the lesson, an understanding of the nature of STEM literacy is important. Lessons that promote the outcomes envisioned in this discussion include content knowledge, discursive processes, and literacy skills. Figure 1.2 captures the complexity of the relationship among these three outcomes; the arrows show how each component connects with the other two. Lesson imaging provides opportunities to focus on these connections during planning, with later follow-up and reflection.

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FIGURE 1.2 A Model of the Dynamic Nature of STEM Literacy

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STEM with Caution

As discussed, STEM literacy involves learning content knowledge from each of the overlapping literacy domains: scientific, technological, engineering, and mathematical. Because STEM education is a relatively new research direction, it is unclear whether it is best to teach an integration of all four disciplines at once or to focus on each domain individually. What is important to note is that current conceptions of content knowledge go beyond "compartmentalized" knowledge in any one of these domains; instead, teachers must begin to think more about the interconnections among these disciplines.

It is rare to find a 60-minute lesson that emphasizes each STEM domain equally. Many STEM lessons we have seen tend to favor one content area (e.g., science) at the expense of the others, which are then taught rotely to the students in order to finish, say, a science lab. Rather than force-fit all four content areas, teachers might think about the connections that are evident and which domains are primary. It is critical to build connections that are clear and natural and to avoid forced linkages that do little to build students' understanding of the interrelationships among the disciplines. Considering the information, procedures, and concepts that can be developed naturally through a lesson is the foundation for providing a context where students apply and generalize concept knowledge in different and multiple contexts, as depicted in the model seen in Figure 1.2.

In the model, discursive processes refers to the idea that conclusions are constructed through reason and that thinking is characterized by analytic reasoning. These statements capture the type of discourse that will make a difference in the learning experienced by students. For example, consider the nature of "doing" science. Engaging students in scientific practices allows them to develop scientific knowledge in meaningful contexts that resemble how actual scientific discoveries are made (Evagorou, Erduran, & Mäntylä, 2015). The scientific methods, engineering design processes, mathematical practices, and technological ways of thinking and acting all involve discursive processes inherent in the disciplines and position the learner in dynamic interplays that involve students in thinking deeply about how "work" progresses for professionals.

It can be argued that the discursive processes supported by inquiry teaching hold the same power for all STEM fields. Inquiry engages the learner in "doing" STEM and supports the processes by which professionals in the various ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. STEM Literacy: The Nature of STEM Teaching and Learning
• Chapter 2. Beginning the Imaging Process: Unpacking the Goals
• Chapter 3. Imaging the Launch
• Chapter 4. Imaging Student Reasoning
• Chapter 5. Imaging Mathematically Powerful Whole-Class Discussions
• Chapter 6. Putting It All Together
• Chapter 7. Getting Started
• Frequently Asked Questions
• References
• About The Authors
• Related ASCD Resources
• Study Guide
• Copyright