Being able to seive through all the information and concepts in a topic to narrow it to the underlying principles is not easy, even for a graduate in the subject. Having good content knowledge does not mean that a person understands what the underlying principles are and that the person is able to articulate it to the pupils in a way that they can understand or put together learning activities that scaffold learning. I have seen teachers teach what is in the book exactly in the way that it is presented in the book in a rote-like manner. I wonder if the teachers are teaching the concepts or just presenting information - information pupils can get by reading the book themselves.
Though learning activities are carried out, sometimes what the pupils learn are still the facts and not concepts or connections. I remember a teacher being excited about giving the pupils a project to make a model of a (non-working) volcano and the objective was for the pupils to remember the different layers making up the volcano (to show this, pupils were supposed to lable the layers in the model). To me, if the objective was only to memorise the layers, the pupils could just read the book and be quizzed or just make a simple drawing and label it. It was a waste of time, energy and materials building a volcano for the sole objective of memorising the layers of a volcano. When I taught pupils the topic of light to lower sec science (physics component), I got them to do a project to build a model of a working pin-hole camera (which is not in the syllabus) that can produce a clear and sharp image of a distant object like a tree in the garden (I tested and assessed each model) and to orally present to me
(a) how the pin-hole camera worked using the principles of light that they had learnt in class (to check understanding of concepts and how it can be applied in real life situations)
(b) what were the 3 basic features of the pin-hole camera that controlled how effectively it functioned (to give pupils the opportunity to practice how to pick out the basic prinicples from the mass of information that they have to read on their own and make sense of it).
I do not have deep understanding of physics and so this project may not be very good (had to make this statement as you are a physics teacher, ha, ha), but I was making an attempt to get the pupils to
(a) use what they had learnt about light (light travels in straight lines, light can reflect, light can converge to form an image on a screen, virtual and real images, etc) to explain the type of image formed in the pin-hole camera (inverted, laterally reversed,diminished)
(b) if they had discovered new information through independent research [internal reflection of light, focal length)
(c) able to pick out the 3 principles of a pin-hole camera (presence of screen and type of material used, black interior, distance of object to screen)
(d) if they had discovered new information through research and experimentation with their model to address the objective of how to get a sharp image (sharpness of the image being dependent on the distance of object to screen - create an inner movable tube with screen within an outer length of tube with pinhole to be able to adjust the distance).
[Now reading what my expectations were of the project as listed above, it seems overly ambitious. However, I think the project worked for 2 reasons
(i) one needs to be clear about the objectives to be achieved and I used examples from another topic to illustrate the expectations
(ii) one needs to give proper feedback after the project is assessed (model & oral presentation) to address learning gaps in pupils)].
Over the last 2.5 years in AISS, I have observed a number of teachers teaching in the classroom (all official KPs, some of the maths, science and english teachers). This year, I am going to observe all the new teachers for the last 2 years and the A&C dept. I have been thinking what are some of the things I should highlight about crafting a lesson to the teachers during our pre-post discussions. There is so much one can say. I decided that I am going to use the volcano and pin-hole camera examples to illustrate the type of activities that can enable pupil learning to occur and the importance of not carrying out time-consuming activities/projects if the learning can be done through simpler ways (just like what stephen said about not using ICT if it does not value-add to learning). I want to raise their awareness about the importance of carefully selecting activities that will scaffold learning or stretch pupils to think [also talk about what I learnt about the importance of scaffolding and teaching just-in-time skills when I did science investigative project work with my pupils]
Going back to the original point about achieving this deep teacher content knowledge, how do we get this deeper understanding of content - it is not taught in the university when we do our degreee course nor in NIE when we are trained to be a teacher of that subject (I still don't understand why it is not). We can read up research done by other people and do some sense-making of our own and but this is very time consuming. Even if we learn how to find out what is the underlying principles, there is the problem that you do not know if you are doing it correctly for each topic and the problem of how to explain it to the pupils in a way they can understand. I asked some friends in another school who went through a series of a workshops on UbD for science how effective was their learning and application. They said that though they understand what the principles of UbD are and what it is they are supposed to do when crafting a lesson using UbD, they found difficulty distilling the underlying prinicples and there was no one to tell them if they were right or wrong or even where the mistakes were as the workshop consultants were generalists and not specific to the subject. It is important to find consultants who know and can handhold the team through the whole journey of learning and crafting all the lessons or we will be like lost sheep going roun din circles and reaching no destination - consultants should give feedback on all the underlying UbD prinicples crafted by the teachers for every topic as well as observe and give feedback on lessons conducted and observed (a sufficient number of lessons to gather enough info for a detailed and comprehensive feedback to all teachers involved). The problem is having consultants who have the expertise and who are willing to spend so much time without bankrupting the school. I am glad our school has this approach of the consultant observing teachers displaying skills learnt/lessons and giving feedback (Melvin, Peter Seah, Jan & Elly)- however, we should do more of this. Currently, everyone does not get the feedback and for those who do, one feedback is insufficient to achieve lasting change. I think that after the whole staff/large group goes throught the workshops, a small core group should go through a more intensive training with the consultants on observing and giving feedback so that after the consultants leaves, the small core group can carry on over the next few months or up to a year, observing and giving feedback multiple times for teachers so that learning is translated into action regularly (and not only during the one time when the consultant observed) and the new learning is internalised by the teachers. If we do not do this, we will not have sustainability.
