Ecosystems Curriculum

Introduction

Instructional Approach

The activities in this module are best supported by a classroom culture that fits with the following suggested actions:

• Encourage students to take risks in their thinking and to test their ideas in a social context. No ideas should just be shot down. Instead relevant evidence should be considered.
• Encourage students NOT to accept ideas just because someone else says that they are so. Students should change their ideas when they find that the evidence is convincing.
• Emphasize developing understanding and the importance of transferring understanding to new contexts as opposed to right answers.
• Seek opportunities to engage students in scientific inquiry. The process of learning should mimic the process of discovery that scientists engage in. However, not all learning can be inquiry-based or constructivist. Students also need exposure to the models that scientists have evolved during centuries of scientific inquiry.
• Recognize that students come to class with general principles about how the world operates as a result of their own attempts to make sense of the world. Offer opportunities for them to reflect on their own thinking.
• Encourage testing and revising one's thinking over getting it right. Students who adopt the right model without deeply reasoning it through are likely to revert to their less evolved models as soon as the unit ends.
• Help students to realize that no model explains everything about a particular phenomenon. Each model has ways in which it fits and ways in which it does not fit with the concept. Critique models as a regular part of classroom discussions. Some models have more explanatory power than others, but no model captures the whole idea.