In the previous lectures we've looked at a number of student ideas, and we've looked at ways of thinking about student ideas. In this lecture, I'd like to focus on how do we listen to students' ideas to get a better idea of our students' ideas, to help students to express their ideas. So we saw that one of the important implications of research on students' ideas, is that we need to help them express their ideas, both for our benefit as teachers, and researchers, to better understand their ideas, and for their benefit in terms of drawing out their intuitive ideas, so that they can be examined more consciously. Here is Jim Minstrell talking about one of his early experiences in working with teachers, and his mentor, Arnold Aarons, giving him some very pointed advice on the importance of listening. My mentor, Arnold Aarons, when I am working with him, with teachers, in professional development venue, he would see me a little busy over there, telling the teachers what to do, and he would come over, and pull me aside, and say, ''You have two ears, and one mouth, use them in that proportion." That was very meaningful to me, and I turned into much more of a listener. So listening is very important. Secondly, trying to take a neutral stance on what the student says, to not be surprised by what they say, but rather to get them to tell me more about their ideas. So I think that advice that, "We have two ears, and one mouth use them in that proportion," is both very impactful as well as being humorous. But it certainly points out the need to listen to our students. So what I'd like to ask you to do is to think of a question you might ask a student to explore their ideas on a topic, and write your thoughts in the text box provided, and when we come back, we'll talk about this important skill of asking questions, and then listening to students. One of the methods in research on students' conceptions that is widely used is called clinical interviewing. This is a method where the interviewer asks a student a conceptual question that draws out the students' ideas, so that the interviewer, and the student can explore them more fully. So it's important to ask students questions to explore their ideas, but also the tone of the questioning is very important. The tone of the question needs to be a tone where I'm genuinely asking for your ideas, not testing you on whether your ideas are the right ones, and further the kinds of questions are very important. So let's look at these latter two more closely. So thinking about the tone of questioning; a less effective tone is questions that ask for a right answer, and so the tone is one of a quiz, or a test, or an oral examination, and probing questions that attempt to leave students away from wrong answers, and toward right answers. When I have my students do interviews, this is one of the things that they find the most difficult; is that they're interviewing someone, and the person that they're interviewing gives the wrong answer, and they feel very strongly that they need to either tell them the right answer, or ask them a question that will guide them strongly toward the right answer. That really prevents them from exploring more fully the person's ideas. So more effective are questions that asked for their ideas, and so they're asked in a phrased in a way that's invites an informal response as opposed to the interviewee feeling like they have to give the right answer. Finally, probing questions that try to help them elaborate their ideas as opposed to try to lead them to the right ideas. The kinds of questions are also very important. I think less effective kinds of questions are questions that use technical vocabulary, questions focused on factual knowledge. More effective are questions that ask about observed phenomena, questions focused on conceptual ideas. So I'd like to go through a number of examples of kinds of questions. When I teach the class face to face, one of the assignments that I ask my students to do, is to interview someone. Before they interview someone, I asked them to submit questions to me, so that I can give them feedback on those questions. I'm going to show a number of questions that I've received in this assignment or questions that are very similar to ones that I've received, and the kinds of feedback that I've given, both on the tone of the question, and the kind of question to better draw out students' ideas. So here's a question; what causes the seasons? Now, this is a question that we've already thought about. But I think feedback that I might give on this is this phrasing makes it sound like a quiz question, asking for a correct answer. So better might be, why do you think it's warm in the summer, and cold in the winter? So this is asking them about something that they've observed, and what do you think about this? It sounds less schoolish. So the phrasing, why do you think, is often a very good thing to incorporate, and help stress that you're interested in their ideas as opposed to right answers. Another proposed question. How does photosynthesis work? So this is a very schoolish question asked using a technical term the student might not know the technical term, it makes it sound like a quiz question. So better might be something like a tiny acorn grows into a huge tree. Where do you think all that extra weight comes from? So this is getting at the same ideas, but in much more common sense way that even a kindergartener would probably have some ideas about. If they use the term photosynthesis, be sure to ask what they mean by it. That goes across the board if they use any kind of terms such as, for example, in Carroll Smith's work, if they use the term matter, obviously they might mean something very different by it than the science teacher would mean by it. So any technical terms that they use you want to ask, ''Oh you used this term, can you tell me what you mean by that." Another proposed question, and this is more of a follow-up to the preceding question asked in a way to trying to lead the student away from their misconceived response. Do you really think sunlight that doesn't weigh anything turns into mass in photosynthesis? So the phrasing, probably the tone of voice, the expression implies very strongly, "That's the wrong answer, give me the right answer." I think to better explore students' ideas, you might ask in a different way. So for example, ''Can you show me with a drawing how that works.'' This is a very common technique, it can be very powerful. Asking students to draw something if it involves anything visual. This gives them a chance to express their ideas in a different way they might not be able to express very well in words. It also gives you a context for exploring their ideas more fully, "So I see you've drawn this here, can you say more about that?" So it can be a very powerful context for exploring their ideas more fully. Another example, "You said the Earth's tilt is responsible for the seasons, how much is the Earth tilted?" So this asked for factual information rather than probing the students ideas. So better might be, "You said the Earth's tilt is responsible for the seasons, could you say more about how that works?" Again, asking them to draw a diagram can help enormously in helping them to express their ideas and helping you to get a better understanding of how their intuitively making sense of this particular system. Another proposed question might be, what is the meaning of the fraction four-fifths? Now, this is phrased in a kind of abstract way, and students are likely to say, "I don't know," or just not say anything. So better might be something like, can you show me four-fifths in a drawing? Or here are several fractions, which do you think is the largest? The smallest? Whatever they say, be sure to ask for their reasoning to follow up. Again, probe them in ways not to lead them to the correct answer, but to further probe their thinking about why they think a particular fraction is larger than another one, etc. Here's another question you might ask, what is three-fifths plus four-thirds? Now, I would say this is actually not such a bad question to ask, but be sure to ask them why they do the steps that they do. Oftentimes, you could ask this question, they do it correctly, and then you move on. But even if they do it correctly, you want to explore how they're making sense of the operations. Also, you can follow on with other questions and examples that focus on conceptual issues expressed. So for example, they might have trouble with four-thirds, "That's not really right, the top needs to be smaller than the bottom. " "Oh, okay can you tell me more about that?" Or is four-thirds just simply wrong or is there a different way to write it that would be a better way? It's just one way of writing it, but there's a better way to write it. This kind of thing. So you can follow up on how they're understanding those fractions. Another example, how do micro-organisms cause disease? Well, first of all, this is assuming that they know that microorganisms cause disease. They might have a different view of disease, but it also seems like a quiz question asking for a right answer. So a better question that leaves it more open to their ideas might be, "Last week, I had a cold for a few days, how do you think I got sick?" So it's not saying that microorganisms made that happen. It's asking for their ideas. It's informal context and so it makes it seem much less like a quiz question and more like a conversation starter asking for their ideas. Again, if they use a term such as germs, be sure to ask them what they mean by this. Again, asking for a drawing of the process can be very helpful. For microscopic and submicroscopic processes, I think saying that they have something like magic glasses that allow them to look very closely, as close as they want at something, can help them. They can zoom in and draw germs, or draw atoms, and molecules and their ideas of what those look like and how they interact, etc. That can be a powerful probe in combination with the drawing, where they can express their ideas visually. Another example, put the following on a timeline. So you have examples, such as the Big Bang, the Earth formed, first signs of life, the Sun formed, plants appear, etc. Now, an issue with this is that it seems focused on factual information about the timing of these events. Students might not know what happened before what, and they also might not know how far in the past they happened. So if the focus is on their understanding of geologic time or their understanding of logarithmic scales, you could simply provide the factual information, such as the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. Then just ask them to construct a timeline to show these events. Be sure as they're doing that, "Oh, so I see you put this here, can you say more about why you put this here? " You can ask them, "So I see that you put this this far away from this. Can you say why you did that?" So it allows you to, again, explore their thinking about geologic time or their understanding of logarithmic scales etc. So in exploring students ideas, interviewing is a gold standard for helping students to elicit their ideas and to probe their intuitive ideas. But the types of questions and the questioning tone are very important. As we have seen, if you ask questions that are schoolish and ask for right answer, it can inhibit students. They might say, "I don't know," or give very brief responses. Whereas, if you are genuinely valuing their ideas and asking questions that help them to better express their ideas, as opposed to trying to steer them toward the right answers, this can really help students to express their ideas and for you to get much more information about their ideas. Also, good interview questions usually work well to elicit student ideas in small groups or whole class discussions or even written questions. So skill at probing student ideas, such as asking good conceptual questions, asking follow-up questions that don't lead, but elicit more of their ideas. These kinds of skills that you can develop in interviews will help in guiding class discussions. To recap, thinking about this entire module, we've seen that students have ways of making sense of ideas and phenomena that can make learning more sophisticated ideas difficult. These ways of making sense are often deep and intuitive, serving as conceptual attractors. So it's not simply that students are getting wrong answers. They are drawing on their intuitions and coming up with answers and responses that make sense to them, and that draw on their intuitive resources. Asking students conceptual questions can help to draw out these ideas. Finally, after expressing their ideas, how can we help students to critique and modify these ideas? So we've looked this module at a student's ideas or ways of exploring students ideas and ways of helping them to express their ideas. In the next module, we'll go further and ask, how can we help students to go beyond expressing their ideas to also critiquing and modifying these ideas in appropriate learning environments?
