As a designer of courses and lessons you will always be in demand if you have success in creating response environments for learning in which students are given the responsibility and the chance to think for themselves. This was the case a few years ago when two teachers (P. Schildwacht and C. Papenhuyzen) from the Department of Botany at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, came to our department (the Department of Research and Development in Education) seeking help in designing a five-day experiment in which their students could investigate and think about a phenomenon in plants known as ‘apical dominance’.
This has to do with the fact that the bud at the apex of certain plants grows much faster and more luxuriously than buds down the stem. It occurs despite the fact that the apical bud is least favourably situated in respect to access to nutrients in the soil. The phenomenon has interested scientists for a long time. It still does.
The teachers seeking assistance were responding to a complaint from students that they had too many prescriptive type experiments in their curriculum. These are experiments in which the student works from a step-by-step protocol and is given little opportunity to work and think in her or his own way. The teachers were willing to convert their protocol-steered experiment into a think-and-do-for-yourself type experiment. They needed help in doing this. There were 65 students involved and it was difficult to visualize the working effectively on their own, without the sort of help a protocol was able to give them. A colleague (P.J. van Eijl) and I were asked to respond to the teachers’ call for help.
It wasn’t very long before the five steps in the so-called ‘scientific method of enquiry’ began to attract attention as the special bit of content which would serve as the students’ response environment organizer. It was intuitively seen as the most natural REO in a think-and-do-for-yourself scientific experiment. The challenge was how to weave it into place in a didactic design so that the design would be experienced not only as valued and liked but also effective and efficient for a group of 65 individuals with different interests and skills. It was quite a challenge!
Finally, a design emerged. Some fifteen working days into the project we saw how it had to be. The steps in the scientific method (observing the phenomenon, formulating a general hypothesis, formulating a work hypothesis, testing the work hypothesis, and drawing conclusions) were made the focal point of five S-R events. These were supported by 11 other S-R events. Seven of these were discussions between the teacher and the students on what they had just done and what they were about to do. The S-R events were sequenced into a chain. The design split the 65 students into seven groups of seven and two groups of eight. It assigned an experienced teacher or an assistant teacher to the role of mentor in each group. The design in its worked-out form contained 16 S-R events listed in fig. 14. These S-R events involved individual (I) activity, group (G) activity and teacher intervention (T) activity (see fig. 14).
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- Observe Phenomenon (I) (G)
- Discussion (I) (G) (T)
- Focus on apical dominance (I) (G)
- Formulate general hypothesis (I) (G)
- Discussion (I) (G) (T)
- Formulate work hypothesis (I) (G)
- Discussion (I) (G) (T)
- Design experiment (I) (G)
- Discussion (I) (G) (T)
- Test-work hypothesis (I) (G)
- Discussion (I) (G) (T)
- Draw conclusions (I) (G)
- Discussion (I) (G) (T)
- Write report (I) (G)
- Discussion/evaluation of report (I) (G) (T)
- Exchange of results between groups (I) (G) (T)
Figure 14 The S-R events in a think-and-do-for-yourself type experiment
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The activities included reading, looking, discriminating, judging, discussing, completion of experimental formulae, steering of the process, and so on. This reflects care for active and not passive learning (criterion 1). The discussion events provided the chance to look back at and evaluate the quality of the activities and decisions which had just been made. They also provided the opportunity to look forward at what was intended in the event which followed. This feedback reflects concern for criterion 5. It came (in a non-directive way) from the teacher of the group and also from members of the group themselves.
To ensure that the individual student and the groups of students could respond in a didactically meaningful way (criterion 2) to what was asked of them, help stimuli were provided for use in each event. In S-R event 6, for example, these help stimuli were in the form of a set of criteria for a good working hypothesis. They were also in the form of a list of references and a selection of important current information and theories on the subject of apical dominance. Without these, the students involved did not have enough basic knowledge and experience to formulate a working hypothesis that would satisfy the scrutiny of the group teacher and (perhaps) fellow students.
The splitting of the students into groups of seven and eight allowed the design to share control over the learning process (criterion 3) between students as individuals, and between the group and the teacher. Working as individuals and as a group also helped outwit existing constraints (criterion 4), which included too many students, too little time, and limited laboratory resources.
Once the thought-up design had been worked out, it was time to test it before its formal installation in the Botany curriculum as a regular laboratory experiment (new style) on the phenomenon of apical dominance.
The results of the first try-out were not exactly as anticipated. We were happy enough to discover that in the main, all groups valued and liked the new think-and-do-for-yourself type experiment. Reactions as to how effective and efficient the experiment was were mixed. The results, as scored against the Emax Vmax Lmax E’max criteria, were for some groups E ±V+ L+E’ ± and for other groups E± V+ L+ E’ ±. What could account for these differences? The results are certainly worth improving. How? The opinion of the teachers and assistants on the new method of experiment came out about the same: practically all valued and liked the change from the prescriptive form of experiment, but not all found it effective and efficient. What they did say was that they had never had to work so hard before in assigning and supervising a laboratory task. But they all thought it worthwhile! This was a healthy signal to the design group.
The teaching-learning situation described above is an en-counter with the scientific method of enquiry. Telling and explaining came through the materials which served as helping stimuli in the different events. Instruction touched the learning experience during the discussions with the laboratory teacher and during ad hoc teacher intervention when help was asked for at the laboratory bench.
The above results are reasonably good but there is room for some revisions. What do you think these revisions might be? What factors are interfering with the experiment’s success? We’ll come back to this diagnosis at the end of Chapter 4, on testing-and-revising a thought-up, worked-out design. In the meantime you may like to think of an answer to these questions yourself or together with another reader of this book.