This case book is a result of a project in science education funded by
the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. The project, ”A
cross-disciplinary approach to language support for first year students
in the physical sciences,” commenced in October 2007. It addressed the
language needs of a diverse student body by investigating and testing
language oriented strategic approaches to learning and teaching in first
year sciences. This project was concerned with the acquisition of
language specific to science in addition to the implicit teaching of
meta-cognitive skills required in doing science. The disciplines covered
by the project were biology, chemistry, and physics. Around 3400
students were involved in the project from the University of Canberra,
the University of Technology, Sydney, the University of Sydney, the
University of Tasmania, and the University of Newcastle in Australia.
BACKGROUND
Student retention and progression rates are a matter of concern for most
institutions in the higher education sector (Burton & Dowling,
2005; Simpson, 2006; Tinto & Pusser, 2006). There is also
substantial literature concentrating on the first year experience at
university (Kerri-Lee Krause, Hartley, James, McInnis, & Centre for
the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, 2005).
Currently, there are two broad approaches to providing extra academic
(rather than language) support to help students succeed during their
first semester at university: targeting all students who wish to
participate in extra learning opportunities or targeting only those
students deemed to be at risk.
For example, the peer assisted study support schemes at the University
of Wollongong, University of Queensland (Miller, Gregg, & Kelly,
2000), and now at the University of Technology, Sydney and a number of
other universities, offered academic support to all interested students.
Students usually self-select to participate in these schemes. While
there are considerable resource implications associated with such
broad-based schemes, they are widely reported to be effective (O'Byrne,
Britton, George, Franklin, & Frey, 2009).
However, the problem with both of the approaches above is that students
either have to self-select or be selected for such extra academic
support. This works on the assumption that students who are not selected
are all coping with their first year science study. This project
questions this assumption and offers proof that as far as language in
science is concerned, all students need support. Thus, we aimed to offer
language support to all students who attended lectures and tutorials
thereby developing an approach of academic support that supports all
students.
PROJECT AIMS
Specifically this project aimed to:
- target the issue of language in science and suggest ways of
solving some of the language issues by importing techniques and
strategies frequently used in the teaching of foreign languages;
- create innovative online teaching modules that directly address
the language difficulties in the targeted disciplines in science;
- expand and reshape the current teaching approach to include a
language focus in the teaching of science in the face to face mode;
- increase student awareness of the language used in the targeted
disciplines by presenting student and staff insights of the particular
types of language used in that context;
- rigorously evaluate the implementation of these learning
strategies on student learning to enable their transportability to other
teaching contexts in higher education in Australia.
SCIENCE BACKGROUND OF STUDENTS
Students undertaking tertiary studies in the physical and biological
sciences are a highly diverse group, and that diversity is increasing
(Harris, et al., 2007). For instance, at the University of Sydney,
Australia there are usually around 2000 students from various faculties
in the first year chemistry cohort. Some of these students had little or
no Higher School Certificate studies in chemistry (especially students
in Sports Sciences). However, others have very high Universities
Admissions Index chemistry scores (>98 for Veterinary Science
students). With such a diverse group there is also, naturally, a wide
range of interest in and aptitude for the subject. Such diversity is
typical for classes in biology, chemistry, and physics at a number of
Australian universities (see Table 1).
Table 1. Summary of discipline areas studied
through a language focus, host universities for each discipline and
features of large student cohorts and learning environments.
THE PROJECT METHODOLOGY
The project protocols were developed through collaboration among all
stakeholders. These included a specialist in language learning and
science subject specialists who were also e-learning developers and
students. Designs built on the team members’ knowledge of research into
online learning (Schulte, 2006), computer-assisted language learning (F.
Zhang & Barber, 2008), linguistics (F. Z. Zhang, 2006), empirical
research in science (Ellem & McLaughlin, 2005), and pedagogical
practice. A student-centered approach was emphasized in the design
process and in the design itself.
The subjects in this project were taught by lecturers who hold broadly
constructivist views of learning as described by Bruner (1986). In this
view of learning, learners are considered to bring different
conceptualizations, intentions, styles, and approaches to the learning
situation (Kolb, 1984; Marton, Hounsell, & Entwistle, 1984; W. G.
Perry, 1988). Students’ active engagement in learning activities was
also an essential ingredient.
Furthermore, these activities should be based on direct experience as
far as possible (Boud, 1993) and reflection was seen as important in
building understanding (Schon, 1987). Finally, the project was also
informed by Lave and Wenger’s ideas of situated learning (Lave &
Wenger, 1991). Students and staff were participating in academic
communities of practice. Therefore, the classroom was no longer a site
for the transmission of knowledge but rather a site for social practice.
To be included in such a social practice environment, the language of
that environment must be learnt.
In this process, the roles of teaching and lecturers were changing too.
Science lecturers worked alongside an educationalist and contributed to
educational research and scholarship. Just as experiencing change in how
they learned took place over two years for the students involved in
this study, academics teaching also experienced changes. The science
academics involved in this project were extremely accomplished and
knowledgeable individuals in their own disciplines. By participating in
this project, they were positively recognizing the possible contribution
education theories and practices could make to their teaching. The
involvement of the educationalist was a way of establishing a mutually
beneficial learning relationship so that science academics and the
educationalist could gain new knowledge from each other. The
educationalist involved in the project had very little scientific
background or knowledge in the targeted disciplines. She, in a sense,
was like a student who chooses to do science without the necessary
pre-requisites.
In this model, changes in teaching approaches were explored through a
co-teaching or peer coaching approach (Ladyshewsky, 2006; Roth, 1998;
Roth, Tobin, Zimmermann, Bryant, & Davis, 2002) in which the
education/language expert shared with the science academic techniques
and strategies used in teaching in a constructivist model. The science
academics taught the education expert the content and pedagogy used in a
particular science discipline. This coaching practice before lectures
and tutorials in private between the educationalist and the lecturers
was an essential element in successfully implementing the change in
science academics’ lecturing styles in the face to face context. During
the coaching practice in private, the educationalist and the lecturers
worked together to anticipate areas that students might not understand.
This preparedness enhanced the delivery of the content using the new
face to face protocol.
The staff project participants were instrumental in ensuring the
sustainability of the project processes and findings. At each
participating university, the staff project participants involved were
instrumental in disseminating the outcome and findings of this project
in higher education to colleagues within their own disciplines in their
own universities and across the sector. Teaching project staff
participants consulted with staff in units for the promotion of teaching
and scholarship in higher education such as the Teaching and Learning
Centre at the University of Canberra. Teaching staff project
participants also conducted workshops to train lecturers in their
disciplines in using the online and face to face protocols. Project
participants were also involved in a peer-mentoring program organized at
each individual institution. During the peer mentoring program, project
participants mentored colleagues who intended to adapt and implement
the strategies tested in this project, and they also conducted workshops
and seminars to showcase the processes and outcomes of this project at
their own institutions.
In the project, we undertook to do the following:
- conduct an online language difficulty survey to ascertain the problems students might have with scientific language;
- implement the following two protocols in teaching in all five universities
We also implemented the following protocols:
-
During each lecture, the lecturer built into the lecture materials
short survey questions made available on VotApedia
<http://www.urvoting.com> or audience response devices such as
clickers <www.keepadinteractive.com> to offer feedback on
lecture content;
-
During tutorials, interactive activities were introduced. Such
interactive activities could include small group discussions involving
the linking of concepts learned.
Ethics approval for surveying and communicating with participants was
given and monitored by the University of Canberra Ethics Committee;
approval number: 01-119. Each participating institution also obtained
ethics approval for their participation in this project.
TARGET AUDIENCE
This casebook will be of interests to educators, science educators, both
education and science lecturers themselves, as well as staff in
teaching and development units. Researchers in higher education might
also be interested as this cross-disciplinary approach to science
education can be a sustainable model for the professional development of
the staff.
DESCRIPTION OF EACH CHAPTER
The chapter submissions in this volume include nine chapters detailing
successful collaboration in science education. Chapter 1 documents the
results of language difficulty surveys distributed in the participating
institutions to ascertain the extent of the language difficulties
encountered by first year science students.
Chapter 2 documents the successful implementation of various Chemistry
language strategies in the first year Chemistry curriculum at the
University of Sydney, Australia. This is followed by another instance of
successful implementation in Chemistry at the University of Tasmania,
in Hobart, Australia in chapter 3.
Chapter 4 documents the longitudinal implementation of language
strategies in the curricula of Genetics and Molecular Biology at the
University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia. Chapter 5 details the
verification of the Genetic Concept Inventory (GenCI) (Elrod, 2007)
which was used extensively at the University of Canberra in the Genetics
unit.
Chapter 6 of this book documents a successful transfer of the strategies
to the subject of Human Physiology at the University of Newcastle,
Australia. Chapter 7 contains a description of the implementation of
language strategies in the first year Physics curriculum at the
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Chapter 8 describes another
example of successful transfer of knowledge to the discipline of first
year Statistics teaching. Chapter 9 is a concluding chapter which
summarizes findings from the project for science education starting with
the issue of language difficulties.
CONCLUSION: IMPACT OF THIS BOOK ON SCIENCE EDUCATION
One of the key achievements of this project was that it succeeded in
changing the teaching practices of science lecturers, not by imposing a
set of “best practices” onto them, but by directly involving them in
designing, testing, and implementing practices that they would use in
their own teaching. With the idea of disseminating sustainable
strategies in mind, the guiding principle of selecting suitable
strategies was that the strategy must be easy to use and flexible enough
to be modified to suit different institutional contexts. As a result of
the cross-disciplinary collaboration between the science lecturers and
the educationalist (the project leader, Dr. Felicia Zhang), some
twenty-five language oriented exercises created using the freeware Hot
Potato software (
http://hotpot.uvic.ca/), over forty critical thinking
activities, and over forty five multiple choice questions and a large
number of VotApedia questions (
http://www.urvoting.com) in the
disciplines of chemistry, biology, and physics have been created. These
teaching materials can be used either online or in face-to-face
contexts, in lectures or tutorials, and are not constrained by
institutional computer infrastructure such as the Learning Management
System (LMS). This case book contains many of the teaching materials
used in different project sites and is intended to be a one stop shop
for science language activities used in the project.
Finally, this book contains a wealth of ideas, practical exercise
sheets, and technological advice targeted at a number of specific topics
in the Physics, Chemistry and Biology curricular. In some disciplines
such as Chemistry, materials concerning all the usual topics have been
included. Though coverage in other disciplinary areas has been isolated
to a few topics, the model of creating language oriented exercises,
creating exercises that integrate the use of technology can be readily
transferable to other areas of science and other disciplines such as the
discipline of business and health. What distinguishes the materials in
this book from other curriculum advice is that our learning materials
are not like those in any science textbooks, are produced by the
disciplinary science academics themselves rather than by the
educationalist, can be easily implemented with or without technology,
and most importantly, have proven to produce significant improvement in
first year science students’ achievement.
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