Newsletter Volume 2	Fall 1997

A Student's Perspective on an ACEPT Reformed Course

Kimberly Ethington
Arizona State University
Elementary Education
Pre-service Math Specialist

I was one of the students fortunate enough to have participated in PHS 110 (Fundamentals of Physical Science) at ASU during the 1996 fall semester. This was the first semester that PHS 110 was offered as an ACEPT reformed science course. The structure of the course was to help pre-service teachers learn better methods for teaching physical science in the classroom, and to give students a deeper understanding of physics concepts. The second cohort of students to take this course benefited from our comments and criticisms about the class. We completed a total of fourteen experiments; twenty-one personal labs (i.e. "take-home" experiments), and two long-term personal labs (involving semester-long observations of the moon and sun that would allow us to explain the reason for the different seasons). Students in PHS 110 were responsible for keeping a detailed journal of all observations and experiments, as well as for participating in classroom and lab discussions. I must admit that the class was very challenging, but the rewards were worth all the hard work.

Kim Ethingtion

Although I completed this course a full twelve months ago, I distinctly recall many of the questions raised within the class and many of the experiments. We frequently addressed questions that children in K-8 classrooms would raise in class that most K-8 teachers would ordinarily not know how to explain.

For example, a nine year old child is very likely to ask why the sky is blue or how a helicopter flies. Would you know how to answer this question? As a result of taking PHS 110, I now feel that I have enough background information in the basic principles of physical science to explain these things to a child in terms that they would understand. Also because our personal "take-home" labs which used common household objects to demonstrate these principles, I am confident that I could also explain and demonstrate how a plane flies or other questions commonly asked by children.

One of the unique aspects about PHS 110 was the fact that we completed experiments before we discussed the concepts in class. This challenged us to design our own experiments, use our own reasoning to explain our results and, basically, learn each concept through our own experimentation. We were able to explore concepts, then return to class and share our ideas. Only after these steps were completed would our professor and/or teaching assistants explain to us the results of our experiments. The fact that we were discussing our ideas with each other about the phenomena that occurred in each experiment, and not simply reading a text book about science, made the course unique and useful to me as a pre-service teacher. We were exploring and doing science on our own and thereby learning more than if we had simply sat in a lecture hall three days a week, reading the text on our own along the way.

Kim Ethington works with Workshop participants on the development of physics/math integrated modules.

The most unique component of our class was a classroom device called Classtalk, produced by Better Education, Inc., Grafton, VA. Students in the class organized themselves into groups of two or three. One person from each group checked out a TI-85 calculator from a teaching assistant at the beginning of class, then each group member logged on to the Classtalk program on the TI-85 using their own name and password. We frequently used Classtalk questions to elicit class discussion.

A conceptual Classtalk question, with four possible answers, would be projected on a screen in front of the classroom. Each group then had several minutes to discuss the question among themselves, before entering their individual answers into the TI-85. When the discussion time expired and everyone had entered their answers (usually about 3 minutes), a graph which was displayed on the screen showed how the class had responded-the correct answer was color coded. The professor then led the class discussion, explaining the correct answer and why the others were incorrect. These discussions helped clear up any confusion about a particular concept.

The Classtalk program was also used each Friday to assess our quizzes. A problem was presented and we were able to discuss the possible answers within our group before keying in our final answer. Again we were given immediate feedback, because the graph displayed the class responses within a few seconds, which allowed us to see the areas where we were having difficulties. As a result we continued to raise questions regarding specific concepts until we were confident we understood the phenomena.

My experience in PHS 110,was very positive. I feel that I learned a great deal from this course, and that I have retained the material I learned. I know that this material will help me to be a better science teacher in the future. Working in groups throughout the course allowed us to share our ideas and compare our perceptions in order to explain concepts to one another. This helped me because I was forced to verbalize all that I had learned in order to support my answers, or to refute another person's answer. It also helped me to see the errors in my own thought process.

Overall, this class allowed me to learn about science by actually doing science. It reinforced the scientific concepts, and showed me how to teach science by using very practical, meaningful methods.

Course materials for PHS 110 may be found on the PHS 110 Website.

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