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Newsletter Volume 2 |
Fall 1997 |
Patterns in Nature in the Navajo Nation
Steve SemkenDepartment of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Diné College/Shiprock
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Newsletter Volume 2 |
Fall 1997 |
Patterns in Nature, the ACEPT signature course in interdisciplinary science and constructivist science teaching, is now part of the curriculum at Diné College, formerly known as Navajo Community College. Diné College is the official institution of higher education for the Diné (Navajo) Nation, and a partner in ACEPT. Patterns was offered for the first time during the spring 1997 semester at the Tsaile, Arizona campus, under the auspices of the Diné Teacher Education Program (DTEP), which is a joint project of Diné College and Arizona State University (ASU) that also has direct ties to ACEPT. The groundbreaking group of seventeen Native American students in this new Patterns class, BLE 498, was also the first cohort of DTEP students, all of whom are pre-service elementary-school teachers progressing toward a B.A. degree in Elementary Education in 1998. Each of the students had previously completed at least one college-level course in science; a few had completed several.
Steve Semken, Diné College, Shiprock campus and Patterns in Nature Students from Diné College observe geological formations around the Tsaile area.
Patterns began to coalesce on the Navajo Nation in the fall of 1995, when ACEPT funded a planning group of Diné College science, mathematics, and education faculty to develop course outlines and preliminary syllabi for a two-course sequence of upper-division science and mathematics education courses for the DTEP. The successful Patterns course at ASU, with its learning-cycle approach, modular laboratory and field activities, and interdisciplinary curriculum, served as a model for the DTEP science course. However, our version was intended to have its own unique attributes derived from the Diné philosophy of education and indigenous concepts of natural systems, and focusing on scientific examples of particular interest to Navajo educators.
ACEPT provided additional developmental support throughout 1996. As the lead instructor for the Diné College Patterns course, I was invited to attend and to help teach three modular labs in geology during the spring and summer 1996 Patterns classes at ASU, and to participate in the first ACEPT Summer Faculty Workshop. These shared practical exposures to methods, materials, and pre-service teachers were crucial. Several of the modules developed by ACEPT for the ASU Patterns and Physical Science 110 courses were used in their entirety at Diné College, while several others were modified to better complement the backgrounds and professional plans of the DTEP students entering the course in January 1997. Some new modules were developed by me from ideas published in science-education journals and texts.
One significant way in which the Diné College Patterns in Nature course differed from its predecessors was a decidedly "low-tech" approach, born of the humbler lab facilities available at Tsaile and at the Navajo Nation schools where our students would be working as K-8 educators. Much as the students in the ASU Physical Science 110 often do, the Diné College Patterns students explored scientific principles using inexpensive, readily-available materials such as cardboard and aluminum foil; sugar, drink mixes and gelatin; crayons and colored pencils; modeling clay and plaster of Paris; and local rocks and soils. They compiled, plotted, and analyzed data on DTEP Macintosh computers using the inexpensive, cross-platform spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel. Some laboratory equipment, such as a hand-held radiation detector, was borrowed from Diné College research labs for demonstration purposes.
Diné College students in the computer lab.
The lab modules, although conceptually-rich and usually quantitative, were intended to allow neither economic constraints nor laborious procedures to thwart the direct transfer of hands-on exploratory activities into the hands of Native American K-8 students. As evolving, confident professionals who were accumulating classroom experience in other courses, the DTEP students were always quick to advise the instructor on the applicability of this or that procedure to a room full of fifth-graders!
As spring weather melted the snow at 7,000-foot (2134-m)-high Tsaile, and a college student's fancy quite naturally turned to the windows, the final modules took place outdoors, culminating in a geological field trip to nearby Canyon de Chelly National Monument to interpret patterns in rock textures and landscapes.
In addition to laboratory and field activities, there were readings in and discussions of the National Science Education Standards, and round table explorations of indigenous Diné scientific knowledge, such as the coupled systems of Earth and Sky (analogous to the solid and fluid Earth systems of contemporary geoscience) and an empirically-determined, cyclical model of dynamic equilibrium in natural and human systems that is essentially identical to Le Chatelier's Principle in Euro-American physical chemistry. Students were encouraged, and sometimes assigned, to gather Diné and historical information relating to some of the topics covered in the course, such as astronomy, weather, water, and natural landscapes.
Modular labs and supplementary activities completed during the spring 1997 semester included: Problem Solving with Computers (Inside/Outside); Dinosaur Tracks and Trackways; Exploring Electric Charges (Safely); Standards and Diné Concepts; Radioactivity and Time; Solutions, Dilutions, and Powers of Ten; Patterns in Natural Objects (The Art of Observation); Interpreting Patterns in Rocks; Recreating Patterns in Rocks; Simulating the Solar System; and Interpreting Rocks in the Field.
One class featured hands-on activities and discussion of educational principles by visiting instructor Herb Cohen, from the ASU School of Education.
While student evaluations were not officially compiled and tabulated at the time of this writing, informal student comments regarding the initial offering of Patterns were uniformly favorable. The principal objective of the course was to increase the students' enthusiasm for science while enhancing their abilities in it, and this appears to have been met.
Patterns in Nature is scheduled to be offered again at Tsaile in the spring of 1998, to the second cohort of DTEP students. James Matlock, Diné College Tsaile biologist, will be the new lead instructor, while I will be working on a plan to offer Patterns at the Diné College campus in Shiprock, New Mexico where I am based.
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