Making Room for Creativity in Science Class

How many times have you had a student ask, “Will this be on the test?” I often did as a teacher. They fully expect the test questions to have one right answer, and I would often give them those answers over the course of a unit. Students might have to plug in different numbers, but there wasn’t a ton of critical thinking in the end.

I have wondered, “How could I have made more room for creativity in my science class?” I have a few ideas and welcome yours in the comments!

First, create a culture where students ask questions. When considering student questions, I think teachers worry about tangents that will distract from concepts they “need” to cover. At least, I worried about that. In my experience, when a unit focuses on students figuring out a key phenomenon, the questions they ask tend to be naturally answered in the planned unit anyway. The students, however, at least had a chance at creativity when asking them, and they buy in as they see them answered. For questions that aren’t part of the unit, let students go on a research tangent or test different variables, and give them credit for doing so. Of course, that sounds a bit like project-based learning, which is an obvious pathway here too and enables students to research/experiment based on their own interests. While I didn’t connect them as well I could have to their learning, I honestly loved crazy questions from students, so I appreciate the work of Randall Munroe in xkcd with "what if" questions like, “What if I had a mole of moles?”

Second, find ways to get rid of one right answer tasks. I thought web searches were going to destroy these questions, but now I see that AI is going to obliterate them. Teachers tell me they need to know whether students know definitions. The challenge is that they don’t remember them anyway. I had amazing students who would come back the next school year, and I’d ask, “What’s a proton?” They seriously had no idea. Testing definitions is pointless in the long run, and even in the short term, students often hide behind an illusion of understanding by being able to spout the right terms. They have to be asked to apply ideas to their worlds, to things that they’re interested in, and to current contexts. Plugging numbers into formulas is similarly problematic. Testing on conceptual understanding of what a formula means and how it’s used requires more critical thinking (and is more likely to support remembering it). To help make this change, students could even create the tasks (or questions) that they find meaningful.

Third, push for originality in scientific modeling. Modeling can also become a process of looking for what the teacher wants, but that defeats the whole purpose of modeling! We want students to make connections among ideas in their world and through the lens of their background understanding, not replicate diagrams from a book. In a workshop, I have used a phenomenon of cup phones several times and asked educators to model how they work, as well as why they work sometimes and not others. Once a teacher took the blank paper I handed out and folded it up like an accordion. When asked to share her model, she showed the folds bumping into each other and transferring energy. Brilliant! If I had specifically asked them to draw something or given a starting diagram to add to, I never would have seen that creativity shine.

Notably, I supported a research project where we asked students in grades K-8 to make a model of blowing a crumpled-up piece of paper across a desk. Younger students were more likely to include themselves in their model. Some 8th graders did too, but they were more likely to only draw a mouth or maybe a mouth to lungs system. We interpreted that as younger kids being more likely to see themselves as part of the scientific process, while older kids abstracted science to something outside of who they are. We should encourage kids to make the models personally relevant, meaning giving them phenomena where that will be possible, rather than stressing a system that doesn’t include them in the picture.

Finally, celebrate your students’ ideas! Whenever they get excited, get excited with them, even if it’s hard to do. I had a student who was excited to bring in articles that argued against human-caused climate change. It tended to make me grumpy, as they didn’t represent quality science. But, he wanted to talk science! I really should have celebrated his interest in pursuing science topics outside of school. I should have called my excitement out to the class! Because that’s what science should be, full of wonder and questions and creative expression, even in the face of the competing priorities and obligations of being a teacher.

Cultivating Genius: Adapting Lessons to Bring Out the Genius in All Students

I have a hard time connecting with some frameworks for equity-based teaching. Often, that’s because they don’t connect as well as I’d like to science teaching. The Cultivating Genius Framework from Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, on the other hand, provides a simple tool to reflect on lesson and unit design.

Her framework includes the following 5 elements, and I note how they’d work within science:

• Intellect: the disciplinary core ideas of science (DCIs) and ways of thinking of science (i.e., CCCs)
• Skills: the science and engineering practices (SEPs)
• Identity: connections to students’ interests and cultures, current events, and local contexts (some ideas in Appendix A of the WI Science Standards).
• Criticality: how is this science going to help change our community and the broader world?
• Joy: linking to the beauty and wonder of science, as well as the collaborative nature of it

So, what might this look like in practice to adapt existing materials? Let’s start from some high-quality and free materials, OpenSciEd, specifically the 7th grade unit on matter cycling and photosynthesis – “Where does our food come from and where does it go next?” In this unit students explore the growth of plants, creation of food, and decomposition of food materials.

Applying Dr. Muhammad’s framework:

This unit already effectively brings in the 3 dimensions of the WSS/NGSS = intellect and skills. Students develop a strong conceptual understanding of these topics and do science.

    Identity: The lesson starts out with maple syrup and students watch a video of tapping a maple tree. Instead, classes could go out and actually tap trees to connect to their local environment and native understanding of ecosystems and science, specifically noting the cultural connections. 

    Criticality: Later in the unit, students grow plants hydroponically. They could connect this work to growing healthy food for the school cafeteria (and eating it!) and consider issues such as the impact of food deserts in communities and over-consumption of processed foods.

    Joy: Students could take a walk in a local forest or other ecosystem to observe plant growth and decomposition. If the environment is a nearby local forest, they might do multiple measurements over time in the spring when plants are growing like crazy. A teacher could also add a group project related to local plants, food, decomposers, etc. that benefits a local food pantry.

There are so many possibilities for making our lessons better connect to the identity, joy, and critical perspectives of our students! The challenge, of course, is time. Like always, I’ll emphasize that it’s better to engage students deeply in their world than it is to cover more content. They will remember the ideas better and be able to better apply them to new situations. Their scientific literacy will also increase. If we want students to find joy in learning and be careful consumers of the (mis)information overload around them, some coverage must give way to more opportunities for locally-connected critical thinking.

Are Today's Students Actually Different?

In my role in state science leadership, I often end up hearing from educators that the students right now are different than before. I have especially heard that as we’ve gone back to school during this COVID era, but frustration aimed at cell phones and social media has been around for a while. Notably, I also heard these sentiments from several educators when I first started teaching 23 years ago. “Kids have changed from when I first started teaching…They’re not as ______ as they used to be.”

I sometimes wonder if those perceived changes are reflections of changes in society in general more so than children being inherently different now.

I have a few concerns with focusing on perceived “changes” in children:

First, it’s an easy excuse. It shifts the onus of responsibility away from educational systems and educators, and instead focuses on children. It becomes part of the ongoing blame game in education. It would be helpful to change how we frame our analyses. For example, instead of saying, “Only 30% of our students are proficient,” we ought to note that our instructional system and curriculum only meet the needs of 30% of our students.

Second, it can be conflated with changing demographics. I taught in California in a district that went from about 70% white to 20% white in the 20 years before I started there. We all have implicit biases; lots of evidence points to that. So, when we say students are different, their demographics are sometimes quite different, and we can come off as suggesting that that is the underlying problem, even if unintended.

Third, children are amazing, creative, and bring a fresh new lens on the world around them. That’s what we need to emphasize.

Some instructional shifts might help, but I think that’s always been the case. For example:

First, yes, there are real issues with social media, internet-connected phones, etc. Cell phones turn most of us (adults too) into screen-addicted zombies. That includes me (I’m working on it). Social media usage is linked to self-esteem issues in children. I’d hypothesize that social media and excess screen time are linked to mental health issues for people of all ages. I would suggest rules and a culture that gets rid of phones in general during school day – not in the bag, not in a pocket. It would take serious time and effort, but it would give children some time to be away from those addictive platforms. We could model that behavior as educators (your family can call the school if there’s an emergency, and the front desk staff can contact you). Admittedly, students need to develop healthy habits with phones and use the internet for good. Using computers on a structured basis can support those goals. Perhaps there is real research that show most kids having phones will keep them safer in an emergency – if so, that should be considered, but I haven’t seen it yet (science is about evidence, not random anecdotes).

Second, if they can Google the answer, that’s the type of pedagogy that has needed to change for a long time. It’s even more critical now. Content-focused instruction has never been motivational for most kids, and according to repeated research, students quickly forget the details from that type of learning. Any DOK 1 or 2 learning can be effective when embedded within community connections, local phenomena exploration, and meaningful problem solving, but it shouldn’t be the focus. Kids have never been excited about memorizing the periodic table or the stages of mitosis! Applying understanding means connecting it to real issues, jobs, challenges, changes in the local community; it is not giving some fake context on a test to make stoichiometry (etc.) appear like it has “real-world” value. Students should be learning to make sense of the world around them, not be fed pre-packaged understanding.

In the end, are students different? Probably a bit. Society is different. But, that 13-year-old is still a lot like the 13-year-old from 50 years ago with similar core needs and wants. Let’s work together to help them find joy and wonder in the world around them!

What Is “Student-Centered” Instruction?

To begin, if there is one right answer to a task, it’s not student-centered. It’s students figuring out the answer the teacher wants. True, that might be the “scientifically accurate” answer to a problem, but it leads to students being dependent on the teacher (or another outside source) for telling them what is correct and what is not. It leads students directly to the sense that the teacher, textbook, or website are the knowers and creators of science, not the students. We want students to grow in their identity as scientists by becoming scientific knowledge creators themselves! That’s the key to student-centered instruction.

So, does that mean learning shouldn’t involve problems with only one right answer. No, but there should be many fewer than they typical classroom includes. And, when they happen, they should be in the larger context of student sensemaking and creation. The foundation of the Wisconsin Science Standards (and NGSS) is that students should use scientific practices, ways of thinking, and content to make sense of phenomena and solve problems. So, if there are single answer problems or questions, such as a limiting reagent in chemistry or the speed of a cart in physical science, they should be included specifically so that students can then use that understanding to make sense of or solve problems within a larger context, not be an end in themselves.

Learning targets and assessments should then have this student-centered focus as well and not stagnate in lower cognitive levels. For example, I would not have an objective that says, “I can describe an ecosystem.” Instead, I might have one that says, “I can explain with evidence how changing environmental factors can affect some species of bats more than others” (for reference, here’s a unit outline for learning related to that target). I might then break that down into success criteria for students, such as, “I can: 1) use my understanding of ecosystems to explain why changes in particular aspects of them matter for bats; and 2) use my understanding of structures and functions of different bat species to explain why some bats will be more affected by those ecosystem changes than others.” Therefore, students are using an understanding of ecosystems for learning in a context of Wisconsin bat populations--specifically building toward making sense of decreasing bat populations due to various causes including white nose syndrome, and then determining what to do about it.

In this unit example, assessment should also involve sensemaking/problem-solving and questions that do not have one right answer. The assessments should reflect the 3D instruction. They could include:

1. Modeling a bat ecosystem and using evidence to show how it might change with a new environmental pollutant or other ecosystem change; 
2. Writing a letter to a local politician describing the bat population problem, why it’s important, and possible solutions; 
3. Designing and physically building a locally adapted product to help bat populations, like a bat house tailored to a local species of bat; 
4. Developing an evidence-based explanation in relation to the success criteria--see sample bat ecosystems explanations rubric.

Notably, students will be using their own research, investigation results, and a variety of data to make these assessment products their own. In particular, writing an explanation (CER if you use that) should not be a reading comprehension exercise.

In the end, the goal is for students to do science that is directly meaningful in their lives and community—to engage in learning that builds up their scientific identity, not reinforces their proclivity to want the teacher to tell them what the “right” answer is.

Reframing the Discussion on “Learning Loss”

When students were asked to discuss “learning loss” for a recent article, one talked about school during COVID, saying, “I lost time I could have been enjoying my childhood.” I think that is a profound statement on where students are at right now. While it is clear that some typical school learning did not happen to the same extent through the past 11 months, I would like to reframe how we look at the learning that did happen and learning goals moving forward. 

I argue that the primary focus of schooling should not be to push students toward artificial learning benchmarks at the expense of “enjoying their childhood.” We need a focus on helping students first develop a love for learning. We need a focus on what they can do, not on whether there is a small change in a test score-based trajectory. Using a packaged program that raises their score 5 points on a standardized test is not worth it if it destroys a child’s engagement in school. And, we have lost that truth when the primary focus is on “learning loss.” Schooling at its best allows for students to find their identity and their passions. And, it helps them see that they are loved. That should be a major lesson of COVID-19.

Therefore, we need to focus on meaningful learning opportunities for all students, not a deficit- and remediation-minded emphasis on making up for lost time. Post-COVID student support requires very careful and thoughtful approaches for several reasons:

• Standardized test scores in mathematics and literacy have been relatively flat for at least the last decade and achievement gaps are not closing. Putting more time into these subjects and doing more of the same has not and will not fix that problem. Admittedly, these types of tests provide limited information about the full range of important student learning, but they are a useful barometer, particularly in relation to equity.
• Research shows that science learning supports literacy learning, but it has seen an ongoing deprioritization, especially at the elementary level. Literacy learning consistently receives a larger share of the limited time available.
• Like mathematics learning, science should be about giving students opportunities to collaboratively figure out interesting problems and phenomena, not memorize facts. STEM learning broadly should be about empowering students to make a difference in their community, with the ability to see where that’s possible.
• We need to move beyond only the “What Works Clearinghouse” of programs, often based on biased studies. As noted above, we have seen little overall impact on achievement gaps, but we have also realized that they exacerbate the opportunity gap. I taught in a school where students were taken out of engaging elective courses (like STEM) and placed in front of a computer for extra reading learning. Thus, they lost key elements of school that motivated them to attend. We must unravel the structures that inhibit joyful learning.
• A deficit focus on students who have not “learned” as much as others has historically led to tracking. Tracking needs to be dismantled, not further entrenched through new post-COVID strategies. Remediation, as has been seen in post-secondary education, is rarely the best answer. School systems need to strive for renewal- and asset-based support, as framed by this Nebraska model.

Instead of a focus on more of the same strategies to support students, we need to emphasize enriched learning for all. We need to get students engaged through meaningful connections to their community and their lived experience. For example, teachers can have them build literacy skills while gaining empowerment through exploring a unit on health equity and COVID-19.

As Dr. Bettina Love, the inspiration of several parts of this article, says, we need to focus more on joy – celebrating that we made it through COVID and dreaming of what can be – not get stuck back in the way things have always been done.

Is the "Scientific Method" Still the Way to Go for Science Lessons?

 Ask 20 teachers what scientific inquiry is and it’s possible you’ll receive 20 different answers. From a series of proscribed steps to a lab-based free-for-all, conceptions have shifted over time. In the National Research Council’s (NRC) 1996 National Science Education Standards (NSES), inquiry held a prominent position as its own content area, but the term rarely comes up in its 2012 Framework for K–12 Science Education (Framework). A report by the Midwest Comprehensive Center and myself (image above) details how notions of inquiry have changed in recent history, particularly as seen within the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). A further section of the report that won’t be described here analyzes how the science standards of upper Midwest states describe inquiry. 

In preparing this report, we reviewed articles about science inquiry from both current and historical perspectives, analyzed national science standards and related documents, and interviewed national science education experts.

Historical beginnings

In the early 20th century, John Dewey proposed a list of five steps scientists use in their work, intending to emphasize their reflective work practices, but educators instead interpreted those ideas as the five linear steps to doing science. Pedagogy and curricula through the 20th century showed the increasing popularity of labs with proscribed procedures and the idea of a set “scientific method.”

Standards era shift

In 1993, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Benchmarks of Science Literacy clearly pushed on this idea of a set method and discussed inquiry as a “habit of mind.” The 1996 NSES attempted to further clarify notions of inquiry with the five big ideas of inquiry in its own section of the content standards. With a follow-up report, Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards (2000), the NRC stated that, “Students do not come to understand inquiry simply by learning words such as ‘hypothesis’ and ‘inference’ or by memorizing procedures such as ‘the steps of the scientific method.’”. In the NSES, inquiry instead described the way scientists study the world and build explanations based on evidence.

Teachers nevertheless continued to use the scientific method as a convenient way to organize scientific investigations and what it means to think like a scientist, and instructional materials supported this approach. Textbooks today continue to include separate chapters on a scientific method. According to Dr. Joe Krajcik, a member of the NGSS writing team, “While well intentioned, when the National Science [Education] Standards assigned inquiry to its own separate content area, it meant that inquiry remained separate from other science learning.” And, thus, got its own chapter in the textbook! Therefore, as noted by Dr. Melissa Braaten, a professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, “In schools, inquiry had come to mean one narrow image of doing formulaic, defined experiments. Teachers would refer to it as ‘the scientific method’ like it was a titled thing.”

Framework and the NGSS

The writers of the Framework and consequent NGSS aimed to clarify ideas of scientific practice, moving away from varying ideas of “inquiry.” As emphasized by Dr. Helen Quinn, a researcher with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and chair of the NRC Framework committee, “While it is what we do—we inquire—scientists do not use the term inquiry.”

To summarize, in this report we emphasize four big ideas from the Framework and NGSS that take the place of some traditional conceptions of inquiry:

1) Inquiry is a means for constructing scientific understanding; it’s not a content area

    Students should be involved in asking questions and investigating natural phenomena in the world around them. Instead of learning steps of a scientific method, they’re doing science.

2) Inquiry is a fluid set of practices that scientists use

    As Dr. Krajcik notes, “Having the eight practices doesn’t mean that you start with a question, then move on to the next practice... There is no linearity implied. The practices are tied together and any one of them could lead to another.” Further, when working with the practices or discussing their use as a class, they shouldn’t be numbered.

3) Inquiry involves three-dimensional learning

    The science and engineering practices are the means to gain scientific knowledge while investigating phenomena with a lens of the crosscutting concepts. Or, in other words from Matt Krehbiel, assistant director of science at Achieve, Inc., inquiry is “woven into science learning throughout the year, where practices are exercised and integrated with learning of the crosscutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas.”

4) Inquiry is independent from science pedagogy

    Inquiry-based teaching is essential, but it’s not the only appropriate type of instruction. Varying instructional practices based on student learning needs make sense.

Final thoughts

I’m certainly not suggesting that you shouldn’t do inquiry-based lessons; however, I would suggest that you rip out the chapter of your textbook on the scientific method and consider ways to structure labs beyond hypothesis testing. There are as many ways to “do science” as there are scientists, so allow the practices to infuse your instruction where they naturally and logically fit rather than in any prescribed way.

Supporting Students in Asking Questions in Science and STEM

What questions do you have about the world that is within one centimeter of you right now? 

What do you notice and wonder about the phenomenon represented by this graph?

If we look at the performance expectations of Next Generation Science Standards, which many districts and several states have adopted as their science standards, the practice of “asking questions” comes up only four times in all of middle and high school. I argue that for personalized, engaged learning, asking questions is the most important scientific practice. If we want students seeing themselves as scientists (which we do), then they need to be the ones asking the questions. Students’ lived experience and community/cultural-connections matter in building their identity as scientists, and asking questions is a critical part of that. Unfortunately, this practice is one I see only rarely in classrooms. I continue to see many teachers doing most of the deep thinking (and students doing the provided worksheets and Kahoot).

This lack of students’ questions not only misses a critical area of science, it’s also an equity issue. I argue that textbooks and prepared materials most often rely on questions built from the perspective of the dominant white culture. Textbooks and most other materials do not reflect local and community-based phenomena, whether urban or rural. They typically represent a limited notion of content and practice loosely tied to national standards.

Given that many teachers rely on packaged materials, having students ask questions becomes more challenging, but it can be done. Here are a couple strategies for adding in this work:

• Anchor Projects – while day-to-day learning continues, students also work on a self-selected anchor project in the background as time allows. In that space they ask questions and pursue learning based on their own interests, with class-wide sharing and check-ins through the year. This Costa Rica school does that work within a theme at each grade, and this Wisconsin DPI website has further ideas. 
• Driving Question Board – When introduced to a phenomenon, students should have the opportunity to share their noticings and wonderings. Those wonderings can be put on paper or virtual sticky notes to form a “driving question board” that the class returns to throughout the unit. In a typical unit, the vast majority of student questions are answered, while others can be turned over to students to explore on their own beyond classwork. It does not sidetrack planned learning but enhances discussion to better address and include student ideas. Page 22 in this OpenSciEd guidebook has some practical implementation ideas. 
• Other Resources – the Learning in Places team has useful ideas for K-3 science in community spaces. Google Books has a preview of the NSTA Making Sense of the World through Science and Engineering Practices book, which includes most of chapter 5 on asking questions. 

In addition to finding the time for student questioning, students also need help in asking good questions. It’s a skill that needs to be taught. Saying, “Does anyone have any questions?” is not an effective teaching strategy.

• Crosscutting Concepts – this dimension of the NGSS (and Wisconsin Science Standards) details how scientists think about or approach phenomena. It details the questions they ask. Students as well should be using them as question starters. What pattern do we see? What’s happening in the broader system and what do we focus on in this system? How does the structure of this part of the organism relate to its function? Teachers will have to model these questions first. The San Diego County Office of Ed has some useful further ideas. 
• Question Formulation Technique – this process provides a structure for students and a protocol for teachers to work toward asking better questions. It does take more time, especially at first, but will effect real change. 
• Eliciting Student Ideas – Ambitious Science Teaching is an incredible resource (and book). Part of figuring out what students already know can and should involve allowing them to ask questions about the topic. It’s a productive formative assessment for both content understanding and the ability to ask scientific questions. 
• Finally, teachers themselves should model good questions in discussions, on assignments, and on assessments. They should call out when students ask good questions. STEM Teaching Tools has two nice resources for asking questions based on the science and engineering practices and the crosscutting concepts. 

How do you support students in asking questions or help teachers better use this practice in their classrooms? I’d welcome your ideas and resources in the comments.