Write a detail note on the various methods used for teaching of General Science.

Write a detailed note on the various methods used for teaching General Science.

Answer:

The teaching of general science in teacher education often emphasizes teaching approaches, such as the thematic approach, integrated learning, issues-based inquiry, and the STS approach. There are a variety of science teaching methods you can draw upon when helping students understand their world. Whilst there are several approaches to try, the most important thing to keep in mind is that our role as science educators is to help students understand how the scientific method actually works and why science impacts their own lives. Some of the methods of teaching Basic Science and Technology involving the use of outdoor science educational activities include;

Methods for teaching science

All science teaching methods come down to either teacher-centered or student-centered instruction. Both types of instruction have their place, however, in practice have very different dynamics in the classroom.

Lecture (teacher-centered)

In this approach, it is the teacher that is the focus. Students either passively take notes or ask questions through the teacher’s presentation. Handy for large groups of students or for when you need to get through a large body of information. The key to this lesson style is to keep it lively by inserting graphics, video snippets, animations, science demonstrations, audio grabs or guest appearances via video conference. To help increase engagement during a lecture, try incorporating student polling using Poll Everywhere, Plickers, Quizizz, or Kahoot. The advantage of getting active student feedback is that this formative assessment can help shape your lecture and future lessons to fit the student’s needs.

Hands-on activities (student-centered)

Break out the experiment materials! Whether the students work in small groups or by themselves, the lesson has a clear question that students need to find an answer to with the teacher acting as a facilitator. There are a few variations here;

• Students follow an experimental procedure with a clear set of instructions and scaffold for their scientific report.

• Students explore the materials themselves to design and test their own fair experiment, keeping variable testing in mind. This version is better for students who already have a clear understanding of the scientific method and are now ready for independent thinking

• Station-based rotations. Here the students rotate around the classroom to explore a variety of hands-on materials that all cover an aspect of your lesson topic. The trick here is to ensure that there is enough time for the students to complete each activity and that there are no bottlenecks in terms of access to resources or one particular activity taking too long to complete. A fun way to link all the stations together to pull together a scenario such as a forensics investigation; some students will enjoy the role-play!

Project Based Learning (student-centered)

This teaching method draws on the hands-on nature of the activities above and extends this to involve students in a deep dive into a given topic. Time is the key here, as students will be engaged over an extended period of time in researching their topic, designing their experiment or model, writing a scientific report, or creating a poster and presenting their findings in a short talk. When planning this in your scope and sequence, consider access to resources both within and beyond your school and how the students might be able to involve the community in their research or as an audience for the final presentation at a school science fair. Often part of inquiry-based instruction, the outputs of Project Based Learning (PBL) can include several of the following as a major work;

• Field journal

• Student Podcast 

• Working model

• Science poster

• Research paper

• Video diaries

• Augmented reality or Virtual reality

• App creation

The outcome doesn’t necessarily have to be informal too; try emulating the entrepreneurial show Shark Tank and have students compete for a prize in a pitchfest!

Peer-led team learning (student-centered)

Peer-led team learning (PLTL) is about empowering the students to teach other students. Often employed in undergraduate studies, this approach also works in schools where it is most effective when connecting older students with younger students. Alternatively, PLTL can also be used when pairing students with a high subject aptitude with students needing help. Guidance is important here as you need to ensure that what is being covered is correct and safely performed. With supervision, this approach can be effective for students to learn leadership skills and can create a positive atmosphere around the scholarship.

Flipped learning (student-centered)

Flipped learning has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. The idea is that the instructional content is given to the students outside of normal school time, with the intention that students can then come to school with deeper questions for teacher clarification. you can present this content via a series of videos, articles, and books to read, podcasts to listen to, investigating a problem, and so on. There is much debate on how to best implement this in the classroom; in essence, you need to consider how your students will respond to flipped learning and how you can motivate them to try it. A handy app to use with this is Flipgrid, whereby you can record a very short video question to your class and the students then respond to you with their answers via video as well.

Differentiation (student-centered)

Differentiation is all about ensuring that students of all levels can be involved in your lesson. You may want to create worksheets with different tasks or levels of difficulty, perhaps have a variety of activities for students to choose from, or create a variety of job roles for students when running PBL. Of course, with differentiation comes a time required to prepare the lesson, however, it can help with students being more on task as they can choose tasks that they can achieve. You can differentiate tasks as both extension activities as well as design activities for students who need more support.

It’s up to you!

Without a doubt, the list of teaching methods above is just a brief overview of what you can try in your classroom. In reality, there are many ways to teach science and you might find that you’ll blend methods together and change on the fly depending on how your students are responding. No matter what, it’s not just about the technology but more about the pedagogy. Have a chat with your fellow teachers or reach out to others via Twitter on the myriad of professional learning networks for advice. As always if you’ve got any thoughts on the above or advice, pop it in the comments below or get in touch!

Further enrichment ideas

Create a science festival at your school to showcase these different teaching methods. You can also enrich this day with a science show, workshop, or STEM activity!

• Primary science visits

• High school science visits

• Online programs

1. Field Trip/ Excursion Method

Field trips involve journeys with the pupils to observe and investigate situations outside the classroom. Many such expeditions might go no further than the school building or environment. Within the school itself, the teacher may find illustrative examples for his or her students. In the immediate environs of the school, there may be available for examinations and observation such things as different soils, flowers, a river, etc. Popular field trip sites include zoos, nature centers, community agencies such as fire stations and hospitals, government agencies, local businesses, amusement parks, science museums, and factories, not only do field trips provide alternative educational opportunities for children, but they can also benefit the community if they include some type of community service.

Field trips are most often done in three steps: preparation, activities, and follow-up activity. Preparation applies to both the student and the teacher. Teachers often take the time to learn about the destination and the subject before the trip.

The teacher should give the students the opportunity to select any scientific and technological interests for the field trip. The teacher should visit the site for the field trip before the date of the excursion and make necessary and adequate arrangements. The science and technology concepts to be learned should have relevance to the curriculum and the students should have sufficient time to observe and ask questions. When the pupils return, the teacher should ask them to discuss and make a report of the trip.

2. Demonstration Method

Demonstrations are the repetition of a series of planned actions designed to illustrate certain phenomena. The demonstration can be presented by the student or the teacher. Demonstrations often occur when students have a hard time connecting theories to actual practice or when students are unable to understand the application of theories. Demonstration in science class involves carrying out science and technology activities to illustrate science and technological concepts or ideas.

The demonstration method refers to the type of teaching method in which the teacher is the principal actor while the learners watch with the intention to act later. Some of the advantages of this method as outlined below includes:

• It saves time and facilitates material economy.

• The method is an attention inducer and a powerful motivator in lesson delivery.

• Students receive feedback immediately through their own products.

• It gives a real-life situation of the course of study as students acquire skills in real-life situations using tools and materials.

• It helps to motivate students when carried out by skilled teachers and it is good for showing the appropriate ways of doing things.

Teachers not only demonstrate specific learning concepts within the classroom, but they can also participate in demonstration classrooms to help improve their own teaching strategies, which may or may not be demonstrative in nature.

3. Project Method

The project method also discussed under headings like project work, project approach, and project-based learning as one of the standard teaching methods. It is a sub-form of action-centered and student-directed learning and an enterprise in which children engage in practical problem-solving for a certain period of time. He also revealed that projects focus on applying not imparting specific knowledge or skills, and more rigorously than lecture, demonstration, or recitation, they aim at the enhancement of intrinsic motivation, independent thinking, self-esteem, and social responsibility. scholars also opinion that proponents of the project method attempt to allow the student to solve problems with as little teacher direction as possible. The teacher is seen more as a facilitator than a delivery of knowledge and information.

The project method is a method used by science teachers to individualize instruction. It is used to teach a central theme, idea or problem to be tackled. This theme could be given to an individual student or group of students. The students are encouraged to investigate, collect specimens or materials, and analyze and construct things on their own. The teacher act as a guide in facilitating the student’s learning. At the end of the investigation, the reports on the project are collected and discussed with the whole class. Examples of projects in BST include:

• Investigating the different methods of conserving and improving soil fertility,

• Making simple weighing balance,

• Making simple models of machines.

4. Process-Based Teaching Method

Problem-based learning is a process that uses identified issues within a scenario to increase knowledge and understanding. Process-based approach lays emphasis on helping the students to develop process skills through practice or hands-on activities. These activities can take place inside the school classroom or outside. The teacher is to encourage the students to learn how to observe objects or events more closely as they use their senses to gather information about the objects or events. The teacher should make sure the information the students obtain is qualitative by describing what they have actually observed. An example of process-based learning is illustrated in the case of grouping (classification) and observation. For example, identifying similarities and differences between objects and events such as

• Students to identify common weeds in the environment,

• Students to identify diseases infesting crop materials in their environment,

• Students to identify types of buildings and differentiate between each of the buildings in their environment.

5. Inquiry Approach Method

The inquiry approach is primarily a pedagogical method, developed during the discovery learning movement of the 1960s as a response to traditional forms of instruction where people were required to memorize information from instructional materials.  The inquiry method encourages divergent thinking, allows students to find out information by themselves and it generates students’ enthusiasm for examining issues logically. 

There are specific learning processes that people engaged in during the inquiry approach, these processes include:

• Creating questions of their own;

• Obtaining supporting evidence to answer the question(s);

• Explaining the evidence collected;

• Connecting the explanation to the knowledge obtained from the investigative process;

• Creating an argument and justification for the explanation.

In the inquiry approach, the students are given the opportunity to carry out the search and discovery of facts about events and scientific and technological ideas. The pupils should be made to observe carefully, identify the problem, explorations, hypothesize, predict, describe and conduct experiments, collect data, organize and analyze data, report, make generalizations, and so on. It develops attitudinal skills such as objectivity, curiosity, open-mindedness, and perseverance. Inquiry entails practicing attitudinal skills such as honesty, open-mindedness, and perseverance when carrying out science and technology tasks. Inquiry can be open-ended or close-ended. It could also be done in the classroom or outside the classroom.

6. Laboratory or Experimental Method

The laboratory method refers to the activities such as observation of processes, products, or events carried out by a group of students or individual students. Laboratory methods can be used to practice skills or acquire skills such as interpreting and operating experiments. Experiments could be carried out to verify hypotheses, confirm the known and discover the unknown. It aids the development of manipulating skills, enhances realistic learning, it aids better retention, it develops competence in learners in learners by developing confidence and helps develop students’ scientific attitudes, interests, and skills. The method aids the learners to use their mental processes such as observing, inferring, measuring, and data analysis. The advantages of this method may not fully be realized because of the lack of the facilities and equipment necessary for the effective use of this method.

7. Lecture Method

This method is the most commonly used mode by teachers. This expects the students to quietly sit and listen to the talk about the subject matter. The teacher does all the talking while the students are passive, doing little or no talking. The lecture is seldom used in secondary school classroom teaching-learning situations. Most of what happens in teaching situations with a class size of over 200 students in tertiary institutions is lecturing. This is an organized verbal presentation of a subject matter dominated by the teacher with little or no student involvement. The teacher is responsible for organizing, preparing, and presenting the lecture while the students listen. A teacher would have no option but to use the lecture method when the topic is abstract. It saves time and more topics are covered, but it is rote learning and most often students lose the essential parts of the lesson. The learners are passive and the class is boring and in the end, does not make room for the acquisition of scientific skills.

Some of the advantages of this method are:

• It allows the material to be clarified and presented to a large group in a short period of time.

• It gives teachers maximum control of the teaching in terms of the amount of interaction, type of substance presented, and organization of material.

• Since the note is taking accompanies the lecture, the method promotes learners’ oral and written expression.

• It also helps learners to cultivate the habit of listening attentively.

8. Co-operative Learning

Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a concept or subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus promoting academic achievement and cross-cultural understanding. However, the quality of achievement and other outcomes depend on the implementation of cooperative learning methods that are characterized by at least two essential elements: positive interdependence and individual accountability. In a group task, each member is individually accountable for part of an outcome that cannot be completed unless the members work together in other words, the group members are positively interdependent. Some cooperative learning methods include:

• Group investigations: to emphasize higher-order thinking skills and produce a group project;

• Jigsaw: used with narrative material where each team member is responsible for learning a specific part of a topic, becoming the “expert” and then sharing their findings with the group.

• Guided reading and other integrated cooperative reading strategies.

9. Discussion Method

Discussion simply means talking over topics from various points of view and the teacher’s role is to act as moderator. Discussion in a science classroom should be differentiated from lecturing. This is because discussion implies that every student has background information that provides him with viewpoints. In the use of this method, there is an exchange of ideas between the teacher and the learner. The discussion method can be used to introduce a lesson thus motivating students’ activities. It develops a positive interpersonal relationship and provides students with a sense of confidence through the frequent exchange of ideas between the teacher and the students. It enables the teacher to get feedback on topics taught and learners are able to express themselves in relation to the understanding they have on a particular topic. However, it cannot be used often as it does not allow easy coverage of the syllabus, and not all topics lend to discussion. As the discussion method must necessarily start with a question, the teacher must avoid vague questions and so requires a thorough knowledge of the topics under discussion.

10. Teacher exposition

Teacher exposition is a teacher-centered technique used to present subject matter in an orderly and organized fashion. It is the most frequently used method by teachers. It is normally confused with the lecture method, which is extremely expository. Teacher exposition is not a lecture method. A good teacher exposition differs from a good lecture in that the former makes specific provisions for obtaining knowledge for pupil learning at regular and frequent intervals, while the latter does not. However, teacher exposition is said to be teacher-centered, it is relatively more student-centered than the lecture method. Obtaining knowledge of pupils’ learning is accomplished by frequent monitoring of pupils’ performance at relevant cognitive tasks and by observing the non-verbal dimension of the pupils’ communication. Teacher exposition, therefore, constitutes constant active interaction between teacher and pupils. A lecture may not necessarily involve the pupils actively. 

Since teacher exposition is the presentation of content in an orderly fashion, the key to its success is organization. That is, the breaking down of the content into less complex subtopics and the sequencing of these subtopics in a way that would maximize learning.