NCB Science advice paper comment Pt 5

V. [Appendix 1] “Teaching for scientific competencies requires: More emphasis on teams working cooperatively to investigate problems or issues.”

A. This is completely false. It is impossible to assess with any certainty the knowledge and understanding of any individual within a team based purely on the team’s final product. In team-based situations it is easy for one or more individuals to contribute minimal effort, to the detriment of other members of the team. The problems of students’ perceived needs for peer acceptance means that this is unlikely to be either identified by the teacher or reported to them. Working in teams when the team members have no particular special abilities related to their role within the team penalises the knowledgeable and hardworking team members and benefits those whose morals allow them to slack off.

B. Team tasks where individuals are arbitrarily given different portions of the topic to examine cannot solve this problem, as then the entire team membership is limited in their understanding of parts of the topic that were beyond their purview.

C. It would be of greater worth to encourage teachers to incorporate interactions between their students and people with a higher level of knowledge in the field, whether in person (using technological advances to make this possibly where necessary) or through the close study of the products of fertile, intelligent scientific minds: the actual journal articles and books written by great scientists of the past and present. The length of time necessary to study some of these materials (or even a portion thereof) in depth would be entirely rewarded by the interest inspired in the students, their greater level of understanding and the catalyst which this experience would provide to their further efforts within the discipline. This form of detailed study would be particularly rewarding and stimulating to students in the senior years of secondary study.