Over the past 3 to 4 years, the Edexcel exam board in the UK has produced exam style questions for AS/A2 (A Level) Biology that are increasingly more applied. In the UK, students are expected to submit their practical write-ups and a research paper as coursework to be assessed; as an international school, we are not bound by this coursework requirement and our students sit a written alternative practical exam. While my students do not like having to write practical investigations to the degree I ask them since they aren’t submitted as coursework, I am certain that the skills they acquire from going through the process are a necessary ingredient in their ability to perform while in these written exams.
I believe that having my students go through the process of proper investigation and research, they will be prepared for the strange scenarios the examiners present in the written exam.
What is more of a concern is that Edexcel have begun to introduce these styles of questions for IGCSE; the students have little experience of the thinking processes required of them to answer these questions. Anecdotally, I have found that students who are very good at being “traditional students” and do well in the traditional learning environment can struggle, whereas students who are less rigorous learners but have good common sense can see the questions for what they are!
Stephanie Bell (2010) highlights a study in the UK by Boaler (1999) where they found that three times as many PBL students achieved the highest possible grade in national exam. “Students at the PBL school were equally able to answer procedural questions that used formulas, but they were superior in answering applied and conceptual problems (Boaler 1999).”
I am hoping that by introducing more PBL style lessons for my students that I will be able to enhance their skills in identifying the scenarios they are presented with for what they are by asking the correct questions. At the moment, my colleagues call this exam technique but it is the skill of critical thinking that needs to be targeted as a whole.
“With PBL, assessment is authentic. We measure a child’s performance via rubrics, but a critical aspect of this model includes self-evaluation and reflection. Children learn from their processes. They reflect on how well they worked in a collaborative group and how well they contributed, negotiated, listened, and welcomed other group members’ ideas. Students also self-evaluate their own projects, efforts, motivations, interests, and productivity levels. Students become critical friends by giving constructive feedback to each other, which helps them become aware of their own strengths and improve on their interactions with each other.”
The self-evaluation and reflection part of PBL is clearly a huge part that cannot be overlooked. In a content heavy syllabus with little time for reflection, students often don’t get, or take, the time to consider their meta-cognition. If PBL is to be successful, I will need to carefully plan my contact time with my students in order to provide the support and reflection time they need; a combination of PBL, Flipped Lessons, and reflection time should do it!
Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) are highly critical of the value of the constructivist theory that lies behind PBL:
“In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimally-guided learning. Even for students with considerable prior knowledge, strongly guided learning can be equally effective as unguided approaches. Not only is unguided instruction normally less effective, there is evidence that it may have negative results when students acquire misconceptions or incomplete knowledge.”
Clearly, one should consider the issues they raise regarding “minimal guidance” in order to ensure students do not acquire misconceptions in their knowledge and understanding of the science concepts taught.
Andrew Provan (2011) also highlights the issues of minimal guidance in PBL in his article regarding the the delivery of the medical cases in a Problem based approach to learning at British Columbia. He points out how the course organisation expects students to hypothesise on problems before they have any base knowledge around which the problems are set; this leads to the students going in the wrong direction for their research and that the research is unnecessarily time consuming in an already packed course.
Considering the workload A Level students have in my current school where they study 3 or 4 A Levels plus the Extended Project Qualification, having students research all of their content and self study must be an unreasonable expectation when direct instruction and classroom activities supported by the teacher are more efficient.
Project Idea
A large part of the AS and A2 Biology syllabus is tied to plants; photosynthesis, flowering, hormones, totipotency, mitosis and cloning, seeds, conservation, affects of global warming.
The project I would like my students to undertake will likely be based around the Driving Questions of:
- Can you produce Food for the Future?
- Can you generate sustainable Fuel for an energy hungry society?
The students will need to grow their own plants and maintain them over the duration of the course. The purpose of the project is to have the students take ownership of their learning and to be motivated in the lessons on plants as they will use their own plants in the practical lessons.
Their initial research is likely to be in germination of seeds, and on which plants will best suit their desired project goal. In order to ensure the students are further "hooked" by the project, their first lessons on seeds will be followed by a scientist from the Millennium Seed Bank giving a live virtual tour of the MBSP and answering the students questions regarding seed conservation and germination strategies.
As the students progress through the course, their plants and how they care for them, will become the central focus around which the content of the syllabus will be hung.
The students will visit local universities and plant research centres in order to learn first hand the techniques required to allow them to investigate the propagation of their "food plant" or "fuel plant." If at all possible, students will gain experience of genetically modifying their plants in order to cause them to be more productive in harsher conditions predicted by global warming predictions.
As a culminating presentation, the students will present that plants/food/bio fuel at the school summer fair and pass on their projects to the younger students by using the seed banking techniques they have learned from the MBSP.
References:
Bell, S. (2010). Project-based learning for the 21st century: Skills for the future. The Clearing House, 83(2), 39-43.
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational psychologist, 41(2), 75-86.
Provan, A. (2011). A critique of problem-based learning at the University of British Columbia. Retrieved June 22, 2014, from http://www.bcmj.org/mds-be/critique-problem-based-learning-university-british-columbia.
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