Friday, March 15, 2013

How to teach, and not to teach, science

Though most of our day was devoted to sightseeing, that doesn't mean that we didn't focus, at least a bit, on education. Around mid-morning we visited the Bloomfield Science Museum, and there we met with Tami Yekhieli who described The Museum-College Project she developed in which student teachers from an Orthodox college in Jerusalem act as tour guides for children at the museum.


We learned from Tami that the project is a win-win situation - the college gains the ability to engender scientific knowledge among its students, and the Science Museum gets free, but supervised, guides, and also exposure to future science teachers (some of the students even get jobs at the museum). She placed the project in a theoretical framework developed by lee Shulman - it enriches scientific content knowledge, enriches general content knowledge,and helps develop a conceptual understanding of scientific concepts. When the student teachers prepare lessons for the museum they come into contact with approaches they weren't familiar with before, and they learn to be flexible. They also gain confidence in their ability to teach.

But it wasn't all theory. What's the point in a Science Museum of you can't press buttons, or do some experiments! So, we played a bit with liquid nitrogen, saw how dry ice can expand a balloon, saw how air pressure can cause water to boil at a lower temperature, and more.


We didn't have enough time to push all the buttons, but even if it's only for  a short visit, science museums are always a treat!

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