Experience in Learning Science

Learning sciences requires a collaborative and dynamic environment between the learner and the teacher. As learning chemistry is challenging for most students, it was no different for me. For instance, going back to my private school in Al-Rafid at grade nine “9”, the Chemistry teacher provides the whole class with enhanced tools so they take them to a higher level.

All students calm down to hear the sweet “hello” with the big smile from the Chemistry teacher while entering the class. This teacher demonstrates a caring behavior to the whole class. This is because students need care from teachers in order to have the ability to challenge and share their ideas during the session.  Such behavior contributes indirectly to the fundamental build of student’s personality and self-confidence. Ferguson emphasizes in his research that a Tripod survey is conducted by students which deemed a reliable measure of teacher effectiveness. Teacher’s effectiveness that measures how well teachers teach and how much students learn. “Care” was the first teacher’s behavior to be assessed. The measure is conducted via rating of typical descriptions that are rather similar to the following questions: first, my teacher in this class makes me feel that she really cares about me. The second question may look like “My teacher really tries to understand how students feel about things” (Ferguson, 2010).

In sciences, behind of theoretical example, practical one makes the lesson more attractive. Valentina on his experiment indicated that the Experiential Learning Provides an effective connection between theory and practice which involves studying as being connected with doing, sensing, observing, reflecting, thinking and planning (Valentina, 2004). So in Chemistry class, the teacher always change strategy by doing experiments which are sometimes related to the lesson like titration or she made any concerned experiments related to this course. In fact, the teacher usually starts the lesson with the main idea and relate it to the real life in practice. Then ask the class critical and open-ended questions related to the topic. The students are then able to outline the whole lessons within the first ten minutes of each session. After explanation and discussion, some topics are covered within experimentation to be done at the lab to elaborate more the concept. As a matter of fact, this provided students the ability to configure answers by themselves and build methodological thinking and reasoning that enhances student’s ability to become self-directed learners.

In this Chemistry class, the information are organized and questions are introduced so concepts become more related to each other. By introducing the ideas in a coherent ways, students can link and form a solid base on the knowledge being explained. This must be reinforced with interrogations, activities and exercises which will familiarize learners with main concepts. That’s why student’s attitude tends to be positive towards solving problems introduced in official exam. Moreover, the teacher prepares at home sample exams for students as this chemistry teacher do. It has been reported that effective instructions work well along the way with giving the student the opportunity to practice the methods (Richard, 2005).

One drawback is configured during the Chemistry session which is the use of language. Though the language is English being set inside the classroom, the teacher has a French background which being embedded frequently in the teacher’s explanation. This is because the teacher feels at some point needs to express her self-regarding certain subject. Sometimes students get misleading or lose concentration and build weak technical communication skills.

Another aspect that the teacher needs to improve is centered on the feedback being provided. The teacher rarely provides feedback on students’ mistake so they are unable to configure their errors in a learning context. On the other hand, if a feedback is provided, it is poor with a “feed forward” so students can learn from their mistakes and not fall in them again. That is why it has been reported that feedback has been recognized as the ignition of the learning cycle. Feedback would help students clarify what good performance is and how challenging learning tasks could be managed in terms of time and effort. This would help learners self-correct in the future when the summative assessment has a positive impact on teaching (Dorothy, 2009).

Teaching and Learning are two complementary aspects in the evaluation of students’ performance. That is why this evaluation is not a complete study but highlights the most common aspects of a better teaching performance as it should be. The Chemistry teacher being evaluated underlined her success by acting with a great care towards students. Moreover, the Chemistry teacher gave great attention to the practical side along with the variety of exercises and activities inside and outside the class. A recommendation to improve the sessions are also discussed in the light of research. For instance, the chemistry teacher is highly encouraged to improve the English language for better communication and to provide positive feedback that would improve the learner performance in future and similar tasks.

Reference:

[1] Ferguson, R. F. (2010). “Student Perceptions of Teaching Effectiveness.” National Center for Teacher Effectiveness and the Achievement Gap Institute, Harvard University. October 14,  p. 2.

[2] Valentina, S. (2004). “Experiential Learning”, Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp 36-39.

[3] Richard M. F, Rebecca B. (2005). “Understanding Student Differences”, Journal of Engineering Education, 94 (1), 57-72.

[4] Dorothy S. (2009). Assessment: Feedback to promote student learning, Teaching Development Wāhanga Whakapakari Ako, February.