SOME ESSENTIALS of an ELEMENTARY SCIENCE UNIT* G. V. BRUCE New York University, New York City
Modern educational philosophy sets forth the aim of education as founded on the actiwities and needs of the learner as a n active participant. Serious attempts have been made to hamzonize school practice w'th this aim, but the curriculum of traditional subjects and the routinized practice of the classroom are slow to respond. One of these potentially fruitful attempts to harmonize theory and practice and to narrow the gap between school and lqe i s to be found in the unit p h n . It would recast the jield of academic subject matter and present it i n such a m y as to assume the aspects of real situations for the learner. The present article discusses some of the aspects of such a n organization for junior high-school science.
In science unit building, as in all variable endeavors, there are a few fundamental elements common to all situations. If I may be permitted to choose this more liberal interpretation of my topic I will be glad to discuss some of these minimum essentials for successful units. The first essential requires that the unit shall present to the student a total situation. A total situation is one that is comprehensive enough to embrace a number of naturally related elements, so that as the student goes through the learning activities and discovers new knowledges and experiences they will integrate into broader and unified understandings. It has a definite beginning and a definite ending, and all the way through the experiences and knowledges associate + + + + + + themselves in meaningful ways and reduce themselves HE topic, "Some Successful Science Units," as- to a unified conception from which will follow the satissigned to me in this program, if taken literally, faction of a complete experience. This is in direct would require the presentation of some actual contrast to what I term the "pin-prick method," which units that have been worked out and tested and pro- I have known to carry all the way from induction nounced successful. But since the criterion of success motors to the inhabitants of Mars in a single week. The capacity of the pupil to associate and reduce his is dependent upon numerous specific variables, such a experiences to unified conceptions will delimit the scope presentation could have little meaning. To me the only successful units are those I have built myself and used. of the unit. This integrating capacity varies with the I can say this with no thought of immodesty for it is degree of maturity. A unit that would possess the eleequally true of anyone that the only successful units ments of a total situation and a complete experience he can ever know are those of his own construction. for the first grade would be utterly lacking in the eleThis consideration couviuces me of the futility of any- ments of a total situation and complete experience for one's endeavor to build a course of units in textbook or the ninth grade. To make the point clear, consider other form with the expectation that another teacher two widely separated extremes. The chick, for incan use them with that understanding and vital stimu- stance, as soon as it is out of the shell will discover a lation that is necessary to make them the successful speck of yellow corn and with a single peck he has it. teaching instruments intended by the author. Only in Something goes into his gizzard and he experiences so far as such endeavors inspire an appreciation of the satisfaction in the achievement. He has achieved the fundamental and basic criteria of valid unit procedures visual motor coordination and his education is thereby are they valuable. I n so far as they achieve uncritical complete. That one speck is a total situation for the acceptance they defeat their purpose and reduce the chick. In adult human life, the building of a home is procedure to that dead level of formalism that has typical of a total situation. It has a definite beginning proved the graveyard of many well-conceived educa- and a definite ending and every stage of the experience tional technics of the past. It remains always for the is integrated. There is the final satisfaction of a comteacher to enrich his units with content, devices, tech- plete experience. Such examples from life could be nics, and spirit to fit the specific needs of the teaching cited without end. In natural science the only recourse is to look to the situation. Has not education reached that stage of professionalization where every qualified teacher should natural physical environment or to the realm of social command sufficient mastery of his field, both as to its needs for those larger aspects that possess the potential content and its educational implications to build his characteristics of total situations in science, for the own units to fit the needs of his position? Until that junior high-school student. "The relationship of the time is reached the unit conception can meet with only earth to the other bodies in space" is typical. Such themes though, while possessing the essential elements partial success. of scope and unity, will lack that vital element of * Paper delivered at Round Table 23 at The Annual Junior challenge and purpose that is inherent in real life situaHigh-school Conference. New York University, March lC-11, 1933. tions. They lack the element of ownership.
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This brings us to the second essential factor for success. It demands that the teacher shall present the unit in such a way that the student from the beginning of the study will see it in its totality, and will anticipate adventure in the promise it holds for new experience, and with such challenge that he will claim ownership of the situation. When a man sets out to build a house he has the whole plan and purpose before him. He sees the relationship of each of its parts to the whole. He achieves a sense of complacency with the solution of each stage of the problem, when he sees that it is taking him one step nearer the ultimate goal. By the "pin-prick daily-assignment method," the teacher is the only one who knows where the daily tasks are leading. The teacher alone sees the relationship of these small increments to the whole. The class is working in total darkness. There can be no challenge, no anticipated adventure, nothing but loose associations and a sense of incomplete experience. Consider the husband who, all through the week during his leisure moments, is planning a week-end trip. He gets out his road maps and his topographical maps. He studies geographical data. He sees the trip from start to finish. He has both a spatial and temporal notion of all the features he expects to see. He is full of anticipation. He can scarcely wait to get started. On arriving from business Saturday noon he suddenly springs it on his wife. She consents to drop all of her plans and go along, on the ground that to refuse would be worse than to go. But i t is his trip. She just rides along. When she fails to show enthusiasm he wonders why, and when she tires of passive acceptance, temperaments begin to clash. Had he taken her into his plans, had he sold the trip to her in its totality that she might claim ownership, the outcome could have been different. I realize the danger in carrying the particular analogy too far. Nevertheless, it helps to illustrate the imperative need for orientation of the student in the unit, presenting it in its totality, and motivating i t in such a way as to establish student ownership. This is, without question, one of the most essential elements for success. Failure here is very apt to be followed by failure in the subsequent stages oi the unit. The ---- third element for success relates to the activities within the unit. They should be of a nature to offer a f e a l in Lhemselues. The experiments should be simple and direct with as much of the spectacular as possible without obscuring the meaning of the experiment as it relates to the unit purpose. They should be designed for the specific purpose of discovering the bit of knowledge the unit situation demands a t the moment. They should for the most part involve student activity; either home experiments, individual pupil demonstrations, group demonstrations and, when necessary, teacher-pupil demonstrations and teacher demonstrations. The more closely the activities relate to the unit-need a t the moment, the more meaningful will be the associations; and the more the activities de~
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volve upon the class, the more completely will the sense of student ownership be maintained and the happier will be the pupil-teacher relationship. The following incident will illustrate the meaning of student activity. A unit devoted to the "Nature of Chemical Change" was in progress. At a given point it was necessary to have some knowledge of color transformations produced by chemical change. One boy volunteered to perfect the technics and carry out the series of demonstrations for the class. That evening after school he tried out the demonstrations and had several beakers labeled and arranged with the chemicals measured out on sheets of filter paper. The janitor that evening in the course of his duties unknowingly disorganized the set-up. On returning the next morning the boy noted the state of his materials with a sense of shock and displayed a pronounced emotional reaction a t the prospect of failure before the class. It happened to be assembly morning and the teacher suggested he ask the principal's permission to absent himself from assembly and use the time to reorganize his materials. He did so and carried out his part with success and satisfaction. From this incident of student assumption of responsibility pertinent inferences can be drawn as to the vital educative significance of the pupil-centered unit procedure. The unit should make wide use of the reading actinrity. Investigation is revealing the reading activity in the purposeful discovery of new knowledge, to be on a par in importance with, if not superior to, laboratory and demonstration and other activities traditionally assigned to the science department. The relationship of source material to a study situation is just as essential to the discovery of knowledge in the natural science department as in the social science, notwithstanding the strange propensity of school executives to frown upon a science department requisition that includes a fair quantity of reference reading material along with testtubes, chemicals, etc. Glenn' found in 1913-14 that in 1000 high schools of the North Central Association only six per cent. of the reference materials available related to the natural sciences. A later study by Glenn' (1921) showed but little change. The teachers themselves are to blame for this situation. They still submit to the persistent influences of the external standardizing agencies which would retain in the elementary school the pure scienceresearch aspect of the university in miniature. Consequently, the textbook, laboratory manual, and other traditionally accepted materials of the laboratory are the only ones readily countenanced. With a shift of emphasis away from the attempt to produce miniature science specialists a t the elementary level and toward what is happily being termed the production of the "cultivated amateur," much of the costly paraphernalia of the elementary laboratory 1 GLENN, EARLR.,"Past and present practice in high-school library book selection from point of the science teachers," Sch. Sci. Math., 21,217-37 (Mar., 1931).
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is becoming obsolete and shelves of rich, cultural-science reading matter are taking its place. The success of the reading activity in a unit will depend upon a wise selection of reading matter. The article or sketch should meet the specific need of the unit situation a t the moment in order to possess associative value. I t should be psychologically adapted to the level of the pupil in order to be readable and appealing in itself. Studies of the reading habits of adolescent children show a pronounced aversion for reading matter of the information type as contrasted with fiction. Plot, it is found, is the most desired characteristic. Informational reading material lacks this element. It is found, though, that plot may be replaced by dramatic action, adventure, the heroic, interesting problems, real-life characters, and humor, and the information type of literature can be made absorbingly interesting. Scientific literature that is written for tlze childrea rather than culled from adult literature will be read with interest. Fortunately, great quantities of such reading matter for junior high-school science are available and should find a significant place in our units. The list by Ellis C. Persing in School Science and MatAematics2is typical of such literature. To recapitulate a t this point, I have tried to point out that to be successful, the unit should present a total situation in which the pupil will gain a complete experience. It should be presented in such a way that the pupil will see i t in its totality, and motivated in such a way that the student will claim ownership. The activities within the unit should be of such nature as to have intrinsic appeal in themselves and should integrate in a meaningful way toward the larger goal of the unit. Dewey says, "Children have an aim when they follow a process having intrinsic continuity through to the foreseen end." "Three things are nonsense," says Dewey, "to talk of educational aims, first, when each act of the pupil is dictated by the teacher; second, when activities are capricious or discontinuous; and, third, when there is no foresight of the outcome of a given activity." These aspects of the unit technic, so far touched upon, derive their meaning mostly from the nature of the child and of the learning process. Now as related to the larger purpose, that of the life function, I wish to touch upon one point before closing. It is the idea of the "cultivated amateur." Shouldn't our units be conditioned more and more by the cultural need of the individual and less and less by the vocational and utili-
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* P ~ S I N GELLIS , C.,"Science library for clmentary schools," Sch. Sci. Math., 3 2 , 6 5 7 7 (Jan., 1932).
tarian? Consider how the problem of widespread leisure is intensified to almost menacing proportions. It is possible that hours of labor will eventually be a negligible factor in the life of the individual. Leisure is dangerous not because of any inherent undesirability but only because of lack of preparation on the part of those who possess it. It is well known that diversions of a harmful and degrading nature appeal mostly to the uncultured. It is thought by many, and I believe it firmly, that the solution of widespread leisure is widespread culture. People who love music, literature, art, and science, and who have a creative interest in hobbies usually have little time for harmful diversion. A music teacher once remarked to a parent, by way of argument, "A boy who learns to blow a saxaphone is not so apt to blow a safe." This illustrates our point with sufficient force, regardless of the facetious reply of the father, that he thought he might prefer his boy to blow the safe. Could we not spare some of the emphasis on water faucets, traps, and flush bowls? Out of these the pupil does not get a thrill. I know, for I have them all in my home as well as a member of the ninth-grade science class. We talk a great deal about society changing. Water faucets change too, though textbook writers have not sensed that. In the process of opening a modern faucet, one encounters a number of tricky little gadgets that were not known when that original textbook cut was conceived by some venturesome author years ago. After all, isn't most of this practical handy-man stuff a matter of common-sense intelligence? We waste time teaching such simple and common-place things to pupils who can build a radio or dismantle and reassemble an automobile motor with no assistance from the teacher. In place of these let us enrich the units with more of the wonder-inspiring, interest-holding, and cnriositysatisfying aspects of the natural and social environment: the wonders of the natural world, as the splendors of the heavens, volcanoes, earthquakes, snow crystals, and molecules; the wonders of man's own creation, as great bridges, tunnels, engines, telescopes, machines, and delicate achievements of human ingenuity. And we must not leave out of this category the lives of our heroes of science and invention. This, in short, is the stuff that is capable of developing into sources of cultural enrichment, and extending into life-long diversions of a pleasant and useful nature. What better preparation for h .-. a ~ and ~ v useful social living could be conceived? This I commend as the major criterion of a successful unit.
Previously published artides which may be of interest to readers in connection with the following paper on, "Spectroscopy in J. CHEM.EDUC.,7, 276947 (Dec., 1930) and "A table ChemistryMare: "What is light?" ARTHURH. COMPTON, of radiations." INGOW. D. HACKH, ibid.. 8, 2420-1 (Dec., 1931).
