Blog #7 Cut the Textbook

According to edglossary.org, scaffolding, in terms of education, “refers to a variety of instructional techniques used to move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning progress.” As teachers, our goal is to have our students not only possess knowledge, but to grow to understand and eventually produce their own knowledge on an independent level. Because I am currently focusing on teaching science, I chose to read Reading, Writing, and Thinking Like a Scientist by Gina Cervetti and P. David Pearson. Science itself, as taught in schools, consists of reading texts, writing arguments/reports, as well as conducting experiments. But simply reading, writing, and doing does not make you a scientist. It is stated in the article, that when reading a science textbook “there is a great deal of potential for misconceptions about science and that not all texts support involvement in inquiry” (p. 584). So why do we, as science teachers, incorporate the textbook in our class? Is it because it is required? It is easy? Instead, we should focus our instruction on texts that scientists actually read and create – “handbooks, field guides, and graphic representation of data” (p. 584). By students reading texts like these, they will start to read, write, and think like a scientist because they are examining the work of a real scientist. 

So, where is the line? You can’t just take the textbook out of a science class, right? In my opinion, I believe the textbook to be arbitrary. If you know how to read, you can probably decipher a science textbook – it is a simple skill. There are definitions and “facts.” There are pictures and graphs. It is basic reading and is not all that specific to the discipline of science. So, what are students actually getting out of it? Science textbooks are not what scientists write. By reading texts like these, they are simply possessing knowledge and have no gateway to producing it. With this, yes, they might know what a hypothesis is, but do they know how to write one? They might be provided with the structure and an example, but will they be able to recognize one? Write one? What does a real hypothesis, written by a real scientist look like? They would not know. 

This, I believe, is a scream, a cry, a yell, for help in teaching science. How can we, then, move towards that stronger understanding and greater independence? Well, for starters, we should provide our students with science texts that push students to “examine the credibility of the work that lay behind the text” versus texts that students read to possess facts and definitions (p. 583). Science is a natural world, a world of exploratory and creative thinking. It is not a world of facts – what, in science, is a fact, anyway? In my opinion, science should be a more hands-on subject. Students should be pushed to experiment, question, and explain. Of course, this is not to disregard that reading in science is important. All scientists read, and read, and read. And then read some more. But as a student, that reading needs to be valuable – and in my opinion, it will not be found in a science textbook. It should be something that pushes students to be more and think more like scientists– not just knowing the definition of a hypothesis. All too often teachers forget why we are teaching – to prepare our students to be successful. To be a doctor. An engineer. A real-estate agent. Or even a scientist. We cannot expect students to achieve this when all we do is teach out of a text book.