Science and the Natural Learning Model

Science fosters the innate curiosity of children through observation, experimentation, inquiry, and discovery. The essential structure of science is the exploration of the natural world, the accumulation of knowledge, and the development of critical thinking skills. Students practice thinking like scientists by understanding and applying the processes and skills that are used to conduct scientific investigations. Through acquired knowledge and experience, students generate questions, test hypotheses, analyze results, formulate conclusions, and communicate their findings ... resulting in more questioning. With this ability, students can drive their learning experiences, not only in science but in all aspects of their lives. Science is making sense of the natural world, stimulating curiosity, and cultivating the drive to understand how things work.

A Focus on Experience
Experiential learning continues to be a buzzword used in the education world. Through research, I have noticed the breadth of this teaching model. The idea is often to get students moving and experience science as a scientist. However, what does this look like in the classroom, what does this look like for the teacher and what does this look like when it comes to assessing the students?

“Children enter school curious about how the world works. It is important to harness this curiosity in our teaching to allow students to make sense of the world around them” (Wright, 2017, p. 189).

To fully engage in experiential learning one must learn from the act of doing. Founder of experiential learning John Dewey (1916, 2007) stated: “doing becomes trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like” (p. 104). Students engaging in the Natural Learning Model demonstrate the experience was fulfilled and the objective was met. Reaching their success cycle shows the development of student learning goals and needs is in congruence with experiential transactional engagement.

Today many teachers and schools are under pressure of high stakes testing causing teachers to have to teach content-driven direct instruction lessons. This type of learning contrasts the aspect of human development and learning processes necessary to become a virtuous holistic being. Experiential learning is a way that teachers can carefully and critically derive a lesson for students’ emotional, social, and academic development. Learning through first-person experience develops a construction of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and a transfer of learning that engages students in a positive environment and experience (Marlow & McLain, 2011). Students need to approach tasks in their everyday life like they are scientists, authors, historians, and mathematicians. They are not just passing through a class or lesson. To reach this higher level or purpose, students must be a part of the essential structure of the discipline. According to Jerome Bruner (1960, 1977), “Grasping the structure of a subject is understanding it in a way that permits many other things to be related to it meaningfully. To learn structure, in short, is to learn how things are related” (p. 7). This implies that without experience in the subject itself, it is impossible for us to assume students are making relevant connections to the material. Experiential learning allows students to engage in this type of natural learning.

Experiential Learning in the Science Classroom 
Science is an inquiry-based subject that goes hand in hand with experiential education. As STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education and the maker movement increase in the United States, teacher awareness of experiential education and the critical application it can have on student development is key. To develop this type of education, we must first understand what it is, why it is important, and how to deliver this properly in the classroom (Moye, Duggar, Stark-Weather, 2014). Developing real-world connections, finding answers to issues, and solving problems allows students to reach their fullest potential. Proper scaffolding and development of the experience helps students to become active participants in their learning and take pride and responsibility in their knowledge (Peters, 2010).

The science classroom is a place where students can be one with nature and natural phenomena. Inquiry is linked with many positive student outcomes, such as growth in conceptual understanding, increased nature of science knowledge, building relationships between student and the teacher, reducing errant learning, and development of research skills (Peters, 2010). Scientific inquiry capabilities are developed through scientific discovery. Scientific inquiry capabilities refer to the development of intellectual skills, the understanding of scientific methods and mastery of concepts, whereas, scientific discovery refers to concepts gained from building and testing natural phenomena. With this understanding, research demonstrates that personal discovery goes hand in hand with content development (Zachos, Hick, Doane, Sargent, 2000).

Habits of Mind of a Scientist 
To fully engage in experiential learning students must have the thinking skills of a scientist or expert in that field. “Scientific thinking is the ability to generate, test, and evaluate claims, data, and theories” (e.g., Bullock et al., 2009, Koerber et al., 2015 as cited in Schmaltz, Jenson, and Wenckowski 2017). Generating experiences and lessons that have students develop this type of thinking is what makes experiential learning successful. “When kids have a hand in inventing scientific practice, they get more knowledge out of the classroom experience” (Lehrer, as cited in Bower, 2009 p. 20). To generate this type of thinking teachers must have a mindset and plan to teach children how to do this.

Developing questions is key to this. Durkin (1993) emphasized that “asking appropriate questions is probably the most effective art a teacher can acquire to help students become productive thinkers” (Durkin, 1993, p. xviii).

Teachers should start the lesson with a driving or essential question related to real-world problems. When students can find this connection through an essential question the understanding of the scientific phenomenon is grown. “Phenomena are observable events that occur in the world or universe that we can predict or explain using understandings about science” (Moulding, Bybee, & Paulson, 2015 as cited in Wright, 2017 p. 190). “Good driving questions direct students to investigate phenomena and use these investigations to help them to build understanding” (Wright, 2017 p. 190). For teachers to develop this in students it is important that they maintain a mentor relationship. As a mentor, the teacher should model how a scientist thinks. According to Jerome Bruner (1960, 1977), “To instruct someone ... is not a matter of getting him to commit results to mind. Rather it is to teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the establishment of knowledge. We do not teach a subject to produce little living libraries on that subject, but rather to get a student to think mathematically for himself, to consider matters as a historian does, to take part in the process of knowledge-getting” (p. 72). The development of this type of thinking helps children to foster their natural curiosity and pushes them to keep asking questions and observing the world as real scientists.

One challenge that John Dewey proposed through his work “Experience and Education” is the possible misuse of what experience is. “Hence, the central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experiences that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences” (Dewey, 1938, 2005 p. 28). He refers to the term “experiential continuum” (Dewey, 1938, 2005 p. 33). This is the idea that for an experience to be meaningful it is important that the teacher guide it properly. For instance, Dewey (2005) stressed: “an experience may be immediately enjoyable and yet promote the formation of a slack and careless attitude” (Dewey, 1938, 2005, p. 26). Teachers cannot assume that providing students with materials and letting them “play” with them will increase the students’ understanding of that phenomena or science topic. Each experience should be connected to another experience helping children to continue to learn from it in the future.

As a teacher, this can become a challenge because not only do the children need to experience the skills of a scientist, but they need to experience how a scientist thinks and accumulates knowledge of a topic.

This article was written by Birchwood School science subject specialist Michelle Bogden, who teaches fifth through eighth grade science. Mrs. Bogden is a graduate of Ohio University with degrees in integrated science education and curriculum. She has helped her students achieve success in the BEST Medicine Engineering Fair, Northeastern Ohio Science and Engineering Fair, District Science Days, Science Olympiad, and more.