THE FOUR STEPS LEADING TO COLLEGE SCIENCE TEACHING REFORM

The traditional and most common form of college teaching is passive, involving professors talking and students listening. The focus is on content, not process. Yet, current research shows that, although standard lecture courses may effectively promote content mastery, they generally do a poor job promoting student intellectual development. So, during the past two decades instructors have made many exciting changes in the way they teach.

The first step toward teaching reform involved war stories. The literature contains empirical/anecdotal reports on cooperative learning, minute papers, jigsaw groups, journaling, and other strategies that have proven successful. Many acolytes argued that those who did not adopt active learning strategies in their classrooms were shortchanging their students. Yet, Bain (2004) and others have pointed out that we need not abandon lectures. Many great teachers rely on a lecture format, but lecture in a way that keeps students actively engaged.

Most college science teachers remain unconvinced of the need for change. A significant underlying problem is that, until recently, the fundamental science explaining the success of active-learning strategies has been missing. Convincing recalcitrant colleagues to adopt strategies without proving their efficacy is problematic. So, a second step in science education reform is occurring as teaching scholars and cognitive psychologists establish the connection between the way students learn and classroom practices.

Two additional steps remain to be taken. The third step is to move significantly farther away from content-driven education. If instructors use alternative pedagogies simply to promote better content mastery, then they have missed the key point: instruction should focus most on helping students develop intellectual skills and become better thinkers. The fourth step, then, is to promote students as scholars. Students need to know how to learn in different environments, they need to be able to change strategies when needed, and they need to be able to assess learning outcomes. They need to learn how their backgrounds, values, skills and daily lives affect their thinking and learning. This "metacognition" involves both cognitive and affective components. Instructors should discuss both with their students as a standard practice in their classroom.