Teaching for Conceptual Change: Confronting Children’s Experience

Colby Wegter

Teaching for Conceptual Change: Confronting Children’s Experience

Once again the question lingers: How do you teach science? Do you follow the book and teach a lot of facts with little depth or do you teach fewer things and really focus on them, go in deep and let the students decide for themselves, based on their discoveries, what is and what isn’t?

I really believe that students need to experiment and manipulate things. They need to do things, not be told what is. This argument will go on forever because there are arguments for both sides. If you think you should go by the book that is OK because you are preparing kids for the standardized tests that states will never get rid of and you are giving them as much information as you can in the school year. These are true, but when I look back on what I learned in science (or any other class) it wasn’t what I learned out of the book that I remember. It was when I used my hands, when I saw what was being taught, when I was able to experiment and have my own preconceived thoughts and test those thoughts.

To me students have to remember. And to remember they have to experience. There is little to no experience when you are getting lectured out of a book and are told what is fact and what isn’t. So what if you don’t touch on everything that the book offers. There are teachers down the road who will not be bold enough to teach any other way than by the book. I want to be the teacher students remember because they will be able to tell you years later what they learned. How can they remember if they don’t have an experience.

Let’s go in depth!