Do you have the HOTS for science? Part 3

Making change in teaching and assessment
In my role as Year 11 curriculum leader this year, one of the projects I am involved in was an action research project into developing higher order thinking skills and assessment tasks for the Year 11 science curricula. This post is part of a series (See Part 1 and Part 2)

Over the course of this project it has become clear that teachers at my school are not very clear on what higher order thinking skills in science look like. They are not clearly defined. Without this, it is difficult to teach and assess such skills.

This project has shifted from trying to directly change what is occurring in the science classroom, to developing teacher awareness of such skills.

So what are higher order thinking skills?
There is a vast literature around higher order skills, yet they are not adequately defined. What are the higher order thinking skills needed in the science classroom? What do they look like? If we are to assess them, what is the standard against which we are assessing?

I have developed the table below to provide answers to teachers who are looking to develop their pedagogical skills in science, particularly in knowing how to teach and assess some of the key higher order thinking skills (HOTs) in science.

Self-assessment in education

Over the last few weeks a lot of things have been happening at my school. Year 12s finished their studies with end of year exams; Year 11s have had their final assessments and are beginning Head Start classes for next year; Year 10s have had final assessments; including their research presentations; Year 8s have had camp; I have been teaching Head Start; I have spoken at my first assembly for year 11 in my new role as curriculum leader; and I have begun moving office into the VCE centre.

Oh and reports and finishing marking.

So apart from feeling a little:

I am actually quite excited about teaching my Head Start classes. This week I have started teaching year 11 biology and chemistry. In my chemistry class today, one of the things I was doing was getting my students to self-assess a timeline that they had produced in groups in the previous class. The timeline illustrated development of atomic theory, hopefully showing understanding, content knowledge, and presentation skills (in order of relative importance).

What I found was that students were quite on the mark in terms of assigning 'grades', compared to what I assign. More importantly, the discussions that ensued were particularly revealing. Through a conversation I facilitated, they indicated why and why not they thought particular posters were well done- several students were corrected by peers for praising well-presented work that showed no understanding. They began to auto-correct and critique the work beyond a surface/superficial level. Some students misidentified information (dates/names etc) as understanding, and were able to be corrected by their peers, who explained that the posters did not in fact show the experimental evidence leading to the development of the different models.

I know that Hattie ranks student self-assessment as an important and powerful element of education, yet I do not think I had experienced just how powerful it could be in my classroom. To watch students reflect and change their thinking in front of me was really satisfying. Taking the time to think, to really slow down and look at a piece of work, was something that benefited my chemistry students. I will definitely be employing this more often in my classes, with the intention of developing self-correcting, deeply understanding students.

Contextual learning

We have just finished a semester long course at year 10 in advanced chemistry and physics, a subject we called Future Energies and Sustainability. The focus of this course was a research project into our local suburb, Ferntree Gully, to investigate different aspects of energy production, usage and sustainability that could be improved for the year 2040.

Josie Hopkins and I came up with the idea of contextual unit to teach science at St Joseph's College because we wanted to achieve several things:

1) We wanted to students to engage with science as an inquiry based subject, rather than a content based subject (although there is a need to teach content as part of science).

2) We wanted students to be involved in a learning process (the research project) that is authentic (solving real world problems, engaging with real people)

3) We wanted to use assessments (the research project, the student blog) that allow for deeper learning through reflection and collaboration in an ongoing process for students.

Last Monday we came to the end of the course, finishing on a high with student led presentations in our learning centre, Chieri. The students put on a science fair of sorts, presenting their research into future energies and sustainability for the suburb of Ferntree Gully. What they presented was of high quality, with deep understanding evident in many presentations. Some groups had made posters communicating their ideas, whilst others had conducted experiments to test and refine hypotheses. We provided the boys with an authentic audience - Lisa Loulier and Sam Sampanthar from Knox City Council's Community Sustainability Program; Kate Evans, Director of KIOSC at Swinburne University; as well as a member from Energy Australia; and a long serving member of the engineers' institute of Australia. These visitors were full of enthusiasm about the program after speaking with the boys, impressed by the level of their understanding and knowledge in their project areas. Several students have been asked to present at an Expo at KIOSC early next year.

What really hit me with this course finishing up was that it could work. Science education could be contextualised and allow for deeper understanding. Students could have a longer term exposure to the themes underlying a subject and move beyond surface or skill learning. It was by no means perfect, and I can already see ways to improve how we ran the course, including: how and why we use the student blogs, incorporating more practical work, building more links between students and the community. Yet the overall results of the project encourage me to think that we can positively engage students in science, and achieve better understanding of science through making it real in the classroom.