Science Modeling Talks

In this episode, Mark talks with Cynthia Passmore, who is a professor of science education at the University of California, Davis. They talk about the differences between the approach to modeling developed at ASU and UC Davis, which seem to be more and more similar as time goes by. They talk about how all of our understanding in scientific study is based on models, even if we do not specifically hold those up as "models" per se. We use mental models to explain the world around us and to better understand how and why certain interactions happen the way they do. They talk about modeling instruction and the Next Generation Science Standards and how modeling really gets students to do the thinking as scientists and make the connections between what we see and the explanations for what we see. They talk about Cynthia's new book, even get to talk about some of Cynthia's recent research on effective teaching using modeling methods in the high school biology classroom.

Guest

Cynthia Passmore is currently a Professor specializing in science education in the University of California, Davis School of Education. She did her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and prior to that she was a high school science teacher. Her research focuses on the role of models and modeling in student learning, curriculum design and teacher professional development. She investigates model-based reasoning in a range of contexts and is particularly interested in understanding how the design of learning environments interacts with students’ reasoning practices. She has been the principal investigator of several large grants and is the lead on a collaborative curriculum design project that has created a full-year high school biology course. A key practitioner publication is the edited volume: Helping Students Make Sense of the World Using Next Generation Science and Engineering Practices from NSTA Press.

Highlights

[2:44] Cynthia "I think the inclusion of modeling as a practice in the next generation Science standards has also brought a lot more people to the work of modeling than used to be the case."

[3:25] Cynthia "Models are the functional unit of scientific thought."

[7:51] Cynthia "The depiction is important. I'm not trying to say it's not, but if all we're doing is asking kids to reproduce representations and depictions of things, then we're losing the modeling practice, in my view."

Resources

Ep 65 Transcript

Modeling  Based Biology - Living Earth

In this episode, Mark talks with Brooke Jenkins about her early teaching career, her time at ASU, and then as an adjunct instructor at Estrella Mountain Community College, where she was introduced to modeling instruction. They talk about her work with BYU Idaho, and her move to Utah, where she has helped to develop concurrent enrollment classes for high school students to take the course at their high school while earning college credit at Weber State University. She has been creating professional development for the high school teachers who administer the concurrent enrollment chemistry classes. She uses labs from the modeling materials and walks the high school teachers through how to do each lab in the way that modeling instruction would administer those labs. They talked about a grant she has been able to secure to fund the modeling instruction workshops through state funds, and another grant she is working on to provide stipends for teachers who attend the workshop.

Guests

Brooke studied Chemistry Education and Physics teaching at Brigham Young University before going to Arizona State University where she earned her Masters in Chemistry. Her research in Chemistry specifically addressed assessment of conceptual understanding in chemistry. She has taught chemistry at the high school, community college and now at the university level. Since 2018 she has taught at Weber State University where she gets to mentor students working towards their licensure and has revamped the concurrent enrollment program. This redesign of the concurrent enrollment curriculum has allowed her to incorporate more modeling ideals into the labs and classroom. Hosting a modeling workshop in Utah has been on her bucket list since moving away from Arizona. She is very excited that this is the year this workshop will become a reality.

Highlights

[19:19] Brooke Jenkins "we go through an accreditation process to make sure that our concurrent enrollment program is in fact accredited. And one of those things is, you have to make sure that, what we're doing on campus is the same as what they're doing in the high schools, and that includes professional development for our teachers that are doing the program."

[24:26] Brooke Jenkins "the way it works here in Utah is you get your license and then you get endorsed in different areas that you can teach in. And if a teacher is working towards an endorsement, then they can have their tuition covered for taking that class."

[30:51] Brooke Jenkins "So if there's something in your state that can happen for your teachers, trying to figure out that incentive system may be a really big part to making your workshop successful."

Resources

Ep 64 Transcript

Modeling Instruction Website

In this episode, Mark talks with Kathy Harper, a senior lecturer in engineering education at The Ohio State University. She tells us about how she found her way to a modeling workshop half her lifetime ago, and how modeling has changed her life. They also talk about the work that Kathy has done bringing modeling workshops to Ohio, and then having workshops to develop small activities to bring tastes of engineering to our science courses. We hope you enjoy listening!

Guest Bios

Kathy Harper is a senior lecturer in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University, teaching in the Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors program. Her involvement with Modeling Instruction began in 1995. She has directed dozens of workshops for Ohio science teachers in Modeling Instruction, piloting the first workshops to incorporate engineering content into the Modeling framework. Her research includes an array of educational topics, but most recently centers on assessing classroom-level innovations. She has made conference and workshop presentations on topics such as problem solving, cooperative learning, reflective journaling, first-year engineering courses, and, of course, Modeling.

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Highlights

[26:05] Kathy Harper, talking about starting to develop engineering content using a modeling framework "what if we offer a one-week workshop for people that have already taken a modeling workshop to come in and we'll just work through ways that we can add engineering into an existing modeling curriculum. ...But one of the things I really remember was one teacher said "My advanced students are usually debating between a career in medicine or a career in engineering. And they all feel like they understand what medicine is. And so I think they're more likely to choose that, but they don't really understand what engineering is." ...So we worked then as a group to think about some activities that we could add, just to introduce students to engineering design that were largely independent of content."

[40:01] Kathy Harper, talking about funding for modeling workshops and state funding for professional development "we need to do something to get those mechanisms back in place so that we can support these state-level, or at least, you know, portion of state-level workshops, where again, like-minded teachers can get together, talk about the content and the pedagogy. Where we can teach these workshops for the people who teach these workshops are real K-12 classroom teachers. Not university people like me; people that teach in very similar circumstances to the people attending the workshops. Those are key."

Resources

Ep 63 Transcript

This week, Mark talks with Phil Root about the differences he sees between teaching using modeling methodology at the high school level and the college level. They talk about Phil's experience helping to adapt modeling materials for physical science to the Next Generation Science Standards, and how much he enjoyed building a storyline for those units. They talk about the advanced modeling workshops, including the new materials Phil helped to develop for them, and the various topics covered. They finish with Phil's advice for folks just starting out on a modeling instruction journey.

Guests

Phil Root taught high school chemistry and physics at Chandler High School from 2004-2013, and has been teaching chemistry at Scottsdale Community College since 2013. Phil teaches using modeling methods at the college level, and also leads modeling workshops. He helped to develop the physical science curriculum for Next Generation Science Standards and worked with Levi Torrison to develop a thermodynamics modeling workshop and extend the Chem 2 workshop to a full three week course.

Website

 

Highlights

[11:05] Phil Root: "AMTA was actively engaging students before it was cool."

[17:08] Phil Root, on advanced modeling workshops: "you will have activities, labs, facilitation experience that you can take with you directly back to your classroom the next year and put it to place right away to build your storyline in your classroom and make it stronger."

[19:13] Phil Root: "My goal now isn't to get my students to solve a problem a certain way or to get an answer. It's to probe their thinking about the relationships that they're using or how are they making sense of the mathematical relationships they're using or the conceptual frameworks that they're building."

Resources

Ep 62 Transcript

 

This month, Mark talks with the executive officer of the AMTA, Ray Howanski. They talk about the importance of getting at student thinking and effective student-led discussions, and the transformation that happens when students start being the scientists rather than just looking to the authority figure for the "right answers." They talk about the difference between modeling workshops and distance learning courses and the value of time spent face-to-face, especially for a teacher's first or first in-depth experience with modeling instruction. They discuss what the AMTA has been working on and what's coming soon as well as ways to get involved in the work that the AMTA is doing to improve curricular materials and set the standards for some new technology.

Guests

Ray Howanski worked for Ridley School District teaching Chemistry and Biology for 22 years and then as a Curriculum Director for the next 13 years. He worked with their science department to grow modeling instructional practices during which time they inverted the science sequence to offer a Physics - Chemistry - Biology progression. Ray is currently serving as the executive officer for AMTA.

 

Highlights

[4:34] Ray Howanski "The one thing I'd say that I'd really emphasize and where I think is really impactful about modeling instruction is the listening. Is the learning where the student thinking is."

[7:24] Ray Howanski "So when the students are all figuring out whatever it is they're looking at whatever event they're investigating, it's the evidence that speaks. It's the data that speaks."

[23:22] Ray Howanski "That's why it has to be really centered around sensemaking and having the students gather information in the lab, and then work together with each other to kind of make sense of it, present it, and that's the -ing in modeling"

Resources

Ep 61 Transcript

Get Involved! [email protected]

This month, Mark talks with F. Joseph Merlino about the work he has done using grants from the National Science Foundation to reform math and science education. They talk about his work in Egypt overhauling their whole education system, working with the decision-makers to identify their biggest challenges and then how they can design school around preparing students to solve those big problems. They talk in particular about the success of the government-funded STEM schools and the role that modelers played in training the educators. They talk about formative assessment, and how it is not only for the benefit of the teacher, but also the New Era-New Urgency: the Case for Repurposing Education. They talk about the purpose for education or for teaching the particular things we teach, and the "shadows" that every teacher or reform person must confront even before walking into a school.

Guests

F. Joseph Merlino's academic background is in chemical engineering and cognitive developmental psychology. He is the president of the 21st Century Partnership for STEM Education (17 years). He has been a PI and project director of numerous large-scale NSF, IES, and USAID projects, including a Targeted Math Science Partnership involving 45 school districts and 13 colleges and universities. For the past 12 years, he has been directing a STEM project for the Egyptian Ministry of Education establishing 21 New STEM high schools and new STEM teacher prep programs in 5 Egyptian universities. He has employed many modelers as consultants on these projects. He is co-author of a new book entitled NEW ERA-NEW URGENCY: The Case for Repurposing Education by Lexington Books (2024)

Highlights

[4:47] F Joseph Merlino "Actually, this idea that physics instruction and science instruction could be different, goes back to the 1880s."

[17:01] F Joseph Merlino "we had to use the assessments as a foot in the door as a way to open the door to then introduce a different pedagogical approach."

[24:06] F Joseph Merlino "the idea of the formative assessment that we talk about is that if you're cooking something, for example, if you're cooking, a dish, a stew, for example, you sample it along the way, and then you add ingredients as you need in order to suit it to the taste."

Resources

Ep 60 Transcript

New Era - New Urgency Website

New Era - New Urgency Book Club (starts Jan 2025)

In this episode, Mark talks with Patrick Daisley, long-time modeler and science teacher. They talk about challenges he had when a beginner modeler, good advice that he took and made part of his own routine, and developing a modeling instruction framework and curriculum for integrated science, physics and chemistry. They talk about the origin of the AMTA and Patrick's part in it.

Guests

Patrick taught physics, science and mathematics for 29 years, including freshman level integrated science, physics, AP-1 physics and AP-C physics. Patrick earned a Masters Degree in Science Education in 1998 and became a National Board Certified Teacher in 2008. He earned a doctorate in Educational Leadership at Washington State University in 2016.

Patrick's first experience with Modeling was as a phase 3 participant in the Leadership Modeling Workshop at UC Davis during the summers of 1998 and 1999. He continued to be involved, spending several summers at ASU working with other modelers on integrated physics-chemistry modeling and attending an Advanced Modeling Workshop in 2005. He co-led a Physics Modeling Workshop at ASU in 2008 and another in Spokane, Washington in 2010. He was one of the modelers who founded AMTA in 2005, serving as its first president from 2005-2006 and then serving on the board as Treasurer and Founding Board Member until 2010.

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Highlights

[11:34] Patrick Daisley "Invite [parents] to come in where he could then show them some of the things that the students were doing, like with the labs and things of that nature, and maybe even some of the work that they had on whiteboards, and explain what it meant to be in a modeling class."

[24:55] Patrick Daisley "It's a pedagogy for how to teach students. And the materials are just sort of secondary to that. I just wish I had known how powerful it was."

Resources

Ep 59 Transcript

In this recast episode from July 2021, Mark talks with Marta Stoeckle, who teaches physics and other science courses outside St. Paul, Minnesota. They talk about the improvements Marta experienced in her teaching after attending a modeling workshop. This led to their discussion of Marta's research in STEM education. Finally, they talk about the new way for modelers to connect -- the AMTA Discord server.

Guest Bio

Marta Stoeckle has been teaching science at Tartan High School just outside of St. Paul, Minnesota since 2009. She teaches mostly Physics and AP Physics 1, with occasional sections of other courses including basic chemistry and 9th grade physical & earth science. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Minnesota’s STEM education program where she is studying how classroom experiences influence science identity, especially for underrepresented students. Marta has served on the communications committee for AMTA's board and helped get the Discord server started.

Website | Twitter

Highlights

[10:16] Marta "Labs came up with almost every single student as something really important. What was really interesting to me is I had a lot of students who talked about the guided inquiry labs and the paradigm labs that are an important part of modeling as something that really helped them feel like a science person. And when they were able to see how the data they took led to that physics knowledge, they felt a really strong sense of ownership over their learning and really started to feel good at physics"

[21:21] Marta: "I was introduced to this idea of activity before concept and then concept before vocabulary...No matter what phrasing they use to describe it, but my experience has been, especially with ELL kids and especially with kids who have learning differences, especially around reading, that's been really beneficial because by the time that we get to that technical word, they have something in their head to attach it to, instead of trying to cram in all of these complicated words before they really have any meaning."

Resources

Ep 58 Transcript

Article: Musings on Instructional Shifts

Article: Gender Self-assessment in Classroom Experiences in AP physics

Pivot Interactives

Article: Strategies for Supporting Equitable Group Work

Mark talks with veteran physics teacher and proponent of physics first in high school. He talks about how the connecting thread of energy should start in middle school and continue through 12th grade.

They talk about the Cactus Caucus, advocating to get funding for more teacgers to get state certified to teach STEM classes in Arizona. Then they talk about the Arizona STEM Acceleration Project, which brings on teacher fellows each year. One benefit of this program for all teachers is the free content produced by their STEM fellows, including some modeling-friendly materials in their lesson plan archive.

Guests

Mike Vargas is a 20-year veteran Physics teacher who is a founding member of the Cactus Caucus, a group of Arizona Physics teachers who helped pass legislation to advance science teacher education in Arizona. This effort led to the Arizona Department of Education’s “Get Set for STEM”program which aimed to increase the number of higher-level STEM teachers state wide. This initiative helped increase the number of physics teachers in Arizona by nearly 20%. Mike is also a founding member of STEMteachersPHX and has extensive ties to the Arizona Science Teachers Association, the American Modeling Teachers Association, and the American Association of Physics Teachers. Mike served as a board member to the Northern Arizona University K12 Center and has been an active participant in the Arizona Education Foundations efforts to promote STEM education with its “TeachSTEM” program. Mike has served on the Air Force Association National Aerospace Council for the last few years and co-led the Space Force’s first national education outreach project, “STEM to Space”. Mike served on the Federal Coordination in STEM’s Interagency Working Group for Strategic Partnerships (IWG-SP) and served as a Department of Defense Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow to the Department of the Air Force K12 STEM National Office as well as the Department of Defense’s Strategic Manufacturing Education Workforce Development program. His policy and strategic partnership experience has been essential for the creation of Arizona State University’s newest initiative - The Arizona STEM Acceleration Project. He is currently the Co-Principal investigator and Senior Program Manager for ASAP.

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Highlights

[3:44] Mike Vargas "You should really start in middle school and have that energy thread going through all the way up through senior year, because you can tie that to all the sciences, right?"

[20:05] Mike Vargas "we're curating a website. It's STEM [email protected], and there's gonna be about 2000 lessons on here, at the end of the day. They're all curated, they're all made by teachers, for teachers. It's kinda like teachers pay teachers, but free"

Resources

Ep 57 Transcript

Arizona STEM Acceleration Project

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Mark and Amanda talk about her background as a middle school teacher, the STEM master's program she took at ASU, which introduced her to modeling instruction and eventually led her to found the Cactus Caucus, which advocated for funding for teachers to recertify to teach physics, chemistry and other high-needs areas in Arizona schools. They talk about her move from teaching to the Arizona STEM Acceleration Project at ASU, how this project works, and about building community among our teachers.

Guests

Amanda Whitehurst spent thirteen years teaching third through eighth grade in Arizona Schools with a Masters of Engineering in STEM for Middle School from ASU. She was a founding board member as well as former Vice President, President, Past President, and Executive Officer of STEMteachersPHX, an Arizona based professional development non-profit that works to de-silo teachers in STEM subjects and develop communities to support high-quality teaching in classrooms. Amanda Co-Founded the Arizona Cactus Caucus which successfully developed a coalition for $1.2M in legislative funding for the 3-year STEM Teacher Professional Development Pilot Program which the Arizona Dept. of Education adopted as the “Get Set for STEM” scholarship program to increase the number of high school physics teachers in Arizona and increase the access of students of all grade levels to high-quality STEM education. She is currently the Co-Principal investigator and Senior Program Manager for the Arizona STEM Acceleration Project; a $10M grant from the Arizona Department of Education which in its first year supported over 450 STEM teachers across Arizona and impacted almost 90K students.

Highlights

[6:05] Amanda Whitehurst, on modeling at the middle school level compared to high school level: "there's a lot more scaffolding that has to go on in terms of getting kids to do that discourse and that dialogue. But there are fewer bad habits that you have to break from them from as well."

[7:57] Amanda Whitehurst "I would say that modeling really gave me the tools to teach in the way that I'd always wanted to teach, but couldn't figure out how to implement effectively. "

[21:24] Amanda Whitehurst "if teachers have connections to each other and they feel supported, that they're more likely to stay in the profession."

[29:14] Amanda Whitehurst "one of the values of this project is that so much that teachers do, and so much the professional development organizations do is for the love of students. But that always ends up to mean they're doing it for free. And one of the values was that your time is worthwhile and you deserve to be paid for your time."

Resources

Ep 56 Transcript

Arizona STEM Acceleration Project

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