Deconstructing and reconstructing: Transforming primary science learning via a mobilized curriculum
Introduction
The history of science education reform has fundamentally revolved around science curriculum development and implementation (Forbes & Davis, 2007). With the availability of increasingly affordable mobile learning devices and software applications that can be used for learning purposes, educators are becoming more excited about harnessing the affordances of mobile devices for supporting science learning. Mobile devices provide a platform for students to embark on project-based or inquiry-based science learning activities in and out of the classroom. By coupling the supporting technical infrastructures for mobile learning with good curriculum and pedagogical design, teachers can transform science teaching into personalised learning journeys for each student. Mobile devices are used as a hub to mediate all the learning inquiries and activities.
Mobile technology can also be used to support inquiry-based learning in novel ways. For example, every child can now have an Internet-connected computing device in the palm of their hand 24/7. To take advantage of this emerging pervasive technology, science educators need to develop curricula that specifically consider the affordances of these mobile technologies. However, although there have been studies designed for supporting student inquiry-based learning (Chen et al., 2008, Roschelle et al., 2007, Spikol et al., 2009, Squire and Klopfer, 2007, Vavolula, Sharples, Rudman, Meek, & Lonsdale, 2009) using mobile technologies, most of them were short-term explorations that may not have to be part of schools’ existing science curriculum. This was the challenge we faced a year ago in order to make mobile technology an integral and essential element in the school curriculum. We had to transform the existing science curriculum into a “mobilized” curriculum because students in our experimental class took the same tests as other students in the same cohort. While we exploited the affordances of the mobile technology, we were expected to address learning objectives in the existing curriculum and to follow the existing curriculum schedule. This means that our redesigned science curriculum needs to be enactable in a typical classroom. We envision that the transformation of the existing science curriculum will have the following characteristics: first, the process will result in a gradual but fundamental change of the curriculum; second, the change will be sustainable; and third, the process may be challenging and costly in terms of time and effort. The priorities of our three-year mobile learning project are to: (1) develop a methodology for designing an inquiry and mobile-device-based science curriculum, and (2) pilot-test the resulting curricular materials in classroom settings.
Norris and Soloway (2008) used the term “mobilized lesson” to describe a lesson that starts with an existing, perhaps paper-based lesson design, but then is transformed to make use of mobile technologies’ affordances. The “mobilized curriculum” is a transformation from a more content-centered and teacher-centered infrastructure to a systematic student-centered infrastructure to foster personalised learning and self-directed learning (Looi, Wong, So, Seow, Toh, Chen, et al., 2009). Such a redesigning effort would require exploiting the affordances of mobile devices for effective learning. Affordances here are the characteristics of a physical object in supporting potential interaction (Gibson, 1977, Norman, 1988). We will elaborate the affordances of mobile technologies applicable to our context in a later section.
Indeed, a well-designed “mobilized curriculum” would enable the enactment of learning activities outside school. Providing students with 1:1 ownership and 24/7 access to mobile devices like smartphones would create the potential to use their devices to support informal learning. Our work in mobilizing science lessons is thus framed in the broader context of constructing “seamless learning” environments to bridge formal and informal learning (Chan et al., 2006, Looi et al., 2008). We want to go beyond classroom learning and explore the continuous, pervasive (therefore seamless), and longitudinal use of mobile technologies. Therefore, we aim to design a curriculum that facilitates and scaffolds student-centered learning activities that encompass formal and informal settings (i.e., in class and out-of-class lessons). In this paper, we will be focusing on the design of curriculum for in-class learning activities, which has the potential to be extended to out-of-class and self-directed learning in terms of the activity structure and use of software applications.
Naturally, as in any school-based intervention project, systemic considerations abound. Besides redesigning curricula, one must address associated issues such as professional development for teachers, assessment and funding for sustainability. However, in classroom-based research, staying focused is a necessity in order to create a substantive impact. For example, in addition to addressing the professional development needs of the teachers involved in this project, the researchers also involve the teachers to co-design the Science curriculum. Such concerted effort culminates with the transformation of the existing primary three science curriculum, as well as the knowledge and beliefs of the teachers. These serve as the cornerstones to sustain the MILE (Mobile Inquiry learning Experience) approach. The design guidelines and the process we used for mobilizing a primary three science curriculum will be described. The process model is meant to be adapted and generalized for redesigning curricula for different grade levels and subjects in the school. Some changes as results of the enacted “mobilized” curriculum will be reported, as well as implications and lessons learned to guide subsequent work. The description and discussion of the curriculum transformation process is mainly based on the exemplar science lessons on the topic of fungi.
Section snippets
Context
We are collaborating with a school, North Coast Primary School (all names in the paper are pseudonyms), which had nine Primary three classes. The first three classes were considered as “high-ability” classes where the students scored higher at the end of 2nd year school examination than students in the rest of the six classes. The rest of the six classes were considered equivalent “mixed ability” classes because students with different levels of achievement were evenly distributed to each of
Design guidelines for mobilizing the curriculum
Since we have identified curriculum development as the first major task for our mobile learning project, we combined teacher professional development and curriculum development into a teacher-research co-design approach (Penuel, Roschelle, & Shechtman, 2007). The school identified a few science teachers including the form teacher Grace to participate in a curriculum task force with the researchers to work on the design of mobilized lessons. The mobile device that is used in this research is HTC
An introduction of the mobilized fungi curriculum
Before we describe the process of “mobilizing” the fungi curriculum, we provide an overview of the “mobilized” curriculum to set up the context before introducing the steps we undertook for the redesigning process.
Curriculum mobilization entails a holistic view of how learning activities can be organised via technology so that student learning is situated in authentic contexts. The MLE provides the infrastructure to develop a project with driving questions and learning objects. A project is a
Process of transforming the curriculum
In this section, we describe the emergent process in which we redesigned the P3 science curriculum to adopt an inquiry science approach as well as to harness the affordances of mobile technologies. For a given theme, we analyzed the essential learning points, identified the teaching focus, observed current classroom teaching practices, ascertained students’ learning needs, and examined current lesson designs from SOWs. Through dialogues with teachers, we brainstormed the bigger ideas in the
Teacher and student changes as results of the enacted curriculum
Given the space limitation and focus of this paper, which is to describe the consideration and process of how to “mobilize” the primary three science curriculum, we may not be able to provide detailed account of the impact of the enacted curriculum. Nevertheless, we present some data to show the changes in general. An overview is provided in Table 7. Our data sources were mainly field notes and weekly meeting minutes when the two researchers and others reported their weekly interaction with
Discussion and conclusion
In this paper, we have discussed why we need to redesign the current primary three science curriculum, and how we have deconstructed and reconstructed the curriculum in order to harness the affordances of mobile technologies for students’ meaningful learning. We have articulated our proposed design process cycle in transforming the current curriculum into mobilized learning activities, and shared our experiences in using this framework to design P3 science activities. We have begun to develop
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the Singapore National Research Foundation (Grant #: NRF2007IDM-IDM005-021). We thank the experimental school, teachers, and students for their collaboration. We thank other project team members for their inputs to enhance the paper, especially Yancy Toh for her editing. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback to improve the quality of the paper.
BaoHui Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group (LST AG) and Learning Sciences Laboratory (LSL) at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has more than 20 years of K-12 and college teaching and research experience with technology supported inquiry-based science learning and science teacher education. He is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Science Education.
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BaoHui Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group (LST AG) and Learning Sciences Laboratory (LSL) at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has more than 20 years of K-12 and college teaching and research experience with technology supported inquiry-based science learning and science teacher education. He is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Science Education.
Chee-Kit Looi is Head of the Centre of Excellence in Learning Innovation of NIE. He has over two decades of experience with educational technology research in research institutes and universities. He is an editorial member of the International Journal on AI & Education and the International Journal on CSCL.
Lung-Hsiang Wong is an Assistant Professor in the LST AG and LSL at NIE, NTU. His research interests are ICT-enhanced Chinese Language learning, teachers’ professional development, agent technology for learning, and mobile learning.
Peter Seow is a senior software engineer with the Learning Sciences Lab, National Institute of Education. He has over 10 years of industrial experience in leading projects, consulting and systems development.
Gean Chia is a Research Assistant in LSL at NIE, NTU.
Wenli Chen is an Assistant Professor in the LST AG and LSL at NIE, NTU. Her research interests and expertise are computer-mediated communication, virtual learning environment, mobile learning, and community of learners.
So Hyo-Jeong is an Assistant Professor in the LST AG and LSL at NIE, NTU. Her research focuses on designing interactive online learning environments, and students’ scientific knowledge building through collaborative inquiry.
Cathleen Norris is Regents Professor, University of North Texas, USA.
Elliot Soloway is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, University of Michigan, USA.