Page 6 - SASTA Journal 2017

4 SASTA Journal Number 02 / 2017
Rather, students mostly experienced lectures with limited experimentation, imagination and discussion, and thus
no chance to express their ideas. Learning is more focused on understanding, including describing phenomenon associated with experiments. Students do far fewer lectures now and far more in the way of research and experiments under a model of Plan-Do-Check-Act and this has yielded very positive improvements for their achievement and transition to university.
Examples of student research on display in Ichikawa Super Science High School
Throughout the afternoon, we had the chance to see students in 11th Grade (17 year olds) working on their individual research projects in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Students have two hours of scheduled curriculum time a week to develop these projects with the support of their teachers, and do so over the course of a year, presenting the
nal outcomes of their work in English and Japanese through poster presentations at their conclusion. The students are all too happy to share insights into their work which involves antibiosis between competing fungi species; the manufacture of biodegradable plastics from shrimp; the use of coloured ionic compounds to produce coloured glass products; research into sh colour preferences and research into the correlations between dominance of the hand, jaw, eye and leg.
Observing a biology class of Year 10 students that in many ways looked like it could be in a classroom somewhere in Australia. There were old benches with students seated at each, materials out and at the ready. A teacher at the front demonstrated how to use a piece of equipment and then explained the nature of the day’s experiment as students looked on. Specimens in jars lined the shelves of cabinets around the side of the room, whilst sh tanks and some small containers indicated the presence of some live animals kept in the classroom.
And yet, a closer look revealed signi cant differences:
• Students all wore lab coats, but this was the extent of their personal protective equipment
Notes taken during a Year 10 Biology class at Ichikawa Super Science High School
• There were forty students in the class, much larger than we would have in our classrooms.
• Students used real pig’s blood in their experiment, where we would be prohibited from using this material for safety reasons.
With all students engaged and productive, and left to work on their results and applications to scienti c models over the next week, there was much that seemed familiar, even in this context. If anything, their work seemed rigorous and grounded in what appeared to be a serious, dedicated approach to the science they were studying.
The students working in small groups to create simple prosthetic prototypes.
So, when it came time to teach the students as part of my demonstration lesson, what were they like?
In many ways, these students were just like students I have experienced
in Australian classrooms. The 25 students, who had come to my session, and their teachers, were associated with science clubs in the school. However, despite their aptitude and immersion in Science, I had the pleasure of watching them share a laugh as volunteers used a rudimentary toy
robot claw to perform everyday tasks; watched them empathise with the situation of a young girl in a short video who had been gifted a realistic and complex prosthetic by a young and talented engineer; saw them thinking and suggesting different ways in which simple materials could be used for prototyping and watched them plan, do check and act as they re ned their ideas and built upon both their failures and successes. Teachers, at rst hesitant about an open-ended activity in which students engineered simple
prosthetics, quickly became invested in the task, looking at what students produced or even engineering their own possible solution. In many ways, they were any number of classes I have taught over the years.
Like all good open-ended tasks, students approached such a rich and complex problem from different angles. And sometimes, their designs failed. But, to quote Samuel Beckett:
‘Ever try. Ever fail. No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.’