Technology for Science/Science for Technology
Technology for Science/Science for Technology (TfS/SfT) is a National Science Foundation-funded project for TERC in Cambridge, MA, to develop and test 3-8 week units for secondary science and technology education classes which employ technological investigations and design-and-build challenges to contextualize and motivate students' learning of science and technology concepts and skills. These units, whose titles include Mechanisms & Gizmos, Motion & Measurement, Heat, Electricity & Magnetism, and The Design Process, are intended for technology education teachers who want more science and for science teachers who want more technology -- to develop technological challenges that have clear connections to science concepts and multiple solutions, are low-tech and easy to make, and are testable by students.
The activities in each unit are focused on a major design task, much like the chapters of Active Physics (described in our Spring 1994 issue). Three types of design activities are featured: designing "fair test" experiments, designing devices, and designing product comparisons. In designing a "fair test" experiment, students have to determine 1) what the criteria for "best" or "most effective" will be; 2) what procedure they will use; 3) what they will measure and how accurate they need to be; and 4) how they will control the test in a fair way. After numerous attempts and deciding how many trials to conduct and seeing the different ways their peers have done similar experiments, students gradually discover their own workable version of the scientific method. Students learn that doing real science means asking their own questions and making informed judgments about whether they have satisfactorily answered them.
There are three approaches to designing devices: open-ended design tasks, materials-constrained design tasks, and retrofit design tasks. In each of these cases, students are encouraged to go beyond their first guesses and initial assumptions by undertaking repeated or iterative designing. For those asking "Where is the science in design?" TERC's response is threefold: 1) designing experiments in order to test competing features in a design; 2) making predictions about the performance of prototypes; and 3) analyzing and explaining why things do or do not work.
The use of product comparisons as the primary technological investigation task encourages students to think about users and product lines in a concrete way through the close comparison of three or more designed objects. The approach taken to doing product comparisons involves having several variations and then "messing around" with them, designing an experiment to make fair comparisons, conducting the experiment, and reviewing the experimental results.
Connections to the National Standards
The National Science Education Standards and Technology for All Americans (see story in this issue) call for the integration of science and technology into all primary and secondary curricula. Both state that students should be able to perform authentic tasks on demand. The National Science Education Standards seek to "establish design as the technological parallel to inquiry in science." (p. 135) The current version of the technology standards calls for technology activities to involve hands-on, problem solving-based tasks; integrated learning with other subjects; a combination of knowing and doing; relations to societal issues, jobs, consumer actions, and advances in technology; creativity through problem solving and design; acquisition of personal experiences with devices; and lifelong learning connected to using and acquiring technology.
In TfS/SfT students have many opportunities to do technology and science rather than just learn about them. For example, in Mechanisms & Gizmos students build a winch, using a small electric motor, then are asked to use it to lift a can of food, representing a toxic waste container, from a stream which is in immediate danger of flash flooding. In the Heat unit students are asked to determine which of several soft drink containers is the best for keeping its contents cold or which of a number of glove designs is the most effective at keeping their hands warm.
In addition to measuring the extent to which students are learning science and technology content, the assessments also address students' acquisition of critical process skills including scientific inquiry and design skills, information processing skills, effective communication skills, collaboration and cooperation skills, and habits of mind skills.
(Editor's Note: We last reported on TERC's activities in our Spring 1994 issue. For information about any of their programs, contact them at 2067 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140, (617)-547-0430.)
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