Henry David Thoreau, Forest Succession & the Nature of Science: A Method for Curriculum Development

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A main reason for using the history of in classroom instruction is its utility, in promoting students' understanding of the nature of (hereafter NOS). As indicated in such documents as the National Science Education Standards, it is important to help students develop their understanding of NOS so that they will become more critical consumers of the very scientific knowledge that increasingly impacts their daily lives (National Research Council, 1996). Science education research draws attention to the importance of having students explicitly and reflectively consider NOS tenets during instruction (Howe & Rudge, 2005; Khisthe & Abd-ElKhalick, 2002). Explicit learning means that through some aspect of instruction, one or more of the relevant NOS tenets are directly targeted for students to evaluate. Reflective learning underscores that students must be challenged to develop their own conceptual understanding of the NOS tenets, in contrast to the alternative (didactic) approach in which a teacher tells students how the NOS tenet applies to a given situation. Another important consideration for NOS instruction is the degree to which it is imbedded in a context (Clough, 2006). On one end of the spectrum, there are decontextual approaches which involve exposing students to various black box activities (Lederman & Abd-El-Khalick, 1998) and having them explicitly/ reflectively examine relevant NOS tenets. These can be very powerful introductions to NOS, but as Clough (2006) points out, when students only learn such tenets in a decontextual approach, they may leave instruction with a dualistic conception of NOS--believing that what occurs in real science is distinct from that learned during the decontextual activity. Using history of in instruction is a potential contextual approach for students to explicitly and reflectively learn NOS tenets, and education literature contains numerous examples of its use in this regard (e.g., Howe, 2007; Monk & Osborne, 1997; Khisfhe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002; Solomon, Duveen, Scot & McCarthy, 1992). Indeed, these studies provide empirical efficacy (albeit modest) that the instrumental use of history of can help students develop more informed NOS conceptions. While these studies : effectively present varied ways that history has been used in this regard, they do not provide to replicate their approaches (how to go about identify aspects of the history of to the important NOS tenets). This article provides a method for teachers who intend to use one or more episodes from the history of to help their students explicitly and reflectively learn more informed NOS conceptions. The method facilitates: 1. how to identify relevant NOS tenets exemplified in the episode. 2. how to design classroom problems that have students explicitly and reflectively consider NOS using the historical episode. An example of this approach is given using the work of Henry David Thoreau and introductory concepts of ecological forest succession. Though several of the specific elements of the Thoreau lessons are discussed in the next sections, for the sake of space, only the salient features are highlighted. Readers are certainly encouraged to download supplemental materials from the author, which include the lesson plans and a detailed discussion of how to go about researching episodes from the history of for use in the classroom. These can be found at http://www.assumption.edu/users/emhowe/Thoreau.html. * The Nature of Science Essentially, NOS deals with understanding the unique aspects of scientific knowledge or scientific ways of knowing. Stakeholders in education largely agree that there are fundamental tenets about NOS that students should be learning in the classroom (McComas, 2005). A partial list of these tenets underscores that: * Science demands and relies on empirical evidence. …