The Big Ideas of Science as Means for Promoting Interdisciplinary Science Learning

• In Event: 32.029 - Supporting Science as a Modeling Practice in the Classroom Through the Lens of Next Generation Science Standards

Abstract

Objectives. Meaningful learning episodes may occur only when learners are able to consciously and explicitly link their newly acquired knowledge to a standard knowledge structure (Cimer, 2007). The big ideas of science are a set of overarching core ideas that briefly describe our world. Potentially they could play the role of the aforementioned standard structure as they can enable students to understand different aspects of our world; both the natural environment and that created through application of science (Harlen, 2010).
The main objectives of our research were two:
(1) Identify the degree to which teachers’ understanding with regards to what constitutes a big idea of science is close to the concept as it is presented in the bibliography;
(2) Identify the degree to which the organization of their science curriculum based on the big ideas of science can be beneficial for their students and support interdisciplinary teaching and learning styles.
Theoretical Framework. In our work we proposed to teachers a framework which promotes the use of a big ideas of science set, as a cross-disciplinary ‘backbone structure’ that could facilitate students in making connections between previous and new knowledge as well as between science subjects taught and everyday life. The main idea was to create and introduce to teachers a complementary organization scheme for school science subjects that goes beyond the traditional organization (physics-chemistry-biology-environmental science-geology and geography) and allows students to understand connections among principles and phenomena that they learn about in different science disciplines.
Methods and Data. We began are work with reviewing several sets of big ideas of science as a whole (starting with the one presented in the “Principles and Big Ideas in Science Education” report edited by Wynne Harlen) and of separate science disciplines from the bibliography. We then produced our own set by adopting, combining and extending the existing sets (Zervas et al. 2014). We then introduced our set to teachers of primary and secondary education of different European countries during a series of workshops. In these workshops we started by introducing to teachers the concept of the Big Ideas of Science, why they can be beneficial to students and how they can facilitate interdisciplinary learning. We then conducted a brainstorming session during which teachers were invited to collaborate and produce their own big ideas of science which we then compared to our set. Based on the feedback we gathered from teachers we then finalized our set by making a series of additional adaptations and refinements (Table 1).
Results. Our results indicate that the proposed set of big ideas is very close to teachers’ views. In addition, teachers to their vast majority believe that such a cross-disciplinary knowledge structure can be very useful for students if used as a reference knowledge structure and that it can enable them to make connections between different phenomena and concepts that they learn about in different science disciplines.
Scholarly significance. This work addresses the need for providing students with a standard interdisciplinary structure to act as a reference point for their science classes.

Author

• ELEFTHERIA TSOURLIDAKI, Ellinogermaniki Agogi school