Pedagogic theory that grounds e-learning for secondary
school science students in
Robert Shaw
The Open Polytechnic
of
& the Carter
Observatory
Introduction
Educators
are challenged to base innovations on adequate theory. This is pressing in
distance education:
“The major
theoretical challenge facing Distance Education, as the technology available to
it advances at a remarkable rate, resides in developing didactic constructs
which are appropriate …” (Buachalla, 1989, p.76).
This paper
justifies the pedagogical decisions expressed in an online facility which teaches
secondary school science. However, it does not make an appeal to recent
learning theory, but rather draws upon psychological theory that was published
in 1890. It argues that these ideas are sufficient to the task. The pedagogy
required in secondary education contrasts with that in tertiary education (Most of the discussion to date centres on
tertiary education, for example in science education, Ross & Scanlon, 1995).
The
pedagogy depended on the characteristics of the student population and nature
of e-delivery. The student population was a group identified by the New Zealand
Government as being a national priority cohort, in need of academic success,
and unlikely to take a serious interest in science or technology.
The
National Observatory of New Zealand, the Carter Observatory, constructed a
website (www.carterobservatory.net) that presents three astronomy unit
standards which the New Zealand Qualifications Authority established in 2001 (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 2007b). The website was designed, funded,
and built entirely by the Observatory. The teaching facility was first
discussed publicly at a teachers’ union conference in 2004 (Shaw, 2004a).
The theory of
psychology that underpins the pedagogy is the focus of the present paper. This
complements to the ontological considerations already described (Shaw, 2004b; R. Shaw, 2005). The look, feel, and functioning of
the website was deliberately based on a pedagogy derived from William James.
Looked at in a negative way, this analysis opposes the determining effect of
technology that now causes disquiet in schooling, as much as it is engenders
apprehension in higher education (Clegg, Hudson, & Steel, 2003).
The website
draws students from secondary schools throughout
The present
paper argues that the pedagogy developed - when used to address the specific
situation described - is superior to classroom teaching. A comparison of
classroom and online teaching is provided to consider both the students’
experience in, and the policy parameters of, the two systems.
National science education policy drives
pedagogy
Science
education is weak in
"In order to grow as a knowledge economy, our young
people need the grounding to pursue higher education in the physical and life
sciences. Our early maths and science education may need strengthening relative
to countries such as
Work is
being done to address these issues. One of Government’s five critical social
issues as priorities for interagency action over the next three to five years
is “improved educational achievement among low socio-economic groups” and this
was brought into science policy (Ministry of Research Science and Technology,
2006, p.12). Attempts have been made to
associate science with business (Bolstad, 2004).
Large urban
secondary schools typically have specialist physics teachers, however rural
schools are likely to have only one or two science teachers neither of whom are
specialist physics teachers. Frequently, the degrees of science teachers do not
take physics to a high level and apparently no science teacher holds a higher
qualification in astronomy.
Yet it is
not the challenge of science education that primarily occupies the New Zealand
Government. There is a greater challenge in the dramatically growing student
population that struggles with basic literacy and social outcomes (Author's interpretation of New Zealand
Ministry of Education, 2005, see page 41 for example where the monitoring of
social outcomes is given as equally important as the monitoring of academic
outcomes). Demographics are the foundation of
this challenge. The country must increasingly channel resources into literacy
programmes and basic education that, although now delivered in secondary
schools, have traditionally been the province of primary schools (Author's interpretation of New Zealand
Literacy Taskforce, 1999).
From this
description of national educational need it is apparent that a course delivered
nationally by online, specialist, science teachers is attractive - particularly
if that course offers the opportunity of academic success to lower achieving
students.
Needs of the students a critical foundation for
pedagogy
All
teaching begins with the teacher’s knowledge and assumptions concerning the
students. All too frequently authors write about e-learning in a generic way.
They write as if web based instructional technique is universally applicable,
which it most clearly is not, any more than are the techniques of classroom
teaching. As has been advised, web based learning will only be a success if
those involved:
“…acknowledge
and take into account differences in student/user backgrounds in every phase of
the design and delivery of online materials and support” (Brennan, McFadden, & Law, 2001, p.8).
One mantra
of curriculum theorists is that we build curricula on philosophical,
psychological, and sociological theory. With regard to the astronomy website, psychological
and ontological theories are most prominent – but this theory is intimately a
part of the assessment of student needs as well as the foundation of teaching
practice. The definition of the task and the methods of teaching express beliefs
about the student population and student needs. The students likely to enter
the astronomy online courses are of two kinds.
First, many
students are excited about astronomy. They watch the achievements reported on
television, know the websites of the many scientific organisations such as NASA,
take an interest in the night sky, and visit local observatories. The absence
of astronomy in their school curriculum can frustrate them. These students are
competent on the internet and sometimes are oriented towards science and
technology to the exclusion of other things. Academic competition may motive them.
They gain recognition and rewards from their academic progress.
The second
group - by far the largest - is the most important group with regard to
national science policy as set out above. These students are often not
achieving academically. They have minimal interest in science. They struggle to
find footing in a world of movement and pressures that they do not understand.
They orient towards their friends, and teachers expect them to leave school at
a younger age and not enter tertiary education. Their language skills are
possibly weak. They do not focus well on schoolwork. They sometimes avoid
school. Their schooling, in some cases, fragments because of family
relocations. Money is frequently a household problem. Substance abuse may be
present it the lives of their families or associates, and their families may be
familiar with the criminal justice system. In their world, school work
struggles to become a priority. These students are those who are relevant to
the government policy described earlier.
The
teaching facility, deliberately, directs itself at the needs of the second
group. Accordingly, it does not aim at gifted students or those students who
are highly motivated by science and technology. Nor is it for those who are
highly competent on the internet. Nor it is for students from wealthy families
that provide their children with high-speed internet connections. For the
National Observatory of New Zealand this was a significant alteration in
audience and purpose. It came from the strategic planning of the Board of the
Observatory in 2000-01. It moved the Observatory towards being a significant
instrument of national education policy.
Assessment system foundational to pedagogy
The underachieving
student population (described as the second group above) is more likely to work
for recognition within the formal qualifications system than they are to work
because of their interest in science. It was the characteristics of the
students that drove the developers’ interest in the assessment regime. The assessment
regime itself can motivate students.
National
norm-referenced assessments for students aged 15-, 16- and 17-years dominated
The
opportunities offered by criterion-based assessment were pre-eminent in the
design of the teaching and assessment system. Each student has to prove his or
her ability against specific criteria. In the assessment process there is no
need to refer to the results achieved by other students. To this day, many
teachers in secondary schools use tests and examinations that are
norm-referenced. The students achieve a percentage result and by this means
compete with each other. The website precludes such comparisons.
The website
teaches and assesses each part of the curriculum in turn. The student must
achieve total success with the questions that relate to each part. If they do
not the computer program cycles them around and they do not get beyond the
topic.
When
teachers come to assess the students response to question (which they do
totally online), they see the students details, the question, the student’s
written answer, and the marking schedule for that question. The teacher then
ticks a box to say the student has achieved and writes a response to the
student. The teacher will address errors and appropriately reinforce the
student’s response. The teaching, in this way, is far more specific than what
teachers can achieve in a normal classroom. Classroom teachers simply do not
have the time to respond to every statement that every student makes. The
website includes facilities to make the work of the online teacher efficient.
For example, there are programmed standard responses. Some teachers like to use
their own external database with an automatic paste facility to spend up the
provision of personal responses. The responses to the student are not just
about the astronomy. Frequently, innocuous comments are made about the weather
in
Accordingly,
the approach to assessment drives the approach to the presentation of teaching
materials and the relationship with the teacher. One issue for the developers
of the system is around the quantity of material presented before there is a
question. Developers call this “block size”. Generally, block size is one
screen length (in the jargon of developers a “screen-full”). The section on
teaching below develops this theory further.
A further
implication of this approach to assessment relates to the time available to
complete a course. This is set at an arbitrary one year. Accordingly, students
can work when they like and at their own pace. They can begin in their school
holidays or at weekends. They can work at home, in libraries, or at school.
They can work wherever they can access the internet. They can follow their own
“biological clock”.
This work
pattern for students is different from the situation built around classrooms.
However, the radical difference here is to do with the duration of school
courses. In classroom teaching the students have to conform to the assessment
pattern that applies to the group. There are fixed times for summative
assessment. The online criterion-referenced student faces continual,
progressive assessment that is totally independent of any other student or
teacher requirements. This facilitates pedagogical individualisation.
Psychology as the foundation of pedagogy
Forestructures
are critical in all educational development projects. (The terminology used
here is derived from Heidegger’s work on questioning.) They generally involve:
The
selection of project teams is discussed in Shaw (2005). In this project, funding precluded
the employment of consultants and consequently discussions were occasional and
informal.
What
thinking was it that aligned this project to James’s theoretical text published
in 1890? Five factors may be discerned:
James’s
principles of learning that are particularly relevant are: habit, instinct,
attention, associations, and memory.
Habit
produces ease of action. It is the nature of human beings that they are “bundles
of habits” (James, 1890, pp.68-69). As he argues by analogy:
“Everyone
knows how a garment, after having been worn a certain time, clings to the shape
of the body better than when it was new; there is a change in the tissue, and
this change sis a new habit of cohesion” (James, 1890, p.69).
His
discussion of habit formation describes the importance of consistent, repeated
action. Without any knowledge of microtubules and neural networks, he
speculates about how changes must be occurring in the brain as habits instil.
The importance of attention in habit formation is also discussed (p. 74) along
with the coordination of mind, hand, and eye (p.75). The student website seeks
by clarity of direction and repetition of student action to rapidly build
habits. When the student begins a new session at the computer, we seek to have
their actions repeat those of earlier sessions. Accordingly, we do not distract
the student with messages that do not relate directly to their goal. We seek to
have them repeat the same sequence of mouse clicks, and confront the same
visual pattern as previously. Our website must be “old reliable”. This carries over
to the way that learning materials are presented and the approach to answering
questions. As James says of habit formation:
“Seize the
very first possible opportunity to action on every resolution you make, and on
every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you
inspire to gain” (James, 1890, p.81).
The website
seeks to facilitate the opportunities and the emotional prompting. Students who
are new to the website already have an instinct about it because of their
previous experience of computing. Instinct is the “faculty of acting in such a
way as to produce certain ends without foresight of the ends without previous
education in the performance” (James, 1890, p.700). The teaching facility seeks to
capitalise on the students’ past experience of websites. Accordingly, it seeks
to be a simple example of what is common. It does not seek to be ultra-modern
or exciting. Many who are involved in the provision of distance education fail
to understand this point and build ever more exciting and innovative gimmicks,
allegedly to motivate students. It is a serious mistake if student learning is
the ultimate goal. This is particularly so for serious students who can resent
misdirection.
If one
concept of learning is pivotal in the teaching facility it is attention. James
says everyone knows what attention is:
It is the
taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem
several simultaneous possible objects or trains of thought” (James, 1890, p.261).
Classroom
teachers understand attention very well. “Pay attention” they say to classes.
Attention is aligned to the more mental idea of being able to concentrate. The
description of the students given above justifies the need to attend to
attention. The inability of the student to focus exactly on the matter to be
learnt is a major barrier to learning. Looked at from the perspective of
success, Nuthall asked experienced teachers how they knew learning was taking
place:
“Almost
every teacher knew their teaching was going well from signs of students’
engagement. It was the look in the students’ eyes, the questions they asked,
the fact that they didn’t stop talking about the topic or problem when they
left the classroom. In short, by the feel and sounds of interest and focussed
busyness” (Nuthall, 2005).
The online
equivalent is more objective. What counts is the length of time the student
works on the website and the number of questions they answer in a session.
There is an important caveat: this assumes the website engages them in real
learning and it assumes they have a serious attitude as they answer the
questions. “Being busy is not a cause of learning unless you know exactly what
information or knowledge the student is getting by being busy” (Nuthall, 2005, p.93). Those who suggest that student
chat facilities be added to the website do not understand the imperatives. A
chat facility would legitimise the avoidance of engagement with the content of
the course. It would not assist the student to attend. Given the student
population described above, this is serious. Likewise, the students’ engagement
with the online teacher must always bring the student back to the content with
a minimum of delays. The teacher must maintain the attention of the student on
the course content. The humanising interactions described above (for example,
mentioning the weather) have to be kept within strict bounds and by being
regular and formal they contribute to the reliability of the site which relates
to both habit formation and attention.
Another
aspect of attention is the layout of materials on the screen. The intention is
that all students are taught on the screen. The student population described
above too frequently arrive at their classrooms without their books or even a
pen. The idea of having a required book to accompany the online course is often
suggested, but it could very easily be counter productive. It is not desirable
that work sessions begin with a hunt for equipment.
Many trials
were conducted to judge the operative length of material to be presented. One
rule that emerged was that the material should be in natural blocks. This means
that topics should be presented as a meaningful whole. But equally important is
that there should not be more than three short paragraphs before the student is
required to make a response with their mouse. To manage the teacher workload
but to ensure the optimum level of engagement with the student, short
machine-marked multiple-choice items are sometimes inserted between paragraphs.
Between topics, simple multiple-choice questions are designed to maintain the
students’ attention but without bringing the student away from the content. For
example, “You are now half way though your course. You have 2 of the 4 credits
this course will produce for you. Well done! How are you finding it: easy,
okay, hard?” The machine returns a
suitable response to the student instantly and in the teacher’s name.
The online
student - as an individual - drives the teacher. To obtain a response from the
teacher the student must make a submission. We know that student achievement is
greatly enhanced when teachers respond positively (Hughes, 1973). Consequently, it is quite possible
that the quality and level of direct teacher response to students is greater in
the online situation described than in most classroom situation. It may be
reasoned that learning is greater having regard to the well accepted findings
of Hughes and others.
Lapses of
attention are important considerations. According to James, lapses are common:
“Most
people probably fall several times a day into a fit of something like this: The
eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into confused unity,
the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once,
and the foreground of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort of
solemn sense of surrender to the empty passing of time. In the dim background
of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing …” (James, 1890, p.261).
Something
like this occurs as students’ study. Classroom teachers observe the phenomena –
students “day-dream” they say. For the website the essential point about
student “day-dreaming” is that the notion of what the student “ought to be
doing” is maintained in the student’s mind, and that there is no competition
for their attention. A pause may well be necessary for the mental well-being of
the student, accordingly it may need to happen, however the return to attending
to content must be facilitated. It is in the ability of distance education to
manage these events that they could show superiority to classroom teaching.
Another
aspect of attention relates to the design of the website. Clark and Mayer (2003, pp.111-128) set out in detail, and with humour,
the tension between good pedagogy and the requirements of customers who seek to
have teaching websites constructed. They appeal to a “coherence principle”
(defined as: “People learn more deeply from multimedia lessons when distracting
stories, graphics, and sounds are eliminated”, p.310). For the students
described above, objects on the screen need to look sparse. The flow of text
and graphics must be strictly horizontal. Only three sizes of graphic are used.
Essentially, the screen is to look like a piece of paper. For that reason the
teaching space is white. As has been said, “seductive details” do not assist
with serious learning (Clark & Mayer, 2003, p.115).
The experience with the student population described indicates that they
perceive the website to be about “real work”. They work there to advance
themselves, and not to be entertained. According to the evaluations collected
from students, they are perfectly satisfied with a Spartan website although
frequently adults who have not been students seek to have our site enhanced
with “modern” features.
A further
aspect of attention relates to the provision of an online teacher. It might be
thought that the teacher is present to teach astronomy. That is not so. The
teacher is present to assess the student and to motivate the student. The
website is designed to teach without human intervention. The most motivating
factor within the teaching facility is the teacher’s response. This is designed
not to engage the student for more than a moment, but to bring the student on
to attend to the next topic. The personalisation principle that some advocate
for instructional websites is helpful (Clark & Mayer, 2003, p.184). But when this translates into the
provision of a “virtual coach” it is woefully inadequate for secondary school
students.
There is another
useful comparison between classroom and online teaching that draws upon James’s
theory of associations. The limitation of classroom teaching is that it is
about groups. Nuthall likens classroom teaching to the management of an
orchestra. All is going well when the orchestra makes a certain sound, through
recurring patterns of whole-group activities, however this indicates nothing
about the learning of individuals:
“I now
began to understand the function of the standard patterns or routines of
teaching and why they had such control over teachers’ behaviour. In order to
manage a class of 25 to 35 students, all of whom have different knowledge,
skills, interests, and motivations, teachers have to focus on the performance
of the class as a whole. It is impossible to focus on the individual learning
of any one student for more than very brief periods” (Nuthall, 2005, pp.85-86).
The problem
of how thoughts come to be connected, of how associations are made, is critical
for learning theory. James begins by emphasising that much depends on the
mechanical conditions under which things are brought together and develops a
“law of contiguity”. Before association
is possible, there must be discrimination. The items to be associated must be
conceived as different things.
“There are,
then, mechanical conditions on which thought depends, and which, to say the
least, determine the order in which is presented the content or material for
her comparisons, selections, and decisions” (James, 1890, p.361).
And he
continued:
“… objects
once experienced together tend to become associated in the imagination, so that
when any one of them is thought of, the others are likely to be thought of
also, in the same order of sequence or coexistence as before” (James, 1890, p.367).
This is his
law of mental association by contiguity.
What is mentally associated with classrooms has been summarised by
empirical researchers:
“We began
to realise that students live in a personal and social world of their own in
the classroom. They whisper to each other and pass notes. They spread rumours
about girlfriends and boyfriends, they organise their after-school social life,
continue arguments started in the playground. They care more about how their
peers evaluate their behaviour than they care about the teacher’s judgement” (Nuthall, 2005, p.85).
From this
description it would seem logical that if the goal is the learning of content
(having regard to the law of mental association by contiguity), the student
would be better off anywhere other than in a classroom.
James’s
account of memory provides a further useful insight that is helpful to
developers. He divides the methods of memory into mechanical, ingenious, and
judicious:
“The
mechanical methods consist in the intensification, prolongation, and repetition
of the impression to be remembers” (James, 1890, p.437).
The
impression in the case of a teaching website is generally on a screen but audio
reinforcement is helpful. The intense challenge is to present ideas in simple
language. A teaching website for secondary school students needs to take a
“language learners” approach to teaching. It is the facility of repetition,
however, that attracts debate. The infinite patience of computers may be used
to good advantage, although judgement is required. A course is of a particular
length, described by the number of “screen-fulls” and the number of questions.
Throughout the website and in all the courses, a deliberate effort is made to
use the same words to describe the same things. In the discipline of astronomy
this can entail a choice. Once the word for an object or concept is selected,
the task becomes describing that word or that concept. James reports experiments
to reveal how long it takes to learn certain things. Such experiments need to
be conducted for web based learning systems. The length of time that it takes
students to complete the National Observatory’s courses varies from about one
week to about 10 months. The average is about four months. At present there is
no data available on what this means.
A comparison of internet and classroom pedagogy
This paper
argues that the online teaching of science in the model developed by the
National Observatory of New Zealand produces for students an experience that is
dramatically different from the experience of learning in classrooms.
The table
below compares the regular student’s experience of quintessential classroom
teaching with their experience of the National Observatory’s website. The table
shows data that is derived by reasoning, and it based on a classroom of 30
students, one teacher, and 40-minute teaching sessions. There is an opportunity
for empirical research.
|
Online experience |
Classroom experience |
|
Work
sessions can be of any duration. |
Work
sessions are of 45 minutes. |
|
Work
sessions can begin at any time of the night or day. |
Work
sessions are structured into specific times during the day. |
|
Assessment
occurs as an integral part of learning (page-by-page). |
Assessment
is an “event” frequently at the end of a week or a term. |
|
The
teacher gives personal attention to everything the student produces. |
The
teacher divides their time between all the class members. The result is that
each student’s personal interaction with the teacher must average to less
than two minutes per period. |
|
A
second-order form of personal relationship may develop with the teacher. |
Genuine
personal relationships are facilitated by direct personal contact. |
|
The
teacher responds to the student within a few minutes in every case. There is
only one channel of communication. |
Teachers
sometimes do not respond to individual students and the time take to respond
depends on the nature of the student’s submission (for example, an oral question
or an examination script). |
|
Assessment
occurs as each concept is studied. |
Assessment
occurs when the timetable allows with the curriculum accumulated. |
|
The
teacher sees every statement the student makes and can comment on it. |
Teachers
may collect work from students and view it after the class is complete. |
|
Progress
is reported questions-by-question and an online graph shows the student
exactly how far they are through the course. |
Good
teachers summarise at the start of each lesson how the lesson fits into the
overall curriculum for the subject. The student has only a hazy view of their
progress as each lesson proceeds. |
|
Results
are reported within the hour. This is highly reinforcing. |
The
teacher reports results to the student in the next session, or if it is a
major assessment after the whole class has been assessed. |
|
Course
completion results in an instant congratulatory statement, and an invitation
to enter the next course online. |
Typically,
there are long delays before the results of courses are known. Once the
results are known the student considers (often without the teacher present)
their future courses. |
The students’
experience: This table compares online and classroom education as shown in the
examples of the National Observatory’s facility and
Considered
from the perspective of national education policy the online system compares to
regular schools as follows:
|
Online delivery |
Classroom delivery |
|
Closer
control over the quality of teaching and assessment because all
student-teacher interactions are recorded and available for audit. |
What
happens in classrooms is difficult to monitor and audit. |
|
Every
student is taught by a specialist teacher. |
Science
teachers can be weak in specific disciplines and there can be teacher
shortages in some schools. |
|
The
specialist workforce that develops around the management and development of
the website forms a focus for teacher education. |
Teacher
education depends largely on the provisions in universities and teacher
unions. |
|
Efficiency
in the use of the teachers’ time. Teachers only teach and assess. |
Teachers
are responsible for student management and many other non-teaching tasks. |
|
The
curriculum is delivered to the student in a uniform way with an assurance
that each topic receives its correct curriculum weighting. |
Curriculum
drift occurs as teachers emphasise the topics that interest them and stray
from the course requirements. This can make teaching exciting and motivating
for students. |
|
The
presence of the markers’ highly specific markers’ schedule facilitates
accurate assessment question-by-question. |
Marker
drift is common when teachers make tests for whole classes. |
|
It is
possible for lead teachers to insert in the marking schedule particular
messages that improve assessor performance. |
Heads of
departments find it difficult to influence the teaching of under-performing
teachers. There is always a time between the discussion of issues and the
implementation of improved ideas. |
|
Information
for the moderation of assessments is readily available. A moderation report
can be printed for any selected student by clicking a button. |
Moderation
requirements require the keeping of student tests (usually in paper form) and
their accumulation student-by-student. |
|
Reports
that make comparisons of students, particular questions, particular makers,
or schools, are readily produced. |
The
making of comparisons generally requires a specific research project with a
data collection phase. |
|
Student
achievement accumulates as the teachers assess. There is no teacher
administration. |
Teachers
have to record student achievement. Many use “mark-books”. It is necessary to
accumulate and transcribe to a central system the marks given by teachers. |
|
The
system accumulates the students’ results and reports them automatically. |
Transcription
and weighting errors can occur, and consequently it is necessary to check the
process and audit it. |
|
Courses are
available to all students nationally. |
It is
necessary to have a number of students interested in a particular course
before a school can offer that particular course. |
|
It is
relatively easy to measure the cost of teaching each student. |
The cost
of teaching and assessment is hidden within the costs of running the school. |
|
The cost
of course delivery is significantly less than that in a normal school. Fixed
costs are three part-time staff with minimal overheads, and teachers can be
contracted in accordance with student numbers. |
The cost
of course delivery is often unknown because accounts do not distinguish
teaching duties from school overheads and the teachers’ pastoral duties. The
benefits of schooling for students are greater than those of course delivery. |
|
Teachers
work from their own homes according to a roster. Students usually work from
schools or their own homes. |
Teachers
and students work the same hours at centralised locations. They place
pressure on road transport and incur environmental costs. |
The policy
perspective: This table compares online and classroom education as shown in the
examples of the National Observatory’s facility and
Conclusion
This paper
sets out how James’s psychology was of use in the development of a teaching
facility. This theorist’s work was sympathetic to the needs of the student
population and the opportunities of distance delivery. Of importance was the
approach to assessment that was recently made possible by reforms of the
The use of
Heidegger and James as leading theorists in the development of the teaching
facility does not mean that their ideas were in any sense “adopted”. Instead,
the theorists - through their writing - lead the teachers’ discussions. They
contributed ideas that were congruent with the experiences of those involved at
the National Observatory or which stimulated productive thought. The discussion
of teaching above provides some examples.
This model
of teaching and assessment is for a very distinct group of students with
specific needs and in particular circumstances. It is not to be thought of as sufficient
for “science education” which must involve practical work, personal interaction
with others, and base itself upon the work of scientists. Instead, the model is
one contribution to science education.
Many of the
students taught by the National Observatory are Maori or Pasifika students. The
pedagogy described has yet to consider them as a separate cohort. The extent of
this challenge has been indicated:
“Recent
research on
The model
of course delivery and assessment described will never replace classroom
teaching. However, as an adjunct to school curricula and school management the
system has much to commend it. Schools report that their teachers enjoy
interacting with the online teachers and hearing about course content from
their students. The different mode of delivery stands in encouraging contrast
to classroom delivery. Finally, the economic gains of this method of teaching
and assessment are alluring, particularly in situations were it is desirable to
make specialist teachers available to a dispersed student population.
Acknowledgements
The author
would like to thank the members of the Board of the Carter Observatory,
particularly Mike Doig, Phil Yock, Gary Wilmshurst, and Richard Bentley.
William Bryson produced over 200,000 lines of computer code for the website.
The opinions in this paper are those of the author alone.
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Robert Shaw
was a member of the Board of the National Observatory of New Zealand, the
Carter Observatory, when the decision was made to teach astronomy online. He
subsequently managed the development of the facility. He is former head of a secondary
school physics department and now is a senior lecturer at the Open Polytechnic
of New Zealand and secretary of the Philosophy of Education Society of
Australasia.