Extramural learning in teacher education, G02/30

Ann-Marie Pendrill
Physics and Engineering Physics
Göteborg University and Chalmers University of Technology
SE 412 96 Göteborg
SWEDEN

ABSTRACT

Extramural activities are known to play an important role for learning and motivation of children. Involving students in the visit can lower the threshold for teachers to bring their class: Primary school teachers often have limited science training and many teachers would like support before, during and after a visit.

In this project, science student teachers were given the opportunity to interact with school children visiting Scandinavia's largest amusement park, Liseberg. During special opening days in May and September, the students had exclusive access, together with a large number of school classes, three hours before the park opened to the public. The students had the opportunity to observe many teachers interacting with their classes and to reflect on the experience.

Keywords: Science Education, Preservice Teacher Education, Hands-on Science, Science Instruction, Measurement

1. Introduction

1A. Rationale for change

Extramural activities are known to play an important role for learning and motivation of children (Woolnough, 1994). However, the learning outcome depends on the extent to which the visit is integrated with work in school and teachers need preparation to ensure that science activities outside school contribute to children's learning. Including study visits during the initial teacher training will leave future teachers better prepared to use various possible external activities. The aim of this project was to develop physics activites in extramural settings, in particular in the Liseberg amusement park. Various formats have been tried where student teachers meet children in an experimenting situation, providing a natural school contact within the physics studies. Since primary school teachers often have very little science training, an additional bonus is that the student involvement can lead to a lowered threshold for teachers to bring their classes.

An educational visit to an amusement park or a science center can make use of children's sense of wonder to give them deep and lasting impressions, that may facilitate later, more formal, learning of physics. Science in school is often viewed as abstract, without real context, "decontextualised" to be "recontextualised" in schools (Säljö, 2000). The students guiding school visits tell that many children have commented that it had never occurred to them that Newton's laws could be applied to swings and roller coasters. School visits to an amusement park can also bring about science discussion at home, "the place where lifelong significances are constructed" (Solomon, 1997).

1B. Review of relevant literature

This project brings together a number of fields, including learning in informal settings and conceptual understanding of forces. Whereas these areas are well studied, the context where student teachers assist children in informal settings, as part of their pre-service subject studies, seems unexplored: The subject "VFU" - subject studies in school - is not yet well established Another area, where little is documented, is how the learning of mechanics, also for children, may be affected by taking a starting point in acceleration, and emphasizing forces, as experienced by the own body, which is quite different from the standard textbook approach. A number of investigations, suitable for amusement parks are presented e.g. by Bakken (2004) and the project Slagkraft (2004).

The amusement park, as an informal setting for learning, has much in common with science centers, where the literature, discusses the "Liseberg-effect" (Axelsson, 1997), i.e., that the children run around, having fun, and making sure they don't miss anytning. Thus, in both situation the pupils are easily distracted from learning, unless they are mentally prepared for the visit. This aspect is no less is even more present in an amusement park than in a science center. The importance of preparation and follow-up for the learning outcome is documented e.g. by Rennie and McClafferty (1996). That this is often lacking has been observed in that and other studies (e.g. Kofod and Sørensen, 2002).

The amusement park rides obviously involves motion, forces and acceleration, and provide many examples of Newton's laws. Newton's laws are not only a standard part of any physicist's toolbox. They are also among the most extensively studied objects of Physics Education Research. There is an overwhelming body of evidence that students often fail to master even the most basic aspects. Classical mechanics is probably the area of physics that is most easily related to everyday experience, and, still, everyday experience often appears to contradict the laws of motion. Physics Education Research demonstrates very cleary that conventional teaching approaches are woefully inadequate in overcoming the problems (see e.g. McDermott and Redish, 1999)

Driver et al (1994) note: "There is considerable support for allowing pupils to develop their own dynamics - to clarify and label their own ideas. This is seen as a process which could begin early and which should precede any attempts to teach formal physics concepts, and which is better with 11-year olds than with 14-year olds!" The variation in the ways to learn mechanics can be expected to lead to a deeper understanding and more transferrable skills (Marton and Booth, 1997)

1C. Questions

1D. Importance of the project?

Too often we hear that children are not interested in science and technology. Still, we find that children are often very curious and receptive and can learn topics often considered too difficult for them. By bringing teacher students in contact with children's curiosity, we hope to inspire students to look beyond "Why do we need to know this? - It's not in the curriculum". Many teachers in schools lack a background in science. This project is intended as one way to help them - as well children and future teachers - encounter physics in a positive environment. This project also aims to help both children and student teachers develop a deeper understanding on the laws of motion, by focussing on acceleration experienced by the body, in combination with experiments, observations and discussions.

Acceleration is closely linked to force through Newton's second law, but, in contrast to the understanding of force, seems to have received very little attention by Physics education research. Acceleration, unlike velocity, can be detected by a human body in motion and measured within the moving system. Acceleration is also more fundamental; it is absolute (although, according to the equivalence principle, it cannot be separated from a gravitational field), whereas velocity is relative and depends on the frame of reference chosen. In this way, we build on, rather than reject, the experience by learners and start in situations which where everyday observations do not contradict Newtonian concepts.

2 Method

2.A Students

The project was designed as a collaboration between the teacher educations at Göteborg university and the university colleges in Borås, Skövde and Halmstad. During 2003, one of the collaborators moved from Borås to Karlstad, and in 2004, the remaining collaboration involved teacher educations in Göteborg, Halmstad and Karlstad. In addition, students from Högskolan in Jönköping joined the science day in September. One of the students teachers from Skövde wrote a diploma thesis about teachers preparation and follow-up, as discussed more in section 3B. An important aspect of the project was the adaptation of activities at Goteborg university to university colleges in the region.

In most cases, the students participated as part of a first physics or science course. Only in a few cases has it been possible to bring the same individual students more than once. However, a few students from Halmstad who participated during 2003, prepared a class in Varberg and joined them during the visit in 2004.

In addition to student teachers, first-year students from the Biotechnology ("Kb") and Chemistry with physics ("Kf") programmes at Chalmers participated in the May science days and first-year physics students from Goteborg university and students from the "IT-programme" at Chalmers participated in the September science day 2003.

2B Innovation

The project involves a number of innovations, both concerning the way to study physics and in the way students are given possibilities to interact with pupils and their teachers. In terms of physics, the study of acceleration, with a focus on the experience of the body, enhanced by simple toys as measurement devices, may open the study of motion to younger learners, provided their teachers are comfortable with the approach. This change of reference frame has also been one of the obstacles, as discussed in Section 4.

This amusement park project was designed as an implementation of the subject-"VFU" - studies in situations outside the university classroom, typically in schools, as prescribed in the new teacher education (Utbildningsdepartementet 2000) The VFU has the potential to deepen students' learning of the subject by exposing them to children's curiosity, thereby providing motivation for the students' own learning in a situation where they have easy access to subject specialists. In terms of interaction with school classes, the use of an extramural setting focuses special aspects of the teacher role.

Learning physics with the body

To what bodies do Newton's laws apply? To a physicist it is obvious that "body" neither excludes, nor implies, a human body. To a learner studying textbooks this understanding is less obvious. A body accelerating horizontally is usually a car, although a bicycle, a train or an aeroplane may provide occasional variation. Vertical acceleration typically implies as ball, a stone or an unidentified "object", and in a few occasions an elevator, sometimes with a broken cable.

The study of mechanics usually starts with bodies in rest or in uniform, rectilinear motion, where the absense of net forces clearly contradict everyday experience: Every child knows that you need to pedal to keep the bicycle going or to press the gas pedal to maintain the speed of a car. The physics teacher's assertion that no force is needed to maintain constant speed contradicts the intuition developed during many years. Study after study confirms that the Aristotelian concept of a force needed to maintain a motion is extremely resistant to teaching. In everyday situations, air resistance, friction or other dissipative forces provide counterforces that are less obvious than the force supplied by pedals or engine.

An essential part of learning a concept is to develop different ways of experiencing it. A deep understanding requires many different representations of the concept and links to different representations, as well as to other contexts. To appreciate the formal definition of acceleration as the time derivative of velocity requires an understanding of derivatives as well as of velocity, including its vector character. Both aspects have been found to be problematic also for entering university students. In analysing students' problems, we find that some simplifications introduced in school physics, may obscure, rather than illustrate the more generalised concept. Students often forget the vector character of both velocity and acceleration: Acceleration as a change of direction of the velocity is not an obvious possibility in a simplified treatment where motion is studied only in one dimension.

Acceleration, in its full vector capacity, is very much a part of our life. The child in the swing, on a slide or a see-saw, or jumping down a from a climbing rack enjoys the sensation of changed acceleration and interplay of forces. Children do not feel the need to refer to Newton's laws, but may be helped to connect the experience of the body with a change in velocity - both as a change of speed or as a change of direction. Although g-forces are rarely treated in textbooks, children know about them and are curious. Simple measurement devices connect the experience of the body to a visual observation, that can be shared and discussed. (Mårtensson-Pendrill and Axelsson, 2000, Bagge and Pendrill, 2002)

Student involvement.

A science day at Liseberg involves many different actors, which to some extent limits the freedom of students to design their experience. However, in connections with student presentations and reports, a discussion about various aspects of the form for experiment, as well as for student-class interactions is always an important point, and the experiences are used for the planning of future days. Within the main framework for a science day, students can influence their learning situation, by planning what investigations to perform and how to interact with classes. Some students have chosen to follow a class, either by bringing a class of their "own" or by contacting the teacher for one of the classes visiting the science day. The main design, to assign specific rides to students, was suggested in discussions with students after the first Science Day in 2002.

All student groups were given an introduction to Amusement Park Physics before the visit. Students in a particular course were assigned additional responsibility for 3-5 rides, and each individual student was supposed to spend about one hour assisting at one of the rides. For some rides, the students provided equipment to be taken along by children, since this has been found to facilitate discussions. The task for the students was also to ensure that the riders knew how to use the measuring equipment and to discuss expectations and experiences.

The ride assignment was done several weeks before the visit, to give students opportunity for theoretical preparation, concerning mathematics, physics, technology and pedagogics. As support for the students, they were given access to WWW pages with examples of tasks connecting to the rides. In addition, a number of WWW-pages were created with sample dialogues with pupils, both generic and ride-specific, and based on first-hand experiences from earlier guided class visits. In many cases, the students were also asked to formulate questions to their assigned ride, thus trying a task which has been found to be a useful introduction for school classes in many cases.

2.C Procedures

A science day with up to 2000 learners in the park involves many features. The large number of students involved provides a possibility for monitoring by a large number of observers, with different backgrounds, present at various places at different times, and meeting different classes and teachers. To make use of this possibility, students were given observation sheets for all rides open, and asked to fill in time, length of queue and any other observation for the rides visited. These sheets also give an informal way to study students involvement and learning.

During the May 2003 science day, 11 different student groups participated. The observations sheets from various student groups exhibited significant differences. To some extent, the variations could be related to the way the visit was integrated in the course work and to the follow-up work required by the students, as discussed in more detail in the Results section.

In most cases, the student wrote group reports about the day. During a few hours, the groups then presented their reports to the other students in their "class" and discussed the results, as well as possible modifications for future science days and how they can be used in their education. In a few cases, the follow-up was limited to a discussion in the classroom after the visit. Not unexpectedly, the reports and presentations showed large differences in ambition, observation and insights, focus and learning outcomes. The May 2004 science day was arranged in a similar way, but these visits were planned relatively independently within the teacher educations at Halmstad and Karlstad. In addition to the main Halmstad group of 53 students aiming to teach science for the age group 6-11, a few of the students from Halmstad, who had participated in 2003, prepared a Varberg class for the visit, and were able to share the experiences in the park.

At the end of term, the student reports were analysed for possible remaining conceptual difficulties.

3. Results

The results of a complex project involves many different aspects. During a science day in an amusement park, students meet many different teachers with their classes and have the opportunity to observe and reflect on the relation between teacher involvement and class behaviour, as discussed in section A. A more systematic study of teachers choices of preparation and follow-up was performed as part of a diploma work by a teacher student (Peter Fenelius) at University college of Skövde. A summary of those results are presented in section B. Observations on the relation between student learning and the integration with the ordinary course work is presented in section C.

3A. The Amusement Park as Teacher Observatory

An amusement park science day attracts teachers with widely different backgrounds and intentions for the day. In this section we present results of student observations, based on discussions with teachers and their pupils, This demonstrates one aspect of student learning.

To most people, an afternoon at Liseberg is a fun excursion. For some classes this appeared to be the dominating aspect, as seen e.g. from the quotes

"The teacher we interviewed knew nothing about what would happen. The afternoon was a fun excursion with the class"

"'We prepared a little, but we will get most of the experience here. ... I suppose we should do some follow-up'. He did not care about the experience of the kids"

All excursions require a significant amount of planning, including travel and time tables. Some student observations point to this being the only planning:
The kids were only interested in the rides. The only discussions were about riding again or moving to another ride. The only preparation was travel information."

"The teacher was a passive viewer, just making sure the groups followed the schedule. The kids were only interested in the rides. I could not observe any learning"

The limited preparation can in many cases be related to the lack of science teachers, especially in primary school, which is likely to limit also the follow-up work.
"The teacher didn't seem to consider the visit an important event. They might do some more work when they get around to it"

"The teachers we interviewed had no science background and couldn't answer the questions coming up"

"The teachers knew no physics what-so-ever. Unless the children dared to ask us they would have to wait until after the weekend, when they had probably forgotten a lot."

The reports and discussion show that students are well aware of the importance of preparation and follow up. Meeting unprepared teachers and classes can be demoralizing for students. However, the students have also met many well-prepared classes at science days. Some classes had prepared their visits by doing research into various rides, working with potential and kinetic energy and building an amusement park in the classroom. Other classes came prepared with worksheets, sometimes based on questions formulated by the children before the visit. Sometimes the teacher was found to be available for discussion at the end of the ride. In other cases, the teacher relied on the worksheets.
"The children have made an hypothesis to test. It is obvious that they use each other. Those who have experimented tell the others and those who haven't get more curious and have to try it for themselves"

"The children have written down hypotheses and are well prepared. The teacher poses questions and discussed with the children without giving answers. The intention is that the children think for themselves.

The class was divided in groups, focusing on a special ride."

In some classes, the visit was part of a physics theme:
"The science teacher had tolds the class about the physics in various rides and what would happen. They had also experimented in swings."
One of the participating students chose to focus his diploma work (Fenelius 2004) on teachers preparation and follow-up of visits to science centers and Liseberg, with one of the aims to find inspiration from the variety of ways to integrate a visit with classroom work.

3B. Teachers' preparation and follow-up

A questionnaire was sent out via e-mail to all addresses (65) to teachers participating in the 2003 science days (Fenelius, 2004). A total of 32 replies were obtained - from teachers who had all prepared the visit. Obviously, unprepared teachers are less likely to answer. About 70 % of the responding teachers had also done some form of follow-up. Even if all considered follow-up important, practical obstacles sometimes got in the way. Figure 1 shows a distribution of theoretical or practical preparation and follow-up activities for replies from different pupil age groups. The practical preparations included building miniature rides or constructing measuring equipment and trying it in familiar situations, e.g., in a car, playground or elevator. The theoretical preparations included introduction of relevant concepts concerning e.g. motion and geometry, as well as children formulating their own questions to the rides. The most common form of follow-up was a discussion in the classroom. In some of the older classes, the students produced reports and/or presented group work to the rest of the class.


Figure 1 Fraction of responses from different age groups indicating theoretical or practical preparation and follow-up.

3C. Student group preparation and outcome

The student groups participating in science days showed large variations in their involvement. In addition to assisting at a ride for part of the time, for about two hours, the students had the opportunity to observe or experiment in rides of their choice. According to the observation sheets from the science day in May 2003, this possibility was used very differently by different students. Some chose not to visit any other ride, whereas a number of others found time to observe up to 10 rides. In a couple of cases, the preparation was limited to an introduction by the project leader and the teacher chose a role as observer during the science day. In these cases, the students visited on the average 2 additional rides. On the other hand, students who's teachers were actively involved and invited discussions during the visit found time for an average of 3-4 rides.

An important learning opportunity is the discussions about written reports in connection with a group presentation. The writing often shows very clearly what students have understood and not, and often students in an "opposition" group often challenge the writing of their peers, and force them to clarify the situation. In this way, common misconceptions can be made more visible, helping students to adopt a more Newtonian understanding of force and motion. The reports and pre- and post-tests showed that some misconceptions had been resolved. Nevertheless, in a some cases, the reports indicated the need for additional challenging dialogues.

3D Students preparing a visit for a school class

A few of the student teachers at University College of Halmstad had the opportunity to introduce the amusement park visit to a class of 10-year olds and also to join the class in the park. They prepared experiments before the visit and assisted with pre- and post-test of the children. Both students and children were interviewed as part of a PhD research project by Pernilla Nilsson. A remarkable observation was the similarity in the way student teachers and children discuss the inertia of the body in terms such as "the body was used to the speed" or "the body wanted to continue". Through the project, the students were involved in monitoring the learning outcome for the 10-year olds, and will continue the studies in the form of diploma works. The presentation investigation of the understanding and learning of the children was accepted for the IOSTE conference (Nilsson et al, 2004) and the closer analysis of the student learning will be the subject of a subsequent paper.

4. Discussion

4A. Analysis

The observations of teachers with their classes at Liseberg indicate that directing an extramural activity for a class is a demanding activity, which has not always been learned or trained during teacher education. Many teachers have, however, expressed how much easier they find it to plan the second visit. Thus, giving students a chance to participate already during the pre-service training, should leave them better prepared for extramural class activities. The different groups have used the Liseberg visit in many different ways and below, we will discuss how the focus of the task affects the learning.

School contact and student learning - of what?

The new teacher education (Utbildningsdepartementet, 2000) prescribes that the "VFU" - learning outside the university, typically in a school - should account for 25% of the initial subject studies. The interpretation of the VFU intentions vary between different teacher educations, as well as the possibilities to integrate it into the subject. In this project, where a large number of student groups participated, the interplay between their focus and their outcome of the day was an unexpected observation. From the reports and presentations a few different approaches, such as pedagogics, didactics, science education, physics education or physics, could be distinguished. Within these areas a number of tasks are possible, sometimes as prescribed by the course leader, sometimes as interpreted by the students: From reports and presentations, we found that students in the first categories rarely showed any intention of leading the pupils' reasoning. At first, this seems surprising. However, students who are themselves not completely clear about the distinction e.g. between position, velocity and acceleration, are unlikely to lead pupils into discussion about these concepts. Without having tried out an experiment first-hand, it may be difficult to challenge pupils to give more precise observations, and, if necessary, take a second tour. Many of the first-year student teachers were not comfortable taking on a teacher role. Students in later years of their education showed insight in the need to understand a phenomenon in order to explain to someone else, and thus were often eager to learn more about the physics involved. In this way, their learning in connection with the Liseberg visit resembled that of students with a physics focus, who were in many cases eager to share their knowledge. Differences were, however, found to arise during project presentations, where students misconceptions or incomplete understanding were sometimes more tolerated if the task was viewed as primarily within "education". Some non-teacher students, who obviously had a physics focus, chose to include a video recording of a dialogue with children or to include it in the form of a role play in their group presentations. A somewhat surprising conclusion is thus that a stronger "subject" focus can enhance the learning about children's understanding - and that a lack of the subject focus may limit the student learning about children's conceptions.

Difficulties

Not all intentions in the original proposal could be fulfilled. Apart from external complications, such as personnel change, there were also unexpected, more fundamental difficulties.

Many student teachers preferred to stay on the ground, rather than trying rides and experiments for themselves. These students obviously missed out on the chance to study acceleration with their own body, and to complement the experience with observations of any measuring equipment. However, they also found it more difficult to discuss children's experiences, and were unlikely to challenge children's descriptions. We were surprised at the relatively large number of students who found that nausea and dizziness got in the way. From earlier experiences of class visits, we did know that a few students in each class would refrain from the high drop towers, but have also found that refusing e.g. the Liseberg coaster has been very rare.

We also found that many student teachers would not believe that various phenomena would observable, and if so, they would doubt that children would be able to do any observations - even if we know this to be the case from discussions during guided class tours in 2000 and 2001. The first-hand experience is important, both in physics and in education! For teachers uncomfortable on rides, mathematics activities or other tasks involving only observation are preferrable.

Not only students, but also many colleagues, preferred the solid ground. Not all were prepared to take on the responsibility for guiding students at a particular ride. Partly, this reflects the current work situation at the universities, but again, the lack of first-hand experience often gets in the way. To study Newton's laws from within a rotating or accelerated system, using the body as an acceleration detectors, requires a certain rethinking, whereas to the observer on the ground, the person on the ride could as well have been any inanimate object exposed to external forces.

An additional difficulty has been to ensure that all classes come well-prepared, with suitable equipment. A possible interpretation is that earlier teacher educations have failed to prepare teachers to make educational use of visits outside school. For some, a science festival visit to Liseberg may be a "bad-conscience visit" to ensure that pupils have been exposed to some physics, as prescribed in the curriculum. A few teachers expected a full-service experience.

4B. Implications

For many students the task of assisting classes in connection with amusement park rides has proven too difficult. However, students realize the potential for learning in an amusement park, but also their own limitations in making full use of it. More experienced students have been able to use a science day as a very rewarding learning opportunity.

The possibility to use the experience of the body to enhance physics learning is not limited to amusement parks. In fact, playground physics could be an important complement, and its ease of access makes it easier starting point. It will be tried with entering physics students at Göteborg University in September 2004. Both playground and amusement park rides offer an inside view into forces in accelerated and rotating coordinate systems.

Alternative conceptions of force and motion are very common, and are known to be resistant to teaching. The reports and pre- and post-tests showed that some of them had been resolved. Nevertheless, the student reports indicated the need for additional challenging dialogues in a few areas. Supporting material for teacher educators to address these points will be developed as part of our continued collaboration.

4C. Conclusions

Liseberg can provide excellent learning possibilities, but the rides do not radiate knowledge. Dialogue, observation and reflexion, and possibly calculations, are important ingredients to convert the amusement park experience to a deeper understanding of motion and forces. The learning outcomes of ten-year olds in connection with class visits to the amusement park was studied in a licentiate thesis by Sara Bagge (2003). The PhD work by Pernilla Nilsson adds investigations of the student learning outcome to the study of children's learning. The experiences from the present RHU project are incorporated in the work for the RHU-financed project "Amusement Park Mathematics as Part of "VFU" in Teacher Education" (013/G03), and to some extent in a project "Engineering Physics for the Whole Body" funded by C-SELT (Chalmers Strategic Effort in Learning and Teaching). They also live on within the teacher educations at Halmstad and Karlstad.

The surprisingly positive involvement of several engineering students during science days point to the need to facilitate transitions from engineering to teaching programmes. This is kept in mind in current discussions at Göteborg University about the possibility to create a masters programme combining mathematics or science with education.

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Author Note

Ann-Marie Pendrill
Physics and Engineering Physics
Göteborg University and Chalmers

This project has been funded by the Swedish Council for Higher Education under grant G02/30. Liseberg has generously opened its amusement park for student investigations. The project "Slagkraft" received initial funding from FRN in 1999. Additional funding was also provided by Göteborg university.

Main collaborators in the present project have been Sara Bagge, now att Navet Science Center in Borås as well as Pernilla Nilsson, Högskolan i Halmstad and Roger Andersson, Högskolan i Karlstad, and both PhD students at FoNTD - the National Graduate School for Science and Technology Education. Experiences are shared within the NNORSC - Nordic Network of Researchers in Science Communication. In addition, many other colleagues and school teachers around the country have shared their experiences, insights and ideas.