I am a 49 year veteran science teacher. I started as university professor back in Mexico in 1975. I cannot begin to tell you how much I and my family have suffered. My thesis work was about using the scientific method to teach science. I was a star student that came to the US on a government scholarship. I have been put on leave, investigated and sometimes convicted on ON NOT KNOWING HOW TO TEACH by administrators that have no clue about how science is supposed to work. It is amazing thatI am still doing it. Just to get my credential was an odyssey.
I'd love to have classes like that! The problem, at least in my school, is that you'd have to also train the students to learn to appreciate this kind of knowledge or science in general. I can't tell you how disencouraging my Physics and Chemistry classes are, not because of the subject itself or the teachers, but because the students just don't shut up. While a minority in the class is trying to learn something new, because of the math and numbers involved they just turn around and start talking to their friends, not minding that it is distracting.
Amanda Cardoso Fair Point. We don't have this problem in my school but I understand what you said. It gets better trough the years tough, students that don't pay attention get filtered out.
Amanda Cardoso In England, in Australia, in USA and in other countries students pick up the subjects the want to study. If they find science not interesting they can easily drop the class and don't be annoying to their classmate who are interested in. Unluckly in Italy, and in other countries the school has compulsory subjects which forces student to study subjects they may don't want to. That's why this kind of idea could works really well in Britain, Australia...and so on
You are actually pointing to a secondary issue that he is treading around because the first issue he is addressing exists, engagement. Those students who are talking, are not talking because they lack appreciation. They cannot form appreciation because there is no engagement. To you, for finds Physics and Chemistry exciting an interesting, your already engaged in those subjects you care about the outcomes you care about the experiment and because you care you appreciate the knowledge being passed to you. However, you must accept and understand you are not the norm. To think you are the norm is a fallacy. Stop for a moment and think about the average life of a nonengaged teen. It's Facebook, TH-cam, Instagram (very few of those if any in that day are what we would consider scientifically engaging or enriching). What results is a deficit in understanding and engagement. However, the real crux of the argument is this; "People are not interested in things that they place no value on and do not see as having a purpose or immediate impact life." The talkers that you speak of and bemoan are talking because of this deficit. That deficit will continue to exist in the current state of teaching for some of the reasons Mr. Doecette speaks of. So to cure your problem we have to as, "Well, how do we teach people to value science?" and that gets back to what Mr. Doecette is talking about, we teach value and understanding by asking questions and getting people involved and engaged in learning. Which brings you back to the problem being engagement.
The problem I have witnessed is less with the students and more with the curriculum. The focus is no longer on usefulness, or even just educational. The focus isn't on developing critical thinking skills, or empowering students, or preparing students for the future. Textbook companies, through the use of lobbying and political ads, have inserted this one word into education and curriculum that is similar to the word "fresh" in food service, and the word is "rigor". Every politician, district, and anyone else seem convinced they want to have a "rigorous" curriculum. Rigorous doesn't mean "quality", it doesn't mean "thorough", rigorous literally means difficult, or my favorite one, meaningless never ending work. When they say the curriculum is "rigorous", they are literally just saying "the curriculum is difficult, and taxing on students". Rigorous does NOT mean quality, for some reason schools are focused on simply making the things they are teaching more complex, more challenging, and nothing else. And to test if these "rigorous" classes are actually giving kids the information that they will likely forget in a month or two, we use large, standardized, "rigorous" tests. Most of the kids at my school accept this, and that is why most of them slack off and chat. Cuz most of them know that they aren't going to be using exponential regression to determine what the decay factor is on a city's population, because if they don't enjoy doing it in class, they definitely aren't going to want to do a job involving it. That's the real problem to me, classes teach the test, and most of the information is so ridiculously specialized or specific that people end up sitting through classes that they know for a fact will do nothing for their future. I don't think a lack of knowledge involving world history or geography is going to impact how well a surgeon will perform in his job. We need to really stop teaching for the sole reason of "make a bunch of kids pass this test on information that in 9/10 times they will never need nor use". I am not saying we should stop teaching chemistry or math, but we should enable students to get more specialization, similar to college. I am currently enrolled in a CTE school on top of my regular high school, learning about aviation maintenance. I was informed by my school that, even though I have a 12 hour school day already, I would need to take 2 online classes, ELA and American History. Because apparently, it is felt that not knowing the founding fathers or struggling with MLA format will somehow impact my ability to repair a wing, or inspect a jet engine. I kind of feel like the excuse that "well this could be useful in a future career" no longer applies, because I have my career lined up. Even if I don't graduate the CTE school, which is highly unlikely, I will still have a job lined up at a repair station. I know what my future will be. Rather than wasting my time filling out worksheets about pilgrims or analyzing a text just for the sake of analyzing it, I think that instead I could maybe spend that time, I dunno, actually working towards my future, at my CTE school, where they actually prepare me for a career, rather than making me run on a hamster wheel with the excuse of "it might be useful in the future, if you choose a job that you clearly will never pick because of the fact that it is not at all interesting to you."
That's the thing is that if they're talking, they aren't engaged. You don't have to train students to appreciate knowledge. You just have to find a way to get them interested. If they're too much on snapchat then have them try to do research on how filters work or try to create their own filter and show the scientific work that they did. It's not hard to get a teenager to pay attention, it's just adults give up too easily and they'll just brush it off as a "oh it's just a teen thing" when its not. YOU have to be willing to do the work to get them out of their shells. Don't blame the students if you aren't even trying to make an effort to get them to learn
Marx said that to change education, the educators must be educated. Many science teachers have no industry experience. Hence we end up with students studying for grades rather than know how to apply scientific principles to practical problems. Alternative assessments will not solve this problem.
I completely agree, as a science teacher this is my philosophy. Unfortunately I have had to purchase my own supplies, wash all my own glassware ( rooms did not even have a sink or water) and parents would complain that tests should have study guides with the exact page in the book the questions are from. All in all, I still did it, and the students did great on the applied science assessments....but schools and parents do not appreciate that.
KEEP GOING! All worth and Great Changes are super hard... But they are for fighter people.. As you...you will do it sir!...KEEP GOING in your such a nobal work... Thank for God for those people As you how fight to make out world better....
As long as we teachers keep funding ourselves instead of trying to get things changed...we will have exhausted teachers. We need to teach smarter and demand change. Smaller chlasses that reduce workload would be a good start. Don't American kids deserve far better than they are getting now?
@@archisingh4462 People should start their heart and brain . People without brains, they are uneducated And without heart, they will not find the truth .
@user-dq2xe1zd7f about empathy and mind you should listen "James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents' | TED Talk". And read something like "evolution of cooperation and altruism", review of "The WEIRDest People of the World" by Henrich, an article "The Gendered Brain: Are Men and Women Different Inside the Head?" by Datta. May be rationality site by CFAR.
His students are lucky to have him!! He's teaching them how real science and scientific thinking works! I wish he'll upload some of his classes to TH-cam.
here's what it's like in India. here, when you take science, Medical or engineering, you have one single test at the end of high school for college entrances. called the JEE for engineering and AIPMT for medical. it's all about the application of the things you learn. personally, I'm here in junior high school and I realise the fact that in middle school senior or when I was 15, I was SO MUCH into science. I had so much interest in modern physics. but as soon as I hit high school and turned 16, now for me it's about knowing the formula, applying it and passing that test. I feel so bad that I loved science so much and now it's like okay okay (because the inner scientist in me never dies). suicide rates in children here because of the pressure of this exam is super high. we go to school to get attendance, go to private tuition for passing school exams and go to coaching institutes to clear that test. it sucks so much but that's what we gotta do. sike
@Marianne If only it were so easy! There are a few people who still teach in the way its supposed to be taught but they're sadly outnumbered by the purists
@Marianne That's 100% true. And we have all revolted against the current state of things. But the reality is that we have failed. In this system, the students are powerless and as much as I would love to change the system, added with the fact that I have tried to do so, the sad fact is that in the end, the only thing it gives us is cynicism and no net results
@Marianne Thanks for that essential advice. Being in college, I've had my fair share of authorities to deal with and the people who are willing to change the system aren't in charge of the essential legal devices. Anyways, thanks for the last statement and for sympathizing with our pain.
When you said it was no longer Newton's law, it was your students' law because they discovered it made me almost tear up. Science is about discovering the world and learning how it works and how we fit into it, not about memorizing what people before us had learned. Science is meaningful because we get to dive into our human interests, not because someone decided how the world worked a hundred years ago and now we all have to go along with that. Thank you for reminding people that there are other ways.
This is a wonderful presentation about two important ideas for society: (1) how to empower every student with knowledge about the world, such that it gives them meaning & lets them be more effective better people, and (2) how can our educational institutions better assess conceptual understanding and retention of ideas/knowledge. He showed (modeled) the first. The second is a much broader topic, so he astutely did not expound. I'm hoping educators pay attention & experiment - then perhaps implement his or similar suggestions. Mr. Doucette's style, pace, subdued enthusiasm, and emotional intelligence suggest he is a very good science teacher. He demonstrated he is a very good speaker. Bravo to TEDx for such a talk!!
It was a great presentation! As scientists, we need to make a better connection between the practices, the tests and the scientific method, which is the base of science and of the critical thought. Congrats!
I think this is absolutely brilliant.. I think I finally understood eddy currents in the five minutes he talked about it better than the two hours my teacher spent with her presentations trying to help us understand. That speaks a lot about how much we need practical learning in class rooms.
Fascinating talk. I've been teaching English in Japan for the last 10 years, and the need to teach for tests is the bane of many of my peers. There are students who score well in tests who have almost no communication ability outside of a classroom setting. There are also students who are excellent speakers, but as the tests were designed and marked by non-native speakers, these student's excellent English is marked as incorrect because it doesn't match the accepted patterns for that particular test. Unless the focus is switched to practical skills instead of rote memorization and "correct" word for word translation between languages that are too different to translate word for word, Japan will continue to have the some of the poorest English in Asia, despite making the students work harder than any other countries.
I always wanted this kind of learning culture or environment, we have been forced to learn theories without understanding it, which I going to forget it within 2-3 days, science should be fun regular assessment of learning, not just for getting good marks in exams.
The problem with most schools is that they think forcing people to do a different thing will make them like it. You can't force learning, and you can't force interest. Let a kid CHOOSE it, and let them learn for real. I love knowing how things work, making inventions, asking questions, but I sucked at science in school. I got in trouble for asking questions, the whole of the class was paperwork and memorization, and I got yelled at for writing specifics or questions in the margins of multiple-choice tests.
He is a dream teacher❤.. I don't even want to remember about my highschool teachers. They were monsters...No laughing,no holidays and no library periods 😔
in my country, the curriculum content is too heavily packed. i just wish i can do the same teaching technique, however, provided with only 1 hour and 30 minutes for science class per week, it just seem impossible to allow them to learn through curiosity and at the same trying to catching up with the syllabus and not to mention the standardized exams.
00:07 Scientific literacy is crucial for addressing global challenges 02:15 Scientific and critical thinking empowers understanding 04:10 Demonstrations alone are not sufficient to promote curiosity and critical thinking. 05:59 Science tests are the wrong goal for education 07:57 Science learning is about asking questions and creating your own mystery box 10:04 Modeling instruction is an effective approach in science education 12:01 Retraining teachers to teach more effectively 13:51 High-stakes standardized exams should be scaled back Crafted by Merlin AI.
I think teachers sometimes don't quite understand the depth of the lack of knowledge of students or people in general. I was talking to a friend of mine regaling about the significance of Einstein's equation, E=mc2 and she bluntly asked, what is an equation? That stopped me in my tracks. I guess I would say in this case, it is an unusual or surprising equivalence.
Great talk, but too often TED talks on education repeat the same platitudes and generalities but don't get into specific examples or point people toward resources that they can try out and begin building a good scientific modeling curriculum. This TED talk shows how physics class and modeling instruction are a natural fit, but what about biology, environmental science, marine science, etc?
Teachers get fired for not following the state curriculum. But I agree, and I think more teachers should go on strikes for this reason. However, the economic and political backing is behind Pearson and college board.
I go school in South Africa (I'm not poor or in a poor school, people always think that when I say I'm from South Africa). We don't have Standardized Tests here because in the beginning of a test we get 4 Multichoice questions and the rest is practical. We also learn by doing experiments and that helps a lot. But the tests is soo hard.
I hv always thought that general literacy/knowledge level of public does not keep pace with society change is a huge problem. Considering 99% of the daily/common knowledge we hv now is useless in job, I believe that regular scientific knowledge and thinking can also be incorporated into daily knowledge without making people feeling they are learning useless thing if we are willing to change the education system to make science a mainstream common knowledge starting at very young age.
Very nice presentation. Here in brazil we are only focusing in do tests and pass on an university, it is rare we do some experiment.... this is sad... sometimes i hate Brazil because of that
Please. Don't hate your country for that. As shown in other comments, it is not much difference from other countries. Including my country, Malaysia. Does the leader of the world know about this. Most probably yes. But, why they do nothing. Because change is hard.
gee louise...Students who pay attention in class, ask questions and do all the work because they ACTUALLY WANT TO LEARN will do fine on exams!!!! Been teaching high school off and on for over 30 years, mostly in "disadvantaged" neighborhoods. It boils down to holding them responsible for learning and not keep telling them that exams are "bad" and "unfair" etc. I have 150 students this year and I cannot grade that many "portfolios". The reason American education stinks even worse than it did when I started 30 years ago is thinking like this. We have more tools to make learning far more interesting than I did 30 years ago...but students are still not doing well because they know they will be passed without hardly doing a thing. Every time there is another "great idea" all it does is increase the teacher workload...and Americans do not want to put up the funds for better schooling. I'm exhausted. Don't American kids deserve far better than they are getting now?
In my dreams the schools that we teach at would not only incorporate classes which utilize clever methods of teaching students to think critically/use logic and reason BUT even better would be to obviously throw out tests altogether along with mandatory homework and touch base on social and emotional control and self-regulation, emulate the very institutions that our students will meet as adults in the world they are pushed out into, how to set and meet their own goals, how to plan, support them as individuals, love them as our students, empathize with them, seek to know them, open ourselves to them, allow ourselves to be vulnerable in front of them, always practice what we ask of them, treat them more as peers than 'just kids", realize that their feelings are valid despite our feelings about their importance, and helping them to be good people. I love science, I love my students, and the universally experienced issue between what admin desires from them/us instead of admins/parents/teachers/students come together and demand that we drastically change HOW we decide to educate our students. I cannot help but feel/know we are wasting our students time and only indoctrinating them into a system we generally all hate. I live/continue to teach in a way that always seeks to actively love and support my kids with the hope that I'll live to see a day in which we start to change the world through changing what school is and what it aim's to do for our kids.
Beware of people who tell you to think critically, but then tell you exactly how to go about it. There is nothing unreasonable about thinking extra terrestrials are involved in some UFO sightings. As for group projects, they are extremely time consuming. The knowledge and thinking skills they convey could easily be conveyed in just a few minutes with a short lecture or video.
Science class used to be a favorite of mine but I’ve been chained to the same subject for the past three months, not to mention a boring one. We’re working on rocks and minerals in 9th grade here and the teachers try but we are taught at 7:15 in the morning so I don’t know how they expect us to be active. I wake up at 5 in the morning hoping, PRAYING for a good day and the first thing I get is a 2 hour lecture on rocks and minerals and their different subgroups. It’s been boring out of my mind, there’s been no demonstration or fun experiments, just notes and videos made for kids under the age of 7.
Before I watch this I SAY WHAT I KEEP SAYING visually and interactively. Have kids love to try and test new things, form opinions and be okay with said pinions being challenged. Now I watch
I like every word of what you say , the truth of this is the lesson of my life, which I am trying to undo as a teacher, i make students laugh so that they can work seriously thanks for the wonderful talk
Yes.I tried to explain that to a lot of my teachers but they thought I did that because I was 'lazy' and 'just didn't wanna learn'.No! I;M in 7th grade and I LOVE science.Mostly chemistry and astronomy.
Students in South florida only get 2.5 hours is science instruction per week at the elementary level. It's almost impossible to get this level of depth in that time. I still try but it's a struggle.
Yep. Same goes for all subjects, teaching to the test fails to motivate students to learn how (and why!) to learn. Metacognition and rhetorical skill is just gone from many public high schools outside of debate clubs, if there is even that. Students _are not stupid_ - it's a part of our diffuse cultural knowledge that butterfly collecting is the old way of doing science. Trivia is _not science._ There is more to obtaining knowledge than seeking out a bucket of truth a day, and in my experience _the worst students_ in the current system are the ones that have the most easily demonstrated critical thinking ability, because they are quick to understand how much of a pointless endeavor it is to learn the content of a single textbook and never look back. It's a fucking tragedy that we're pushing them away from academia. Unfortunately educators have a heavy load of pseudoscience they need to deal with, in the form of "These methods are tested and proven." They're proven to fail. But introduce a new idea, and the hostility surges. "Well what if it's worse?" What if the sky turned purple? What if water was suddenly the consistency of syrup? If educators don't trust science, we can't apply it to education.
I agree there is a problem, but I don't think the magnet demo is any better than the explosion in terms of teaching. Either experiment will interest students!
I 100% agree with getting rid of standardized testing. And while what he's suggesting is better than traditional approaches, it's not the whole picture. Students need more individual choice. We expect them to come out of school and enter the real world after making very few real choices for themselves. By the time most of us are 10 years old, we have a pretty good idea of what we do and don't like. We either REALLY know, or we have it reduced to a handful of things. Students should be able to spend 100% of their time pursuing these interests. If students choose to study science at whatever age, send them to the local Danny. But compel them to do it and you'll get marginally better results than you used to. I trained graduate teaching assistants to do modeling based labs for two years as well as ran them myself. The results were better than older approaches, but not that much better. Plainly put, the students were forced to do something they didn't want to do, and they didn't care about the activities. They wanted the grade they needed for the class so they could move on to the next box to check for their degree. Cheating was rampant and to be honest, I could hardly blame them for doing it. We do need change in education. And while what Danny suggests is an important part of it, it would be substantially more effective if the system allowed for students to make choices for themselves more broadly. (and if we better mentored/encouraged them. People need life coaches not dictators. I could keep going, but one rant seemed long enough lol)
I like this guys optimism and his ideas, but maybe have what he's describing as a separate class? As 3rd year university physics student I can tell you that those poor kids in his standard physics class are gonna hit a brick wall when they get to their first university physics test and notice that not a single question asks them to conduct an experiment to derive they're own law. I get the message and it's a great, but sadly, universities are focused on if you know the equations and how to use them.
It doesn't matter what you do, some people will never care about science enough to learn anything beyond the bare minimum. And that's ok, people are interested in different things. What we should be doing, is making sure we don't lose people who otherwise would have been interested in a certain field, and yes the education system and society in general is a dumpster fire at filtering people the appropriate way.
This is preschool not high school; Children need practice thinking spontaneously correctly, interpreting truth, insightfully, reading with comprehension, arguing perceptively, (whereas, perspective comes with Tinkertoy® Etc.), not, mulling warmed-over hypotheses... Children need an intelligent audience to discuss their parents' introductory college level sciences....
if you do not end up with a question in science class after every laws you are just adopting the existing laws and no new discovery will happen ,but the point is that nature is so dynamic it is changing everyday and we are not., then the day will come when we will face disaster right at the corner and the left humanity will will try to fill the puzzle but it will be too late at that time . we people studying natural science are not investing in our future but living on the theories borrowed from last decade or century.
Dear sir , please explain this to my parents & I will be grateful to you for rest of my life . Here in India million of students prepare for a competition exam just to get into a college, hundreds of them commit suicide during incredibly depressing preparation (toxic behavior of teachers as well as parents, high tuition fees in coaching institutions & parents who don't care for your feelings , they just want you to score marks) And those who are not much creative & can rotely memorize concepts and all the stuff & can vomit it into exam in very limited time will get admission into college. And worse part is that not all students have access to this so called education. And at last if student can't make it he/she would be a failure.
Mystery boxes are all well and good........unless you teach Biology. Science teacher workshops are 10:1 Physci:Life science, even when they are called "Inquiry workshops."
sure, but exams should challenge you to show that you have understand the theory and can use and explain it, not that you are able to remember a dozend formulars and are lucky at a multiple choice test even if you got no clue at all
Our teacher uses a note system, Its supposed to be a new type of test per say, we are graded on what we show that we learn on this note system there are still tests, the notes take the place of assignments, which we still do, there just not graded
You can do take home exams or allot more time for them so that you can put items that call on higher ordered thinking/scenarios and problems not rehearsed in lecture sessions, graded homework, or optional p-set problems. They can be nuanced and contain more interesting contexts than those. Basically you are expected to use what you learned through those venues as a foundation to tackle more challenging problems or recognize the content in contexts. I have had professors who gave assessments like this and it was very effective. There are also upper division science courses at my alma mater that straight up ask students to design, write up, and then present/defend research proposals. This process requires one to take ownership. You have to find relevant primary literature and reviews to essentially find novel questions/future aims not currently addressed in the field and then you have to learn how to write about it in a way that sells its significance. There are all types of assessments that require higher levels of understanding and engagement than the traditional assessments.
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Great to see my old high school teacher giving a TED Talk.
You are lucky to get such a teacher
Really?
I wish so badly I had a science teacher like him. You're so lucky!
You are lucky to had amazing physics teacher 👍👍
Old? Are we seeing the same man? He seems like a great teacher, lucky you :)
I am a 49 year veteran science teacher. I started as university professor back in Mexico in 1975. I cannot begin to tell you how much I and my family have suffered. My thesis work was about using the scientific method to teach science. I was a star student that came to the US on a government scholarship. I have been put on leave, investigated and sometimes convicted on ON NOT KNOWING HOW TO TEACH by administrators that have no clue about how science is supposed to work. It is amazing thatI am still doing it. Just to get my credential was an odyssey.
I'm actually a physics teacher, and I've learned a lot with this video, thanks!
Me too!
@@SathyaSankar sir from teaching how much we can earn monthly ?
@@chiragdagar7938 It depends. In schools in India you can't expect more than 20k rupees per month.
@@SathyaSankar ok sir
@@chiragdagar7938 I tutor in Sri Lanka, and can make millions of rupees each month. There is a big demand for tutors in Sri Lanka.
I'd love to have classes like that! The problem, at least in my school, is that you'd have to also train the students to learn to appreciate this kind of knowledge or science in general. I can't tell you how disencouraging my Physics and Chemistry classes are, not because of the subject itself or the teachers, but because the students just don't shut up. While a minority in the class is trying to learn something new, because of the math and numbers involved they just turn around and start talking to their friends, not minding that it is distracting.
Amanda Cardoso Fair Point. We don't have this problem in my school but I understand what you said.
It gets better trough the years tough, students that don't pay attention get filtered out.
Amanda Cardoso In England, in Australia, in USA and in other countries students pick up the subjects the want to study. If they find science not interesting they can easily drop the class and don't be annoying to their classmate who are interested in.
Unluckly in Italy, and in other countries the school has compulsory subjects which forces student to study subjects they may don't want to. That's why this kind of idea could works really well in Britain, Australia...and so on
You are actually pointing to a secondary issue that he is treading around because the first issue he is addressing exists, engagement. Those students who are talking, are not talking because they lack appreciation. They cannot form appreciation because there is no engagement. To you, for finds Physics and Chemistry exciting an interesting, your already engaged in those subjects you care about the outcomes you care about the experiment and because you care you appreciate the knowledge being passed to you.
However, you must accept and understand you are not the norm. To think you are the norm is a fallacy. Stop for a moment and think about the average life of a nonengaged teen. It's Facebook, TH-cam, Instagram (very few of those if any in that day are what we would consider scientifically engaging or enriching). What results is a deficit in understanding and engagement. However, the real crux of the argument is this; "People are not interested in things that they place no value on and do not see as having a purpose or immediate impact life."
The talkers that you speak of and bemoan are talking because of this deficit. That deficit will continue to exist in the current state of teaching for some of the reasons Mr. Doecette speaks of.
So to cure your problem we have to as, "Well, how do we teach people to value science?" and that gets back to what Mr. Doecette is talking about, we teach value and understanding by asking questions and getting people involved and engaged in learning. Which brings you back to the problem being engagement.
The problem I have witnessed is less with the students and more with the curriculum. The focus is no longer on usefulness, or even just educational. The focus isn't on developing critical thinking skills, or empowering students, or preparing students for the future. Textbook companies, through the use of lobbying and political ads, have inserted this one word into education and curriculum that is similar to the word "fresh" in food service, and the word is "rigor". Every politician, district, and anyone else seem convinced they want to have a "rigorous" curriculum. Rigorous doesn't mean "quality", it doesn't mean "thorough", rigorous literally means difficult, or my favorite one, meaningless never ending work. When they say the curriculum is "rigorous", they are literally just saying "the curriculum is difficult, and taxing on students". Rigorous does NOT mean quality, for some reason schools are focused on simply making the things they are teaching more complex, more challenging, and nothing else. And to test if these "rigorous" classes are actually giving kids the information that they will likely forget in a month or two, we use large, standardized, "rigorous" tests. Most of the kids at my school accept this, and that is why most of them slack off and chat. Cuz most of them know that they aren't going to be using exponential regression to determine what the decay factor is on a city's population, because if they don't enjoy doing it in class, they definitely aren't going to want to do a job involving it. That's the real problem to me, classes teach the test, and most of the information is so ridiculously specialized or specific that people end up sitting through classes that they know for a fact will do nothing for their future. I don't think a lack of knowledge involving world history or geography is going to impact how well a surgeon will perform in his job. We need to really stop teaching for the sole reason of "make a bunch of kids pass this test on information that in 9/10 times they will never need nor use". I am not saying we should stop teaching chemistry or math, but we should enable students to get more specialization, similar to college. I am currently enrolled in a CTE school on top of my regular high school, learning about aviation maintenance. I was informed by my school that, even though I have a 12 hour school day already, I would need to take 2 online classes, ELA and American History. Because apparently, it is felt that not knowing the founding fathers or struggling with MLA format will somehow impact my ability to repair a wing, or inspect a jet engine. I kind of feel like the excuse that "well this could be useful in a future career" no longer applies, because I have my career lined up. Even if I don't graduate the CTE school, which is highly unlikely, I will still have a job lined up at a repair station. I know what my future will be. Rather than wasting my time filling out worksheets about pilgrims or analyzing a text just for the sake of analyzing it, I think that instead I could maybe spend that time, I dunno, actually working towards my future, at my CTE school, where they actually prepare me for a career, rather than making me run on a hamster wheel with the excuse of "it might be useful in the future, if you choose a job that you clearly will never pick because of the fact that it is not at all interesting to you."
That's the thing is that if they're talking, they aren't engaged. You don't have to train students to appreciate knowledge. You just have to find a way to get them interested. If they're too much on snapchat then have them try to do research on how filters work or try to create their own filter and show the scientific work that they did. It's not hard to get a teenager to pay attention, it's just adults give up too easily and they'll just brush it off as a "oh it's just a teen thing" when its not. YOU have to be willing to do the work to get them out of their shells. Don't blame the students if you aren't even trying to make an effort to get them to learn
Marx said that to change education, the educators must be educated. Many science teachers have no industry experience. Hence we end up with students studying for grades rather than know how to apply scientific principles to practical problems. Alternative assessments will not solve this problem.
I completely agree, as a science teacher this is my philosophy. Unfortunately I have had to purchase my own supplies, wash all my own glassware ( rooms did not even have a sink or water) and parents would complain that tests should have study guides with the exact page in the book the questions are from. All in all, I still did it, and the students did great on the applied science assessments....but schools and parents do not appreciate that.
KEEP GOING! All worth and Great Changes are super hard... But they are for fighter people.. As you...you will do it sir!...KEEP GOING in your such a nobal work... Thank for God for those people As you how fight to make out world better....
As long as we teachers keep funding ourselves instead of trying to get things changed...we will have exhausted teachers. We need to teach smarter and demand change. Smaller chlasses that reduce workload would be a good start.
Don't American kids deserve far better than they are getting now?
@@ArmadilloSusan not only Americans dude, same for my own country and infact the whole world!
@@archisingh4462
People should start their heart and brain .
People without brains, they are uneducated
And without heart, they will not find the truth .
@user-dq2xe1zd7f about empathy and mind you should listen "James Flynn: Why our IQ levels are higher than our grandparents' | TED Talk".
And read something like "evolution of cooperation and altruism", review of "The WEIRDest People of the World" by Henrich, an article "The Gendered Brain: Are Men and Women Different Inside the Head?" by Datta.
May be rationality site by CFAR.
His students are lucky to have him!! He's teaching them how real science and scientific thinking works! I wish he'll upload some of his classes to TH-cam.
He has uploaded some videos search his name
here's what it's like in India. here, when you take science, Medical or engineering, you have one single test at the end of high school for college entrances. called the JEE for engineering and AIPMT for medical. it's all about the application of the things you learn. personally, I'm here in junior high school and I realise the fact that in middle school senior or when I was 15, I was SO MUCH into science. I had so much interest in modern physics. but as soon as I hit high school and turned 16, now for me it's about knowing the formula, applying it and passing that test. I feel so bad that I loved science so much and now it's like okay okay (because the inner scientist in me never dies). suicide rates in children here because of the pressure of this exam is super high. we go to school to get attendance, go to private tuition for passing school exams and go to coaching institutes to clear that test. it sucks so much but that's what we gotta do. sike
I Relate to you bruh
I feel you. The same thing happened to me until I found my lost love again. Happily, I made a career out of her
@Marianne If only it were so easy! There are a few people who still teach in the way its supposed to be taught but they're sadly outnumbered by the purists
@Marianne That's 100% true. And we have all revolted against the current state of things. But the reality is that we have failed. In this system, the students are powerless and as much as I would love to change the system, added with the fact that I have tried to do so, the sad fact is that in the end, the only thing it gives us is cynicism and no net results
@Marianne Thanks for that essential advice. Being in college, I've had my fair share of authorities to deal with and the people who are willing to change the system aren't in charge of the essential legal devices. Anyways, thanks for the last statement and for sympathizing with our pain.
If only the world had more teachers like him...
When you said it was no longer Newton's law, it was your students' law because they discovered it made me almost tear up. Science is about discovering the world and learning how it works and how we fit into it, not about memorizing what people before us had learned. Science is meaningful because we get to dive into our human interests, not because someone decided how the world worked a hundred years ago and now we all have to go along with that. Thank you for reminding people that there are other ways.
This is a wonderful presentation about two important ideas for society: (1) how to empower every student with knowledge about the world, such that it gives them meaning & lets them be more effective better people, and (2) how can our educational institutions better assess conceptual understanding and retention of ideas/knowledge. He showed (modeled) the first. The second is a much broader topic, so he astutely did not expound. I'm hoping educators pay attention & experiment - then perhaps implement his or similar suggestions.
Mr. Doucette's style, pace, subdued enthusiasm, and emotional intelligence suggest he is a very good science teacher. He demonstrated he is a very good speaker. Bravo to TEDx for such a talk!!
It was a great presentation! As scientists, we need to make a better connection between the practices, the tests and the scientific method, which is the base of science and of the critical thought. Congrats!
I think this is absolutely brilliant.. I think I finally understood eddy currents in the five minutes he talked about it better than the two hours my teacher spent with her presentations trying to help us understand. That speaks a lot about how much we need practical learning in class rooms.
Critical thinking is not used.
Problem of education system.
Great idea Danny
Thank you
LOVED this. Examinations are the key problem. All my teachers admit that they just need us to memorise stuff: not learn.
No. Exams still test your comprehension of the subject and how far along you are at understanding key concepts
@kho5254 it would be so if there were no mistakes in tests.
@@kho5254but it makes science not fun
Fascinating talk.
I've been teaching English in Japan for the last 10 years, and the need to teach for tests is the bane of many of my peers.
There are students who score well in tests who have almost no communication ability outside of a classroom setting.
There are also students who are excellent speakers, but as the tests were designed and marked by non-native speakers, these student's excellent English is marked as incorrect because it doesn't match the accepted patterns for that particular test.
Unless the focus is switched to practical skills instead of rote memorization and "correct" word for word translation between languages that are too different to translate word for word, Japan will continue to have the some of the poorest English in Asia, despite making the students work harder than any other countries.
I always wanted this kind of learning culture or environment, we have been forced to learn theories without understanding it, which I going to forget it within 2-3 days, science should be fun regular assessment of learning, not just for getting good marks in exams.
Thank God for people like you! I seriously question why other people (especially those with children) are not thinking like you. Keep it up bud!
The problem with most schools is that they think forcing people to do a different thing will make them like it. You can't force learning, and you can't force interest. Let a kid CHOOSE it, and let them learn for real.
I love knowing how things work, making inventions, asking questions, but I sucked at science in school. I got in trouble for asking questions, the whole of the class was paperwork and memorization, and I got yelled at for writing specifics or questions in the margins of multiple-choice tests.
He is a dream teacher❤.. I don't even want to remember about my highschool teachers. They were monsters...No laughing,no holidays and no library periods 😔
in my country, the curriculum content is too heavily packed. i just wish i can do the same teaching technique, however, provided with only 1 hour and 30 minutes for science class per week, it just seem impossible to allow them to learn through curiosity and at the same trying to catching up with the syllabus and not to mention the standardized exams.
How about extra classes?
00:07 Scientific literacy is crucial for addressing global challenges
02:15 Scientific and critical thinking empowers understanding
04:10 Demonstrations alone are not sufficient to promote curiosity and critical thinking.
05:59 Science tests are the wrong goal for education
07:57 Science learning is about asking questions and creating your own mystery box
10:04 Modeling instruction is an effective approach in science education
12:01 Retraining teachers to teach more effectively
13:51 High-stakes standardized exams should be scaled back
Crafted by Merlin AI.
8:48 Best camera work 2017.
I think teachers sometimes don't quite understand the depth of the lack of knowledge of students or people in general. I was talking to a friend of mine regaling about the significance of Einstein's equation, E=mc2 and she bluntly asked, what is an equation? That stopped me in my tracks. I guess I would say in this case, it is an unusual or surprising equivalence.
Why do we need to learn science when we can just say "You are fake news!"? Our children will be so proud of us!
Great talk, but too often TED talks on education repeat the same platitudes and generalities but don't get into specific examples or point people toward resources that they can try out and begin building a good scientific modeling curriculum. This TED talk shows how physics class and modeling instruction are a natural fit, but what about biology, environmental science, marine science, etc?
All that teachers need is passion to make this change possible..
Teachers get fired for not following the state curriculum. But I agree, and I think more teachers should go on strikes for this reason. However, the economic and political backing is behind Pearson and college board.
I go school in South Africa (I'm not poor or in a poor school, people always think that when I say I'm from South Africa). We don't have Standardized Tests here because in the beginning of a test we get 4 Multichoice questions and the rest is practical. We also learn by doing experiments and that helps a lot. But the tests is soo hard.
Which school?
One of the best talks i've watched
Definitely man Open mindedness and critical thinking. PREACH brudah! !!!!!!!!
Sir your students are very lucky to have you as a teacher
you're not wearing safety goggles during the experiment.
Lol these chemicals are not volatile
I used to be in the exact school he teached in Riga, Latvia. The school is ISL
Hey Jooho! We miss you at ISL :)
Hi
My elder brother is a scientist whatever he told me I don't understand at all, agree that learning science is not easy
The science classes of yesterday are gone, at least in our district. We are doing engaging, inquiry based lessons every day.
I get good knowledge from this video. Thanks motivators. I am from nepal`s jajarkot
I hv always thought that general literacy/knowledge level of public does not keep pace with society change is a huge problem. Considering 99% of the daily/common knowledge we hv now is useless in job, I believe that regular scientific knowledge and thinking can also be incorporated into daily knowledge without making people feeling they are learning useless thing if we are willing to change the education system to make science a mainstream common knowledge starting at very young age.
I am teaching a K-12 professional development course and this just became an assignment!
Homeschool style of teaching kids is what he just described.
Very nice presentation. Here in brazil we are only focusing in do tests and pass on an university, it is rare we do some experiment.... this is sad... sometimes i hate Brazil because of that
In Colombia is same, the students are treated as soldiers with a lot of duties.
leonardo carmona same case in India bro.
leonardo carmona Same here in Chile. I think that there aren't incentives to do it in others ways, someone have to take the lead.
Please. Don't hate your country for that. As shown in other comments, it is not much difference from other countries. Including my country, Malaysia.
Does the leader of the world know about this. Most probably yes. But, why they do nothing. Because change is hard.
same in india
Im student of physics, i live in the brazil, this is video so wonderful, congratulation.
Really good presentation. Glad I watched.
gee louise...Students who pay attention in class, ask questions and do all the work because they ACTUALLY WANT TO LEARN will do fine on exams!!!! Been teaching high school off and on for over 30 years, mostly in "disadvantaged" neighborhoods. It boils down to holding them responsible for learning and not keep telling them that exams are "bad" and "unfair" etc. I have 150 students this year and I cannot grade that many "portfolios".
The reason American education stinks even worse than it did when I started 30 years ago is thinking like this. We have more tools to make learning far more interesting than I did 30 years ago...but students are still not doing well because they know they will be passed without hardly doing a thing.
Every time there is another "great idea" all it does is increase the teacher workload...and Americans do not want to put up the funds for better schooling. I'm exhausted.
Don't American kids deserve far better than they are getting now?
This teacher taught very well.
In my dreams the schools that we teach at would not only incorporate classes which utilize clever methods of teaching students to think critically/use logic and reason BUT even better would be to obviously throw out tests altogether along with mandatory homework and touch base on social and emotional control and self-regulation, emulate the very institutions that our students will meet as adults in the world they are pushed out into, how to set and meet their own goals, how to plan, support them as individuals, love them as our students, empathize with them, seek to know them, open ourselves to them, allow ourselves to be vulnerable in front of them, always practice what we ask of them, treat them more as peers than 'just kids", realize that their feelings are valid despite our feelings about their importance, and helping them to be good people. I love science, I love my students, and the universally experienced issue between what admin desires from them/us instead of admins/parents/teachers/students come together and demand that we drastically change HOW we decide to educate our students. I cannot help but feel/know we are wasting our students time and only indoctrinating them into a system we generally all hate. I live/continue to teach in a way that always seeks to actively love and support my kids with the hope that I'll live to see a day in which we start to change the world through changing what school is and what it aim's to do for our kids.
Teacher must be respected why - see "The Secret of Our Success" by Henrich.
About self-control there's "Stumbling on Happiness" by Gilbert.
"A teacher to learn
A Master to unlearn." Sufi People of path
Beware of people who tell you to think critically, but then tell you exactly how to go about it. There is nothing unreasonable about thinking extra terrestrials are involved in some UFO sightings. As for group projects, they are extremely time consuming. The knowledge and thinking skills they convey could easily be conveyed in just a few minutes with a short lecture or video.
I have learned a lot. Thank You.
Finally someone told the truth about this joke called ''school'' these days.
Streemsable Luckily things are going in the right direction with STEM and TW.
It's not a joke anymore because a joke is funny, not something that hurts people and abuses them.
@@ErutaniaRose Maybe what Streemsable means is "dark" jokes?
What makes science teaching unique? Base on how will you watch sir danny?
This is SO inspiring... thank you!
Science class used to be a favorite of mine but I’ve been chained to the same subject for the past three months, not to mention a boring one. We’re working on rocks and minerals in 9th grade here and the teachers try but we are taught at 7:15 in the morning so I don’t know how they expect us to be active. I wake up at 5 in the morning hoping, PRAYING for a good day and the first thing I get is a 2 hour lecture on rocks and minerals and their different subgroups. It’s been boring out of my mind, there’s been no demonstration or fun experiments, just notes and videos made for kids under the age of 7.
7.15?! wow! my high school didn't start til 8.50, and that was homeroom for like 10mins or so.
I love class like this❤❤❤❤❤ talk while doing experiment
Before I watch this I SAY WHAT I KEEP SAYING visually and interactively. Have kids love to try and test new things, form opinions and be okay with said pinions being challenged. Now I watch
I like every word of what you say , the truth of this is the lesson of my life, which I am trying to undo as a teacher, i make students laugh so that they can work seriously thanks for the wonderful talk
His beginning was nice and yet no one laughed
Heartbreaking... :(
A population that cannot think critically is much easier to control.
Yes.I tried to explain that to a lot of my teachers but they thought I did that because I was 'lazy' and 'just didn't wanna learn'.No! I;M in 7th grade and I LOVE science.Mostly chemistry and astronomy.
Students in South florida only get 2.5 hours is science instruction per week at the elementary level. It's almost impossible to get this level of depth in that time. I still try but it's a struggle.
He's so handsome. I became is his fan after I watch this video. Love to watch more videos of him
Good words...true words
7:34 Nice trick! I had to watch it 4 times to solve it ... very simple and smart ;)
Yep. Same goes for all subjects, teaching to the test fails to motivate students to learn how (and why!) to learn. Metacognition and rhetorical skill is just gone from many public high schools outside of debate clubs, if there is even that. Students _are not stupid_ - it's a part of our diffuse cultural knowledge that butterfly collecting is the old way of doing science. Trivia is _not science._ There is more to obtaining knowledge than seeking out a bucket of truth a day, and in my experience _the worst students_ in the current system are the ones that have the most easily demonstrated critical thinking ability, because they are quick to understand how much of a pointless endeavor it is to learn the content of a single textbook and never look back. It's a fucking tragedy that we're pushing them away from academia.
Unfortunately educators have a heavy load of pseudoscience they need to deal with, in the form of "These methods are tested and proven." They're proven to fail. But introduce a new idea, and the hostility surges. "Well what if it's worse?" What if the sky turned purple? What if water was suddenly the consistency of syrup? If educators don't trust science, we can't apply it to education.
I am back again it's me miracle effiong happiness I am a nurse too science
thank YOU verry much..
Confirmation bias is the tireless enemy of rational thought and science education.
What is the right way to teach children?
I agree there is a problem, but I don't think the magnet demo is any better than the explosion in terms of teaching. Either experiment will interest students!
I need this science teacher
OMG if only my science teachers would have been like him.
Great presentation!
Sir,
I love this video very much.
Thanks a lot.
I 100% agree with getting rid of standardized testing. And while what he's suggesting is better than traditional approaches, it's not the whole picture. Students need more individual choice. We expect them to come out of school and enter the real world after making very few real choices for themselves. By the time most of us are 10 years old, we have a pretty good idea of what we do and don't like. We either REALLY know, or we have it reduced to a handful of things. Students should be able to spend 100% of their time pursuing these interests. If students choose to study science at whatever age, send them to the local Danny. But compel them to do it and you'll get marginally better results than you used to. I trained graduate teaching assistants to do modeling based labs for two years as well as ran them myself. The results were better than older approaches, but not that much better. Plainly put, the students were forced to do something they didn't want to do, and they didn't care about the activities. They wanted the grade they needed for the class so they could move on to the next box to check for their degree. Cheating was rampant and to be honest, I could hardly blame them for doing it. We do need change in education. And while what Danny suggests is an important part of it, it would be substantially more effective if the system allowed for students to make choices for themselves more broadly. (and if we better mentored/encouraged them. People need life coaches not dictators. I could keep going, but one rant seemed long enough lol)
I like this guys optimism and his ideas, but maybe have what he's describing as a separate class? As 3rd year university physics student I can tell you that those poor kids in his standard physics class are gonna hit a brick wall when they get to their first university physics test and notice that not a single question asks them to conduct an experiment to derive they're own law. I get the message and it's a great, but sadly, universities are focused on if you know the equations and how to use them.
emit jonson He touched this point in the end.
Those 87 people who disliked this video better watch out cause I'm coming for you.
It doesn't matter what you do, some people will never care about science enough to learn anything beyond the bare minimum. And that's ok, people are interested in different things. What we should be doing, is making sure we don't lose people who otherwise would have been interested in a certain field, and yes the education system and society in general is a dumpster fire at filtering people the appropriate way.
This teacher is good
This is preschool not high school; Children need practice thinking spontaneously correctly, interpreting truth, insightfully, reading with comprehension, arguing perceptively, (whereas, perspective comes with Tinkertoy® Etc.), not, mulling warmed-over hypotheses... Children need an intelligent audience to discuss their parents' introductory college level sciences....
Good talk.... but a correct chemical equation would have been better O2 is gaz oxygen
It was n awesome speach , inspiring,and out of the box.great
I really love this
Awesome Mr Danny Doucette.
Totally agree! Thank you. Check our our videos on how to teach science and engineering.
Thank you sir to inspire me.
Best informative knowledge❤
Had me smiling the whole way
I learn lot of things as a physics teacher accordingly
Wow 😍 em science teachr sinc 6 years thanks for this video❤❤
When you remember what have learned and why you have learned it
if you do not end up with a question in science class after every laws you are just adopting the existing laws and no new discovery will happen ,but the point is that nature is so dynamic it is changing everyday and we are not.,
then the day will come when we will face disaster right at the corner and the left humanity will will try to fill the puzzle but it will be too late at that time .
we people studying natural science are not investing in our future but living on the theories borrowed from last decade or century.
the whole speech should be a quote
Dear sir , please explain this to my parents & I will be grateful to you for rest of my life .
Here in India million of students prepare for a competition exam just to get into a college, hundreds of them commit suicide during incredibly depressing preparation (toxic behavior of teachers as well as parents, high tuition fees in coaching institutions & parents who don't care for your feelings , they just want you to score marks)
And those who are not much creative & can rotely memorize concepts and all the stuff & can vomit it into exam in very limited time will get admission into college.
And worse part is that not all students have access to this so called education.
And at last if student can't make it he/she would be a failure.
I need training for science teaching
unmotivated public, analyzes having the standing ovation!
I think i need training to teach like him....
the reaction equation is wrong....
Mystery boxes are all well and good........unless you teach Biology. Science teacher workshops are 10:1 Physci:Life science, even when they are called "Inquiry workshops."
So true
Admirable!
what is the method to evaluate the student if there is no exams ? i know there is stupid exams but there is good one too
sure, but exams should challenge you to show that you have understand the theory and can use and explain it, not that you are able to remember a dozend formulars and are lucky at a multiple choice test even if you got no clue at all
Master Qfox
Do an assignment instead that actually lets you apply the information to a real situation.
14:20 in the video
Our teacher uses a note system, Its supposed to be a new type of test per say, we are graded on what we show that we learn on this note system there are still tests, the notes take the place of assignments, which we still do, there just not graded
You can do take home exams or allot more time for them so that you can put items that call on higher ordered thinking/scenarios and problems not rehearsed in lecture sessions, graded homework, or optional p-set problems. They can be nuanced and contain more interesting contexts than those. Basically you are expected to use what you learned through those venues as a foundation to tackle more challenging problems or recognize the content in contexts. I have had professors who gave assessments like this and it was very effective. There are also upper division science courses at my alma mater that straight up ask students to design, write up, and then present/defend research proposals. This process requires one to take ownership. You have to find relevant primary literature and reviews to essentially find novel questions/future aims not currently addressed in the field and then you have to learn how to write about it in a way that sells its significance. There are all types of assessments that require higher levels of understanding and engagement than the traditional assessments.
i love it so much, thanks for the videos