Science Learning Doctors

Science Learning Doctors - using diagnostic assessment in the science classroom

The Science Learning Doctor approach is designed to support science teachers who wish to develop their use of diagnostic and formative assessment in the classroom, and to understand the way students' ideas can sometimes act as impediments to learning the science in the curriculum.

The 'Science Learning Doctor' idea derived from a project for the Royal Society of Chemistry (leading to the publication of 'Chemical misconceptions : prevention, diagnosis and cure'), and then related talks given to ASE meetings and for the Institute of Physics.

Principles

The basic idea is very simple:

• Teaching and learning are complex enough that motivated students often fail to learn what well-prepared teachers hoped they would. This seems an universal experience in science teaching!

• The science teacher as learning doctor sees these 'failures to learn' as bugs in the teaching-learning system: bugs to be diagnosed and treated.

Whilst accepting that it is in the nature of teaching that we seldom get a whole class to understand the science as we would like, the science learning doctor mentality is that:

• there are causes for the learning bugs which can in principle be understood
• it is possible - at least in principle - to identify the causes of learning bugs
• identification provides the basis for devising and putting in place treatment (remedial action)

There are a number of potential causes of students not learning what we hoped, and the Science Learning Doctor approachis based upon a simple classification (a typology of learning impediments) that can act as a heuristic tool that teachers can use. Since the original model was proposed, the approach has been discussed with science teachers and others. Discussion and feedback has led to a slightly modified set of categories.

( download the Science Learning Doctor 'Guidebook')

Classifying learning bugs

The Typology of learning impediments is a scheme for classifying the types of barriers that can lead to students not understanding and learning ideas as intended by the teacher (or text book author). The typology is organised into a number of categories, and is designed as a 'thinking tool' to support diagnostic assessment in the classroom.

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Dr Keith S Taber kst24@cam.ac.uk

University of Cambridge Faculty of Education

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