“Collège” Science Curriculum Project: Principles and Guidelines

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EABJM “Collège” Science Curriculum Project: Principles and Guidelines
This project emerged from conversations in the fall of 2004 with Georges Charpak regarding his
vision to extend the general principles of la main à la pâte to collège students. It soon became
apparent that to do justice to those principles in the context of an age group whose appetite for the
“real” world—and impatience with traditional academic subjects—was all-consuming would
require a more inclusive approach than the design of a thematic science curriculum based on
experimentation and student-centered inquiry. Therefore, at Georges Charpak’s suggestion and in
search of inspiration, Elisabeth Zéboulon and Bernard Manuel visited two very different
institutions: first, the Ross school in East Hampton, NY, known for its integrated humanities
curriculum informed by the theory of Multiple Intelligences developed by Harvard University
professor Howard Gardner; and second, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA)
in Aurora, IL, a high school for gifted students founded by physics Nobel laureate Leon
Lederman and focused on an integrated inquiry-based science curriculum and Problem-Based
Learning pedagogy.
The resulting synthesis is a curriculum development project that, with respect to the teaching of
science, combines three central pedagogical ideas:
1) Inquiry-based scientific “excursions” based on perennial questions.
2) Problem-Based Learning.
3) Every fourth week dedicated to science, technology, and the history of science.
To turn this project into reality, however, requires pedagogical resources beyond those of
EABJM. Hence, Georges Charpak’s suggestion of a curriculum development partnership between
the Maison des Sciences team of the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de
la Ville de Paris (ESPCI) with whom a first contact was established in December 2004. This
contact sparked a great deal of shared enthusiasm for the project and, upon review of documents
on the seconde programs subsequently sent by Jacques Treiner, also showed a great deal of
compatibility in terms of pedagogical vision. Consequently, we agreed in principle to constitute a
joint team whose deliberately ambitious objective it will be to develop the first part of this
curriculum (sixième) on time for September 2005 implementation, subject, of course, to the
approval of the Ministère de l’Education Nationale (EN).
In the longer term, the new collège curriculum might be further integrated around a core of
cultural history, i.e., not only the traditional political and social history and literature, but also art
history (visual arts, architecture, music and the performing arts), and the history of science. This
integration, which is hinted at in current EN curricula, would provide students coherence, a clear
vision of the purpose and architecture of their studies, and most important, multiple and mutually
reinforcing perspectives from which to explore each discipline as they intersect the central core of
cultural history. This goal, however, is not immediate. For now, the impact of cultural history on
the science curriculum project shall be limited to the history of science, which lends meaning to
scientific inquiry as part of the often-heroic adventure of humanity’s attempt to “read the book of
nature.”
1) Scientific Inquiries Excursions (Itinéraires de Questionnements Scientifiques)
Rather than approach science as a collection of separate, albeit interlocking disciplines (physics,
chemistry, biology, ecology…), or even as a multidisciplinary investigation of scientific objects
(e.g., the solar system, light, water…), the proposed curriculum will approach science as a
process of inquiry echoing the perennial human quest for understanding and modeling the world
(e.g., where does the universe come from?). IMSA’s 10th grade (seconde) core curriculum for
scientific inquiries, which is summarized in the attached exhibit, will serve as general inspiration
in the sense that it illustrates how each excursion (Describing Life on Earth, Exploring the Planet,
The Universe and its Beginning, and Energetics of Living Things) draws upon the various
traditional disciplines as and when each is needed to help answer the questions raised during the
corresponding excursion of scientific inquiry. Teachers will either develop their understanding of
the disciplines required for scientific inquiries or cooperate with each other as required.
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The definition of desired pedagogical outcome, expectations, evaluation, and assessment are
important objectives that must be addressed concurrently with curriculum development. Various
levels of “comprehension” will be sought according as they match age-appropriate development
and/or the availability of mathematical tools. This outline is not the place for either a semantic or
an epistemic debate, but clarity as to expectations of comprehension is essential, particularly
since, over the course of the collège’s four years, it will be desirable to repeat, expand, and
deepen several modules of scientific inquiries in order to raise the level of comprehension from
familiarity to intuitive grasp, to full comprehension—however that term might be defined in an
ordered taxonomy of educational objectives.
In terms of content, the curriculum must not eschew the ever-present oversimplification dilemma.
Students of that age group are constantly confronted, in movies, TV series, computer games, the
media, the Internet, and in the technology at their everyday disposal, to words, expressions, and
devices that refer to concepts of modern science. This is why they want to hear about black holes,
neutron stars, relativity, the Big Bang, quantum uncertainty, genetic engineering, cloning, etc.
Our goal is to get them as close as possible to grasping the significance of the profound
ontological changes and paradigm shifts that have taken place since the end of the 19th century
when Lord Kelvin famously wrongly declared, “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics
now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Thus, for example, by the end of
troisième, we will seek a real comprehension of special relativity, which might be spurred
earlier—perhaps in cinquième—by sewing doubt about simultaneity. Similarly, an intuitive
notion of general relativity will be sought, as well as a sound feel for the behavior of quantum
objects, their dual wave-particle nature, and the sources of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,
possibly illuminated by Young’s double-slit experiment.
In parallel with their corresponding scientific inquiries, the pivotal paradoxes or contradictions of
the late 19th century will be explored and examined (Michelson-Morley experiment, ultraviolet
catastrophe, atomic instability…). As well, a critical approach of the scientific process will be
developed by systematically examining why people reach wrong conclusions. Why, for example,
was Aristotle, who dominated Western thought for over fifteen centuries, wrong in almost every
respect (in science)? How could the Ptolemaic geocentric model survive for over a thousand
years? How could our 15th century forebears hold that the earth was flat? How could Lord Kelvin
claim, against then known geological evidence, that the Sun was less than 100 million years old?
How can creationists still claim today that the Earth is 6009 years old?
Overall, aside from the knowledge content gained through their four-year of scientific inquiries,
we hope to achieve three goals: first, we wish for students to love the adventure of science and
appreciate its epic dimension; second, we want them to develop as informed, critical citizens, and
thus to internalize the meaning of scientific theory as perfectible working hypothesis with
predictive (and retro-predictive) power, as expressed in Einstein’s famous statement, “No amount
of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." Finally,
we want them to understand how a good portion of mathematics actually emerges
consubstantially with physics in forming models that constitute, more and more, our only tenuous
attempt at representing reality in an era when traditional notions of space, time, and extensionality
are no longer adequate on a particle scale. Increasingly, Galileo’s 17th century claim, that
“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe,” finds an amplified echo
in Richard Feynman admonition: "To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get
across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. If you want to learn about
nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in."
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2) Problem-Based Learning (PBL)
“Active” learning methods may well trace their roots to the 6th century BC, when Confucius
claimed: “I hear, and I forget; I see, and I remember; I do, and I understand.” Quite a few years
later, EABJM was founded on pedagogical principles that also recognized explicitly the
importance of doing and the value of student-centered active methods of learning. PBL, a style of
learning first formalized in the early 1970s at the medical school at McMaster University in
Canada is an extension of this pedagogical approach. PBL takes the commitment to studentcentered exploration and discovery one-step further by designing a curriculum centered around
the investigation, by student teams, of “purposefully ill-structured problems that are messy and
complex in nature, require inquiry, information-gathering, and reflection, are changing and
tentative, and have no simple, fixed, formulaic, right solutions;” in other words, real problems.
PBL is particularly well suited to scientific inquiry and is already used by many educators who,
like Monsieur Jourdain and his prose, practice it without identifying it as such.
PBL is broadly and explicitly used by IMSA in curriculum development and, wherever possible,
would also be part of this project. Its pedagogical benefits are multifold. First, since the problems
are real problems, PBL is a powerful motivator; one that answers the often unspoken question of
most collège students, “why do I need to know this? How relevant is it to the real world or to my
life?” Second, ill-defined problem scenarios lead students to devote as much effort to formalizing
questions as they do to developing answers. In doing so, they focus on creative thinking and
critical analysis rather than on trying to guess what teachers want to hear. Finally, PBL promotes
metacognition by inducing students to generate (and confront with each other) their own learning
strategies for formulating problems, gathering facts, and building and testing hypotheses.
3) A week dedicated to science, technology, and the history of science
In the collège, the hours assigned each week by the EN to science and technology vary between 3
hours in sixième to 5.5 hours in troisième. In quatrième and cinquième, capturing one hour of
itinéraires de découvertes (IDD) also leads to 5.5 hours. The change suggested here is to
concentrate all these hours in a “science week” held every fourth week during the entire school
year and dedicated primarily to science and to the history of science. During science week,
students would spend 3 hours a day in sixième and 4+ hours a day in the other grades doing
science and history of science. (Technology—or ICT—would not be taught per se, but the
necessary skill set would be developed as a bi-product of its integration in lab work through the
use of computer-linked sensors, data-acquisition and simulation software, presentation tools,
internet research, etc.) The balance of the time could be devoted to any other subject, but we
might investigate the possibility of concentrating on art and art history, which can often add
another stimulating “hook” to the study of science (e.g., Leonardo Da Vinci and his flying or
military machines, or the “golden ratio” in the context of Greek architecture and Nature’s
architecture of, among others, the nautilus shell).
Several benefits are anticipated from this periodic high concentration of time in the sciences.
First, the daily focus would enable greater continuity of experiment- or lab-intensive inquiry
modules, thus avoiding the tedious weekly recap of the prior week’s material. Second, each
week’s module (there would be nine each year, probably grouped in 2-4 “journeys”) could thus
focus on the in-depth exploration of a specific scientific inquiry (itinéraire de questionnement
scientifique) or of a reasonably self-contained part thereof, contain its own evaluation and
assessment, and include as well a thorough exploration of the historical context of that particular
excursion. Ideally, given the amount of time available, each week would involve the out-ofschool visit of a museum, observatory, university, or research facility whose activity would be
connected to that week’s theme. Finally, the monthly rupture in the school schedule brought
about by science week should be welcomed by students of an age group notoriously averse to
routine.
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Exhibit: IMSA 10th Grade (seconde) Scientific Inquiries
Scientific Inquiries
The Role that Science plays
in developing our ideas
about the Universe
The Universe
and its
Beginning
Human
Impact
Exploring and
Investigating
our Planet
Describing
Life on
Earth
Energetics
Of
Living Things
Observation Skills
Scientific Reasoning Skills
Observation Skills
Scientific Reasoning Skills
Observation Skills
Scientific Reasoning Skills
Observation Skills
Scientific Reasoning Skills
Scientific Way of Knowing
Scientific Way of Knowing
Scientific Way of Knowing
Scientific Way of Knowing
Data Analysis
Data Analysis
Data Analysis
Data Analysis
Constructing & Supporting
Judgements
Constructing & Supporting
Judgements
Constructing & Supporting
Judgements
Constructing & Supporting
Judgements
Linear Motion
Atomic Structure
Evidence for Evolution of
Organisms
Energy in Living Systems
Circular Motion
Electrostatics
Natural Selection
Enthalpy
Orbital Motion
Chemical Periodicity
Mechanisms of Genetic
Change
Entropy
Newton's Laws
Molecular Geometry
Genetic Traits
Spontaneity of Processes
Equations of Motion
Conservation of Mass,
Energy and Charge
Cellular Reproduction
Oxidation/ Reduction
Gravitational Force
Chemical Equations
Molecular Basis of Heredity
Cell Structure/Function
Conservation of Energy
Earth, Structure and
Composition
Gene Functions
Energy Conversions
Kinetic and Potential Energy
Plate Tectonics
Chemical Reactions
Cell Metabolism/ ATP
Electromagnetic Radiation
Buoyancy, Density
Acid-Base Reactions
Chemical Pathways
Emission Spectra
Force/ Equilibrium
Chemical Equilibrium
Gibbs Free Energy
Astronomical Distances
Atmospheric Circulation
Genetic Manipulation
Photosynthesis
Solar System Dynamics
Climate and Biomes
Stars
Atmospheric Filters
Stellar Structure
Human Impact on Climate
Organism Independence and
Interdependence
Hydrogen Fusion
Nucleosynthesis
HR Diagrams
Red Shift and Expansion
Color Key: Inquiry/Technology
Physical Sciences
Earth & Space Sciences
Life Sciences