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GSA goes Metacognitive

Posted: Dec 23 2010 by Kim Kastens

Looking around the website of the Geological Society of America, I found myself on the page announcing the Society's upcoming 125th anniversary celebration. In bold print, the Society congratulates itself for: "ADVANCES IN GEOSCIENCES: Our science, our societal impact, and our unique thought processes." More

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Should we call on non-volunteering students?

Posted: Nov 29 2010 by Kim Kastens Before the beginning of this semester's "Frontiers of Science" course, the folks in charge of Columbia's Core Curriculum put on a one-day professional development session for instructors new to the course. Among the suggestions for leading a successful seminar was that we should call on non-volunteering students.

This suggestion took me aback. It did not align with my prior practice teaching either undergraduates or graduate students at Columbia. And it certainly did not align with my own experience as a university student. More

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Multiple lines of reasoning in support of one claim

Posted: Nov 22 2010 by Kim Kastens One of the attributes of most K-12 classroom science inquiries is that the reasoning that leads from data to interpretation is simple and straightforward. From this experience, students develop the habit of mind of expecting that a data set in science class will lead by a single linear robust chain of reasoning to a claim or "answer," like this:

Earth Science, in my experience, tends not to work this way. Instead, many of the most bold and important claims in Earth Science have been built from many different forms of data and observations. More

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Kim's First Lesson on Learning Goals

Posted: Jun 25 2010 by Kim Kastens Last week, my daughter Dana took the Algebra Regents Exam, her first encounter with the Regents system. New York State has had state-set exams for high school academic subjects since my mother was in high school, and they are generally accepted rather matter-of-factly here, with little of the flap that seems to have accompanied the advent of state curricula and state testing elsewhere in the country.

Dana's right of passage got me thinking about my own encounter with the Algebra Regents, in June 1968, at Hamilton High School. Our teacher taught us methodically and conscientiously throughout the school year, and then spent about two weeks reviewing for the Regents. The last day of class, out of the blue, he announced that he was going to teach us one more thing, something that he hadn't taught us during the year. More

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Using Logic Diagrams to Organize Knowledge and Pinpoint Ignorance

Posted: Apr 18 2010 by

Kim Kastens

(adapted from essay and talk prepared for the Cutting Edge Workshop on "Developing Student Understanding of Complex Systems in the Geosciences," Carleton College, April 18-20, 2010.)

Introduction

One of the hardest aspects of learning about complex Earth Systems is organizing fragments of knowledge into some kind of coherent framework. I teach students who want to be science journalists or environmental journalists. These students are looking towards a career in which they will frequently have to jump right into the deep end and come quickly up to speed on complicated new ideas. I am always on the lookout for techniques that will help them construct understandings quickly and accurately, techniques that will continue to work for them when they no longer have me and their other professors to scaffold their learning, techniques that will help them to become effective self-directed learners.

One of the most powerful techniques that I have come up with is a type of concept map I call a logic diagram. More