Taking a Trip Without Leaving the Classroom (Guest)

(Written by Guest Blogger, Professor Don Duggan-Haas, Colgate University)

It’s a pleasure to be a guest – my first foray into blogging. Thanks, Andy!

While the example discussed here is grounded in science teaching, many of the fundamental ideas transfer well to the teaching of other topics. In reading through what follows, consider the questions: “What are signature pedagogies in my discipline?” and, “What makes a field trip an experience in inquiry, and not just a tour?” I’ll end with a slight twist on Andy’s lesson ideas.

Teaching certain things practically requires getting out of the school. Virtual Field Trips, developed by Earth science teacher Sarah Miller, invites you and your students to pay a virtual visit to Norwich, New York to explore the local geology. Built around the essential question (see Wiggins & McTighe’s Understanding by Design) of “Why does this place look the way it does?” the VFT is intended to facilitate the inquiry approach that geologists take when they go into the field. Of course, it’s no simple matter to take all your students on a field trip.

The geology field trip is an example of what Lee Shulman calls signature pedagogies. This is closely related to his conception of pedagogical content knowledge (mentioned just below). Signature pedagogies are…

“…the forms of instruction that leap to mind that organize the fundamental ways in to mind when we first think about the preparation of members of particular professions–for example, in the law, the quasi-Socratic interactions so vividly portrayed in The Paper Chase.”

Just as it would be unthinkable to have a physician educated without going on clinical rounds that include mentored discussions of individual patient’s cases, it would be unthinkable for a college geology major graduate without having stood at a rock outcrop and work to figure out how that rock formation came to be. Even though it would be unthinkable for a geologist to graduate without having done this, it often doesn’t happen in teaching Earth science at the K-12 level. There are some very obvious reasons for that – cost and safety concerns probably topping the list – but done well the field trip is remarkably effective pedagogy.

Sarah’s work allows her and other teachers to give a very meaningful simulation of the work of the geologist. In fact, this goes beyond simulation. Students can do the work of the geologist even if they aren’t standing by the outcrop. Wrestling with the questions posed in the graphic organizer on the introductory page for VFTs while virtually standing in that creek or quarry is fundamental to the work of hard rock geologists.

Sarah is working with Rob Ross and Elizabeth Humbert at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY and me (at Colgate University) in a National Science Foundation funded professional development program for beginning Earth science teachers. She’s wearing at least two hats in the project – she’s a teacher participant and she’s developing some materials, like the VFT on her web site and the included graphic organizer as exemplars for other teachers in the project. She spent much of her summer looking at other virtual field trips and thinking carefully about how to structure them so that students are engaged in active wondering rather than just watching. At the outset of the project, I drafted a vignette of how a VFT might play out in a classroom. (Sarah’s VFT is better than the one in my vignette).

VFTs are but one facet of the project, and if it is practical to do actual field trips those are preferred. We do hope, however, that some teachers will develop VFTs and work with one another’s classes so that, for example, a class in New York City might take a virtual trip Upstate and students Upstate might visit Central Park and investigate its geology. Students across the state might serve as experts about their local geology to learners in distant classrooms.

I will be visiting participating teachers across the state this fall. One of the things I’ll do when I visit is act as a rock courier so students will have real rock samples from places they visit virtually.

Questions that might lead to lesson ideas:

1. What are examples of signature pedagogies in the training of professionals in your discipline? Are they reflected in your teaching? Should they be reflected in your teaching? What does it look like when it works well? What is necessary for that to happen?
2. Can you lead a field trip where students inquire into your discipline? Should you? Is there a big question you can think of that could be asked in a variety of settings to foster inquiry (like why does this place look like this)?
3. What would a VFT in your discipline look like? What would you want students to be able to take a closer look at (like the close ups in Sarah’s VFT)? Do you know teachers in other places that you could work with and share VFTs?
4. What would you want a courier to bring your students from the places they can only visit virtually? If it includes documents, are they already available online? Can you think of a discipline where that courier should or would only bring documents?