3 minute read
Science
KATE WARING
Head of Science
Advertisement
This year Mr Alan Parsons has been discussing with staff the consequence of a “growth mindset” versus a “fixed mindset” to senior schooling and the transition that many students face. This has been mainly driven by the understanding that originates from the research work performed by Carol Dweck, an acclaimed Stanford psychologist. Much of her work involves the power of our beliefs and then the reflection and inquiries of our beliefs in order to predict that even the simplest changes can have a profound impact.
Carol Dweck (2009) concludes, “Each boy’s academic progress through school transitions faced by all adolescents depends on their ability to negotiate these changes”. How is it that we as teachers can facilitate all students to have an increased resilience to these changes? Our aim as teachers is to promote a “growth mindset” in order to see the students under our care thrive and flourish. For us to achieve this goal we must encourage our students to acquire a desire to learn and therefore have a tendency to: • Embrace challenges more willingly than avoid them. • Display persistence in the face of obstacles rather than giving up easily. • Perceive effort as the path to mastery instead of effort being boring and useless. • Attempt to learn from criticism as opposed to ignoring or being stung by criticism. • Rejoice in the success and inspiration of those around us instead of feeling threatened by the success of others. A “fixed mindset” carries with it the belief of assuming that our intelligence, personality, creativity and sporting attributes are fixed and stagnant and so embracing challenges, displaying persistence, exerting effort and learning from criticism would prove to be a useless exercise.
In an effort to increase the “growth mindset” for students within the Science Department we try to do as many experiments as feasibly possible in order to increase mastery, persistence, cooperation among peers and inquiry skills, while students embrace the challenges they encounter.
As the students reach Years 11 and 12, the Syllabus for all sciences incorporates the category EEI – extended experimental investigation. This dimension is incredibly useful for expanding the “growth mindset” of students as they have to develop instruments useful to investigate a hypothesis in order to answer a significant, justified researchable
question. The focus is on planning the EEI, assessing risk, designing, refining and managing the investigation, then analysing the primary and secondary data to identify relationships between patterns, trends, errors and anomalies, followed by analysis and evaluation of complex scientific interrelationships and possible outcomes with justification of conclusions and recommendations.
The experiments obviously vary widely with each subject:
• Physics investigated the shielding capabilities of materials with various densities and thicknesses when faced with a beta source of radioactive Strontium-90.
• Chemistry used the principles of thermodynamics in order to produce exothermic (hot) or endothermic (cold) packs in order to adequately treat sporting injuries.
• Biology travelled to the rocky shore at Hasting’s Point to specifically focus on the area encompassing the supralittoral, littoral and sublittoral zones, vitally important to ecology – the study of organisms in their natural habitat to discover by what means they adapt to their environment and how they interact with both the biotic and abiotic surrounding them. • Agricultural science grew plants in order to discover the variation of factors involved in percentage plant growth and yields, so impacting the farmers’ agribusiness viability. Students displaying a “fixed mindset” very quickly become bored with their experiments, especially when the ‘going gets tough’! Thankfully, due to the constant training, experimentation and mastery in junior science, most of our students exhibited a “growth mindset” by demonstrating persistence, enthusiasm, motivation, diligence and grit in order to achieve the very best result possible.
Finally, I wish the departing Year 12 Valedictorians all the very best of luck with their future lives, chosen career paths and in discovery of their passion. I hope they always remember their schooling lives with fondness and a smile.
“If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve.”
“Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…” (D. Millman)