The Brandon Sauve Blog

 Coming out of High School I had a good understanding of scientific facts like gravity, evolution, and space. I could tell someone else about gravity, how you can take an object and because of the mass of the earth, it has a gravitational pull that no matter what, when the object is dropped it will fall to the floor. But did I understand the process of taking repeated observations and turning these observations into a scientific theory or scientific fact? No. However after reading Davis, Francis, & Friesen's (2019) STEM Education by Design, chapter 6 (Science)  I thought back to my high school experiences and questioned if I had learned about inquiring rather than simply accepting fact. On page 101 inquiry is condensed into the understanding of an "iterative process of working with established facts and accumulating additional evidence in order to defend, extend, and/or challenge interpretations" (Davis, Francis, Friesen. 2019). So taking this section about inquiry an...

     It can be understood some courses are more knowledge based than others. For example, History, Math, and Science are all subjects typically centered around the teacher bestowing knowledge upon their students. Most of these types of subjects involve direct teaching methods. Some courses may not require as much teacher involvement, for example, Physical Education, English, and Visual Art. Within Physical Education there are models like TGFU (Tactical Games for Understanding), which is an indirect teaching method where the student is at the center of the learning model. The model is meant to make the students feel like their decisions matter since they are able to modify games as they choose, with little teacher involvement.  Woosley, S. 2015     However, I ponder if these same type of indirect teaching models would work in Math or Science, specifically Math. There have been discussions about reforming the way math has been taught however Davis, Francis, a...