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Immersion Units Enhance Science Instruction

October 2006

Imagine you’re an elementary school science student beginning to study a life science unit on decomposition. You have two options: You could read with your teacher from a text about life on a forest floor and how matter decomposes. Or, you could go outside and gather leaves and other compostable materials, bring them inside and put them into a large plastic soda bottle. Over the next days and weeks you would observe substances as they decompose (or not). You would observe and smell how moisture, air, temperature, and light affect the process of decomposition on different substances. You would watch the living and nonliving worlds interact, you would pose your own questions about decomposition, and you would test your ideas.

Which option would you prefer?

Some fortunate students have experiences in their science classes that fundamentally change their views of science and technology. They move from passive consumers of information to active participants in important scientific processes. In other words, they become apprentices on the way to becoming scientists or engineers. But far too often, the best science instruction is restricted to the best and brightest students attending the best schools.

The soda bottle decomposition investigation is one example of an inquiry that is part of an ‘immersion unit.’ Immersion units are instructional materials leveraging a powerful influence on student learning. And an immersion model for collaborative development and facilitation of professional development is opening doors to successful, widespread, and sustainable implementation of immersion units and high-quality science instruction.

Educators and scientists in WCER’s System-wide Change for All Learners and Educators (SCALE) partnership are developing conceptually coherent science units, one for all grade levels, Kindergarten through Grade 12, to represent and support the SCALE goal of rigorous and engaging science teaching and learning for all students. SCALE’s immersion work includes instructional materials design and development as well as professional development for teacher–learning facilitators at partner universities and districts.

SCALE’s Immersion Unit Design Team says the primary functions of such immersion units include:

1. Giving students deeper learning opportunities. Greater depth means that students develop a conceptual understanding.
2. Providing model instructional materials to support best practices in science teaching. Immersion units can help teachers as they help students.
3. Encouraging student ownership of the immersion experience. Students come to see themselves as doers of science, rather than just consumers of science.

The team designs immersion units not only to improve students’ scientific understanding and competence, but also to support professional learning for preservice and inservice teachers and to support district implementation. The interdisciplinary team includes:

• University science, technology, engineering, and math faculty,
• Learning scientists (cognitive psychologists, curriculum designers, and education faculty),
• School district curricula coordinators,
• Lead teachers and other representatives, and
• District change consultants.

Among their recommendations for producing system-wide, high-quality immersion units are:

1. Each immersion unit should include the full scientific inquiry cycle, that is, students should select a research question, design an experiment, collect the data, analyze the data, determine a conclusion, and present the results.
2. The units should be coordinated with the curriculum rather than standalone experiences.
3. Units should focus on core content concepts that are traditionally hard to learn and yet are important precursors of other science concepts.
4. Units should be taught by the regular teachers. Immersion units can enhance professional development as they teach process and content to science teachers for better year-round science teaching.
5. Students should experience science as an ongoing production of knowledge, rather than as recreations of experiments or reviews of historical byproducts.

Let’s go to the Los Angeles basin, where there’s a coordinated effort by the SCALE Immersion Unit team; California State University, Dominguez Hills; California State University, Northridge, and California State University Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Unified School District. The consortium produces intensive week-long institutes for LAUSD science teachers based on five immersion units. During the institutes, teachers immerse themselves as learners in the science content and the best instructional practices in the context of their grade–level immersion unit. Teams facilitating the institutes include STEM and education faculty, district leaders, and teachers who have implemented the units in their own classes.

The institutes introduce teachers to an immersion unit, prepare them to teach it, build leadership skills, and develop a common vision among the co–facilitators. Teachers who attend summer institutes have access to follow-up activities including mentoring from local science experts. The institutes have been offered for the last two summers and offerings will continue to grow in coming years.

Sociologist and WCER Director Adam Gamoran has obtained a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation to study the effects of teacher professional development with immersion units in 4th and 5th grade in Los Angeles. With colleagues Geoffrey Borman, UW-Madison professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, and Ted Bartell, Los Angeles United School District director of program evaluation and research, Gamoran will examine student science achievement in 40 randomly selected schools whose teachers attend summer institutes to learn how to teach with immersion units, compared to achievement of students in control schools whose teachers will attend institutes in later years.

For more information see the SCALE site project pages.