Behind the Scenes with Presenting Inquiry 2.0

I just presented on Inquiry 2.0 for the first time, and I wanted to share that presentation with you. I thought this might be especially useful to those of you looking to develop a presentation on the NGSS. Here's the Prezi I used, and it's set so you can copy and recycle it as you on. And here's a behind-the-scenes walkthrough of that Prezi in which I explain how I used it to help teachers understand how the Next Generation Science Standards require us to teach by inquiry and also ramp inquiry up to the next level.

Please, steal this Prezi!

Understanding, not Belief, in the NGSS Evolution Standards for High School

Image from here

Finally got some time, thanks to Snowmageddon '14 here in Birmingham, to dedicate some time to examining how the Next Generation Science Standards approach the teaching of evolution. I had looked briefly several times before, but I needed some think time before putting an analysis for your review and reaction. (I definitely got that think time when my whole city shut down for 2 days.) I look forward to your feedback, especially if you see the NGSS differently than I do.

Bottom line: The NGSS do not require belief in evolution. And that's really good news for teaching evolution in the South and other areas of the country where students resist learning about evolution. It's also really good news for public school parents, science teachers, and anyone developing curriculum documents. The NGSS keep public school classrooms safe for students who see a conflict between evolution and their faith.

Let's look first at the high school evolution standards from the NGSS. I'll analyze them standard-by-standard below, but I suggest that you first take a couple of minutes to review the standards as they are presented together. As you probably know, the NGSS are purposely written to fit many, many features together in each standard set.  At the bare minimum, they intertwine content and process so that science teaching in America can no longer divorce the two. If you haven't seen it already, also make sure to see how the clarification statements and assessment boundaries help science teachers see the level of rigor NGSS is targeting for teaching evolution.

Now, looking standard-by-standard for belief versus understanding:

HS-LS4-1 Communicate scientific information that common ancestry and biological evolution are supported by multiple lines of empirical evidence. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on a conceptual understanding of the role each line of evidence has relating to common ancestry and biological evolution. Examples of evidence could include similarities in DNA sequences, anatomical structures, and order of appearance of structures in embryological development.]

Clearly, this standard makes no requirement students believe in evolution. As I have advocated for years, this standard grounds students' work strongly in evidence by having them look at multiple lines. Then, they are to be able from that to "communicate scientific information" about evolution, and I hear in that portion of the standard a clear focus on students' understanding and communicating key science ideas without requiring any kind of belief from them.

HS-LS4-2 Construct an explanation based on evidence that the process of evolution primarily results from four factors: (1) the potential for a species to increase in number, (2) the heritable genetic variation of individuals in a species due to mutation and sexual reproduction, (3) competition for limited resources, and (4) the proliferation of those organisms that are better able to survive and reproduce in the environment. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on using evidence to explain the influence each of the four factors has on number of organisms, behaviors, morphology, or physiology in terms of ability to compete for limited resources and subsequent survival of individuals and adaptation of species. Examples of evidence could include mathematical models such as simple distribution graphs and proportional reasoning.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include other mechanisms of evolution, such as genetic drift, gene flow through migration, and co-evolution.]

I've summarized inquiry for many groups of science teachers as a cycle of evidence and explanation. This standard solidly directs students toward understanding evolutionary processes in an inquiry approach. They build explanations out of evidence, and teachers can guide these explanations away from belief controversies by keeping them focused on scientific explanations and how those are limited to natural processes. The standard clearly supports this with its four factors, all of which are natural processes.

HS-LS4-3 Apply concepts of statistics and probability to support explanations that organisms with an advantageous heritable trait tend to increase in proportion to organisms lacking this trait. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on analyzing shifts in numerical distribution of traits and using these shifts as evidence to support explanations.] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment is limited to basic statistical and graphical analysis. Assessment does not include allele frequency calculations.]

A focus on natural selection, as in this standard, typically doesn't cause resistant students nearly the problems they face when they are asked to look at evolution across millions of years. So belief shouldn't be an issue with this standard.

HS-LS4-4 Construct an explanation based on evidence for how natural selection leads to adaptation of populations. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on using data to provide evidence for how specific biotic and abiotic differences in ecosystems (such as ranges of seasonal temperature, long-term climate change, acidity, light, geographic barriers, or evolution of other organisms) contribute to a change in gene frequency over time, leading to adaptation of populations.]

Same as the Standard 3 above--natural selection typically doesn't raise belief issues.

HS-LS4-5 Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in: (1) increases in the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of other species. [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on determining cause and effect relationships for how changes to the environment such as deforestation, fishing, application of fertilizers, drought, flood, and the rate of change of the environment affect distribution or disappearance of traits in species.]

With a focus on "emergence of new species," this standard will probably be the most difficult of the six for resistant students. Typically, they resist evolution because they simply do not believe new species can emerge on their own without supernatural influence. (I actually agree with them, and many practicing scientists agree as well.) But, clearly, this standard does not focus on changing students' beliefs. They are not to "accept the evidence supporting claims..." Instead, they are to "evaluate the evidence." Interestingly, I actually think this standard left a door wide open for a Teach the Controversy approach, which I am quite sure the NGSS authors did not attend.

Create or revise a simulation to test a solution to mitigate adverse impacts of human activity on biodiversity.* [Clarification Statement: Emphasis is on designing solutions for a proposed problem related to threatened or endangered species, or to genetic variation of organisms for multiple species.]

Again, clearly a focus on natural selection, since it's limited within the short time frame of human activity, and not one raising the specter of belief change.

Vote No to SB 403!

The video here gives a quick overview of the benefits of the common core standard. See my previous blog post for the lies the opponents of common core are using to try to make their case. Please take five minutes to find out who your senator is, and to call him or her and ask for a No vote on SB 403. (The bill is to repeal the common core; so, a No vote is asking to stop the repeal and keep the Common Core.)

They lied!

I don't normally make a habit of posting political comments, but something is going on in the Alabama legislature that I think many of you would want to know about. A bill has been introduced in both houses that would ban Alabama from participating in the Common Core movement. That is a nationwide coalition of states who have come together to decide and implement a set of common standards. As a life-long educator, I think the common core is a great thing for Alabama kids. It puts them on a level playing field with students in 45 other states, and it will open the doors for them to get better jobs in today's global economy.

The bill is being pushed by the Tea Party side of the political spectrum. I have no beef with the Tea Party. I believe in conservative fiscal policies and limited government. I do have a beef, though, with a bill that is based on lies. Please take a look at the document here, which clearly rebuts every point of the current Alabama bill.

Online learning: Knowing their work, but not them.

Online learning is all the rage right now, but I don't think it's a panacea or silver bullet. I'm learning from teaching online that it has strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages, and definitely trade-off's when compared to face-to-face instruction. In this 3-minute video, I describe what I've learned this semester in teaching online. My key reflection is that I get to know my students' work, but I don't get to know them as people. 

Coming soon

... the behind the scenes on Coevolution on Prezi.

6000 Skulls

I just spent the day trying to really get my head around human evolution at the Hall of Human Origins in the National Museum of Natural History. I think I'm getting it. Australopithecus died out. Homo heidelbergensis is probably the common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals. Homo erectus lived a long time and was pretty dang tall.

The biggest thing I'm pondering as I walk away is how all that we know about early humans is based on 6,000 skulls. That seems like a low number. On the one hand, the number doesn't bother me. 6,000 is a pretty hefty count for any collection of specimens. Even just 1 piece of evidence is something that science must deal with, as long as it is authentic. And 6,000 is a lot more than 60 or even 600.

On the other hand, that seems like such a small number to answer the question, "Where did we come from?" In my day-to-day world, people don't believe in human evolution. I don't see them being convinced by this amount of evidence. Sure, I could try to argue with the reliability of the skulls we do have or the promise of future finds or the difficulty of fossilization. Those science-y arguments don't work well for the non-science-y people I'm thinking of. Human evolution asks them to overturn much of their worldview, and I don't think 6,000 data points are enough for them to do that.

(And I just realized that the number of currently known skulls is equal to what most of my people believe to be the age of the Earth. How crazy is that?)

My Talk at Tedx Birmingham

Speaking at Tedx Birmingham was an amazing experience! How do you cram 25 years of teaching into 18 minutes? How do you communicate the dire challenges in American education and the hope all around us in excellent innovations? How do you help people outside of education understand how our education system is failing children while at the same time honoring teachers and the impact they have?

The resources I used in the talk should be tagged in my Delicious account with "MyTed". Let me know, please, if anything you need is missing. Also, here's the link to the presentation I used during the talk, which was developed in Prezi.

Tweaking Inquiry

When I was in the classroom, the break around Christmas was always a time when I retooled what was going on in my classroom. It was my half-time for the year, a time to step back and make important changes so that my students would learn better. Half of my time with them was gone, and I wanted the rest of the time with them to be as good as it could be.

If you're new to teaching science by inquiry, you've got a chance to make some key tweaks to teaching and learning in your classroom now. You probably don't need to make huge changes, even if you're frustrated with inquiry. Inquiry is a great approach for teaching! Don't doubt that. Instead, step back and think about small changes that you can make that can give big benefits.

I constantly use the five essential features of inquiry from Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards as my diagnostic for how well I'm doing with guiding learning. Here, I've flipped those around into questions you can use for diagnosing how well inquiry is going in your classroom:

1. How engaged are your students in scientific questions?
2. How do your students give a priority to evidence when they are learning science?
3. How adept are your students at developing explanations based on the evidence they're seeing?
4. How adept are you at guiding your students to consider alternative explanations for the evidence they're seeing?
5. How are your students constantly communicating and justifying their explanations?

I've found that if I think through the five essential features, I can usually figure out what's not working well in the inquiries I'm leading and how I can improve my students learning. 

I'll be tweeting out tips based on each of these questions in the next few days. I hope these help you as you teach with inquiry. Please let me know with a comment here or a reply on twitter if you have any questions. I'm happy to help.

FCR STEM Conference links

Thanks so much to those of you Florida teacher who attended my sessions over the last two days. Here are the links I promised:

• My Prezi on teaching evolution from Saturday.
• For the Facebook page with teaching evolution resources, look to the left here for a link.
• My Prezi on inquiry from Sunday.

Teaching Evolution Resources

A big thanks to all of you who attended my sessions at NSTA in New Orleans. I posted resources from both sessions on the Facebook page for The Missing Link (since I was having trouble with uploading to the NSTA site). If you have any questions, feel free to write them on the wall there or as a comment here. 

See You in New Orleans?

It's almost time for NSTA's Regional Convention in the Big Easy, and I'm getting excited. Please let me know if you're coming so we can connect up. I'll be speaking twice on teaching evolution, and the image here gives the times and locations.

• My Thursday session is workshop-styled, and we'll be focusing on specifics in the classroom. You'll walk away with a lesson plan for teaching whale evolution and an overview of the evolution unit I created in The Missing Link. If you've been to one of my sessions before on teaching evolution to resistant students, this is a good follow up.
• My Friday session is a big picture look at the issues involved in teaching. Do you have students afraid of evolution, maybe even hostile to it? I'll give you some good traction on the issue and show how you can be faithful to the science without attacking any faith-full students in your class. 

Both sessions feature inquiry as the heart of science teaching. 

Backstory of a Tweet

I just tweeted. No big deal really. It was a quote from an Educational Leadership article I was reading. But, in case you weren't aware of how teaching and learning is happening now in today's university, here's the gist of what happened:

• In my online class, I posted an assignment on Blackboard for students to find & read good articles on how schools at changing.
• My students log in and read the assignment.
• They log into our university library and find the e-version of the journal.
• One of my students, B, selects an article on today's tech savy students.
• He reads the PDF of the article.
• He posts a summary of the article and the PDF in Blackboard for his peers in the course.
• I click through all of their posts on my laptop as I grade their article submissions.
• His article catches my eye.
• I don't want to forget to read it; so, I email the PDF to myself as a reminder.
• Later I'm sitting by the fire taking it easy. I'm listening to music on my iPad.
• I see the article in my email and decide to take a look.
• I realize I think I'll want to hang on to the article for future reference, so I open it in iBooks.
• One paragraph catches my eye, and I think about tweeting it out.
• I zoom in on the paragraph with a flick of two fingers, and click with my iPad to screen capture an image of the paragraph.
• I open Twitter, type in my tweet, and attach the paragraph image.
• The good find from one of my students is now out to my 300+ followers, one of which is B from my course.

And, it took me as long to write this post as it did to read the article and post the tweet.

Mirror Inquiry Ideas

I got inspired this week to move an inquiry I've been doing for years onto Prezi. Here's my vlog entry on what I learned in the process, including the following thoughts.

• Here's a link to the Mirror Inquiry on Prezi.
• The original concept for the inquiry came from Video #1 of the Minds of Our Own series.
• Transitioning from a hard copy to Prezi. An image of the old Word file is below.
• Starting to implement web-based video for bursts of instruction. Find all of the videos I researched at my mirror inquiry Delicious tag collection.
• Aha! I could use these videos from my iPad when working with small groups.
• Kids can go back to this Prezi whenever they want.
• Teacher's corners & Facilitator's corners.

Celebrating Authentic Assessment

The celebration graffiti from EHS 401/600

I've been using authentic assessment for over a year now, slowly transitioning away from projects my methods students did for me to projects that they do for authentic audiences. In June, I taught Methods I at UAB in a compressed format, and I really pushed the students to make each project authentic. I was really pleased with the work they did, and I think they were too. The image shows the celebration graffiti from the last day of class. I asked them, "What do you celebrate?"at the end of the course and to post that in a visual form.

5 Kinds of Scientists: The Theists

The most provocative kind of scientist mentioned by the National Academy in Science, Evolution and Creationism are theists. As I've presented to audiences around the country on how to teach evolution inclusively, seeing theists as a credible group of scientists has been a game-changer for many people. It was for me. As a theist myself, I always had a tendency to duck my head every time supernatural beliefs and science came up. I was always on the defensive, feeling like I had to explain how I was still rational and believing. The National Academy changed that for me and many in my audiences, however, when they stated unequivocally that theists can be good scientists: "Others are theists, who believe that God actively intervenes in the world" (p. 15).

Image from http://tinyurl.com/3lhgxxo 

Francis Collins stands as a modern example of a theist who is a great scientist. Great is a strong word, but how else would you describe the scientist who led the Human Genome Project and now heads the National Institute of Medicine? He's a great scientist, and he's quite clear about his belief in the supernatural. In his book, The Language of God, Collins traces his move from atheism to Christian belief. He founded the BioLogos Foundation, an effort at integrating science and faith. He has recently co-authored The Language of Science and Faith. 


(Collins's work reads to me like theistic evolution, but please don't be confused. Theistic sciences are not necessarily theistic evolutionists. I am a theist, but I have serious doubts about the appropriateness of trying to integrate science and faith into one nice, neat picture of agreement, especially since most theistic evolutionists work from a Christian perspective. They then are dangerously close to imposing any integration they achieve on scientists who are not Christian, since what theistic evolutionists seek is a search for ultimate truth.)


Theists have always been in the mix among scientists. Before the 19th century, theists were prominent among scientists, as they were prominent in all fields in Europe. As an example, Isaac Newton consistently wrote on religious issues as well as scientific ones. In the transitions of the 19th century, fewer mainstream scientists ascribed clearly to a theistic position, but many clearly did. Louis Aggisz is one of my favorites. As I studied the history of science in American, Aggisz as a great scientist and a devout Chritian became a role model for me. 


The New Atheists get it wrong when they insinuate that theism clouds scientists' judgment and bars them from practicing science well.  The National Academy got it right by including theists among scientists, and the history of science clearly shows the contribution that theistic scientists have made. The challenge for theistic scientists is maintaining their commitment to methodological naturalism in their scientific publications. They can't bring their beliefs about the supernatural into their scientific explanations, or they cross the line into the error of Creationists. Talk about supernatural actions and the hidden hand of Providence in the natural order are great conversations to have over beers after work or while tromping around collecting data in the field, but those speculations can't find their way into the write up of the data and still be scientific. 

5 Kinds of Scientists

Something has been rolling around in my head for a while. I'm beginning to see that there are 5 kinds of scientists when it comes to how they view evolution. The good scientists at the National Academy got me thinking about the first three kinds, but recently, I've realized that there are two more.

First, the three kinds identified by the National Academy: On page 15 of Science, Evolution, and Creationism, the authors line out how scientists can be scientific materialists, deists, or theists. This statement has been a game changer for me and for many of the teachers I have spoken to. In it, the National Academy has clearly kept the door to practicing science open to religious people like me. They refused to exclude us, and I'm grateful for their courage and clarity. Their statement has been a key platform in my talks on teaching evolution. If religious scientists aren't excluded from practicing science, then religious students shouldn't be excluded from learning about evolution. We must stop telling students, "Check your faith at the door. This is a science class."

What I'm seeing now, though, is that there are actually two other kinds at the fringes of the National Academies three. These other two kinds break long-standing scientific traditions about methodological naturalism, which is probably why the National Academy didn't consider them. One fringe group stands at the edges of theistic scientists; the other lurks at the edge of scientific materialists.

The first fringe category is pretty clear, and it's the Creationists and Intelligent Design advocates. They argue that science should consider supernatural as well as natural causes. As I heard Michael Behe explain last night, scientists should follow the evidence wherever it leads. If it leads to an intelligent designer, as Behe believes, then that's good scientific thinking. He just crossed the line of methodological naturalism, however, and that opens the door to the chaos of scientists having to figure out which supernatural explanations from all the religions in the world get considered.

The second fringe category is more subtle, and as a religious person, it's the one that concerns me more. It's closely aligned with the New Atheists, and it basically says that religious people themselves, not religious explanations, should be excluded from practicing science. Here, think about Dawkin's God Delusion and how delusional people don't make good scientists. The problem with these fringe scientists is that they are breaking long standing scientific traditions about philosophical naturalism. Science has never excluded people who believe in the supernatural, but in its modern formulation it has always said that scientists must stick to natural explanations in their work and publications. These fringe scientists make scientific materialism not just one of three possible views, as the National Academy has said. Instead, they make it a requirement for all scientists, excluding me and every other religious person from doing science. They have just opened the door to the chaos of elite science where only a few enlightened individuals can understand science, and the implications of that stance are hugely sinister.

Eagle Evolution: An Inquiry with Prezi

More and more, I'm seeing the power of Prezi for teaching well today, including teaching science by inquiry. Over the last week, I developed a Prezi-based lesson on eagle evolution for teaching to a local middle school. I'm really pleased with how the lesson came out on Prezi.

The lesson uses 4 species of sea eagles, including the bald eagle, to help 7th graders begin to grasp how variety in a population can lead to speciation over a long period of time. The students responded well to the lesson, and I think part of the reason is how easy it was to make the lesson image-based. The students jumped right into their research, using laptops, and were able to find evidence about the differences in the environment and traits between eagle species. I was also pleased with how easy it was to adapt the lesson between classes, since it was a lesson I'd never taught. The school is on a testing schedule; so, their teacher is going to finish it up today when I can't be there. With Prezi, all he needed is the link, and he'll be off and running to teach the lesson.

Remembering the Mimeograph

One of my first memories of teaching has to be the smell of the mimeograph machine in the teachers' lounge. If you are young enough that you don't remember anything before photocopiers, mimeographs were what teachers used to make copies back in the day.

You made a master by handwriting or typing on a special combination of paper types. By the way, I do mean typing, not word processing. We were using old-style typewriters and any mistake was a real pain to correct. Then, you removed a sheet from the master that had your original turned into purple on the paper. You attached that sheet to the drum on the mimeograph machine, loaded in a stack of blank paper, and started turning the handle. If your school had a fancier machine, it turned itself with a motor. As the drum made contact with each sheet of blank paper being fed through, the machine transferred an image to the paper. A little of your master wore off with each sheet; so, masters wouldn't make copies forever. The smell came from the fluid in that gallon container in the picture, and you could smell it far down the hall whenever someone was making copies. Here's a YouTube video showing a mimeograph machine in action. They were loud!

Do I miss mimeographs? No, not at all. I don't even miss photocopiers now that I've moved to almost-paperless teaching. Mimeographs do remind me, though, of a very different day of teaching the first time I was in the classroom. No photocopiers, no word processors, no spreadsheets, no cell phones, and no Internet! The last one seems to be the one that amazes my Net Generation students the most. We taught without any Internet support. All we had where our textbooks, the supplemental materials that came with them, and any resources we had collected on our shelves or in our filing cabinets. We were all little teaching islands in our own classrooms.

Teaching 25 Years

(image from http://www.hesilir.gr/)

This month marks my silver anniversary of teaching. 25 years ago, I took my first teaching job. I decided late in my pre-med studies in college that I didn't want to go to med school, and I really didn't have a plan B. I tried working as a youth director in a Baptist church for awhile, but quickly realized I didn't like being a professional Christian. My parents were both educators, and I had often wondered if teaching was in my blood, too. So, when my church job was cut to part time, I went looking for jobs as a substitute to give teaching a try. The first school I walked into, a small private school in Greenville, Mississippi, hired me on the spot. Their junior high math teacher had just walked out, and I took over that class when spring semester started.

I learned over that first semester that I didn't like junior high, I didn't like math, but I really liked teaching. I thought I had found my niche, and 25 years later, it's clear that I had. I am my teacher. It's one of the main ways I define myself. I do it naturally, and it brings me great joy. There's nothing quite like those times in my classroom with my students in which we're all engaged in true learning.

I'm not sure yet how I'm going to celebrate this silver anniversary, but I really do want to mark this milestone. I may be blogging over the next semester about key moments in teaching across the last 25 years. (It's funny--the first thing I think of is the mimeograph machine!) I find myself being reflective and a little nostalgic as I think of a quarter century of teaching. That's a long time doing a really valuable job!