The STEMscopes curriculum's pedagogical roots can be traced back to the Russian launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 and the ensuing space race. Coincidentally, STEMscopes is headquartered in the space flight capital of the United States, Houston, Texas. But what’s the connection between this 21st-century educational approach and the space race? Read on.
The curriculum is based on the 5E instructional model, originally developed by principal investigator Rodger Bybee and his team at BSCS Science Learning in 1987. Over the past three decades, the 5E model has been implemented widely for science instruction, refined continuously based on research and classroom experience, and increasingly validated by research assessing its effectiveness.
BSCS based the 5Es on an understanding of an earlier three-part learning cycle developed by Robert Karplus and Herbert Thier in the massive Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS), which ran from 1962 to 1977. Funded in a nervous post-Sputnik America by the National Science Foundation, SCIS was one of a number of federally funded studies launched to counteract the perceived failure of the American education system to match the Soviets’ strong emphasis on science. Karplus and Thier’s work was unique in its commitment to foundational elementary science education. Further, it built a life sciences curriculum around the principle that children learn best through hands-on experiences with experiments, exploration of ideas, interpretation of what they observe, and ability to relate scientific concepts to the real world.
All of this will sound very familiar to anyone working with STEMscopes. The curriculum is rooted deeply in the BSCS 5E instructional model, which itself owes a debt to the revision of thought about science education after the Soviet success with Sputnik. But unlike the Cold War era objective to teach science solely in order to build a workforce of scientists, the STEMscopes curriculum seeks to apply the 5E model to build life skills, regardless of students’ career choices. These skills are applicable to science learning in later grades but also to general learning and life beyond academics: a sound approach to teaching problem-solving, the investigation of questions, evaluation of evidence, development of an explanation, and communication of findings.
Underlying Principles of the 5E
The power of the 5E model lies in its underlying principles. While following the 5Es in sequence is important, they are more than a 5-step teaching recipe. Unlike previous models for teaching science, the BSCS 5E approach follows the way people naturally approach problem-solving. As former BSCS Executive Director Janet Carlson comments, it follows an “everyday problem solving strategy.” Furthermore, it mirrors the way scientists pursue inquiry. The 5E model is based on three major principles: it is inquiry-based, uses a constructivist approach, and is built around hands-on learning.
An inquiry-based approach to learning starts with a question, using students’ curiosity to fuel their learning of science. In this approach, students ask a question about a phenomenon they have observed, do their own investigation, gather evidence, and propose and test ideas to find answers to that question. Research shows that inquiry-based science improves test scores in both science and mathematics. But more importantly, it prepares even the youngest students to think like scientists, as the process of doing science starts with asking a testable question that can be investigated scientifically. As a teaching approach, it also provides a means of teaching vocabulary and reading in context. And, finally, students find school more enjoyable and rewarding when they’re learning about things they can connect to their everyday observations and lives.
Constructivism is “an approach to learning that holds that people actively construct or make their own knowledge and that reality is determined by the experiences of the learner.” Constructivist methods allow students to go beyond rote memorization to develop a deeper form of knowledge, use context that is meaningful to them so they can better connect to the content, and take active control of their learning process, as a participant rather than a passive consumer of traditionally taught material. A constructivist classroom is characterized by students in teams or at workstations, using inquiry and discovery, hands-on investigation, debate, and creativity to interpret materials to develop their own meaning and understanding. Instead of lecture and teacher-led activities, learning is centered on the student’s interest, curiosity, and prior knowledge of the world around them. The emphasis is on problem-solving, the process of discovery and scientific discourse, and providing context for content first.
Finally, basing all lessons on hands-on learning gives students the experience of exploring natural phenomena in the same way scientists do: through close observation and the use of all five of their senses. Research has shown that students who have directly observed or experienced a phenomenon better understand its underlying concepts and principles. For example, students who had played sports later grasped the concept of a parabola better than students who had not frequently watched the trajectory of a ball. Hands-on learning grounds later phases of the lesson in the student’s direct experience so they can connect the concrete with the abstract.
The 5E instructional model incorporates student-centered, hands-on investigations into a specific progression of lessons that build student understanding of scientific phenomena. Each lesson (called a scope in the STEMscopes curriculum) follows a sequence of five elements, described below.
Elements of the BSCS 5E Instructional Model
In this 5E instructional model, each lesson follows five phases, used in sequence.
In science subjects, these phases are completed sequentially with little doubling back, although the STEMscopes curriculum provides multiple elements for teachers to choose from for each scope (lesson).
- Engage – The Engage is a hook that piques students’ curiosity or connects the content to a real-world phenomenon they already know. It is meant to be an invitation that draws them into an investigation of a scientific concept. It is usually a hands-on activity; teachers may use different Engage activities each day that the lesson is taught. Teachers can also use the Engage as a chance to assess their students’ prior knowledge, and circle back to review foundational material if there are misconceptions or gaps.
- Explore – The heart of inquiry-based instruction, Explore gives students (usually collaborating in teams) the opportunity to apply their prior knowledge to hands-on experiences. These activities may include scientific investigations, engineering solutions to real-world problems, and research. Together, the students observe closely, collect and record data, ask questions, and formulate new questions for investigation. The teacher acts as a facilitator and coach, encouraging further questions and modeling the use of appropriate scientific vocabulary to describe observations.
- Explain – In the Explain phase, students begin to make sense of their data, come up with explanations, further develop their science vocabulary, apply and interpret evidence, defend their own rationale, and listen critically to other rationales. There may be a sequence of several experiences relating back to the broad questions raised in the Engage and the specific activity or activities in the Explore, all intended to develop depth and breadth around the content. The teacher’s role is to guide student reasoning and direct students toward other resources.
- Elaborate – The primary goal of Elaborate is for students to generalize the concepts, processes, and skills they have learned in the Explore and Explain. Here, students build their understanding of the science concept to draw broader conclusions, proposing solutions, and extending what they learned in the specific Explore and Explain to new situations.
- Evaluate – As might be expected, in this phase teachers evaluate individual students for their understanding of the science concept. However the Evaluate phase is more complex and student-centered than that: students have to opportunity to demonstrate to themselves as well as the teacher that they learned a skill or concept, and thus learn to evaluate their own progress, while teachers use their evaluations to assess their own skill at teaching the concept. At a higher level, the Evaluate phase teaches metacognition to students and teachers alike.
The STEMscopes 5E + IA Lesson Model
STEMscopes augments the 5E model with the addition of two enriching resources: Intervention and Acceleration. Based on each student’s Evaluate results, the teacher may decide to move students into either Intervention, if they need more help to master the concept, or Acceleration, if they fully grasp the concept and are ready to be challenged to explore further.
- Intervention – These resources are used for students who are unable to grasp the concept the first time it is introduced. They include small group instruction and guided practice, where the concept is revisited in a different way, and independent practice activities that enable the student to review vocabulary and solidify understanding of the concept. Students can progress from Intervention to Acceleration if they master the knowledge and skills.
- Acceleration – These resources and activities allow students who have mastered a concept to explore it further, look at it from a different perspective, or reinforce what they have learned. Elements include Math Today and Create Your Own, and students can also be assigned an Elaborate that was not used in class.
The STEMscopes curriculum is built around the principles and elements of the 5E learning model, providing teachers a sequenced pathway of lessons (scopes) that are tied directly to the NGSS and state science standards. The curriculum offers teachers a rich repository of digital and material resources for themselves and their students, as well as professional development that is embedded into the curriculum and offered in both online and live formats.
STEMscopes provides a complete, coherent, and supported pathway for the academic success of students using this enhanced 5E instructional model. Through the 5E+IA curriculum model, teachers are given a rich collection of carefully integrated, standards-aligned resources that support them in meeting the diverse academic and learning needs of the students in their science classrooms.
