It’s Not The Demonstration, It’s The Presentation.

A critical time in a young science teacher's career

It is the third class meeting of the second semester of a young science teacher’s career. Now is the time to introduce a powerful law of nature with such vast predictive power that most people tend to take it for granted. Remembering how the students of last semester failed to appreciate the fundamental importance of this foundation block of science, this young teacher decides to dramatize the wonderful law with a simple demonstration. 

Good idea, but the demonstration falls flat.

Oh, it works alright, but the class stares blankly and asks, “What was that all about?” The polite ones in front ask only themselves, but the less polite sitting in the back lecture hall whisper, elbow their neighbors, and ask each other.

The young teacher considers this to be a disaster. It is the ones sitting in the back that our young colleague is trying hardest to engage.

As anyone who teaches to a large class knows, the challenge is always in the back of the room.

This particular demonstration not only failed to engage the back of the class, it apparently failed to engage anybody. Our young friend realizes that it was not the demonstration itself that was at fault. Similar demonstrations are commonly done and are fully described in the literature. The fault more likely lies in the way the demonstration was presented.  It’s frequently not what one does – so much as how one does it.

What our young colleague does next, so early in a formative teaching career, may be critical in the development of our friend’s teaching style.

And what happens next probably depends on available resources.

If our young colleague is lucky enough to have friends teaching at the same level, friends who are famous their science demonstrations, help will be close at hand. A few questions, a few emails, and advice will be forthcoming.

Of course, it would be most useful if our young colleague could see those experienced teachers present their versions of that demonstration before live audiences. It would be far better to actually see those famous demonstrators in action rather then to read a text description of what they do. A reference book on demonstrations or an email answer from a friend would be helpful, of course, but any text description would be a distant second in terms of usefulness to seeing the demonstrator in action.

Still better than seeing one famous demonstrator, at work in the classroom or lecture hall, would be for our young colleague see several demonstrators at work. That way, our young friend could compare various teaching styles and synthesize one that works.

Of course, we then run into a different constraint all young teachers experience once they find themselves in the trenches. They rarely have time to travel to distant sites and to watch whole lectures. They would probably not be teaching already if they didn’t have some mastery of the subject matter, so they don’t need to watch whole lectures. Their needs are more specific than that. It is only part of the lecture they need to see.

 Short videos would suffice. They should be short enough that our young teacher could see several of them for comparison, but long enough to see how the demonstrations are presented and how the audience reacts.

We propose to start a collection of commonly done physics and chemistry demonstrations, a collection that it can be easily accessed and easily added to.

We feel that it is important that the collection be large enough that a teacher researching a particular demonstration can compare several styles of presentation. There is no best way to present a demonstration. Each teacher must develop their own style.

Not every teacher is going to dress up as a magician, as does Clint Sprott who is widely famous for his public shows done at the University of Wisconsin. Not every teacher is going to dress up their demonstrations as magic tricks, as does Dave Wall in his Physics of Magic public shows. Those forms of showmanship might fit some teacher’s style, but certainly not most. The public persona of a science teacher is highly personal.

Clint Sprott, by the way, agrees. In answer to the above comments, Professor Sprott says the following:

I very much agree with what you say. Everyone who does public
science education has to develop a style that works for him or her, but
examples are extremely useful. I am always careful, for example, in our
Lecture Kit which was funded by NSF, to point out that my style is only
one of many possible, and of course, I have borrowed heavily from
others.

We feel that it is also important that the collection be expandable. Once started, we will encourage teachers everywhere who are proud of their work to add short videos of their most successfully presented demonstrations to the collection.

Professor Sprott’s work could, for example, be included by reference.

Joe Redish, in an email regarding this proposal has made the following suggestion:

How about this.  Suppose in addition to a sort of "chat line" of teachers just talking about demos and how they did with it, you included a "Peer Reviewed" section?  You could create a set of questions (see below) and a teacher could prepare a submission that answered them.  You would then send it out to two of a team of reviewers that you arranged and (perhaps after an exchange or two improving the submission) the teacher could get a "peer reviewed publication" that might help them in their local environments. 

The questions might include ones that focus attention on the students.  Here are some off the top of my head.

 1. How do you deliver the demonstration?

2. Are there any setup problems that must be paid attention to?

3. In what way is the demonstration appropriate for your students?  How do you know?

4. How do you get students involved and engaged in the demonstration?  How do you know they are?

5. What evidence do you have that the students have learned something from this demonstration?

 You could then set a standard that would help keep teachers focused on the student -- and when teachers looked at the demo they could have a set of carefully thought out and described delivery examples.

 

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