Discuss how you could use STANSW Young Scientist Awards or a similar award system (e.g. CREST or BHP Awards) to assist teachers and students with open-ended investigations and apply holistic marking criteria. (May draw relationships to your MyScience project).
Open ended investigations and SRPs should allow students to start off with their own query and curiosity about something beforehand and then further build upon it by implementing the 5E's: engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration and evaluation.
An example would be a student from year 7-9 Biology (my Science project) that wanted to know what type of music would increase memory. This topic engaged the student to want to dwell further and do a SRP. The student explored different genre of music: classical, rock, no music, pop and heavy metal. Once the student was able to get results, the student was able to explain her hypothesis and whether or not it was right or wrong. The student was thenable to further elaborate and evaluate on this, giving reasons to why the hypothesis was not correct and the limitations and improvements of her SRP.
When marking this SRP even though this student's hypothesis was incorrect, the holistic nature of how she presented and came up with her SRP was very much more significant then if the hypothesis was correct or incorrect or if the results were correct or incorrect. To be a holistic marker, one must look at the whole picture. What was the aim/goal of the student's SRP did they meet this aim/goal. If so, how? If not, why not? Is the SRP logically sequenced (aim, hypothesis, equipment, method, reults, discussion, conclusion, limitations)? Do they have an understanding on the significance of the results when it comes to conclusion and evaluation of the SRP?
As markers, it is important not to be biased. If the student has used a graph that as a marker, we do not like then that should not be marked down. The marker should be asking, does the student have an understanding of the relationship between this graph and the results?
SRP and open investigations are student based and are a great way to allow students to be engaged in science, to be able to explore, explain, elaborate and evaluate something that they are curious and interested about and want to find an answer.
A very interesting post Gen. As teachers it is important to engage and excite our students in the science classroom and SRP are a great way of doing this. As you mentioned SRP give the students opportunities to explore and investigate scientific questions that they are interested in hence giving them control in their own learning. In regards to science awards such as the young scientist award, it is important to notify the students of the award and encourage them to participate as a learning and rewarding experience
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