I teach, you learn. Sound familiar? With an appropriate amount of “drill and kill”, this can broaden a student’s field of experience. Learning can take place under these circumstances, yet we can all broaden our fields of experience by considering better ways. The term “field of experience” is based on Jean Piaget’s theory that intellectual structures are built by the learner. Our fields consist of the body of knowledge, the experiences, and (of course) all the misconceptions we bring with us when we enter someone else’s field of experience. Given a new learning environment, a learner’s cognitive structures can be reconstructed from the present learning environment when sufficient overlap of the instructor’s and learner’s fields of experience occur in such a way that there is a stimulation of cognitive processing. In other words, when some common knowledge is available between the teacher and the learner, then it is at this interface where you as the instructor can engage your student(s) and stimulate the building of new knowledge. Think of a Venn diagram that consists of two circles, each encompassing a personal field of experience. The overlap of the two circles represents common knowledge and/or experience. Knowledge to be transmitted now has an interpersonal connection making it easier to enable cognitive processing.

For example, after reading the Commentary by Freeman, I realized that thinking about the definition of a mole as a count might be inconsistent with present day thought. However, it was not until I read Gorin’s treatment of the mole, molar quantities, and “chemical amount” that I began to understand Freeman’s article. This is probably similar to what students go through with various approaches to learning about similar subjects from different instructors and the value of revisiting a subject from various points of view. Sometimes multiple contacts with the material in question are needed so that there is an increased chance that fields of experience overlap. It is at this interface, where the respective fields overlap, that the matrixes indicative of learning are constructed.

McCalla suggests aiding students’ problem-solving ability by explicitly addressing how students are taught to solve problems. Her “Pathway Method” is similar to the Explicit Method of Problem Solving (EMPS) (1). Both of these methods attempt to help students’ and instructors’ fields of experience overlap, so that learning can occur. Having students form new schema, work backwards within existing schema, and carefully create precise pathways to solve problems are all good ideas.

Paper and pencil resources are not the only methods available to teachers and students to widen their respective fields of experience. Cooke provides a list of online resources on the periodic table, molecular shapes and structures, and transition metal and organometallic chemistry. Special attention should be paid to WebElements and Visual Elements, both excellent resources.

Linking students’ experiences to real-world analogies and events can also improve learning. This Journal is one of the best resources for learning how to deliver experiential learning. Goss and Eddleton present a demonstration, which is closely analogous to how acid rain occurs in the atmosphere, to help students better understand the formation of acid rain from “wet deposition”. From here the students’ attention is directed toward how lake acidification occurs. The Goss and Eddleton article is complemented by this month’s Classroom Activity on acid rain, and by the article by Li, Barnett, and Ray, which reports useful safety tips on pollution prevention in academic laboratories. Though the article is directed at the college laboratory, the “reduce, recycle, reuse” philosophy is very appropriate for high school. The less waste produced, the less treatment and disposal needed. Some ways to reduce the production of wastes are to use microscale quantities and to investigate and develop alternative experiments or demonstrations that achieve the same or similar pedagogical goals.

In a Gallup poll of 1000 students attending four-year colleges more than 70% of the students reported that science literacy is important to their careers (2). I assume that science literacy is also one of your goals for your students. According to results of the Third International Mathematics & Science Study (TIMSS) and National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), however, our high school seniors are not faring well in mathematics and science achievement. One of the most disturbing trends in the U.S. scores is that the longer our students stay in school the lower is their performance as compared to their international peers. No single factor has been identified as a predictor of success for the undergraduate (3), but it seems likely that progress can be made if we use research-based learning tools.

If the linear model of “I teach, you learn” can be expanded to include “I learn and I can help you learn by facilitating your learning opportunities”, maybe the longer our students stay in school the better educated and the more prepared to be life-long learners they will be.

Literature Cited

1. Bunce, D. M.; Heikkinen, H. J. Res. Sci. Teach. 1986, 23, 11; Bunce, D. M.; Gabel, D. L.; Samuel, J. V. J. Res. Sci. Teach. 1991, 28, 505–521.
2. Nalley, E.A. C & E News May 20 2002, 50.
3. Spencer, H.E. C & E News April 22 2002, 2.