Creating Context for Learning About Minerals

English Abstract:

Provincial science curricula tend to be disconnected theoretical and abstract little boxes, the complete antithesis of how we learn. An isolated Grade 7 Minerals unit will not lead to any significant learning of the connections with the multitudes of metal containing products that we use daily. We miss out the complex physics, chemistry and environmental issues of not just mining but of processing, extraction and refining of the metal, creation of alloys, of fabrication, pollution, recycling and community impact. At the end of the day we scratch our heads and continue with the same old practices of memorizing mineral properties, not realizing or understanding that by repeating traditional practices we are contributing to common disconnections with the bigger world.

Just attending a 3 h workshop on minerals for example will rarely lead to significant behavioral change in the classroom, as there will have typically been little contextual layering during the workshop process. Frequently the teacher goes away with an armful of goodies but on returning back to school my experience is that they just end up in a cupboard, and if they occasionally come out it is usually only to follow an isolated exercise in the textbook. The average teacher has not had a background of industrial processes through which they can embed context into their teaching. We have made little progress in trying to develop curricula that embed contextual multi-layered learning in our future populations. This in a time when some scientists are already deeply concerned about such issues as resource extraction, climate change and food supply in a world in which the population has increased 300% since I was born.

This session will describe a Grade 11 Science Unit focused on the processes by which common objects are made by developing a foundational approach to student understanding of the role of mineral resources in their daily lives. For evaluation each student had to choose a metallic object and present a report deconstructing how that object was made. Because of the lack of general print resources much of this research had to be done on line. For many students, it turned out to be a very powerful learning experience.