Context-based Learning - Cathy Middlecamp

Cathy Middlecamp
Department of Chemistry
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract - Storyline - Commentary - Recommendations for Adaptation - Things to Consider - Literature

Abstract: In this example, Cathy Middlecamp talks about her approach to teaching context-driven physical science courses that are based in real-world examples. She has students first engage with the real-world issues and then explains the science behind these issues. She finds that her students are more invested in solving the science puzzles when they're presented with situations and examples that have ramifications for the lives of real people. The contexts that Middlecamp chooses to focus on often involve racial and ethnic minority groups or women. This allows her to weave aspects of human diversity throughout her course material as well.

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Storyline: "Doing learning-through-diversity in classrooms requires higher order skills on the part of both teachers and students," according to Cathy Middlecamp, distinguished academic staff in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She isn't satisfied with merely teaching her students content. In fact, Middlecamp argues that if a teacher's goals are characterized by statements that start with "understand this" and "summarize that" then teachers are expecting too little of their students. Middlecamp's learning goals, which she sets before she ever starts developing her curriculum, require students to integrate what they've learned about concepts and processes into real world examples and applications. How? By starting with the world. Starting with the world also facilitates incorporating diversity into the curriculum.

"People are the key to doing learning-through-diversity in science classes," Middlecamp asserts. "If people aren't connected to science, there's no diversity." Rather than beginning with processes and explanations in her course, she teaches "from the world inward." Starting with real-world examples of how people and science interact, Middlecamp uses as a starting place a story like Radium Girls-a book detailing the New Jersey case of female workers' exposure to radium which resulted in fatal poisoning and was covered up by the paint companies-or The Firecracker Boys-a book focused on the Inupiat Eskimo movement to stop the 1958 plan to use the H-bomb to create an Alaskan habor. Both of these texts discuss how science has been (or could have been) used by the powerful at the expense of women and Native Americans; but more than that, they provide students with a compelling reason to understand the science behind the stories: because people's lives are at stake. With these stories as a foundation, then, Middlecamp explains what radium is and how radioactivity works. The capstone project for this course is that the students have to find another science story to tell. They work throughout the semester to find their story, write it up, and explain the science in it culminating in a 35 minute presentation and a 5 page well revised paper. "By shifting my focus away from seemingly disparate processes and facts to real world applications, I find that my students learn about other cultures, integrate cultural and scientific issues, and locate and explore scientific issues that are relevant in their own lives," Middlecamp says.

Middlecamp has written extensively on diversity and teaching. She also developed the first physical science course at the University of Wisconsin System that satisfied the ethnic studies requirement for undergraduate students. This course, Environmental Chemistry and Ethnicity, looks at the affects of radioactivity on Native American populations in Wisconsin.

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Commentary: This example highlights the way that instructors can "explore novel contexts for presentation [and, thereby] can enrich the experience of participants and practitioners alike" as recommended in the learning-through-diversity pillar. Middlecamp pays close attention to diversity, especially with regard to her students' relationship with the content in her classroom. She works to ensure that the students engage with a variety of science-related issues that emphasize the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in our world.

"Integrating science with the real and pressing concerns of human beings on this plant is a powerful way to give race, ethnicity, class, and gender a rightful place in our science classrooms. In the process we create a synergism: we draw our students into the world of science as we in turn are drawn into the world and its people," write Middlecamp in her piece on "Diversity in the Physical Science Classroom."

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Recommendations for Adaptation:

1. Set learning goals before planning curriculum and make sure these goals are high-order goals such as evaluate, use, integrate.
2. Liberate yourself from thinking you must cover the content "or else." Look at your course in broad strokes and discern what is it that students actually need to know, can remember, and will use.
3. With these content areas in mind looks for examples in the world that can help them better learn about those processes. Ask yourself "what are the real-world contexts that I'm most familiar with that use scientific concepts emphasized in my course?"

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Things to Consider:
Middlecamp argues that often instructors "add diversity and stir." That is, instructors incorporate extra material on population sub-groups which is not essential to the course curriculum. The effect is that students can ignore this material and still be successful in the course. Consider ways that you can make the changes to your curriculum substantial such that students need to interact with the questions the real-world contexts pose.

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Background Literature:
Donovan, M.S. and J.D. Bransford, Eds, (2005). How Students Learn: Science in the Classroom. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Pr.

Middlecamp, C. H., Trace, J., Shachter, A.m., Lottridge, S., Oates, K. K. (2006). "Chemistry, Society, and Civic Engagement (Part 1): The SENCER Project." Journal of Chemical Education, 83(9), 1301-1307.

Middlecamp, C. H. and Phillips, M.F., Bentley, A. K., Baldwin, O. (2006). "Chemistry, Society, and Civic Engagement (Part 2): Uranium and American Indians." Journal of Chemical Education, 83(9), 1308-1312.

Middlecamp, C. (2006). Diversity in the Physcial Science Curriculum: The Intellectual Challenge. NSTA Handbook of College Science Teaching (Mintzes, J. J., Leonard, W. H. Eds.) Arlington, VA: National Science Teachers Association.

Middlecamp, C.H., C.E. Heltzel, and S.W. Keller. (2009). Chemistry in Context: Applying Chemistry to Society. New York: McGraw Hill.

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