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The arguments presented through the three principles that were expounded in the
introduction part were quite alarming. As a science teacher, and as a teacher-trainor /
academic coordinator, I was quite at a lost how to react with the first part of this reading
material. Is there any better way to start this final reaction paper but to elucidate based
on personal experience? There are ideas in the reading material that are absolutely true
for the western learners but it could be a different story for the Filipino learners. Students
enter with their own schema ± preconceptions and a lot of misconceptions. What is most
alarming is the revelation that preconceptions developed from everyday experiences are
often difficult to change because they generally work well enough in day-to-day context.
What is most alarming is that although students memorize content and prepare for the
test yet they still use their experience-based preconceptions to act in the world. This is
already expected because learners would always believe [and remember] what they
commonly experience and what they assume to be true according to their level of
understanding. Just as how the fish imagined the different animals as other forms of fish.
The observation presented in Chapter 12 is another alarming realization which I also
personally experience as a Biology teacher. In the study made, the students recognized
that their models were inconsistent with other knowledge but were willing to overlook
such inconsistencies when they judged their models to have adequate explanatory
power. Thus, students paid more attention to empirical than conceptual issues and
tended to value empirical power over conceptual inconsistency in models when both
criteria were brought to bear (Stewart, Cartier and Passmore, 2005). On my personal
experience, my students reported that water boils at 98 *C when we all know that the
boiling point of water [which is an intrinsic property] is 100 *C unless the atmospheric is
very low. When I discussed this with the class, they were all surprised because none of
them ever thought of explaining why their result was not the same with the expected.
How could they question then when they cannot even recognize a simple inconsistency?

The socio-cultural background of the learner also has a significant implication to his
preconceptions. At some extent, family-home setting and even genetics play significant
roles about these preconceptions and the ability of the learner to correct misconceptions.
Children who have a very good follow-up at home, whose parents are also inclined to
continuous learning and who are intellectually advance are better performers in school,
with outstanding preconceptions and quick to realize and correct their misconceptions.
There is a theory in biology that 60% of a child¶s intelligence comes from the mother. As
a general observation in the students that I have handled, most of the time, good
learners have mothers who are also of average or superior intelligence and those who
are academically challenged are whose mothers also seem academically challenged
when they were still students.

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On the debate whether to develop novice who see ideas as separate pieces or experts
who see them as organized set of ideas, I am supportive of the ³experts´ approach
because it agrees with brain-based learning, integrative approach to instruction and the
idea of enduring understanding. Although mastery of factual knowledge is a foundation
for conceptual understanding and high order thinking skills, being able to comprehend
the overarching idea and the interrelationship of details Ö
Ö
realistic context is much
more important than having rich inventory of concepts but with limited breadth and depth
of application ideas. There are a lot of highly performing students who do well in written
exams but are very poor in reasoning and drawing inferences or formulating synthesis.
Based on my teaching experience, these students are quite busy learning by heart the
concepts and processes that they don¶t have enough time to practice ³thinking outside
the box´. On the contrary, students who rarely keep notes during lectures are those who
are actually into deep thinking and are the only ones in the class who could answer
practical questions. These students are those who simply use their common sense.

On the second principle about what it means to do science, it should have been
emphasized that when science teachers teach the scientific method, they give the
impression that it is a sequence of steps, when in fact, it is not. It is just a generic model
for conducting research, processing and making sense of gathered information. Science
education in majority of schools is very poor in conducting science research. The
science process skills, starting from observing and describing up to the more complex
formulation of hypothesis and concluding are not that comprehensive and not that well
articulated. Most of the time, elementary science teachers simply rely on science
laboratory workbooks rather than arranging the development of the skills according to
the rigors of the scientific method. Another idea that should always be emphasized is on
the proper treatment of data. In science, it is not always important to get the expected
results or to come up with the correct patterns or trends of data. What is more important
is for the learners to explain why there were inconsistencies in the gathered data, what
is/are the probable source/s of errors in the experiment and how to resolve these if the
experiment is to be repeated. Furthermore, it is also important to formulate logical
hypothesis, conclusion and correlate these with the existing theories or principles. The
research study presented in Chapter 9 could corroborate these reflections.

What is rarely given much emphasis in the usual Filipino science classroom is
metacognition or self-monitoring. There are activities that address this such as when a
teacher ask questions like ³what is the most difficult part of the activity?´, ³what would
you do if´« etc. but these are optional parts of the teaching-learning process. In fact,
self-monitoring was not even included in the indicators of effective science instruction
published by UP-NISMED (2003). Perhaps it would be better to start training teachers on
self-monitoring their teaching performance. By noting down their daily observations of
learners¶ reactions, progress [particularly those with learning difficulties] and discourses,
the teacher would have a way to identify the strengths and weaknesses of every lesson.
Keeping a personal science journal could also be required but this might entail a more
comprehensive training for the science teachers because it is more than writing
reflections and monitoring of understanding. Furthermore, the classroom culture of risk
taking [exploration, discovery approach], positive approach to analyzing mistakes, and

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opportunities to question are also separate areas that must be given much emphasis in
teacher in-service training.

In reality, there is a greater demand for science teachers than what is being supplied by
the teacher training institutions. The burden of training, re-training or re-tooling of
science teachers lies on the schools themselves. One of the problems that we usually
encounter is that the kinds of teachers that are being supplied to the provinces, even
those who specialized in science, are what we call those with ³daily lesson plan
mentality´. How will they teach according to the three principles if they have no idea
about it? Based on my personal experience, there are current and emerging trends in
science education that have never been heard by new graduates. Even those who
graduated from what we consider good teacher training institutions [other than PNU and
UP] cannot fully execute an effective science instruction. Yes, they have heard of the
terms such as integrative, constructivism, metacognition, etc. but they cannot fully grasp
how to apply it in actual instruction. How good their schools are is what we should ask
ourselves. Are they really good or what is the definition of being good? If the science
education majors perform like this, what more of can we expect of a non-science major
to teach fundamental scientific concepts in elementary? And then we wonder why we
perform poorly in international achievement tests. What I always advocate is that it is
always better to hire teachers who have AB or BS degree and ask them to take units in
education simply because they have greater knowledge of the scientific concepts.
Instructional strategy can be learned by experience and continuous study but a strong
foundation of factual and conceptual understanding is something that a BSE or BEEd
can never achieve. What they bring into the school are teaching methods that can
become obsolete in the passing of time. In science, the body of knowledge grows
steadily, no matter how obsolete the theories are they would always have a place in the
field of science. But learning theories and teaching styles may lose their relevance as
the characteristics of learners change from one generation to another.

In general, the implementation of an effective science instruction Ö
Ö
the three

principles is a big challenge for both teacher and supervisor or curriculum coordinator. A
paradigm shift that requires teachers to come out of their comfort zone in facing the
challenge of the traditional views and practices of testing and measurement. The current
science education context is primarily driven by test scores gathered from pen and paper
tests [formative, summative, diagnostic, and achievement tests]. No matter how
innovative the teacher is, regardless of the approach or richness of the teaching
repertoire, we cannot ignore the fact that the system of promotion and the perspective of
the different stakeholders put primacy to the quantitative ratings given to learners. If we
are to truly apply the three principles in the Filipino classroom, it is not enough to change
the way we conduct our science instruction, it is much more important to make the
parents, the administrators and the community to understand, embrace, and sustain the
prescribed learning environment and design of instruction being proposed.

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Teachers should be well-versed with the scientific method before they attempt to guide
their learners in creating their own conceptual framework of understanding. The
realization of utilizing organized knowledge as basis for the conceptual frameworks
requires a well-designed curriculum and specific guidance of teachers. However, the
greater challenge is for teachers to fulfill the crucial role of helping students re-state
claims, discriminate relevant from irrelevant data and make additional claims. Teachers
should also have rich mastery of the concepts in order to address questions that may
arise and be able to correct misconceptions. There is always the danger of teachers,
instead of clarifying confusions, unknowingly encourage misconceptions because of their
inferior knowledge about the nature of science and insufficient understanding of
concepts and processes associated with a specific topic strand in science. As stated in
Chapter 11, when teachers fail to properly address preconceptions, misconceptions
persist. There are a variety of ways to elicit preconceptions and these ways are usually
directly linked to constructivism. It is worth reiterating at this point that poorly taught pre-
requisites due to inferior teacher competency have crucial implications to the
preconceptions and complexity of correcting misconceptions.

The idea of mutual respect highlighted in Chapter 11 is parallel to the idea of two of the
five attributes of Authentic Instruction (Newman and Wehlage, 1993) which is social
support for student achievement and substantive conversation. Instructional activities
should be rich in substantive conversation between the teacher and learner and among
learners. The exchange of ideas should be utilized to address preconceptions and
correct misconceptions. The social support for social achievement simply requires that
all learners be given opportunities for respectable work. Even differentiated activities are
employed, the teacher should be very clear about the rationale behind such activities
and the learners should understand that what they are accomplishing are of equal
importance. At all times, learners should feel that their ideas are accepted, supported
and appreciated before they can learn to proactively respond to feedbacks on their
mistakes.

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In Genetics, a simple question would always call for a complexity of answers with many
underlying concepts involved and that should be considered. It is one branch of Biology
that borrows foundations from other fields such as Biochemistry, Statistics, Population
Biology, Evolutionary Studies, Ecology, etc. Therefore, the modeling used in the study
was quite not appropriate. The representation or simulation should be at least closer to
reality. For instance, if the teacher wanted to make the learners realize that there are
patterns of inheritance, why use the ³black box activity´? It is like a case of forced
relationship, which I am sure brought more confusions than clarifications. What the
teacher should have done is to present historical accounts comparing facial features of
prominent persons or pedigrees of famous families. Actual data should have been used
such as the occurrence of a prominent [pointed] chin among French royalties, the
occurrence of hemophilia in the European royal family during the time of Queen Victoria
or any other actual data that exemplifies pattern. To reiterate, the teacher simply wants
the students to understand the concept of patterns, to introduce the concept of gene, he
could have used buttons with two colors and then by doing a simulation of genetic cross,
a pattern of result could surely be noted even by young learners.

The relationship of models that govern genetic principles, meiosis and behavior/
characteristics of biomolecules is a very complex idea that if one is not a Biology major,
it would be difficult to understand. This is the very reason why I cannot appreciate the
black box activity. It was difficult to accept that it is the best simulation or representation
activity to introduce a lesson in Genetics.

On the lighter side, reading the entire Chapter 12 also gave me pleasure because I
realized that the clustering and sequencing of topics and how I teach Biology is
consistent with the principles mentioned in the chapter. However, I usually teach the
Central Dogma of Molecular Biology prior to Genetics which the authors recommended
to be presented right after Genetics. The idea of integrate understanding or integration of
knowledge across domain can be attained in teaching Genetics because it not only
involve scientific concepts, processes, and principles, it also entails a lot of discussions
on ethical-moral issues, simulation of decision making and representations.
Understanding in this aspect requires multiple opportunities to use concepts in different
contexts of practical importance.

The lesson study on Evolution is more logical compared to the unit on Genetics. The
use of case study is an ideal strategy to present evolution because it is one principle and
process that we cannot obviously see or observed; it simply relies on available
information that we may not be able to verify due to time constraints. However, evolution
is quite a complex idea in Biology. It is composed of six main points, each is as complex
as the big idea of evolution itself. The case study is simple enough to be an introduction
but it is not the entire thing. One question that could be raised is the use of Lamarckism

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and Intelligent Design in the study. Why did the researchers include Lamarckism when in
fact it is already known that most of Lamarck¶s ideas are wrong. As for the idea of
Intelligent Design, it is not accepted in Biology. As Mayr has pointed out, there is
probably no more original more complex, and bolder concept in the history of ideas than
Darwin¶s mechanistic explanation of adaptation. Personally, it should have been Natural
Selection only that should be given focus as a model of evolutionary mechanism.

I like the term ³Darwinian history´ very much by Kitcher. Based on my personal
experience, the lesson on Darwinian evolution always stirs positive reaction and great
interest among my students despite its complexity and the difficulty in understanding and
re-phrasing it. Nevertheless, Darwin¶s theory of Natural Selection is such a durable idea
that it can be applied using a variety of updated contexts. It is also very easy to connect
with the concepts in Genetics and Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. However,
majority of textbooks offer ³state explanations´ rather than dwell on the historical aspect
of the development of a species¶ trait or adaptation. If more Darwinian history could be
provided, then case studies would be more common in science classrooms.

In conclusion, much of what students learn in Genetics and Evolution would depend on
their active and thoughtful participation in the classroom community, as well as, the
ability of the teacher to simplify, clarify and exemplify. The game of science is not simply
a task of producing answers but more importantly to be able to defend and critique ideas
according to the norms of the scientific discipline. Indeed, we should abandon the game
of school and begin to play the game of science. Schooling would always aim for the
correct answers to accumulate points. Science, on the other hand, aims for results to be
able to arrive at a conclusion. Therefore, instead of starting with a lecture-discussion,
every science teacher should start with an experiment or a field work before introducing
the concepts. Metacognition is weak in a science classroom because of the traditional
notion that concepts are defined first rather than have the experience followed by self-
generation of definitions. The true science focuses on the process rather than the
outcome which is the very essence of scientific inquiry because science is a continuous
journey through scientific inquiries. In the scientific world, á
 
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