Knowledge Quest on the Web
January/February 2003
Special full text reprint exclusively on KQWeb
Collaborating with Science Teachers
Debbie Abilock
While preparing this issue of Knowledge Quest and thinking about science teachers and the school librarian, I’ve been reading an interesting book on collaboration. Written by Gail Bush, an experienced school librarian with research credentials and a background in both educational psychology and anthropology, The School Buddy System posits that collaborations can be nurtured and learned, rather than just emerging from the interactions of particular types of personalities.1 Bush contends that collaboration has the potential to reward educators with "the greatest gift in their profession, a feeling of serving their students to the best of their abilities."2 Further, she asserts, collaboration provides team members with an enhanced sense of community and commitment to the teaching profession and an increased awareness of being both a learner and teacher with a "more textured understanding of one’s own discipline and the expertise of collaborative partners."3
Science teachers ought to be receptive to teaming. They are certainly aware that scientists today often work in groups precisely because of the potential payoffs in synergy and expertise. Most science teachers have read about notable historical collaborations in science. For example, Bush quotes a scientific historian’s vivid account of Crick and Watson’s joint effort to discover DNA: "Collaboration operates through a process in which the successful intellectual achievements of one person arouse the intellectual passions and enthusiasms of others, and through the fact that what was at first expressed only by one individual becomes a common intellectual possession instead of fading away into isolation."4
Granted, some school librarians whose liberal arts or teacher training programs have not provided them with adequate background in science might feel at a disadvantage in teaming with science teachers. For them, a working knowledge of scientific developments and ideas can be enhanced by regular reading of a popular publication like The New York Times: Science online <www.nytimes.com/pages/science> supplemented by such magazines as Discover, Science News, and Scientific American--available in print or through Ebsco, ProQuest, or Infotrac databases. Take the opportunity to describe a new development you’ve read about to your school’s science teacher. Collaborations can begin with just this kind of casual conversation.
Looking at how science is being taught in your school, it may appear to you that a hands-on, inquiry-based science curriculum (or even a textbook-based science program) does not seem to include opportunities for information literacy projects. But examine the"habits of mind" processes and"science in society" topics referenced in such initiatives as American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Project 2061 and you will discover opportunities for linkage between your information literacy goals and science standards.5 Point out some examples of commonalities you’ve noticed during your next conversation with a science teacher.
This issue of Knowledge Quest gives you an additional edge. The NSDL online databases are constructivist and inquiry-based and, perhaps, resources your science teachers have not yet discovered. Copy an article about the Digital Water Education Library project or the Atmospheric Visualization Collection from this issue and attach a note inviting a teacher to investigate it online with you after class.
Certainly another tried-but-true method of opening doors to collaboration involves suggesting new print resources that might fit existing science curriculum. Two engagingly written small-press titles that teachers could read aloud to their students are Buttons, Bones, and the Organ-Grinder’s Monkey: Tales of Historical Archaeology and Amphibians, Reptiles, and their Conservation.6
Or, if your teachers are interested in applications of science to everyday life, show them the individual volumes (chemistry, physics, biology, earth science) of the Science of Everyday Things.7 Each entry in these reference books follows the same format: the concept or scientific principle or theory is defined and explained in straightforward, jargon-free language, and is followed by a discussion of real-life applications with references to books and Web sites for readers who want to learn more. Your teachers will be grateful for resources that enrich their teaching; they will appreciate the efforts you’ve made to select just the right ones.
Finally, there is increasing interest among educators and researchers in improving the teaching of reading to adolescents, an area of expertise that naturally falls within your comfort zone. However, your science colleagues may need some support in learning to teach nonfiction reading. Exploring the Literature of Fact offers ideas for using nonfiction trade books in the classroom and includes lesson plans, recommended lists and examples of student work.8 Other recent books show content-area teachers how to teach strategic reading of informational texts and how to teach vocabulary.9
While not every effort you make will result in success, keep trying. Recognize that the choice to collaborate is always just that--a choice--for both parties. As a practitioner in Bush’s book asserts,"Collaborative partners cannot be assigned from above; they have to be approached and solicited. For the level of motivation and creativity to be maintained, collaborative partners must be mutually chosen."10 It’s a choice that benefits students--reach out to collaborate
References
1. Gail Bush, The School Buddy System: The Practice of Collaboration (Chicago: ALA, 2003).
2. Ibid., 92.
3. Ibid.
4. Vera John-Steiner, Notebooks of the Mind: Explorations of Thinking, 2d ed. (Albuquerque, N.M.: Univ. of New Mexico Pr., 1997) 187-88, as quoted in Bush, The School Buddy System, 4.
5. American Association for the Advancement of Science,"Project 2061: Tools: Atlas of Science Literacy: Table of Contents," <www.project2061.org/tools/atlas/toc.htm> 12 Jan. 2003.
6. Meg Green, Buttons, Bones, and the Organ-Grinder’s Monkey: Tales of Historical Archaeology (North Haven, Conn.: Linnet, 2001); Marty Crump, Amphibians, Reptiles, and Their Conservation (North Haven, Conn.: Linnet, 2002).
7. Judson Knight, Science of Everyday Things, Neil Schlager, ed., 4 vols. (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2002).
8. Barbara Moss, Exploring the Literature of Fact: Children’s Nonfiction Trade Books in the Elementary Classroom (New York: Guilford, 2003).
9. Linda Hoyt, Make It Real: Strategies for Success with Informational Texts (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2002); Camille Blachowicz and Peter J. Fisher, Teaching Vocabulary in All Classrooms, 2d ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill Prentice Hall, 2002).
10. Bush, The School Buddy System, 59.
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