Tips For Integrating Science Process Skills in Lessons

Integrating the science process skills as one of your teaching strategies requires no drastic changes in your teaching style. It merely involves making the processes of science more explicit in lessons, investigations, and activities you are already using in your science curriculum.

The science process skills are the methods used by students to conduct investigations and understand how we know what we know about the world in which they live. This often means going beyond the textbook and supplementing the core-content within textbooks with hands-on, minds-on activities. It also means using your course content as a means for exposing students to the real processes of science.

In the book, Nature of Science: Part, Present, and Future (2007), Lederman indicates these methods involve making explicit references to the science process skills and allowing students time to reflect on how they participated in the process.

Explicit Teaching Strategy

Shifting from an implicit strategy for developing increased student understanding to an explicit teaching strategy helps ensure students make the connection between science processes involved within an investigation and science content.

One example -

During a lab investigation involving the graphing of a large amount of data students collected - ask them to first draw conclusions on the meaning of their data before graphing it.

Then have them draw additional conclusions after graphing the data.

This process emphasizes the importance which visual representation brings to data analysis.

Using Real Data

Nothing can compare when students collect real data personally or use real data from remote networks such as satellites, buoys, or seismic sensors. Using real data in the classroom in any learning process supports student learning through support for:


inquiry and participation in the scientific method.
ability to design experiments.
effective evaluation of data uncertainties and applicability.
using quantitative and critical thinking skills.
measurement skills.

The Real Value of These Strategies

We know our students bring misconceptions to the science classroom and these misconceptions must be acknowledged before new, more accurate concepts can be learned. These strategies help students recognize their misconceptions and teachers help students overcome them.

Students need to appreciate and value science as a way of knowing. The process of science, such as debate, can cause the general public to mistrust what they hear from scientists. If we teach our students how science works, they are more likely to interpret a scientific debate with ability to separate right from wrong based on their personal experiences.

Additional Ways to Integrate Science Process Skills

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David R. Wetzel, Ph.D. - Currently a FreeLance Writer, Retired Science Education University Professor and Public School Science Teacher. He is an avid technology user and researches technologies which impact everyday science education.

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