CWC Bibliography No. 5, 1995

A Brief Annotated Bibliography:
The Value of Writing in the Science Classroom

This bibliography summarizes six articles selected from the ongoing dialogue about the efficacy of incorporating informal writing into the science classroom. Interdisciplinary writing programs, which probably date from the late 19th century, resurfaced dramatically in Great Britain in the 1960s, giving renewed importance to reading and writing activities in the science classroom. And surely our need to increase scientific literacy has only expanded in the last decade. These articles summarize recent research in the theory and practice of using writing in the science classroom as a tool for learning.

Ruth Weston reminds us of the inherent connections between science and the humanities and indicates ways to encourage students to make these connections. William Holliday et al. discuss the theory behind interdisciplinary writing, while Chris Madigan emphasizes writing as a means to learning, not an end in itself. Madigan also poses solutions to the biggest problems confronting teachers of science when they assign informal writing--i.e., having students write in class takes attention away from science, and grading all of those assignments takes too much time. The last three articles--those by Strauss and Fulwiler, Ambron, and Jensen--give examples of ways that science instructors have used writing in their teaching.

The University Writing Program has a large collection of articles and books on writing assignments. You are welcome to consult our collection. We would also be happy to photocopy any of the articles discussed here that interest you.

Weston, Ruth D. "Science by Poetry, Fiction by Geometry: Interdisciplinary Reading and Writing." Critic 55 (1993): 71-76.

Claiming that all true knowledge is interdisciplinary, Weston asserts that creativity in science and the humanities requires the same cognitive learning processes. But an increasingly fragmented curriculum obscures this fact. One of the clearest indicators of this fragmentation is the disproportionately low percentage of science professors (45%) who see themselves as teachers of critical thinking skills and prefer to leave that chore to English teachers, 77% of whom see themselves as teachers of critical thinking. Weston contends that instructors in both the sciences and the humanities can enhance their teaching by emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of creative thought. The science student needs to remember that creativity in science is not incompatible with poetic method, just as the student of humanities needs to know that contemporary life and literature become more intelligible with some knowledge of mathematics and physics.

Weston offers two ways of helping students perceive such connections. First, we can demonstrate that metaphor, a common figure of speech in poetry, is just as common a tool in scientific reasoning. She cites Robert Frost, who, in a speech at Amherst College in 1930, argued that the most profound thinking begins in the use of metaphor; Pythagoras, for example, compared the structure of the universe with numerical systems.

To demonstrate another dramatic link between science and humanities, Weston compares the physical laws of geometry to the spatial (geometric) plotting of the modern short story. To really understand the theory of plot structure, she contends, one needs to have connected the dynamics of plot with the dynamics of human thought and then with the dynamics of a curve in mathematics. She concludes that whether we like it or not, we have science by poetry and fiction by geometry. We need to help our students make these connections.

Holliday, William G. et al. "The Reading-Science Learning-Writing Connection: Breakthroughs, Barriers, and Promises." Journal of Research in Science Teaching 31 (1984): 877-93.

Most writing in the science classroom has been directed toward communicating what the student knows to the teacher, filling in the blanks, or responding briefly to teacher-generated questions. The writing-across-the-disciplines movement has generated increasingly significant research which suggests that meaningful writing bridges new information and old knowledge, expresses our thoughts, and forces us to grapple with what we know and what we don't know. Holliday et al. point out that "writing should glue thinking to paper, provide a public record of thinking, promote critical thinking, allow the transformation of vague ideas to clear conceptions, and stimulate the construction of understandings." As such, writing "emphasizes exploration, expressive inquiry, discovery, problem-solving, decision-making, and the construction of knowledge.

The main resistance to the writing-to-learn idea arises from understanding composition as a product, as information packaged to be graded rather than a means to transform knowledge and a process that assists in learning. Most teachers have used writing assignments to get students to tell knowledge, a simplistic strategy that discourages students from attempting to shape their writing to transform knowledge and make it their own.

These authors argue that the use of language to support thinking, exploring, discovering, and understanding in a social context should not be partitioned into talking, listening, writing, and reading. Because language arts are interactive and influence one another in important ways, students even in science classrooms need to be productively engaged in writing about what they read and reading what they write.

Madigan, Chris. "Writing as a Means, Not an End." Journal of College Science Teaching 16 (1987): 245-49.

In accordance with the belief that writing is an effective way to teach content, not just test it, Madigan gives informal "writing-to-think" assignments and provides examples of typical scenarios:

• In a biology class, students observe two rabbits and record not only what they see but also what they speculate, both of which are important activities in science.
• To help students in a chemistry class resolve their individual questions about course content, they are asked to write nonstop for three minutes about their specific difficulty. One student begins, "When should I use eq's and in what order?" In three minutes he proposes and rejects one possibility before proposing two others, suggesting that he can generate solutions but needs help evaluating them.

Why does some writing promote thinking? Madigan asks. One theory is that all of us work as scientists--those working in the humanities as well as those in science. That is, we develop a personal construct theory of how the world works, a theory we constantly consult, modify, act upon, and modify again. Moreover, we conceive and modify our personal constructs through language; one way we think is to develop an "inner speech" that explains our experiences to ourselves. A teacher whose role it is to help students develop inner theories (to think, in effect) about math, chemistry, or biology needs to find ways to influence their inner speech. And writing--informal, risk-taking writing--supports that role.

Answering the objection that assigning writing in the science classroom takes attention away from science, Madigan points to a view of writing as "a means to an end, not an end in itself." Consider in-class time. If students sometimes write about science--just as sometimes they listen to a lecture or read about it--their time-on-task remains constant, though writing actually increases involvement with the subject. (Tuning out while listening or reading is much easier than tuning out while engaged in a writing task, which requires more elaborate mental connections.)

To the other big question for teachers--"Who has time to grade all those papers?"--Madigan advises that we respond rather than grade, respond selectively, and disperse the burden.

• Grading usually includes writing comments (often explanations or justifications of the assigned grade), which, besides taking time, reinforces a teacher-versus-student relationship. Further, students often ignore the comments we painstakingly provide. Instead of grading and judging, consider giving advice as a senior to a junior colleague. Advice is usually shorter than self-justification, more welcome, and more likely to be used.
• Respond according to the assignment's purpose. If the aim is to test, then grade. But if the purpose is to encourage observation, comment on how observant the student is. Respond selectively; ignore all but the primary purpose of the assignment.
• Some writing needs no response at all, especially if the students see that they are getting something of value from the act of writing. Collect and discard assignments that generate their own reward. Or grade some assignments, but not others. Or give checks for completed assignments. In good writing-to-think assignments, the process itself is the main point.
• Don't do all the responding yourself. For some assignments, students can evaluate their own or each other's papers.

Overall, Madigan argues that it is easier to incorporate writing into the science classroom when we see its relationship to thinking, not just to testing.

Strauss, Michael J. and Toby Fulwiler. "Interactive Writing and Learning Chemistry." Journal of College Science Teaching 16 (1987): 256-62.

The writing associated with chemistry classes is usually limited to lab reports and term papers. Confident that other kinds of writing can also help students learn chemistry, Strauss and Fulwiler studied a large lecture class of first-year chemistry students, looking at writing "as it helps the writer/learner to investigate, explore, question, and learn chemistry." They asked, specifically, "What happens when students write freely about chemistry whenever they want, for as long as they want, in whatever form and style they want, to an audience who will take their writing seriously, but not grade it?"

To generate answers, they placed a cardboard box labeled "Thoughts, questions, concerns, critiques, commentary" at each of the two exits in a 300-seat lecture hall. Students were invited to write anything they wished about the course and their experience of it. Instructors responded either privately or in lecture, depending on the nature of the query. After picking up 20-30 fragments of writing after each lecture, they usually did one of three things:

• Selected the most commonly asked question to address at the beginning of the next lecture.
• Selected queries of narrower, more-specific concern for elaboration in brief handouts.
• Enjoyed the humor and sometimes shared it with the class.

After collecting and sorting through a semester's worth of these fragments, Strauss and Fulwiler identified seven types of writer--the cautious, the confused, the freewriter, the curious, the searcher, the interpreter, and the discoverer. Searchers, for example, were the students trying to clarify information introduced in lecture for fuller understanding. Because their questions were similar to the relatively few questions asked during class, they were a good indicator of other places in the lecture where something was unclear or misunderstood. Projecting "searcher" questions onto a screen usually clarified a concept for many students who were similarly confused.

Ambron, Joanna. "Writing to Improve Learning in Biology." Journal of College Science Teaching 16 (1987): 263-66.

Attracted by the idea of using writing as a tool for discovery rather than as a measure of learning, Professor Ambron adapted the following three writing-across-the-disciplines strategies for her cell biology class:

1. Student Journals. Ambron sets aside five minutes of each class session for making journal entries, varying the focus of the entries to increase students' awareness of the value of writing. For example, they might write at the beginning of class about whatever is on their minds that might interfere with their concentration. Or she might have them write a reaction to a test grade. Usually, though, they write at the end of class, summarizing the three most important things she discussed in lecture. She collects and reads the journals a few times each semester.

   Unlike passive note-taking, keeping a journal actively engages students in course content. The most significant pattern Ambron notices as the quarter progresses is how much the clarity of expression improves as students begin to compose their thoughts and create meaning.

    

2. Freewriting. In a writing assignment that is cognitively and linguistically accessible to nontraditional students, Ambron asks students to become involved with a topic by relating it to their own experiences in freewriting assignments, an approach (as described by Peter Elbow) "that encourages writers to free associate while writing as fast as they can." These are "hybrid" assignments in which students are encouraged to be personally expressive while incorporating course material. An example of one of her assignments: "You are an energy advisor. Explain to a potential investor of glucose molecules the advantages and disadvantages of the two major types of investment vehicles that yield ATP: short-term anaerobic versus long-term aerobic."

   While keeping journals helps students clarify their thoughts, freewriting exercises have helped them bridge the gap between their own experience and the world of cells, molecules, and biochemical pathways. Reading students' responses, Ambron sees that in "making sense, the student is making knowledge."

    

3. Microthemes. Microthemes are essays so short that they can be typed on a single 5 x 8-in. note card. Ambron finds that microthemes, which replace the traditional term paper, force concentrated thought, develop inductive powers, and improve the quality of lab reports. She also cites research indicating that "students who regularly wrote microthemes in a beginning physics class performed better on exams than students who did not write regularly."

    

How to grade all of this writing? Ambron doesn't grade any of the freewriting assignments. Rather, the students evaluate each other in groups of five on the basis of originality and scientific accuracy. Each group chooses the "best"; these are read aloud and discussed. For grading essay questions, Ambron has devised a holistic scale, which she distributes to the class, that assigns numerical value to content, supporting details, and organization. This scale not only helps students focus their answers but it also has reduced by 50% the time spent grading essays.

Using these writing techniques, Ambron believes that learning is occurring in her class at a level beyond that encouraged by approaches based mainly on memorization. She quotes philosopher and scientist Michael Polanyi, who observed that "all knowledge if it is to be genuine must somehow be made personal."

Jensen, Verner. "Writing in College Physics." The Journal Book. Fulwiler, Toby, ed. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook (1987). 330-36.

Jensen observes that the symbols and equations usually associated with physics actually represent a summary of logical thinking, observation, and experimentation. Reading and memorizing these abbreviated statements, however, doesn't always mean that students understand them. In the belief that writing about a concept and then explaining it to others helps students understand it themselves, Jensen incorporates journal keeping into lower-division physics classes. He usually gives his students five minutes of class time to get started on a journal assignment but expects them to finish it later, expanding and dating each entry. Frequently, Jensen specifies an audience to make the entry even more immediate. Some of his journal assignments: "Describe the concept of momentum to your kid brother." "What is your understanding of the Law of Conservation of Energy?" "Discuss the net effect of leaving the refrigerator door open." "Explain to your mother why water stays in a pail when swung in a vertical circle around your head."

Journals are collected three times a semester, scanned briefly by the instructor, and read more thoroughly by a physics major who makes occasional comments. At the end of the semester, journals are collected and assigned grades. Jensen tells students that a well-kept journal can improve their course grade by as much as a third of a grade point. This is apparently incentive enough. Approximately 90% of his students participate actively in this exercise; two-thirds of the class usually receive the extra grade point.

Jensen's students find that their journal work usefully advances their understanding of physics, while they appreciate at the same time that intensive writing experience is an important part of a complete education.

Dale Flynn
CWC Bibliography No. 5, 1995