Modeling
InstructionTM in High School Sciences
The Modeling Method of High School Physics Instruction began development at Arizona State University in 1990 under the leadership of David Hestenes, now Emeritus Professor of Physics, and Malcolm Wells, award-winning high school physics teacher in Tempe. The program cultivates physics teachers as school experts on effective use of guided inquiry in science teaching, thereby providing schools and school districts with a valuable resource for broader reform. Program goals are fully aligned with National Science Education Standards and with the NRC "Framework for K-12 Science Education", the research basis for the Next Generation Science Standards.
The Modeling Method corrects many weaknesses of the traditional lecture-demonstration method, including fragmentation of knowledge, student passivity, and persistence of naive beliefs about the physical world. Unlike the traditional approach, in which students wade through an endless stream of seemingly unrelated topics, the Modeling Method organizes the course around a small number of scientific models, thus making the course coherent. In 2000 the program was extended to physical science and in 2005 to chemistry, by demand of committed teachers. In 2011, we wrote proposals for a new program in biology. Our proposals were not funded, but development continues nationwide, in the American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA). The AMTA developed middle school Modeling Workshops, an astronomy workshop, and a computational physics first Modeling Workshop.
