Materials Science and Technology: A curriculum that works
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Materials Science and Technology: A curriculum that works Thomas G. Stoebe, University of Washington. Seattle, WA John M. Rusin, Edmonds Community College, Lynnwood, WA Materials Science and Technology is a curriculum developed at Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, which emphasizes hands-on, minds-on studies of materials science and technology. This curriculum has been taught to over 1000 middle and high school teachers nationwide in a series of week-long institute programs, and is used in classrooms in 16 states. Evaluations have shown that the curriculum is highly effective in getting students interested in science and technology, and in encouraging them to study more science. This paper presents the basics of the curriculum and its approach, along with venues used for promoting the curriculum and the teaching methods used. Full evaluation results are discussed, including the assessment of increased student interest and increased student involvement their own learning. Means of adapting the program to a local situation are also presented. Introduction Materials Science and Engineering encompasses topics as widely varying as ceramic tiles to medical implants. Within this scope is the wide range of everyday materials that every student encounters in their lifetime. Using this knowledge of everyday materials and their properties and performance, the Materials Science and Technology (MST) curriculum1 provides high school teachers and students with practical means of enhancing their chemistry and physics courses, along with others. While millions of dollars have been focused on enhancing science education at the K-12 level over the past 40 years, the interest among students in science and technology has been decreasing. Today, a much smaller number of students aim at careers in science and technology than 40 years ago. One potential reason for this is that science has been taught as a subject based on abstract reasoning and abstract concepts. More recently it has been understood that an enormous increase in understanding can be gained through the manipulation of real objects and by focusing science instruction on real subjects that the students can intuitively understand.2,3 Clearly, materials is one of those areas. Curriculum The Materials Science and Technology curriculum is a hands-on, minds-on program designed at Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories.1 This is a practical materials curriculum focused 75% on laboratory exercises for the students. Topics covered are basic metals, ceramics, polymers and composites, and concepts related to these topics are focused on the practical. A course outline, along with related class/lab activities is given in Table A. The excitement of melting glass, rolling pennies or extruding plastic focuses the students on the materials in their bicycles, kitchens and automobiles. This then leads to interest in the science of more complex materials, and the course then expands to include individual projects for the students in these areas. The course as originally
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