Review
John L. Hubisz, Ph.D., Hubisz@unity.ncsu.edu
and the reviewers of the Second Report.

InterActions in Physical Science by Fred Goldberg, Sharon Bendall, Patricia Heller, and Robert Poel and published by It’s About Time

Subject areas:
Section A: Interactions and Energy (Building a Foundation, Interactions and Energy)
Section B: Interactions, Forces and Conservation (Interactions and Forces, Interactions and Conservation)
Section C: Interactions of Materials (Materials and their Interactions, Physical Interactions and Phases, Chemical Interactions)

General Summary of program:
Based on Interactions of energy, forces, forces, and materials, this book presents material in a series of cycles with five to fifteen activities in each cycle. The cycle begins with “Our First Ideas” continues with “Developing Our Ideas,” “Putting It All Together,” “Idea Power, “Making Sense of Scientists’ Ideas,” and finally “Learning About Other Ideas.” Through a series of activities, the students explore their own ideas, do experiments or explorations, refine their ideas, and communicate those through writing or class discussion. The program is very scripted.

The laboratory and exploratory investigations are carried out as guided inquiry. This means that the students are led through the investigations, but are asked to draw their own conclusions about relationships. After they have established general ideas through exploration, they complete a cycle of activities/explorations geared toward fleshing out ideas and making sure that the students thoroughly understand the concepts. After completing these activities, they read about the concepts, define terms and explore calculations based on the concepts. Once terms and definitions of “Scientists’ Ideas” they are led through application and activities to expand their understanding.

General Introductory Comments:
This program is scripted, which will certainly help the new teacher or the teacher who has no physics background. However, the students do get to think through their own ideas before progressing to definitions and reading activities. This would fit into the continuum of inquiry activities on the structured level.

Accuracy: The text has been very carefully written and is highly accurate.

Readability: The readability is appropriate for a very young audience. It is in an informal language, using the second person “you” to discuss calculations and concepts. This allows the student to personalize the material as they are reading. The pictures are generally diagrams, graphs, and vector drawings to help the student visualize the problems presented in the reading. At times the activities seem a little disjointed (i.e. the student reads a sentence or two, does an exploration, watches the teacher for a demonstration, and then reads another couple sentences). It seems as though it would be difficult for a teacher to track where students are in the activities to make sure everyone is ready for a demonstration at the correct time.

Age and Sex Appropriateness: As most inquiry-based programs, this one also encourages and requires exploration of familiar objects and events (such as pool or skateboards) and encourages discussion and communication. The sample calculations also include references to different sexes doing different things eliminating any stereotypes. This text was designed for middle school students so the reading level is quite appropriate for the 6th through 9th grade. Of all the books under consideration, this one would probably be the best for the really unprepared teacher.

Mathematics Requirements: This program is strictly conceptual. There is really no mathematics involved in the program at all. The hardest thing we saw in terms of analysis or calculations was averaging numbers after repeated trials in an experiment.

Overall Recommendation: This program is certainly on the right track for a beginning physical science course for most students. One reviewer thought that it asks too much in terms of read-watch-read again type of interaction with the teacher making it hard to manage a large class of students. Reviewers were mixed as to whether it was too scripted in terms of teacher-student interaction. Some thought that scripting on a limited basis would be helpful. As an inquiry program the reviewers agreed that this one gets high marks.

This program would be improved, according to one reviewer, with a software package or online reference (there is a Website available for students) to have the demonstrations and interactive activities to eliminate the need for some of the teacher demonstrations. That way the teacher could really be a facilitator for individual or group learning at their own pace. It would be great for home-schoolers or those students who learn well completely by themselves with these resources available.