Complexity and globalisation in school.

Miranda Pilo

Department of Physics

University of Genoa

Italy

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, Lille, 5-8 September 2001

Introduction.

July 2001: we quote an extract of a discussion drawn from a Forum for Physics (Sagredo – Italy).

A Physics teacher writes:

“In my opinion, the most important thing is to understand what a student should keep after a secondary high school about Physics and Sciences. We know very well that a middle culture person with difficulty remembers some formulas and some meaningless statements.”

The present debate among researchers and science teachers in Italy strengthens the above sentence, while a new European Project (1), has been co-financed to stimulate a reflection and innovation in teaching. In a few words, teaching should be addressed to a “high quality” learning, that means: students master their knowledge and are able to use them in a proper way and in different context. This measures the effectiveness of teaching/learning conceived as an interaction involving adult/young people and peers among themselves. The developmental and learning psychologist Frank Smith said that the first lesson that students learn from adult teachers is: “Don’t think, do as I tell you” (2). Smith contended that instead of promoting thinking, teachers indirectly promote ignorance. Over time students in schools develop the expectation that the teacher can be relied upon to solve their problems, organise their learning and give them the correct answer. (3).

If teaching is based on culture transmission, students are expected to fit with teacher’s learning model: they do not develop an active attitude, they are not protagonist (4, 5).

Reference frame.

We are sound convinced that knowledge and culture cannot be transmitted, only information can be transmitted but a personal work is necessary to transform information in knowledge. Culture is the result of an individual construction; the student should be guided by the teacher to achieve steady knowledge, through reflective practice, discussion, experimental work, comparison of information/data. Steady learning differs from scholastic learning because knowledge is based upon personal “discovery” and becomes part of him/her.

According to the above point of view concerning teaching/learning, constructivism is our theoretical reference frame. Within it, students are stimulated to be active in developing their curriculum, in expressing their ideas and their criticism about facts and information; effective learning means understanding; pupils are motivated to study and to cope with reality, even to transform it. Citizens participate to a transformation process, while subjects suffer it.

Tobin (6) says: ”Constructivism suggests that learning should be a social course to the purpose of giving meaning to experience beginning from the achieved knowledge. Within this course, pupils raise perturbations caused by trials to give meaning to particular experiences through an imaginative use of the existing knowledge. Solution of these perturbation leads to an equilibrium state where a new knowledge has been built to the purpose of being coherent with a special experience and the old knowledge.”

Following this reference, environmental education provides teachers with excellent opportunities for developing a science method and a critical thought, for investigating and understanding the daily reality, that is for looking into some aspects, like complexity and globalisation.

Complexity.

Living beings have different levels of organisation which can be arranged according to an increasing complexity hierarchy; following Odum’s definition (7):

a-biotic components + biotic components = bio-systems

each level and each organism are deeply interrelated both with other levels/organism and with a-biotic world, especially as far as energy and matter available in environment are concerned (8).

Interactions imply that a stimulation causes an answer influencing on its turn the source of action (feedback). Agent can be modified by feedback and so on.

Complexity comes from living being organisation and from relationships among organisms and between organisms and a-biotic environment.

Complexity is not a feature of bio-systems; we meet it every day.

Complexity is an inherent property of phenomena and thinking. Even simple facts, for example the mirror reflection we daily experience, present a certain level of complexity when analysed, as shown by experiences carried out with pre-service primary school teachers.

Globalisation is an economic term having almost the same meaning of feed-back at world level (answer following action).

New technologies allow fast communication, essential for trade, business and economic decisions. Through Internet, somebody in Europe may know in real time what it is happening in Wall Street and make business also when European Stock Exchanges are closed. But this opportunity raises also problems: fast communication quickens feed-backs, more and more fast decision are needed and so on, causing instability in the economic system and quotations become volatile. An economic event in Asian country has consequences in far countries. Globalisation consists in sharing at world dimension consequences of a local level. Economic events or decisions affect also environment increasing environment complexity.

Agenda 21 was a Rio Conference (1992) follow up: each country had been committed in developing actions for a sustainable development. Developed countries should have stimulated in controlling national consumption, in avoiding resource waste, in limiting pollution and in soliciting social and personal responsible behaviours; this fact would have favoured the development of emergent countries without make environment conditions worse. Some years after, the World Conference in Argentina (1998) about Environment revealed that the Stock Exchange crash occurred in Malaysia time beforehand stopped the development of many South-Eastern Asian countries. Economic problems induced their governments, in order to recover some financial aid, to sell their “right to development” (i.e. their rate of pollution) to California! This fact is misguiding especially for Californian young people, which are not stimulated to save resources, to develop behaviour responsible towards environment: they may think that an unlimited development may be bought.

The result was that a developed country continued to develop, while poor countries were stopped. Owing to globalisation, the economic crash in only a country (Malaysia) affected a lot of Western and Eastern countries; but while Western countries well reacted, poor countries were unable to overcome their economic difficulties and gap between developed and emergent countries has been increased.

As previously said, economic events affect environment; in many countries environment is considered worthless and people have no care of it. An example: toxic waste poison water, sea and territory, without thinking to the consequences that environmental hard pollution has on organisms, human beings included. In Japan, Minamata’s disease is an example. In Italy industrial waste products in Sicily cause swordfish liver’s cancer; toxic substances through the food chain are dangerous also for superior organism.

Local tragic events affect wide areas: we quote only Cernobyl, occurred in1986; a largest territory, in spite of politic boundaries, from Finland up to Mediterranean has been contaminated; up to day local population has been forbidden to come back to home while news are about children’s malformations, miscarriages and high rate of leukemia, as consequences still lasting.

Managing complexity and globalisation in school.

Study of any matter concerning environment requires interdisciplinary culture and involvement of various subjects, as elements being part of environment are connected through mutual interactions.

Complexity sometimes can be faced using reductionism which provides with a “reading key”. A phenomenon should be delimited and teacher with students could decide the “point of view” for observation. This is the main step conditioning the following work. In fact, the “point of view” guides in choice of variables to be investigated, in posing suitable questions, in designing experiments for measures, in planning paths, in looking for information etc. Anyway, whatever any (disciplinary) point of view has been chosen, teachers and students should become aware that it cannot provide with a sound understanding of phenomenon. Any real phenomenon is complex and requests a inter-multi-trans-diciplinary look into. A disciplinary point of view provides with information for conceiving a rough model enabling teacher/students a support for further investigation. Multidisciplinarity allow to perceive the interlacing of relationships among different parts of phenomenon, that is complexity.

Globalisation concerning environment may be interpreted as a local event having consequences in a wide area, sometimes all over the world. Example like the Cernobyl disaster and its consequences can be suggested for study: data coming from governmental agencies for health may be interpreted, especially data concerning children living in areas close to Cernobyl.

Earth science provides people with a lot of local phenomena which had and have influences in a continent. Eruption of Krakatoa volcan in XIXth century caused a change in climate. The ino Stream in south-western America influences the climate in Europe. This phenomenon is quite complicated and is under study.

Complexity and globalisation request sound scientific knowledge and may be proposed only to senior students. A reflection may be suggested: if a disrupting local event has consequences in large area, may many little events have a synergistic effect and cause disrupting consequences?

Anyway, at school, teacher should solicit students to reflect, to develop criticism. In order to be able to cope with complexity and globalisation, pupils should be trained since kindergarten. “Like a mediator teacher should favour opportunities and experiences helping a quality learning, providing pupils with a sound base of learning together with understanding. He should supply and sustain structures allowing the building of knowledge according to directions impossible without the teacher’s influence” (9).

Experiments in schools.

Climatology is a branch of Physics concerning climate and its variations; it requires the study of a very large number of variables and their interrelation. Complexity and globalisation are its features.

In order to allow students to perceive and understand them, it is needed a long path beginning in the first years of schooling.

We briefly describe a work carried out involving pupils aged 8 and 10 years.

Transformations.

Two kinds of transformation are observed: physical transformations and chemical transformations.

Observations made on physical transformations:

in 4 similar vessels the same measured amount of water was poured but

vessel n.1 contained only water

vessel n.2 contained water and salt

vessel n.3 contained water and red syrup

vessel n.4 contained water and oil.

After a week pupils observed that:

vessel n.1: water was completely disappeared

vessel n.2: water was disappeared but “something white” was in the bottom of vessel. Pupils deduced that it was salt

vessel n.3: water was disappeared but “something pink and like a crystal” was in bottom of vessel. Pupils deduced that it was sugar with a colouring agent (ingredients of syrup).

vessel n.4: a very little amount of water was disappeared; water decreased up till oil stains were visible: then oil disappeared and water did not decrease more.

Pupils were bewildered. I asked them if they were sure that oil was disappeared. As they answered affirmatively, I required to see the vessel n.4. A pupil brought me the vessel, I put a finger into water and I said: “In my opinion, oil is still into water but we can’t see it. Please come on, put your finger into water and tell me what do you think about”. Pupils carried out their observation and realised that their finger was oily. So: oil was still present but it was become invisible. What was happened? I suggest that perhaps oil stains were become very tiny, so tiny that we could no more see them. I asked pupils if sometimes they had observed very tiny oil stains. A pupil (*) thought for a short time and enthusiastic replied: ”Oh yes. Often after raining, near a car street I observed a puddle with a coloured surface; colours can be observed only from a suitable position. Coloured surface is like a film and it is not made of water but of gas (petrol). In the vessel containing water and oil it happened something like this: water disappeared till stains were visible and separated, then they became very tiny, spreading all over the water surface and covering completely it. In this way, water covered by oil layer did not decreased more”.

I asked where water was gone since in the first three vessel (and partially in vessel n.4) it was disappeared.

Almost all pupils agreed that water was gone in the atmosphere: I solicited them in trying to put this statement to evidence by observations and/or experiments (also only imagined experiments). After a heated argument, some pupils said that disappeared water could have been transformed again in water by catching it. A girl observed that if we put a cap over a pot with boiling water we can catch water: we perceive it because cap is covered of water droplets. Water comes out the pot as “smog” (vapour) and “smog” can be caught and transformed in water. A pupil (*) added thatonce water is transformed, clouds may be formed and when clouds are filled with water it rains.

Then we introduce the term “transformation”, even better “physical transformation” defining exactly it. I asked pupils if transformation of water into vapour and vice versa is always possible or if some constraint influences it; I proposed also an experiment and an observation like breathing over a windowpane. A pupils made the experiment and all pupils observed that the windowpane was become damp. Discussion about breathed out air made clear that it contains water; some pupils observed that we can “see” breathed out air in open spaces during very cool days. I focused attention on this fact, guiding pupils towards recognition that temperature may have influence on transformations.

At last we came back to our main problem:

in vessel n.4 only a little amount of water transformed into vapour.

I invited pupils to continue observations on vessel n.4.

For further three week pupils daily looked at water level in vessel n.4: water did not noticeably decrease.

Conclusion: water with oil decreases till oil stains are separated and visible; since they are no more visible (but oil is still in the vessel), water does not transform in vapour.

Evaporation is introduced as a new term.

I realised that pupils have studied water cycle but are not aware of the process. They did not experience a “true” learning; only if they are guided to observe and make experiments and remember and connect their personal experience, they reorganise their knowledge, reflect on it and have a steady learning.

I stimulated pupils to do some general inferences from their experiment and observation. Taking as starting point frequent news about oil tank disasters in the sea, I asked them what happens after such an accident. A pupil (*) says: “It happens the same fact as in vessel n.4. At first, sea is covered by visible large oil stains; then oil spread in a very large surface and stains are no more seen.” I: “O.k. What is the effect of this spreading of oil and disappearing of stains?”. (*): “Like in vessel n.4, water evaporates till stains are visible and separated, when stain are no more visible, water does no more evaporate”

I: “Ok. And if sea water doesn’t evaporate, what happens?” (*): “ Clouds cannot form”. I:”Ok. What is the consequence?” (*): ”Rain is no more possible”. I: “Ok. What do you conclude?” (*) “If it doesn’t rain we are in a very bad fix!”.

The pupil (*) was considered a not clever one, having family problems and social and economic disadvantage; anyway taking into account his experiences and observations he was able to give suitable answers and to make inferences.

Following his last answer I solicited a discussion about consequences of oil spreading on sea/ocean surface and of rain lacking to large range: desertification, climate change…

We made clear also consequences on sea life: penetration of light in sea water is hard decreased influencing algae, plankton, fishes and sea mammals.

Conclusion.

Environmental education as part of scientific education, helps pupils/students in acquiring a method for investigating phenomena, develops skills in analysing and comparing information/data and in making inferences, stimulates critical thinking and making aware of relationships among different elements of a system favour at least a rough comprehension of complexity and globalization. Teacher may design experiments or suggest some ones even related to daily life.

Even poor experiments, as the described previous ones, easily mastered by young pupils, can be useful for logical reasoning and for connecting different events and if well managed by teacher lead to sense the dependence of a phenomenon upon many variables (often not well identified) and their interlacing, that means to have a vague idea of complexity of natural events.