Ivan A. Shibley’s research while affiliated with Pennsylvania State University and other places

O ver the past several years, a number of initiatives have sought to improve the quality of learning in undergraduate science education by relying less on content and more on the process of learning science (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 2000; NRC 1996; Fox and Hackerman 2003). Perhaps the most significant recommendation for higher education has been to shift from a paradigm of teacher-centered instruction to that of learner-centered instruction (Barr and Tagg 1995). Although most faculty members agree that classroom instruction should become more learner centered, they are unsure how to make the necessary changes in their courses. One of the problems we encountered while trying to develop learner-centered courses is the general resistance from students regarding traditional college science textbooks. Students frequently complain that they have a difficult time sorting through the overabundance of content and technical jargon. Sadly, the tone of textbooks—impersonal, authoritative, and objective—fails to engage student interest. The inclusion of science populariza-tions can help change a course into one that is more learner centered. In the Science popularizations can supplement textbooks. Their use offers an alternative conception of the classroom, one that focuses on the learner instead of the content. process, popularizations can facilitate student thinking at higher levels of Bloom's taxonomic structure (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001; Bloom 1956). Instead of designing the course solely around knowledge and comprehension (Bloom's two lowest cognitive levels), the inclusion of popularizations encourages more higher-level thinking such as application, analysis, and synthesis. Graff (2003) has effectively argued that too many facts can obfuscate true understanding: " Far from helping you enter higher-order discussions, learning lots of facts in a vacuum may actually prevent you from doing so. I have had students whose minds seemed so cluttered by the disconnected bits of information they had crammed that they were unable to locate the issue that could have organized their information. " Populariza-tions can provide a context for students that helps them to think more critically about the course content. The authors have not systematically studied the use of popularizations in controlled studies. Instead, this article attempts to evaluate why populariza-tions seem to generate positive reactions from learners and why we find ourselves using popularizations more and more frequently. In doing a retrospective analysis, the authors have drawn on the changes advocated in Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice (Weimer 2003). The five changes that must occur are changes in (1) the balance of power, (2) the function of content, (3) the role of the teacher, (4) the responsibility for learning, and (5) the purpose and process of evaluation (Table 1). Using Weimer's framework provides a window through which to view the benefits of popularizations. Each change advocated by Weimer can be accomplished via science populariza-tions. The idea of using popular books is not new to science courses, and it has been described for other courses such as physics (Lam 2000) and chemistry (Carroll and Seeman 2001). In this article we discuss how science popu-larizations can be utilized as part of a learner-centered classroom by looking at each of Weimer's five changes.

Four different team teaching experiences are described with collaborators from a variety of disciplines. The pedagogical differences between the teachers created unique challenges. A description of each collaboration is provided, followed by an analysis of the four experiences. An examination of the challenges that arose are summarized to facilitate planning for teachers who might be considering team teaching.