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New York City
November 2002

Kerlin Institute at Bank Street College Established to “Propel the Teaching” of Science
By Adam B. Kushner

In the silent and empty halls of the Bank Street College of Education, after students had deserted for the day, one room bustled. In it, deans, teachers, and trustees were witnessing an astonishing demonstration of how the Sally Kerlin Institute would use a grant to strengthen the teaching of natural and environmental sciences.

The Kerlin Institute’s Endowment for the Teaching of the Natural and Environmental Sciences was initiated by a bequest from Sally Kerlin, who had been involved with Bank Street for most of her adult life. The endowment stipulates that her institute investigate new methods for teaching the sciences and impart them to teachers in training. It works in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History and the Wave Hill Center for Environmental Sciences, as well as Bank Street.

“[Sally] felt that this was a discipline that needed a new methodology,” said Gilbert Kerlin, her husband, who survives her. “The purpose of this grant is to propel the teaching of natural and environmental science.”

At the Friday afternoon demonstration, Dr. Charles Liu, an astrophysicist for the American Museum of Natural History, wowed participants with his presentation, in which he helped them deduce the laws of reflection by playing with mirrors. Rather than tell attendees the properties of reflection, he broke the conference into groups, handed out palm-sized mirrors, and asked them to figure out the laws.

That method of teaching, said Liu, is called inquiry-based learning. “It’s a modern buzzword for a philosophy of teaching and learning that’s existed for a very long time,” he said. “It’s a way of giving knowledge that is based on answering questions. The philosophical manifestation of that is the Socratic method.”

As if on Liu’s command, the room erupted with noise. The attendees separated into break-out groups, and just like an elementary school science class, participants tried to figure out why a mirror does what it does. “What if we tilt it back at this angle?” could be heard from one side of the room. “I can’t see his face anymore,” from another.

The experiment was developed by Eleanor R. Duckworth of Harvard’s School of Education, to demonstrate inquiry based learning.

“It’s like learning by doing and learning by asking as opposed to learning by sitting passively in a lecture,” said Liu. “It’s not easy to execute if you’re a teacher . . . As an educator, it’s easier to present information to them, and [that] has a value, but it doesn’t necessarily foster the transformation of information into knowledge.”

Liu said that inquiry-based learning was difficult to teach and that the Kerlin Institute had its work cut out. It will have to teach teachers a whole new skill set.

“One of the challenges of inquiry-based teaching is that the instructor needs to be flexible. The instructor needs to know how to bring the discoveries of the students into the main theme of the lesson. You need to know not only how to teach that way, but you need to know what you’re teaching very well.”#

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