SCIENCE IS BORING!!!

I was going through the TED site and I found something that might interest some of the science teachers out there.

This made me think about the idea of stories.

It was Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen and Terry Pratchett in "The Science of Discworld2" (2002) who said that the scientific name for human beings (Homo Sapien  "the wise man") is inaccurate an and really presumptive and that Pan Narran or "Story telling ape" would be a better classification. If this is true then the only reason we have the ability to do the incredible things we do is because we can tell stories. Essential our brains are machines which take in information and create stories . They might be incredibly accurate stories that explain most of the known universe, but in essence they are all stories.

This idea has connections to constructivist idea that "learners construct their own reality ... based upon their perceptions of experiences". So if students have been given a lot of jargon to learn in the past then they will tell them selves the story that they will get jargon in the future, leading them to get bored and not be engaged with the learning

So what if we think about the stories that we tell as teachers and how we tell them to students. Think about what they might have experienced before, individually and collectively, and how we can play with their expectations to create more engaging lessons

if you would like to read more about breaking expectations of your learners or audience, have a look at the blog of an incredible theatre creator Anne Bogart and her thoughts of humans being "Expectation Machines"