Rocketry

The opportunity to build and launch rockets has been a continuing success story in the area of hands-on science education, especially for gifted and talented children. Yet what do students actually learn from these experiences? This entry examines effective structuring of model rocket activity specifically, but also looks at the bigger picture of the structure of hands-on activities for gifted students.

A widespread interpretation of Piagetian theory favors an oversensitivity to the things a child cannot do cognitively rather than a more optimistic and challenging emphasis on what children could do easily with the proper instructional sequence, structure, and social support. This optimistic and empowering emphasis on the child's early competence and strength is both a more empowering basis for science instruction for the gifted child and is in accord with current learning theory. Moreover, much of this work looks upon the child in isolation rather than as a part of a community of learners like that in which rocket scientists engage in on a daily basis.

For instance, the scientist engages intellectually with colleagues at conferences, graduate students in labs, students in classes, and receives feedback on manuscripts from reviewers. What a rich community the rocket scientist belongs to. How can classrooms be structured to take advantage of these social practices of the rocket scientist?

Figure 1 Activity Structure for Proposed Model Rocket Activity

Effective learning experiences are often organized around a driving question. Frequently, however, the question that drives a project is not crafted to make connections between activities and the underlying conceptual knowledge that one might hope to foster. Although the opportunity for deep learning is there, it often does not occur because of the tendency in these hands-on approaches to get caught up in the action without appropriate opportunities for reflection and revision. In such cases, the “doing” of an activity takes precedence over “doing with understanding.” An [Page 745]example of the need for a well-crafted, driving question comes from projects in model rocketry. Thousands of classrooms throughout the country engage in similar types of activities. The opportunities to build and launch rockets have been extremely popular for students, teachers, and parents. Launchings frequently attract press attention, with footage shown on local news programs.

A great deal of recent research has explored whether it is possible to deepen students' understanding by creating the social structures of the scientists (this is sometimes called “participatory practices”) without dampening students' enthusiasm. For instance, can students learn about experimentation and measurement if they have an appropriate driving question behind a model rocket project? To examine this issue, it is necessary to add a learning-appropriate goal to the standard model rocket project that motivates the use of scientific and statistical methods. Indeed, there are many reasons to proclaim such projects a success. But what do students actually learn from their experiences? Research has found that many students who completed the traditional rocket project learned relatively little from the hands-on activity of simply making and launching their rockets. They did not, for example, understand what made a better or worse rocket, and they did not understand how to evaluate the effectiveness of their rockets in any systematic way. One reason for this may be that the students did not have a driving question that could foster focused inquiry. For example, when students were asked what they thought about the purpose of the activity, a typical response was, “You know, to build them and see how high they will go.”

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