Given the difficult-to-digest subject matter in many STEM classrooms, educators have customarily relied on traditional lecture-based educational methods where they spend class time walking through content and then assign homework problems to supplement that learning.
In a flipped classroom, students gain technical knowledge through online videos that prepare them to participate in in-class activities, which may include problem-solving, discussions, brainstorming, design work, guest speakers, or field trips.
“In essence, ‘flipping the classroom’ means that students gain first exposure to new material outside of class, usually via reading or lecture videos, and then use class time to do the harder work of assimilating that knowledge, perhaps through problem-solving, discussion, or debates.” Definition by the Vanderbilt University).
The concept of flipped classroom has been developed since 2012 and is increasingly popular.
Some practices are more teacher-based (having students watch a video before the class) while others are more student-based (the students prepare the material before the class and present them to their classmates).
Alleged effects of the flipped classroom are: increased (students’ and teachers’) motivation, better understanding of acquired knowledge, development of disciplinary and transversal skills, differentiation of teaching and learning… Scientific literature is still lacking to really confirm them.
Its creators Bergmann and Sams describe its attributes as such:
- amplifies personalised interactions and contacts between students and between students-teachers;
- environment in which students take responsibility for their learning with the trainers’ guidance;
- a class in which the teacher is not just a lecturer but an attentive but a guide for learners, leaving room for different forms of differentiation;
- a fruitful mix of direct transmission and (socio)constructivist approach of learning (it is the learners’ task to learn).
- a class in which students with absences are not left behind;
- a class in which subjects are accessible at all times for revisions, exams, remediation;
- a class in which students are more involved in their learning;
- a class in which students receive individualised guidance.
Flipped classroom expert Jonathan Bergmann encourages science teachers to begin by asking themselves the question, “What is the best use of your face-to-face class time?” According to the National Science Teachers Association: it is best for students to spend the majority of class time “actually doing science—so students spend more time posing questions and discovering the answers for themselves.” Flipping the classroom is a strategy that teachers can use to help make this vision a reality. Science teachers are asked to cover a large amount of content over the course of the school year. Especially with changing standards and the push to incorporate 21st Century skills into the curriculum, science teachers have more on their plates than ever before. In the flipped classroom, the teacher does not have to spend class time lecturing, so time is freed up for students to do the real work that scientists do.
