In most of our classes, by the end of Apollo 13, students are quite skilled at design talk (iteration, constraints, criteria), have learned to respect each other's ideas, and look forward to learning from each other. As well, they can talk about experimental procedure and recognize when variables have not been controlled or procedures not followed well. Launcher unit activities place their focus on developing the processes and culture of science and design, and introducing rituals that support these processes. They provide a shared set of anchors (CTGV, 1993) for later discussion and reference. Students continue to engage in each of the rituals and processes introduced in Apollo 13 over the course of the next LBD™ units. Following the launcher unit, students share a common language, rituals, and processes, so that the focus of subsequent challenges can be on science content and on refining their process skills. By introducing these skills early in an authentic context of use, early experiences can become anchors for further development of skills in additional and more varied contexts.
It remains to be seen whether this is indeed the case. Our next steps include investigations necessary to ascertain the validity of our hypotheses: that focusing on the scientific and design skills and processes at the outset leads to their practice in project-based science learning environments, and that the science content is learned better as a result of preceding it with a focus on process. So far, we see that the launcher unit helps to instill the culture into the classroom that we think necessary to support inquiry-based learning of science. To understand the launcher unit's effects beyond that, we are looking for evidence of student remindings of what they did in this unit, their applications of what they are reminded of, and teacher use of experiences during the launcher unit to remind students of skills they might build on. We are also moving forward to focus the unit so that it takes only 3 weeks and to provide enough different variations on its activities so that some version of the unit could be used each year of middle school to set the stage for upcoming Learning by Design™ activities.
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