Science at The Dragon
The Integrated Progressive Science Programme
The Dragon's Integrated Progressive Science Program (IPSP), recipient of a
two year grant from the AKC Fund, addresses the quality and effectiveness of
science education through the curricular integration of the study of sciences,
humanities and arts, the construction and analysis of real-world problems,
projects and experiments to cover the central issues, tenets and methods of
science. Teachers in the IPSP are committed to countering the dominance of
authority, brokering a partnership between teacher and student, forming a
learning community with shared values and common goals, not to mention working
in our beautiful new laboratory.
Most North American science programs are
dis-integrated, breaking scientific knowledge early into distinct and
un-related fields, enabling and perhaps unwittingly encouraging students to
study only parts of the whole. This approach has not proven the best
preparation for post-secondary, let alone post-graduate, scientific studies. It
has not encouraged students to pursue the study of science beyond the high
school level, nor included women and minorities in the numbers aimed for and
needed. The Dragon IPSP corrects the inadequacies of a traditional science
curriculum through enrichment, constructivist practices, discussion-based
classrooms, and documenting, evaluating and disseminating our findings.
The IPSP also forms the base of a spiral curriculum,
in which key concepts and skills recur in ever more sophisticated and widely
applicable form across the four years of the high school program, as well as
across the traditionally distinct subject fields. The IPSP is an expression of
our commitment to the larger goal of improving schooling as the best means of
preserving and furthering the conditions of a democratic society. Humanity
faces urgent problems, on the solution of which our prosperity and even our
survival depend. To solve these problems we need to define and create an
educated population, intelligent and informed followers of resourceful and
innovative leaders, who are motivated to work for the improvement of society
and of the globe.
The Dragon Academy inspires student interest in the
connections between politics, ecology, and science. Particularly original is
our interest in making the work of student scientists serve as active research.
For example, our grade 10 Civics students replaced lighting to lower the carbon
emissions of the school. In Math class, the students ran the data to determine
how much of an impact was made. They calculated and graphed the results. They
instituted changes, cutting the school's CO2 output by 2000 metric tons. Dragon
biology students participated in a study with medical students at UBC,
demonstrating their mastery of cardiac physiology through arts projects. Such
activities have direct, palpable and immediate local impact, on the individual,
on the school, and the local community. Our next step is to link with far-flung
student groups, to inspire and support similar projects
globally.
