I was out shopping with my daughters the other day at Costco and bumped into my Advanced Placement Computer Science teacher from high school. It was great to see her, only for a few minutes, because it helped me to recall her class. I was a senior when I took the class and remember her to be the best math teacher I had ever had. What made her so great? She knew what she was doing and she had the practical experience to back it up.

Roberta was a programmer at MIT for a government project. (I always remember there was a bit of secrecy to what she did.) As she taught us to program, she taught us from personal experience. That personal experience made the projects we did more authentic. And, in fact, those projects tended to be very practical.

Point? The science research student, in an authentic, applied situation, benefits from the experience of a scientist, who may, in fact, be a science teacher. The nature of science can benefit well from students (or visa versa?) who get experiences that are situated in nature and have a cognitive apprenticeship period with an authentic master.