Lessons from the Past: Reviewing How We Teach Science, What’s Changed, and Why It Matters (original) (raw)
K–12 science education reform—a primer for scientists
1999
refocused public attention on current deficiencies in science education for US students and possible solutions for its improvement. Reports resulting from TIMSS, a 5-year international project comparing curricula and achievement in 50 countries, ranked twelfth-grade US student performance-among the lowest of participating countries in general knowledge of mathematics and science and more specific knowledge of physics and advanced math (NCES 1998). However, at the same time a new vision of science education for K-12 students has emerged. This vision, which calls for excellence in science education for all children, is expressed in the NRC Standards, which, along with Project 2061's Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS 1993), provides recommendations and guidelines for student learning, classroom practices, teacher professional development, and overall organization of educational systems. Development, writing, and review of the NRC Standards involved more than 18,000 people over a 4-year period, including classroom teachers, science educators, engineers, scientists from a variety of disciplines, and representatives from 22 science education and scientific organizations (NRC 1997). NRC Standards are voluntary, yet they are being adapted and applied by local school districts throughout the country, as well as by state educational organizations responsible for creating or implementing educational guidelines. The NRC Standards clearly identifies the need for ongoing partnerships among scientists, teacher educators, teachers, and school districts as a way to address shortcomings in the nation's current approaches to science education. Although such partnerships can take many forms, it is almost universally accepted that K-12 science education improves when scientists contribute their knowledge and skills (Wheeler 1998). For most scientists, the world of K-12 education is long forgotten, left in a distant past before years of advanced study. Even scientists with children sometimes find the K-12 culture of teaching and learning-with its own vocabulary, policies, and procedures-difficult to enter and navigate. In addition, members of the science community can unintentionally intimidate teachers and nonscientists and, at the same time, ignore the realities and challenges facing science education today. A useful beginning step toward enhancing the ability of scientists to work with teachers and schools is to promote basic understanding of the issues by all participants. Scientists, teachers, school administrators, and parents all need to recognize the contributions that each of them can make and be able to talk about their potential contributions using a common language. Mutual understanding of key concepts, approaches, strengths, weaknesses, and barriers is especially important in helping all parties to communicate clearly and work together in meaningful ways. Many scientists now active in science education reform have discovered that this growing field has developed its own vocabulary-borrowed from both science and traditional education. Simple words and phrases, such as "assessment," "cooperative
SCIENCE EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS
2005
Abstract Science education seeks to change society, but does little to produce change in itself. Our initial effort into changing ourselves and our discipline resulted in Science Education at the Crossroads. This conference brought together stakeholders in science education to present their problems, rather than research results, and discuss methods of addressing these. In this paper, we describe this conference, its development, and its future.
Viewpoint: What we did not learn from the 60s about science curriculum reform
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2007
An analysis of our efforts with curriculum reform in science during the 60s is offered. Failure to state the problems and to engage all those interested, involved, and affected is noted. Instead of proceeding with the same tactics and using the same rationale for new reforms, a rationale for focusing upon instructional goals and enlarging the research and development team is presented. Basically, a call for treating science curriculum reform as a science rather than an art is advocated. 0
A Political Sociology of Educational Knowledge: Studies of Exclusions and Difference
This chapter historicizes the classification of different kinds of students in U.S. science education by exploring a moment when high school science became stratified. At the turn of the twentieth century, the general science movement sought to adapt instruction for children seen as belonging to populations with “unscientific minds.” In this alchemy of school subjects, science education research drew on social science techniques to translate disciplinary knowledge into curricula fostering certain modes of thoughts and behavior. Through techniques like the developmental scale, the standardized test, and the home survey, school science became constituted as a set of norms comprising the good, rational American citizen. In stabilizing the science to be learned, differences became visible as deviation from cultural norms. These translation tools positioned children along a developmental trajectory that reconfigured racial distinctions and sequenced science curricula hierarchically from the local and concrete to the universal and abstract. Recent science education reforms rely on similar translation tools, raising the concern that attempts to adapt instruction for groups labeled as diverse may inadvertently produce new distinctions.
2014
This is an editorial report on the outcomes of an international conference sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) (REESE-1205273) to the School of Education at Boston University and the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University for a conference titled: How Can the History and Philosophy of Science Contribute to Contemporary US Science Teaching? The presentations of the conference speakers and the reports of the working groups are reviewed. Multiple themes emerged for K-16 education from the perspective of the history and philosophy of science. Key ones were that: students need to understand that central to science is argumentation, criticism, and analysis; students should be educated to appreciate science as part of our culture; students should be educated to be science literate; what is meant by the nature of science as discussed in much of the science education literature must be broadened to accommodate a science literacy that includes preparation for socioscientific issues; teaching for science literacy requires the development of new assessment tools; and, it is difficult to change what science teachers do in their classrooms. The principal conclusions drawn by the editors are that: to prepare students to be citizens in a participatory democracy, science education must be embedded in a liberal arts education; science teachers alone cannot be expected to prepare students to be scientifically literate; and, to educate students for scientific literacy will require a new curriculum that is coordinated across the humanities, history/social studies, and science classrooms.