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In Brief
- Two recent reports from the National Research Council call for significant changes in the way science is taught in elementary school. Unlike previous recommendations, the new suggestions reflect recent findings about how young children think and how they acquire knowledge.
- Research shows that children learn best when they regularly revisit topics, moving from basic to sophisticated views. In keeping with this knowledge, education experts advocate curricula in which students deepen their understanding of a topic—and hone their abilities to practice science—across many grades.
- The most effective teaching expands both the knowledge and the skills needed to engage with science authentically—that is, in a manner akin to how scientists work. To practice science in the classroom calls for problem- and project-based lessons, as well as considerable social interaction. As is the case among scientists, argumentation and discourse help students to refine one another’s ideas and to articulate their own.
We face a real crisis in science education in America. Representative Bart Gordon of Tennessee, chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology, has warned that countries such as China and India will trample the U.S. economy in the near future without major improvements in teaching. Indeed, our schools are falling behind. In the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)—a respected measure of achievement around the globe—the average science score of U.S. 15-year-olds dropped below that of teens in 28 out of 57 participating countries. (In math, U.S. students fared even worse, lagging behind their peers in 34 nations.)
Despite decades of reform, America has made only modest gains in the science classroom, particularly in high schools. Two recent reports from the National Research Council (NRC), however, offer novel strategies. Entitled Taking Science to School and Ready, Set, Science!, they call for changes in the way science is taught beginning in elementary school. Unlike previous recommendations, the new suggestions reflect recent findings from neuroscience and psychology about how young children think and how they acquire knowledge.
This article was originally published with the title A New Vision for Teaching Science.
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23 Comments
Add CommentIf I were King. I wouldn't let them teach Science at all. If I could design the curriculum, I would do away with all the artificial boundaries between subjects. I would find away to mix History with Literature and Science with Geography. None of these subjects are separate or special; they are just life. Unfortunately, I will never be King; but I am just saying.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRealistically, the above listed findings means teachers will have to give up mind numbing repetitive drills and instead allow students to explore subjects as deeply as the kids can. And, teachers will have to allow kids to talk to each other; explain things to each other.
That would be completely contrary to teacher's bullying nature.
As a child, as I remember it, teachers were always the challenge not the subject.
Bill... Some school districts and charter schools actually have curriculum in place for GIFTED students to use the King Bill way. IT WORKS, but just for the 95 percenters. It is inadequate for the average or below student who just needs the essentials. Another enemy of the King Bill way is standardized testing. The goal of most districts is to elevate the skills of the lowest, maintain the average, and ignore the gifted (and have a winning football team!). I don't think the teachers are the enemy. It's the school boards and ignorant parents. As long as sports are more important than academics, the smart kids will suffer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA new vision is certainly needed - starting right here with this web site and the SciAm organization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe picture associated with this article is indicative of the problem - not the solution.
Notslic ... This particular subject is one that I have given a lot of thought to and discussed with professionals over the many years since I was in school 45 years ago. So I apologize if I seem to go on.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't make up my mind which is better for a gifted student -- enrichment or coping. When I was in school there were no programs for special students, gifted or otherwise. And I was no 95 percenter! . On one hand, I remember sitting through class in a black funk induced by never ending boredom. On the other hand, as a gifted individual, I learnt coping skills and social skills that have stood me in good stead dealing with the real and ordinary world throughout my life.
As for standardizing testing, I think schools need it. The problem is test scores in school become the ceiling rather than the floor for teachers and students alike. I know for me, testing saved my bacon. Some teachers couldn't believe my scores when compared to my class room behaviour. (From k -13, I was held back 3 times and skipped 3 times.)
So, I am not sure whether I come down on the side of special treatment for the intellectually gifted or not.
King Bill
Sorry Notslic; got so carried with my own school career, I forgot to deal with the main subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe the main difference between those who are intellectually gifted and the rest of the world is 'time'. There is good reason why people who are average or below average are called 'slow'. They just take a little longer to learn and understand. They could probably learn easier by returning, not drilling, to a subject in different contexts and over more but shorter periods of time.
If I were King, children would be sent to school for 13 years at least. There would be no failure; no holding them back to repeat a year but rather dedicated teachers who would keep at it, whatever the subject, until the thirteenth year was up. Everyone would have gone as far as they can go. Modern technology should be able to keep records of much smaller modules of achievement than a whole year chunk.
King Bill
Let's analyze what you have said, Bill. You weren't challenged by school and therefore acted out with your bad behavior. I remember wanting the new "quad" stereo in the 60's. My parents said no way with my poor behavior at school. I replied that I hadn't been to the Principal's office in 2 WHOLE WEEKS!!! I think we were in the same boat. I think we learned social and coping skills due to intelligence and observation, and having a personality, not anything that was offered at school. It later became readily apparent to me that to get ahead in life I had to live within the system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTeachers are forced to teach to the test, not to the skills. That is a major problem with standardized testing.
I got my diploma equivalent in 10th grade and went straight to college. The challenging and underdog environment inspired me to get 5 degrees in the next 9 years. I really believe that I would have been a juvie regular if I would have stayed in high school, as you said, because of never ending boredom.
One very positive aspect of a gifted program is that it gets parents more involved. My wife teaches one here, in a small district where the football record is more important than academics. Generally the parents who care moved here from somewhere else, like us, and they consider it a status symbol to have their kid in the program and be power moms.
Thanks for the chat.
Bill...I recall "module" classes in college, where we had the option of attending lectures or just taking all the tests. All math and statistics classes I think. Rest assured that there are many progressives in the education field that believe the exact same things that you do. My wife is one. I'm just a retired lawyer who likes to kayak fish.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheers.
Oh, by the way...my screen name...here in Colorado the acronym for the very "slow" is Significantly Limited Intellectual Capacity, SLIC. Hence, notslic. yuk yuk.
When I returned to pursue a degree in biology, I knew that calculus was a requirement. Having been out of school for a number of years I decided to take pre-calculus math. Enter Dr. Kim, a Korean. The toughest, yet one of the best professors I ever had. The course was 5 days a week and we had homework of approximately 50-60 problems a night, had to go to the chalk board to write out problems, and other numerous exercises that the majority of pre-university teachers would consider torture. It became quite obvious why most Asian students do better in the sciences --- it is very simple, they are required to work. What a treasure Dr. Kim was! Our teachers spend time trying not to hurt feelings or damage self-esteem and the students don't learn that failure is the springboard of success.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is not clear to the students that learning is work, although it can be fun.
One of the highest compliments I ever received was Dr. Kim Telling me, "You hard worker."
Ditto for my Physics professor, Dr.Odabasi as well as the great professors and teachers that required more of me than was designated by the courses.
renascence1 & notslic ... I am retired as well, living in Ottawa, Canada. There doesn't seem much demand for this channel i.e only one other response to this topic, so don't mind me if I chat a bit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 'module' concept makes sense. Both as you outlined it for the talented, and, repeatable for the less talented or unlucky. If you have very small modules, teachers of other subjects can bring them into their lessons; the learning context can be changed; or the teachers can be changed. No one passes or fails. Students bring home a long list of modules that can simply be marked as 'mastered' or 'not yet mastered'.
Parents have chewable bites they can help their kids with. Teachers or even students should be able to add extra modules to the list.
I have seen curriculum designs; they are already mostly made up from the kind of modules we are talking about.
renascence1, I agree that often students, particularly the bright ones, aren't challenged enough. But I remember my sister; always did her homework; worked for hours before every test; kept meticulous notes with all titles underlined in red. By the end of high school she was barely making it through. There was no lack of effort there. (By the way, she became the millionaire in the family by starting and running her own business. So, street smarts count.)
I remember an English Prof we had. (It's great as a longer story but I will keep it short.) The last day of the year he passed out copies of the final exam. The exam contained twenty questions; the instructions were -- answer four of the questions. All his students thought they had hit the jackpot until they had a day to think about it. Now that was creative testing!
Regards Bill
I agree candice. When I saw the article's picture, it didn't fully register, and when you mentionned it I had to go back and "see". To say the least, there is something deeply superficial about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThinking back to why I avoided the picture, I recall I had a "irrelevant" to "unpleasant" feeling and hurried myself on to read the article. Of course this is a subjective after the fact anecdote but none the less I think the internet has honed my ability to do this.
King Bill...Nice to know that we are both music fans too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are teachers so quick to be blamed? In my sixteen years of teaching I have definitely noticed that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The parents have much more of an impact on how a student approaches learning. Give me a motivated, hard-working student or someone who is more interested and fascinated with learning over a grade grubbing student (and parent) who sees school only as a means to attain high status through the colleges to which they are accepted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my opinion the roots of the failure are in the system of the general education. By this I mean the system that has the mission to form the human content of a being and its compatibility to the human society and to teach him how to learn. The professional education follows and benefits of this system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the warning of H. G. Wells (″The history of the world became more and more a desperate race between education and catastrophe″) we tried to improve the education by pumping more funds into; and even nowadays we continue to do so, wondering on the lack of efficiency. To reduce the problem of education to a simplistic allocation of credits (‘Money can do anything’) is as to believe that by a simple increase of electricity supplies, an installation conceived to fabric nails will succeed to fabric micrometric screws. The allocation of more means to a fundamentally wrong system doesn’t improve, but worsens its results. If we want, not only to survive along the 21st century but to fulfill it successfully, then our educational system must supply the society with ‘micrometric screws’ – I mean sane and humanized beings, well motivated to learn and knowing how to do it.
In all the developed countries the failures of education’s system don’t result from a lack of material means, but from an erroneous pedagogical conception and organization. [By the way, a corollary of the second law of thermodynamics enounces that the validity of a system doesn’t result from its complexity, but from its degree of organization.]
A comprehensive and expressive statistic shows that since 1950 the number of institutions grew arithmetically, the number and the quality of staff and equipments grew geometrically, the proportion of illiteracy and delinquency among the graduates grew exponentially. All degrees of delinquency: alcoholism, drugs, brawls, rapes (individual and collective) gangs that terrorize and blackmail their shy colleagues, single and multiple murders.
To identify the factors of this catastrophic evolution we need first to clear some tenacious prejudices out of our mentality and to do this I had to write much more than a comment.
The other problem is cultural, where girls dumb down so they can be popular. Where outstanding students get teased or picked on or even beaten up. She won't date him- he is a geek. This is a primary reason why advanced students do poorly in regular classes and do well in specialized classes. My own son was accidentally placed in a regular class. He flunked, was absent, sick, etc. Then the error was corrected and he was placed in the advanced. He blossomed and now is a PhD from MIT. Had he remained in the boring regular classes he no doubt would have failed in life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the main problem of US high schools is always giving sports way more value than science and tech (clubs etc).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs long as dumb bullies get all the fame, recognition, future opportunities and so on, you will not see students paying more interest to science in the US !
Plantsrule- many teachers are too concerned with how their students are doing on standardized tests and other measures of performance to actually teach. I say this as an active and engaged mom to 6, with 4 being in school- we've experienced both wonderful and horrid teachers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy 6th grade daughter had to come up with 3 ideas for a science fair project. She and I talked through what types of things she wondered about, what she thought would be fun to learn and worked out two ideas that excited her. Struggling for a third idea, she pulled a canned project idea off of a project suggestion website. Sadly, my daughter does not get to choose which project of the three she does- the teacher does. The teacher chose the canned project idea (how different metals react in salt water) instead of an original idea my daughter had (evaluating whether different toothpastes inhibit bacterial growth on a toothbrush). There are plenty of teachers who are passing up the opportunity to ignite the fire in the students.
My children have gone to Montessori school since they were 18 months old. They both really enjoy science (they are now 6 - turning 7 this year, and 5). The Montesorri method has done a wonderful job of fostering their individual abilities to learn and think. However, I also agree with the comment that the teacher made. My wife and I are avid proponents of education and are very involved in our childrens opportunities to learn. We encourage all opportunities to learn and make sure that learning is fun and is not seen as something boring, but is seen as the wonderous, eye opening, jaw dropping experience that it can be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRight now, my 6 year old is writing his paper about his experience at the science center for school (we pulled him out for 2 days as we went on vacation for a family event). He is doing it happily and telling me about an experiment he wants to do between sentences. My 5 year old is telling me that he may not be home a lot when he is grown up because he will be off looking for dinosaur bones when he is a paleontologist.
A good school program is required, but so are interested parents. If either is looking for the other to do the work, then we have already lost.
Sounds a lot like the old one room school house's,where older student's reviewed what they had learned by helping the teacher teach younger student's,it was a very effective.To bad it's been done away with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBlechten...Sounds like your kids have a great environment in which to become good adults (surprisingle rare these days). I see the Montesorri school thing as a replacement for parents. They really do what the parents should do on their own in that early stage. Sometimes we have to earn the money and trust someone else to get that initial learning desire into our children. I'm happy it is working for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJack...You have a point there. There is nothing worse than a teacher that doesn't want to work and lets the children grade their own worksheets from a 30 year old textbook.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter over 40 years of teaching science, developing science curricula, leading a specialized science high school, and now consulting in science education, I find nothing in the summary above that suggests anything new. Project 2061 (AAAS) has developed marvelous resources that address the content and structure of scientific literacy (http://www.project2061.org/), based on deepening scientific understanding in developmentally appropriate stages, K-12. The challenges that remain relate to teaching teachers in authentic ways how to do this. Based on my experiences, "immersion" is the best way, giving time for teachers to "relearn" the science they will be teaching, having practices modeled, and then adapting their experiences to their own classrooms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW - I agree, the photo above is inappropriate to the the import of the article.
In our primary school, the kids that were clever soon got bored with waiting for the slower ones, so they were allowed to read any books they liked in the class library. So they were often in fact self-taught. I read science magazines, but at high school found science very boring, as we had text books from another age! But I had a chance to go to University later in life, and found that most of what was taught had been in the science magazines twenty years before...Don't fret about teaching the clever pupils : They are smart enough to get by on their own. It's the slow ones that need prompting...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have technology to convert all the system of universe into a single word. I want to tell the world hwo one system of world relate with another syetem.And what is the effect of one system of world on other system.I want to tell the world hwo can we pick the ideas from this theory and can discover a lot of things and sysrems. However it is rather difficult work but I AZHAR ASIF MUGHL chellange thar i will bring a great revulation in the life of humanity.I want to tell you that how can we bring revulation in the field of agriculture.i want also tell the world hwo can we search the petroleume products most easily.hwo can do the best agriculture best. If we see that it looks impossible but one day will come i prove it correct.This is not the end of my ideas I will solve the previouse problems relating to science.I have ability to do this.I will introduce a Lot of new system. iwill also find the soloutions of many dangerouse dieseases. AS WE NOE CORRUPTION IS ERRUPTION. SIMILLARLY STRUGGLE IS EVERTHING. azhar.asif@hotmail.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTHANK YUOU