When Science Mattered

I must share one more article. When working on my Masters and later PhD, I spent a great deal of time studying the history of science education since the launch of Sputnik. In today's New York Times there is an article entitled When Science Suddenly Mattered, in Space and Class.

While the launch of Sputnik spurred unprecedented reform in science education, these efforts had fallen off by the early 80s. In 1983, a bipartisan committee produced a federal report called A Nation At Risk, in which they cited the steady decline of science achievement. More than 20 years later, this situation has not changed. Fewer and fewer students these days want to pursue careers in math, science and engineering, with the number of minority students a startlingly small portion of those who do.

This article highlights a bit of the history of science education and attempts to address some of the problems plaguing us today. Here's one problem that is cited.

Dr. Malcolm said some of the blame must go to the way classes are taught, with too much emphasis on memorizing terminology and not enough on concepts. Most students receive teaching-to-the-test instruction, she and other experts say, in which science laboratories are organized like cookbooks, with ingredients, equipment and instructions — and results — known in advance.

It's a great article with much food for thought. Do head on over and check it out.

Academics or Culture? How Best to Raise Achievement

We devote a great deal of time in our pre-service preparation program to helping our future teachers grapple with issues related to teaching diverse groups of students. In a course called Diverse Learners and Environments, we introduce the wide range of diversity that exists across today's general school population and examine the increased professional demands that this diversity makes upon teachers. We explore a range of diversity issues including economic, social, racial, ethnic, religious, geographic, and physical and cognitive abilities and backgrounds of children.

Through field experiences, upper division course work and finally student teaching, we attempt to get students into schools where they will experience the full range of this diversity. We also share current research and approaches to working with different student populations.

Given our emphasis on developing teachers who are sensitive to the needs of all children, I was particularly interested in this recent article from Education Week on strategies for Native American students. Entitled Varied Strategies Sought for Native American Students, the article examines approaches taken in states where Native American students make up a large portion of the minority student population. The two contrasting approaches highlighted are worth considering and discussing. Here is an excerpt:

Subscribing to the philosophy that Indian students are best served by a focus on core academics was Ben Chavis, a former principal of the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, Calif., who gave a keynote address on the first day of the conference.

Mr. Chavis told how over five years at the school he helped change the academic performance of students by paring down the curriculum to focus on language arts and mathematics. The school went from having one of the worst academic records in Oakland to having one of the best, he said. It also grew far more diverse, from having 27 students, most of whom were Native American, to 230 students, 12 percent of whom are Native American.

Mr. Chavis said that when he started as the principal in 2000, students were spending an hour each morning in a practice derived from Native American culture called a “talking circle,” in which they were “sitting around in the circle passing the feather.”

Though he grew up attending segregated schools for Native Americans in North Carolina, he saw that practice as a waste of time and eliminated it. He also moved cultural electives such as music to after-school programs, so the school day could be spent on core academics.

But in a breakout session that followed Mr. Chavis’ address, Sandra J. Fox, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, and a consultant on Indian education, said she encourages schools to take a very different tack—in one school, she quipped, “we instituted a talking circle.”

In general, Ms. Fox stressed the importance of incorporating Native American culture and history into lessons and teaching in ways that are compatible with that culture. She said, for example, that many Indian parents teach their children by doing or showing, rather than telling, and that such a method works well also in school with such children.

“Indian children watch and watch and watch, and don’t want to try it until they think they can do it,” she said.

Ms. Fox also recommended that teachers use “instructional conversation,” in which they sit in a circle with students, informally introduce a subject they are about to teach, and ask for student input. She said that Native American children also respond well to hearing lessons in a storytelling form.

I must admit that even though the first method described has raised scores, it is the same approach we are seeing in our urban schools here and one that concerns me greatly. Yes, core academics are important, but if we choose to diminish the importance of science, social studies, the arts and other experiential parts of the curriculum, we run the risk of creating children who narrowly focused, unable to see connections among disciplines and how we use these skills and ideas in the real world, and poised to see little value in their schooling. We must do more than teach/prepare students to pass a test.

That said, I'm all for Ms. Fox's method of reaching students, and think it holds promise for students who may come from different cultural backgrounds. We must learn to value who students are and what they bring to the classroom if we expect them to value what we do and can offer them in return.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now. Fire away.

Education News - Reading and Reading and Reading . . . ad infinitum

In the last few days I've read two articles that have me thinking a lot about what is happening in classrooms today.

In the March 30 edition of Science magazine, an article entitled Opportunities to Learn in America's Classrooms appeared. Here is some background.

Here, we describe results from a study of elementary school classroom experiences for more than 1000 American children recruited at birth from 10 U.S. sites and enrolled in more than 2500 classrooms in more than 1000 elementary schools and 400 school districts. Our investigation approximates an epidemiological study of opportunities to learn in U.S. classrooms, although the sample was not nationally representative.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, educational researchers spent thousands of hours in more than 2,500 first-, third- and fifth-grade classrooms, tracking kids through elementary school. It is among the largest studies done of U.S. classrooms, producing a detailed look at the typical kid's day (USA Today).

The results?

• In fifth grade, children spent most of their time (91.2%) working in whole-group or individual-seatwork settings. Students spent little time (7%) in small-group instruction (two to five students).
• In fifth grade, 37% of instruction was in literacy and 25% was in math; in first and third grade, more than 50% of instruction was in literacy and less than 10% was in math.
• Science and social studies activities occurred in 11 and 13% of intervals in fifth grade, respectively.
• The average fifth grader received five times as much instruction in basic skills as instruction focused on problem solving or reasoning; this ratio was 10:1 in first and third grades.
• Teachers in fifth grade spent 17% of their time instructing students on managing materials or time.

For anyone who teaches, or spends large amounts of time in classrooms these days, the results are not surprising. They are, however, very depressing/discouraging/frustrating. Take your pick, or add your own word.

I routinely spend time in classrooms where teachers tell me that science and social studies are not taught every day because there simply isn't time. In many schools these days, teachers have a block of time, usually 15-30 minutes, devoted to both of these subjects, where a unit in science is taught (perhaps for two weeks), and then a unit in social studies is taught. For any teacher who wants to integrate the curriculum, this makes integration extremely difficult, if not downright impossible.

Yes, I know basic literacy skills are important. But I can easily define mathematical and scientific literacy skills that are necessary for negotiating life in the real world. I now have students and teachers spending 90-120 minutes per day on reading, and 60-90 minutes per day on math, in large part because of NCLB. The short-sightedness of this is that in 2006, states were also required to begin testing and reporting science scores for students in grades 3 through 8. And as for social studies, wasn't it George Santayana who said "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it?"

In March 2006, the Center on Education Policy reported that:

• 71% of school systems admitted to reducing elementary school instructional time in at least one other subject to make more time for reading and math
• 60% of the districts surveyed had policies that required teachers to devote a specific amount of time to reading
• 50% of the districts surveyed had policies that required teachers to devote a specific amount of time to math
• 97% of the poorest districts had policies specifying how much time should be spent teaching reading, compared with 55 percent of the wealthiest districts

How do schools make room for all this reading and math? They cut science and social studies. Perhaps most distressing of all is what I read regularly in our local newspaper. This year, the paper is following a first year teacher in one of the city (poor, urban) schools. Here is an excerpt that provides one picture of how these statistics are reflected in public school classrooms.

The schedule on Butler's classroom wall allots two hours each day for reading instruction, an hour for math and about 55 minutes for science and social studies combined. But many days, science and social studies lessons are compressed even more, into five- or 10-minute capsules at the end of the day.

"With science and social studies, that's about as much as you can get in, five or 10 minutes," Butler said after school one day. "Our main focus is reading and math."

On one recent afternoon, Butler's class discussed recycling.

They had already had a reading lesson, a math lesson and a trip to the cafeteria for lunch and the playground for recess. A Spanish teacher visited earlier in the day. Then the students settled down on the carpet for a quick science lesson.

They made a chart with columns for information they already know, information they want to know and information just learned.

By the end of the minutes-long lesson, they had filled in the first column with a list of items that can be recycled, such as metal and glass. In the next, they listed questions, such as "How do we recycle?" and "Why do we recycle?"

Soon, it was time for the students to pack their book bags and get ready to catch their buses. They left the recycling chart on the board, with its final column -- for information they had learned -- empty.

And just before they left for the day, the students settled back on the classroom rug for a little more reading before heading home.

"Kids this age -- first grade -- I don't think their focus should be science and social studies," Butler said. (Read the article in its entirety.)

I'm speechless. Since when is science not important at the first grade level? Many science educators have believe that elementary school science is important because of the interest it has the potential to engender in students at an early age (NSELA article). What happens when we begin to quash this natural curiosity? Will there by any students left who find joy and beauty in science? Who are inspired by it? Who want to learn more? I can say the same things about social studies. But really, where do all these rhetorical questions get me? In the end, I am one lone voice shouting into the storm of insanity. I feel like the old woman in the Wendy's commercials yelling "Where's the beef?" However, my mantra now is "Where's the science?"

I suppose this is why I quietly build my lists, in the hopes that some teacher, somewhere, will think about bringing a little science and social studies back into the curriculum. Perhaps the way to begin is through reading and sharing the books I love so much.