California’s latest trend -- not teaching science

Silicon Valley is going to be in trouble in ten years -- or, at least, more trouble than it's currently in. While they may have enough people writing English and able to give correct change for cash, they may have a staggering lack of scientists. According to a recent study by WestED, only 10 percent of students regularly receive quality science education -- something that has principals concerned, and something that should have parents concerned as well.

The numbers are not pleasant to look at. WestEd found that 40 percent of elementary school teachers spend less than an hour each week teaching science, and those who did teach it often had trouble managing time for adequate lessons. Personal education was another problem. According to the interviews, only 1/3 of them felt they were actually prepared to teach science subjects. Eighty-five percent said they hadn't received any kind of science training or continuing education in science in the past three years. Many teachers said that they didn't have funds or supplies to teach science even when they had the time and training.

Middle Schools play catch up?

There are several issues that compound the problem. California has recommended rules governing how much time teachers should spend on language arts and math. Other subjects, including science, aren't given any guidelines like this. In addition, some districts don't really push to teach science until students reach middle school, since science isn't covered on standardized tests in the elementary grades. This is a grave mistake, because much of the foundation for a good science education and the development of a healthy curiosity can be built in the early grades.

While educators and others are working to address the issue, in the short term there's very little science in the California education system.

http://www.whittierdailynews.com/rss/ci_19193167?source=rss

Videos for teachers: new chapters of "Chemistry Now"

The National Science Foundation (NSF)is teaming up with NBC Learn to launch a weekly series of online videos about the science of common objects and the changes they undergo every day and the chemists who study these things.

The videos, called "Chemistry Now" is a series of 32 lessons break down the chemistry behind things like as cheeseburgers, chocolate, plastics and soap-- and that's just for the first series.  Also featured on the NSF site this week is a video called 'Chemistry of Ocean Clean-Up,' which comes out on the one year anniversary of BP's capping well that created the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  Focused lesson plans for this week are called "Top 10 Big Questions in Chemistry."

This weekly series will build on the 23 original "Chemistry Now" videos that were released during the spring school semester this year.  Best of all, it's available at no cost on the NBC Learn and nsf.gov websites and the NSTA blog.


NSF Home Page: http://www.nsf.gov

Science education? The earlier, the better!

Science education is sort of like the weather -- everyone discusses it but nobody seems to know what to do about it. From Ars Technica comes an article that says stressing science education in middle and high school is bad timing. What we really need to do is start educating them in kindergarten.

They're right on the mark when they say that even very young kids "figure out" how the world works -- and they're often wrong about it or confused about how things work. The direct method of teaching (where it's explained what's going on) is the best for the youngest kids when it comes to bringing concepts to them. But without the "magic" of the curiosity-inducing "discovery method" of teaching (where students devise, execute, and interpret their own experiments), some of the fundamentals can be lost.

And here teachers are sitting on the horns of a dilemma. It's pretty easy to outline a "direct" method of teaching (just lecture.) "Socratic methods" where you lead them through it with leading questions usually only work best for Socrates -- the rest of us end up with an audience who asks questions we don't expect. Discovery methods are very good -- but only once you've taught the kids how to do a proper experiment.

The best solution seems to be to combine all three -- give a short lecture, ask leading questions, have them explore.

...of course, this assumes you've got a perfect class and that Rudy and Maxie will NOT decide to throw spitballs in the middle of the lesson just to see if they can annoy each other.

Desperately Seeking Science Education

Are in-school "special programs" starting to replace science education in this age of teacher and education cutbacks? A rash of "just in time for schol to start" articles about science education suggests that teachers and schools are turning to special programs to help interest kids in science and teach them some basic concepts. And it's no wonder -- if a recent study in California is any indication, students are getting less than 40 hours of science education for the entire school year!

Quantum Camp (is one of a number of programs designed to supplement this lack by bringing science education by science teachers into the classroom. They bridge the gap between education and entertainment and spark curiosity with interesting experiments and even by incorporating music and storytelling.


But -- as an ex-teacher, I have to ask just how effective this is. While it's better than nothing (20 hours per year), 30 minutes of excitement does not replace five hours of drilling and practice. While kids will become engaged with experiments like mentos and cokes, will they remember and understand the reasons why this process happened -- and will they be able to apply these scientific principles in the future. Can someone educated by science entertainment go beyond the simple and start asking the complex questions and making the sophisticated connections needed for good science research?

I have already seen how kids use videos on message boards to "make" a point without really understanding the background of the question and the material. It's a troubling idea when you consider the reports that we're falling behind on science education.

Quantum Camp: http://news.yahoo.com/science-education-takes-quantum-leap-silicon-valley-070408132.html

Guerilla Science music and science experience http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-with-moxie/2011/08/10/guerilla-science-blends-music-and-science-at-escape2ny/

Science storytelling http://www.scienceteller.com/

Direct Instruction -- time to rethink strategies?

I haven't been keeping up with all the latest buzz in the education field since I retired years ago, but I was aware of the trend in the past 20 years of "discovery learning" where kids were encouraged to explore and think on their own. This was something that I didn't have much of an opinion on, but seemed to be highly thought of by people who did a lot of home schooling. So I was surprised to find in a recently promoted National Science Teachers Association digest that kids learn better research skills if they're taught by "direct instruction" rather than "discovery learning."

Instruction versus exploration in science learning

http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/methods/models/direct/

With the ongoing screams about how schools are failing to teach children, some are advocating a return to this kind of instruction. But today's society isn't quite as accepting of this method as it was in the past. The argument is that it's "canned teaching" and it's "not personal" and may not appeal to what the child wants to do.

Now, as someone who grew up under the Really Old School method of teaching, I'll admit I'm rather uncomfortable with some of today's teaching practices. When I was in school (along with the dinosaurs), we didn't work in groups, we had to sit still and keep quiet (and were punished for not being on task) -- and we hated it because it stressed drills and homework, but my generation still ended up being one of the most well educated generations in America (highest number of college graduates, etc.) This is still the method used in totalitarian countries.

Further googling turned up a very interesting op-ed piece on this by Jeff Lindsay, which includes summaries of some of the studies. http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml

That's as far as I've gotten into this today and I need to go attend to other things -- but I want to go back into the material and review it and see if things in there can make me a better educator, both when speaking informally to the public as well as when I'm doing lessons for afterschool science.

 

 

--- Patricia Griffin

Pre-publication PDF of book: Framework for K-12 Science Education

A pre-publication copy of the PDF for the book,  A Framework for K-12 Science Education:Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas  is available for download from the National Academies press. 

 The authoring organizations stress that science, engineering, and technology can provide answers to meeting many of humanity's great challenges, both present and future. This book is proposing a new approach to science at all grade levels that will capture students’ interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field.

To quote the press release:

Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the disciplinary core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: cross-cutting concepts that unify the study of science and engineering through their common application across these fields; scientific and engineering practices; and core ideas in four disciplinary areas: physical sciences, life sciences, earth and space sciences, and engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues; be careful consumers of scientific and technological information; and have the skills to enter the careers of their choice.

Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that will inform state-level decisions and provide a research-grounded basis for improving science teaching and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, teacher educators, state and district science administrators, teachers, and educators who work in informal science environments.

I find this interesting and exciting and have bookmarked the document to download and read later this week.  I'm glad someone is taking this approach but I fear that the statement, "will inform state level decisions" was made by someone who never dealt with Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Education.




Still, I'm eager to see what they've come up with and how it might be integrated in some of the things that I teach!   If you'd like to review it, it is currently available as a PREPRINT at this link (sidebar on left)

Heat Wave Science Notes

One of the more entertaining things I do is volunteer at the Trinity River Audubon Center in Dallas.  It's a beautiful place -- the more so considering that it's a Brownfield Remediation site (The Environmental Protection Agency defines a Brownfield as “a property on which expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant” -- and as it was the site of an illegal landfill, all of the above applied.)  Over the three years that I've been involved, I've seen the landscape change from the fairly raw-looking land (the center had just opened) to an area that looks like a preserved wild area to the untrained eye.

To the trained eye (such as a Texas Master Naturalist like myself) it's obvious that this is reclaimed land.  There's a lot of invasive plants, but we're seeing a rebound in native plant species and native wildlife.  Then came drought and the heat wave.

I teach environmental science to kids -- talking about adaptations and turtles (an easy species to love), taking them on turtle counting hikes and then talking about bugs (not quite so easy to love) and taking them on bug hikes.  One of the strategies to get them less afraid of "bugs" (which includes any creepy crawly thing and not just insects or insects of the order Hemiptera) is to take a hike with them and engage them in a game of "nature bingo."

I try to make the bingo squares something that everyone find easily.  On the list that I made this spring, I put a number of butterflies including "yellow butterfly" (the sulfurs, Phoebis sp) and "white butterfly" (Pieris rapae) as well Tiger Swallowtail, Pipevine butterfly, and Monarch.  The game was a hit with the kids and things rolled along pretty much as expected until one week they didn't find any butterflies at all.

That was interesting.  Then a second group made the same report.  And a third.  I decided to investigate.

I took a group of kids off to specifically look for butterflies one morning.  We walked for about 40 minutes in areas where I knew butterflies were common, but we only found two of them.  TRAC has its own butterfly garden with native plants and water to support butterflies.  It's a good spot to hang out to take butterfly pictures, so I headed there next.  The plants were in bloom, but there weren't any butterflies visiting them, though the bees were enjoying them.

So were they really gone, or were they somewhere else?  In spite of the hundred degree heat and drought conditions, I took an afternoon hike of the distant trails at TRAC.   During the hour's trek I only saw two sulfur butterflies -- and another butterfly that landed briefly and appeared to be one of the Nymphalinae.

So where are they?  When I asked, nobody else had seen butterflies recently -- but they hadn't stopped to wonder if that was peculiar.  Someone suggested that it was "too hot for them to fly," so I tested that idea by hiking at 8 am and 8 pm.   

There are plenty of nectar sources around.  There's water.  There's birds, of course, but surely they wouldn't have eaten every single one.  There's lots of host plants around, including the Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista cinerea.)  These particular butterflies should breed all summer long -- not in a single group and die out.

One thought that has been troubling me about the heat wave and the drought is that it is causing certain plants to die off and animal populations are shifting.  What happens when the drought ends?