Study Highlights Need For More Scientists In Classroom

Sidebar: Focus On Inquiry ECHOES: TIMMS study director Albert Beaton says the U.S. elementary curiculum is too repetitive. International comparisons of precollege science and math achievement interest anyone concerned with future technological literacy and economic competitiveness. For scientists and mathematicians, such information also foreshadows the quality of future students and researchers in their professions. A poor performance at the elementary and secondary school levels can be a wake-up call for those who do science and math to step in and help those who teach these subjects. CLASS ACT: Lester Rubenfeld urges researchers to visit classrooms routinely But most scientists receive little, if any, training in teaching methods. "Scientists usually decide something needs to be done when their own kids are in school and are receiving an inadequate education. They think, 'I'll come in and tell them how it should be done,'" observes Lester Rubenfeld, director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Initiatives in Pre-College Education. For scientists' volunteer efforts to be effective, they need to know how to convey the excitement of what they do. The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a major, ongoing effort to chronicle how science and math are taught and learned in many nations, is showing them what works-and what doesn't. TIMSS is opening a "window of opportunity" for scientists to learn how they can make a difference in the classroom, according to Luther Williams, assistant director of education and human resources at the National Science Foundation. The first report, released in November 1996, covered grades 3 and 4; the second report, released last June, analyzed grades 7 and 8. The final report, due in February, will cover grade 12. DECLINE: William Schmidt notes that U.S. TIMSS results decline from fourth to eighth grade. TIMSS results for the United States indicate decline in achievement from fourth to eighth grade. The older pupils placed 17 out of 41 nations in science and 28 out of 41 nations in math, whereas the younger pupils were second of 26 nations in science and 11th of 26 in math. "What TIMSS is telling us is that we don't start out behind children of other countries, we fall behind," concludes William H. Schmidt, national research coordinator for TIMSS, headquartered at Michigan State University. TIMSS is sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, an Amsterdam-based, independent cooperative of government agencies and research institutions. NSF, the Canadian government, and the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education contributed $5 million in total to the effort. TIMSS evaluated 491 curriculum guides and 628 textbooks; tested 500,000 students; probed school and social factors; and videotaped classrooms in France, Japan, Spain, Norway, Switzerland, and the U.S. "The tests tell the level of achievement in different nations, and how that is related to background factors," such as time spent on particular topics, hours of homework, class size, and money expended per pupil, says Richard Wolf, a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College of Columbia University. OPPORTUNITY: Luther Williams says TIMMS can help scientists determine how they can help. Educators find the wealth of information fascinating. "The videotapes were particularly helpful in showing how science is taught in different countries," concludes Robert Yager, a plant physiologist and a professor of science education at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. "Science teachers in the U.S. go over material. Most questions are recall, and most activities just follow directions, with answers known in advance. Students need real experiences with science, as opposed to going over information." Nations with higher scores tended to have more inquiry-based learning (see story on page 7). The U.S. curriculum most closely resembles those of China, New Zealand, Iceland, Greece, and Bulgaria. For economic reasons, the U.S. would rather its science and math education curricula echo those of high-scoring European countries, Japan, Korea, and Singapore, according to an executive summary of TIMSS called Splintered Vision by the U.S. National Research Center for TIMSS at Michigan State University (Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997; http://usTIMSS.msu.edu). In addition to measuring performance and providing rankings, TIMSS is catalyzing discussion among teachers, teacher educators, scientists, and mathematicians about curriculum content. Such lists of what students should know-the basis of topic selection-are termed "standards." The Reston, Va.-based National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) released standards in 1989, and the National Research Council (NRC) released the National Science Education Standards in late 1995 (K.Y. Kreeger, The Scientist, Dec. 9, 1996, page 1). Splintered Vision crystallizes why U.S. scores are not as high as they might be: Education is controlled locally, a suboptimal arrangement according to many observers, and classes cover too many topics superficially, a curriculum dubbed "a mile wide and an inch deep." A typical U.S. science textbook, for example, covers 50 to 65 topics; counterparts in Japan present five to 15 subjects, and in Germany, just seven topics. Explains Schmidt, "Other countries have a national or a regional curriculum. In the U.S., we have no helm from which activities are done, but local districts that come up with their own curricula." Moreover, the U.S. elementary curriculum is too repetitive, echoing the same topics in different grades "so that by seventh or eighth grade, we are a year behind" other countries, adds Albert Beaton, TIMSS study director at the International Study Center at Boston College. ELEMENTARY PROBLEM: Alan Cromer, shown demonstrating Pascal's Law to a seventh-grade class, says middle-school teachers are inadequately prepared. One explanation for declining U.S. scores from grades 4 to 8 is that "many science teachers in middle school are recruited from elementary education," says Alan Cromer, a professor of physics at Northeastern University and author of Connected Knowledge: Science, Philosophy, and Education (Oxford University Press, 1997). Teachers trained to handle elementary-level content found themselves with older classes when junior high schools evolved into middle schools in the 1980s, snatching the sixth grade from elementary schools. Today some middle-school teachers, originally prepared to teach at the elementary level, are not adequately trained in science content. This occurs because elementary education majors take only a few science courses, whereas secondary education majors typically also major in science. "In middle school, just when students are developing high-level thinking, they are [being instructed by] people without professional qualifications in the subject they are teaching," Cromer adds. MIDDLING INTEREST: Award-winning teacher Joan Wanger notes that few science teachers gravitate toward middle school. But Joan Wagner, national winner of the 1996 Excellence in Science Instruction for Middle School award from the National Association of Biology Teachers, contends that there is a lack of interest in teaching science at the middle-school level. "Most science teachers prefer high school," maintains Wagner, who teaches eighth-grade science at O'Rourke Middle School in Burnt Hills, N.Y. "There has never been a student science teacher in the middle school the 23 years I have been there. However, when I taught at the high school, I had a student teacher." Boston College International Study Center (TIMSS): http://www.csteep.bc.edu/timss Michigan State University, TIMSS Center: http://usTIMSS.msu.edu/ National Science Education Standards: http://www.nas.edu National Council of Teachers of Mathematics: http://www.nctm.org/index-timss.htm U.S. Government TIMSS site: http://www/ed/gov/NCES/TIMSS U.S. TIMSS science rankings exceeded those for math. This may be partly because science curriculum centers on the "three nodes" of earth/space, physical, and life science, says Williams. In contrast, one mathematician describes today's math curriculum as "a goulash" of topics, a change from the structured years of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry of a generation ago. NCTM executive director Linda Rosen cites another reason for higher science scores-in the U.S. science education begins earlier than in many other countries. Considering subscores adds perspective to TIMSS rankings. In math, for example, U.S. students do poorly in measurement, perhaps a result of unfamiliarity with the metric system. But they excel in data handling and probability. That isn't surprising, comments Rosen. "Since the NCTM standards have been in use, there has been prominent teaching of statistics and probability. This focus will lead to greater science literacy." In order to show teachers how their counterparts in other nations handle math instruction, the math education community is disseminating "TIMSS Resource Kits" to educators who teach teachers. The kits include videos of classrooms in the U.S., Germany, and Japan with written guides and standards from different nations, according to Rosen. The U.S. Department of Education is planning to offer the kits from the Government Printing Office starting later this month. HOLDING PROMISE: Rodger Bybee says NRC's science education standards can help solve the problems uncovered by TIMSS. Many in the U.S. science education community view the TIMSS results concerning other countries as validation that the National Science Education Standards are on the right track in calling for more inquiry-based learning of fewer topics. Because the standards were published after the TIMSS tests were given, their impact isn't reflected in the results. "The standards hold promise of contributing to a systemic remedy to the problems identified in TIMSS," says Rodger Bybee, executive director of the center for science, math, and engineering education at NRC. CONSENSUS: Gerald Wheeler notes that many consultants helped develop the science education standards. To develop the standards, NRC "brought together more than 5,000 experts to establish a clear sense of the outcomes of a coherent science education," explains Gerald Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, based in Arlington, Va. One-third of the consultants were practicing scientists or engineers. "They identified the content that all students should know and understand after 13 years of school science," Bybee adds. Helping to create standards is one way that scientists can impact precollege education. To be most valuable, scientists should look beyond their own research interests, educators suggest. "When asked what is important to teach, scientists generate lists-chemists give long lists of chemistry topics, biologists biology topics, physicists physics topics. That leads to science in the schools being taught as a laundry list of topics, rather than representing major ideas," remarks Schmidt. Scientists can also try to express ideas to students without using jargon. Researchers ready for a real challenge can venture into the classroom to oversee experiments or do demonstrations. Ecologists or geologists might lead field trips; chemists or molecular biologists might give lab tours. Whatever a scientist brings to a class, he or she should make it a habit, teachers urge. "A scientist or mathematician who wants to go into a classroom should work over a long period of time with a particular school. Teachers need a continual response," notes Rubenfeld. GET INVOLVED: Marvin Druger exhorts scientists to play a greater role in teacher preparation. Another way that scientists can improve science education is to become more involved with teacher preparation, maintains geneticist Marvin Druger, chairman of the science teaching department at Syracuse University: "Biology professors' major concern is premed, not pre-ed. In all scientific disciplines, professors are more interested in the students majoring in the field." Iowa's Yager adds that professors with education majors in their classes should avoid teaching in a way that requires students to merely repeat facts, since people tend to teach as they were taught. Even scientists who do not teach education majors can help by participating in the more than 90 summer programs in the U.S. for students, teachers-in-training, and teachers. For example, in Richmond, Va., 150 science, math, and clinical faculty members and 15 education professors from seven colleges and universities instruct 360 elementary teachers in science content and how topics relate to familiar events. This program is part of the Virginia Urban Corridor Teacher Preparation Collaborative, a five-year project funded by a $5 million NSF grant. Programs in New York City and Chicago place teachers in university research labs. And at the University of Maryland at Baltimore School of Dentistry, minority high school students and their teachers work in research labs. The TIMSS results have sparked much discussion on what students should know about science and math to succeed in an increasingly technological world, and how they can best learn. TIMSS has also begun a continuing dialogue between the scientific and educational communities. Concludes Druger, "We need more mechanisms for scientists to engage, in an ongoing way, in contributing to education. We need to build the bridges for a continuing relationship between scientists and educators." The TIMSS results reveal, and national education standards stress, the value of inquiry-based learning, in which students apply the scientific method. They observe, hypothesize, experiment, and discuss and interpret results. Such learning allows students to build from everyday observations. "Even as simple an idea as dropping raisins in 7-Up and watching them bob up and down teaches principles of science," notes Richard Olenick, chairman of the physics department at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas. In the past, such learning was reserved for the gifted; today, it is the goal for all. Inquiry-based learning can stem from the imagination of an individual teacher, or be part of a large educational reform plan. Joan Wagner's eighth-grade classroom at the O'Rourke Middle School in Burnt Hills, N.Y., for example, overlooks a large pond that pupils built by digging a big hole and adding lining, filter, water, and frogs. The class continually monitors the pond's residents. "My teaching style is influenced by the old adage, 'I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand,'" explains Wagner, an award-winning teacher. "I design activities that are both hands-on and minds-on." In Seattle, inquiry-based learning is proceeding in a big way. The Partnership for Inquiry-Based Science is a collaboration among the Seattle school district, the University of Washington, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the Boeing Corp. "The program is [a National Science Foundation] Local Systemic Change grant to train all elementary teachers in the Seattle public schools in inquiry-based science teaching techniques and standards-based science education," states Valerie Logan, outreach education manager in the department of molecular biotechnology at the University of Washington, who cowrote the grant. The 1,400 teachers in 76 Seattle elementary schools will receive 100 hours of training each, in small groups led by science resource teachers and scientists, to learn to use three science "kits" per grade. Each kit is a 10- to 12-week program of hands-on activities in earth, life, and physical sciences. Teachers also take in-depth content courses, and 300 scientists volunteer in a family science program. This focus on a small number of diverse topics combats the "mile wide/inch deep" criticism of current curriculum. -R.L. Ricki Lewis, a freelance science writer based in Scotia, N.Y., is the author of several biology textbooks. She can be reached online at 76715.3517@compuserve.com.

Study Highlights Need For More Scientists In Classroom

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