 |
Asia-Pacific
Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 5, Issue 1, Foreword
(Apr.,
2004) Robert E. YAGER Using Social Issues as Contexts for K-16 Science Education
|
|
|
Asia-Pacific
Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 5, Issue 1, Foreword
(Apr.,
2004) Robert E. YAGER Using Social Issues as Contexts for K-16 Science Education
|
STS and Typical School Science
Critics of STS fear that major science concepts will be missed if social issues are used as organizers for school science courses. The typical view of science curricula and science textbooks is one of dividing the major constructs by discipline (biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics) and then defining the major concepts of each discipline for presentation to students. There is fear that such important ideas will not be encountered and given to students if they are not identified in curriculum frameworks and textbooks for students to master directly—usually in terms of repeating what they are told or that they read in textbooks—or fill-in-the blanks on worksheets. Teachers like to assure students that they do need to know “the basics”, that they will find uses for them later, that they will appreciate (in college or later in life) what they study and what the teacher expects them to know.
We continue to think and act by using Aristotle’s identification of the two foci he found in studying the ancient schools of Athens in 300 B.C. He reported there were equal defenders for: 1) schooling to help students learn what will be useful in living versus 2) schooling that will produce students who can perform and to act in ways society has defined as important. In many respects these two views of education exist today and constitute current debates. It is interesting to many others to point to the efforts for reform of school science during our 200+ years of history. With at least 40 major national reforms, all but our efforts in the 60s following Sputnik were toward achieving a more useful (practical) science education. In the 1960s we were focused on transmitting the “Science known to scientists” with little attention to science for any reason other than someone has argued that major concepts are important (basic). One could ask: “Important to whom? Basic to what? Where could they/should they be used?”
Project Synthesis, using information from ten case studies (Stake & Easley, 1978), national survey data (Weiss, 1978), and a review of the research literature (Helgeson, et al., 1977), provided us with a wealth of information about the status of science education in the U.S. schools. In a very real sense this status could be summarized with one word: TEXTBOOKS. This fact continues (though less intense) as reported in Weiss’ third comprehensive survey of what that is occurring in U.S. schools with respect to science (Weiss, 2001).
Although we like to pride ourselves with decisions being placed with each of the 16,000 independent school districts in the U.S. regarding what should be taught and how it is taught, nearly all that is found in all the districts is depressingly the same. Textbooks continue to be good predictors of what most students experience science to be. For the past several decades the science students experience in schools could be determined accurately in terms of what science was included in the three most used textbooks at a given grade level. Looking at but three textbooks is an accurate indicator of what 90% of all students at the grade will have as concept organizers, as activities to experience, as information to consider, and as indicators of what will be used to assess their learning (Harms & Yager, 1981). Further, textbook analyses reveal that the most used ones contain the same information, topics, and verification-type activities (so-called laboratories or investigations). Again, there is 90% agreement among the texts as to what content is included and the suggestions provided for how teachers should approach the content.
This focus on textbooks as indicators of what school science is like for almost all students in almost all schools remains even after the American Association for the Advancement of Science has condemned nearly all mainline science textbooks as inadequate and inappropriate (AAAS, 1999; Roseman, Kesidou, & Stern, 1997). None measure up to the guidelines-defined by the AAAS Project 2061 in their “Science for All Americans” (AAAS, 1989) and their “Benchmarks for Science Literacy” (AAAS, 1993).
The major problem, of course, is the fact that commercial publishers will publish any material that 20-30% of the teachers and students will buy. The textbooks available are what teachers, students, and parents want. They match state curriculum frameworks. They meet all the requirements outlined in the 17 states with required criteria for use of state funds for textbooks. Many of these are the largest states, thereby meaning that their specifications must be met in order to sell the books in those states—at least with tax funds. The schools (and teachers) are free to buy (or to not buy); but in reality they must take what is approved unless they have another way to procure and pay for materials.
Could AAAS be more effective in condemning criteria used for textbook adoptions in the states with statewide guidelines? Is there any research evidence to suggest that the degree-of-fit of published materials with the AAAS Benchmarks is the correct content and order for content for textbooks? Are textbooks even necessary and required for effective science instruction? Or, are they more like religious documents where followers are helped to decide what is important, what students must remember and believe to be successful? What seems to be missing in most textbooks is a focus on the whole of science, upon student mind engagement, upon a reunion of science and technology, upon the identification of assessment as a fundamental part of science, and upon basing student assessments on something other than what concepts students remember and how to perform the skills directly taught to students?
Inquiry is basic to science. Although attention to it in most reform efforts in U.S. schools for nearly 100 years, it has been an illusive goal (or content form) to achieve. It was the one common goal for the programs of the 60s. One elementary school program, Science—A Process Approach, focused only on the identification of fourteen process skills and helping teachers teach them—but out of any real-world context. Classification, for example, was taught as a sorting exercise—again for no reason other than grouping is important (at least as proclaimed by the developers and teacher users). Too few see inquiry as a descriptor for science. Scientists are inquirers. They are curious, asking questions, and collecting evidences that their answers/explanations of events and objects in the natural universe are valid.
Few view inquiry as a form of content, or as specified processes used by scientists, or as an example of the whole series of actions that define science, or as a teaching tool as well as a form of content. Joe Schwab, a leader during the 60s who led in promoting science as inquiry, suggested spelling it with an “e” to catch people’s attention (Schwab, 1962). It did not seem to work! As important as inquiry is to science education, its many faces, its usage, its meaning in the lives of students (and teachers), make it elusive and sometimes difficult to describe fully and in ways that go beyond an elaboration of growing lists of important (basic) concepts offered for students to learn.
Although inquiry was one of the focus areas for Project Synthesis, it was reported after four years of study that no science exemplary programs illustrating inquiry in schools in grades K-12 could be found. Perhaps closest were examples in the STS efforts. This was another reason that many of us embraced STS and its focus on social issues as a way to illustrate real inquiry—not from studying it, or doing teacher directed “inquiry” activities, or reviewing “the” scientific method, or from teacher questioning. Inquiry must be seen as the whole basis of two unique human enterprises characterizing science and technology. One of the greatest failures in K-16 science is the absence of inquiry and the failure to understand what it is and ways of enabling all to experience it—even once over the K-12 continuum of experiences with science studies.
Copyright (C) 2004 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 5, Issue 1, Foreword (Apr., 2004). All Rights Reserved.
