Case Study: Who would you hire?
Objective:
To develop a personal understanding of the rationale and goals of K-12 science education.
Description:
Each person in your group is a teacher on a search committee asked to hire a science supervisor for your school district. You've narrowed the search to three finalists, whom you've asked to submit a letter describing their views on the goals of K-12 science education. Your job is to discuss each candidate's strengths and weaknesses and compose a one-page letter to your superintendent explaining who she should hire. Use arguments from relevant course readings, if you can, to support your decision. Do not assume that there is a right answer, but do support your claims with evidence.
Letter 1: Candidate Jones
Dear Search Committee:
It is with great pleasure that I compose an essay about the goals of elementary science education. The elementary science curriculum has recently deteriorated. We cover far less material, cover fewer concepts, and we avoid quantification (mathematics). This leads to fewer high school graduates possessing the scientific knowledge necessary to succeed in college science, a loss of our global competetive edge in science and technology, and an insufficient supply of scientists to the workforce.
Just the other day I spoke with a neighbor of mine who teaches biology at the local university. She pointed out that students enter her freshman biology course without a sufficient understanding of basic concepts and mathematical skills. This has forced her to water down her college curriculum. This is but one example of why we need an approach to K-12 science education that emphasizes scientific knowledge and skills. If we fail to address this issue, we fail our society's need for qualified scientists.
We need to back off the "science for self-esteem and creativity" movement and get back to the approach which made us great - "science for a scientific work force." I would emphasize the scientific disciplines of biology, geology, chemistry, and physics - these are the categories of science and of scientists. By teaching the basic concepts within the four disciplines of science and the five-step scientific method, students will learn the practical skills and knowledge used by science researchers. Producing elementary school students who think like scientists is a challenging goal, but one in which we can all take great pride.
Respectfully submitted, Candidate Jones
Letter 2: Candidate Walker
Dear Search Committee:
Thank you for providing a venue to express my philosophy of the goals for K-12 science education. We're currently in the midst of a major effort to reform science education. The call to national standards has created a vision for what all students need to know and be able to do upon the completion of grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Never before have we had such a principled vision that can be used to guide the design of curricula.
Now that we have standards, we can develop an assessment framework that will enable us to evaluate the quality of instruction in different schools within the district. While some people may be concerned about the comparative use of standards-based evaluative data, I feel that such comparisons are essential to making decisions about where to direct our limited funding for professional development. We can identify the teachers and schools with the greatest needs, balance the inequities between schools within our district, and insure that all our students obtain a high quality science education. This approach was successfully used in my district. We found below-average performance in a school with a high percentage of minority students, we discovered inequities in resources distrbuted to the school, and by addressing these inequities, student performance increased signigficantly. My point is that the situation might have continued indefinitely without a standard way of making comparisons.
Additionally, given the vision provided by the standards, we are better able to plan K-8 science curricula. In the school district I currently work in, teachers in five grades within one school were all doing units on dinosaurs and the rain forest! Standards allowed us to design and sequence developmentally appropriate content. I envision working with teams of teachers within the district to select and implement curricula which have the greatest potential to helping our children attain the standards.
Sincerely yours, Candidate Walker
Letter 3: Candidate Doe
Dear Search Committee:
America is changing, our world is changing, and our goals for elementary science must accomodate such change. Our greatest need is to produce a society of scientifically literate citizens. In the past, we felt a need to structure the science curriculum to produce scientists. As we raced into space against the Russians, scientists (not teachers) produced curricula to help students to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for success in college science. However, today our needs are driven by a concern for equity, cultural diversity, and the individual needs of our country's children, less than10% of whom will ever go on to major in science in college. Today we need a science education that recognizes these social and cultural concerns and produces science education for all students.
There are several ways to approach these goals. First, we need to modernize the content of our science curricula. We can do this by emphasizing the connections between science, technology, and society (STS) in our approach to curricula. Rather than emphasize the basic, abstract concepts of science in a cold and decontextualized way, we should place science consepts in a context that children can relate to - the societal context.
We also need to emphasize critical thinking skills in our curricula. However, I do not equate critical thinking with quantification of science. Rather, in an STS approach to science curricula, students must assess the strengths and weaknesses of various positions, the difference between science and non-science, truth and theory, and the ways that people use science to promote their own goals and agendas, sometimes with bad outcomes (e.g., deforestation, pollution, etc.). We want a science education that promotes learning to learn so that our children develop the ability to live in a rapidly changing society.
Respectfully submitted, Candidate Doe
This case study was written by:
Dr. Michael Smith
University of Delaware
EDSS 450C
