Water Skiers and SCUBA Divers
By Larry Malone
There are a couple of things amiss in American science education. First, we teach too much. Second, we teach too little. The "too much" is related to the unrealistic burden of science content proscribed in typical science standards. The "too little" is related to the depth of understanding students acquire from a survey approach to science instruction designed to "cover" the standards.
I was recently involved in a summer institute at the National Weather Center in Norman Oklahoma. We were preparing middle school science teachers to teach content that appears on numerous earth science standards around the country. The standards predictably include a menu of topics and concepts related to weather: atmosphere, wind, cloud formation, water cycle, and seasons. We could have presented the topic in a day, discussing the structure of Earth's atmosphere, naming winds, describing the conditions that produce clouds, reciting the traditional stations of the water cycle, learning the reasons for seasons. Like water skiers, the teachers would have skimmed rapidly across the surface of the content, pulled along by the powerful engine of coverage. At the end of the day, had the teachers managed to hold on tightly and concentrate, they may have acquired a substantial quantity of descriptive information about weather, possibly without even getting wet.
But we didn't. Instead we took a week and dove into the science of weather. We went deep below the clouds and thrashed around in the dangerous currents of the kinetic model of matter and energy transfer. As we pushed deeper into fundamental elements of weather-heat, clouds, precipitation, wind, storms-we found ourselves grappling with interactions between matter and energy. To understand weather, an earth science topic, we had to study physics.
Teaching for Conceptual Understanding
This approach to the study of weather is conceptual, not descriptive. In a conceptual curriculum, we are not satisfied with what happens; we strive to understand what makes things happen. For example, when a puddle of liquid water is exposed to the environment, it dries up-evaporates and disappears. That's descriptive; that's what we see. What we don't see are the interactions at the molecular level that explain what happens to the water and where it goes. Models of molecular kinetic energy, energy transfer, phase change, density, and conservation fit together like puzzle pieces. When the pieces are carefully assembled in meaningful ways, students construct a robust concept of water changing from liquid to gas, one molecule at a time, and entering the air. The water doesn't disappear, it decamps and enters the company of other molecules in the air, assuming a new identity (vapor) with new properties. In a conceptually oriented curriculum, evaporation ceases to be an event, it becomes a process-a process that has explanatory power in countless situations.
I have spent more than forty years developing elementary and middle school science curricula. The last 20 years have been devoted to the Full Option Science System (FOSS) program <www.fossweb.com>. FOSS provides research-based, active-learning experiences that teach important ideas about the natural world. During a lifetime of professional conversations with teachers and scientists, authentic interactions with students in classrooms, continuous redesign of the curriculum, and close collaboration with our publishing partner, Delta Education <www.delta-education.com>, we have made substantial advances in our understanding of the elements of good science instruction. Of the many lessons learned over the years, one stands out in stark relief: conceptual learning is hard for students and conceptual teaching is challenging for teachers.
Time and Timing
Conceptual learning requires substantial commitments to authentic engagement with scientific phenomena and intellectual energy. Both require time. And time is the most valuable commodity in education. In FOSS we think of concept development as a progressive, iterative cognitive process. First students experience a phenomenon that inspires interest and motivates exploration. The activity of interacting with, observing, and discussing the behaviors of objects, organisms, and systems provides sensory input to the brain. The process of stimulating neurons and activating neural pathways is learning. After the brain has assimilated the new input, it forges the bits into relationships, principles, and concepts in a social/cognitive process often referred to as constructivism. The constructed products are knowledge. Scientific concepts are some of the most highly valued classes of knowledge. Knowledge, however, is of limited value unless it is functional, that is, can be applied to explain a new phenomenon or create new knowledge. The ability to apply knowledge advances the learning to the level of understanding.
Effective conceptual teaching, however, must consider another dimension of time-the appropriate time in a student's academic career. The level of abstraction and complexity of a concept should be coordinated with the cognitive development of students. And, the sequence in which students encounter concepts is important, as some concepts are prerequisite to others. For example, the concepts of mass and volume should precede the introduction of density. When the conceptual challenge is interesting and the timing is appropriate, students engage the topic with zeal. Even so, mastery of the concept takes time. This applies to kindergartners trying to figure out why one wood block needs nine paper clips to sink while another identical-sized block sinks with only six paper clips on board, as well as research meteorologists pondering what triggers lightning to strike or what causes a thunderstorm to collapse in a heat burst.
Some issues in science education are wrangled over endlessly: which came first, the chicken or the egg?; if everything is matter or energy, what is shadow?; what should be taught first, physics or...? Unlike the first two questions, the question of when to teach physics has stubbornly resisted consensus. For me, however, the answer is straightforward: physics first. By first, I mean first grade. Physics is too large and too important to postpone until high school. Physics is the branch of science that provides the anchors against which the other disciplines pull for explanatory models and confirmation. Where the positioning of physics in the high school curriculum escalates to the level of a philosophical battle, it may indicate that opportunity has already been missed. To me physics first means start with the five- and six-year-olds, spending quality time guiding them to experience and describe the properties of objects and materials, and to discover what happens when they interact. Then comes physics second, moving students into operational experiences with force and energy-magnets, bulbs, sounds, pushes and pulls. Follow this with physics third, discovering relationships between interacting objects and systems. And then physics fourth, with the introduction of the particulate nature of matter and the conditions under which matter experiences transformations. Physics fifth brings an introduction to mathematical models and a new logic for displaying, thinking about, and explaining phenomena. In this scenario, as students enter high school, the notion of physics first has lost its gravity. Too late for physics first, just the next level of the encounter and new concepts to deepen an already substantial body of physics knowledge.
Making the World Safe for Conceptual Science
If trying to teach too much results in teaching too little, what can be done? As always, it depends. Two factors stand out as impeding factors: accountability testing and systemic anarchy. The first affects early science education most dramatically. No Child Left Behind has leveled it sights on literacy and mathematics performance. In the rush to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress scores, science has gotten trampled. Typically, primary students receive a few minutes of science instruction per week; intermediate students less than two hours. You can't even water ski if the boat doesn't leave the dock. As a result, science instruction essentially starts in the middle grades, and that is too late.
The systemic anarchy stems from the fact that science standards are developed by states. This results in a particularly incoherent national policy for science education. What has emerged is a de facto competition between states to produce the most rigorous, most comprehensive catalog of standards for each grade level. It is daunting to imagine water skiing at the speed required to cover the expanse of content suggested by the standards.
In order to teach for conceptual understanding, we will have to proceed more slowly and reach for greater depth. This means teaching fewer topics, an idea that makes educrats gasp. But teaching less will provide students with a far better understanding of science, preparing them better for both advanced study of science and thoughtful, engaged citizenship. Teaching less would require a minor but important change in testing policy. States could keep their comprehensive standards in place, but school districts would choose which science topics to teach, and then teach them in depth. The district would declare which standards their students will be accountable for, and the state would provide a test that examines those topics. The test could then probe for deeper content knowledge as well as functional understanding of the particular habits of mind that characterize the scientific enterprise.
Accountability is a thorny issue. The fates of teachers and schools ride on students' performance on state-authorized tests in the areas of language arts and math. At the elementary level, poor performance can result in teacher dismissal and school restructuring. Consequently, schools allocate most of their instructional resources to reading and writing. The content subjects-science, social studies, physical education, and the arts-lose out to skill development. Accountability under NCLB in science is still half a decade in the future unless science testing is mandated earlier when the law is reauthorized in 2008. Some forward-looking states and school districts are teaching and testing science, but even in these places there are no consequences for weak student performance in science. Sea changes in science education will require significant policy shifts at the highest levels, accompanied by incentives and coherent guidelines for world-class science teaching and learning. In the meantime, high-quality science instruction will thrive only in isolated locations with insightful leadership. While elementary science languishes generally, I, and my like-minded colleagues, continue to work diligently to help concerned educators around the country create a vision of deep conceptual science learning and implement it in their schools and districts.
Some years ago Mesa Arizona performed a sweet little informal assessment of their science program. Mesa had diligently implemented an active-learning science program that was subscribed to by about half of the elementary schools in the district. When the sixth graders advanced to junior high school, they were presented with a menu of options for "elective" courses. Science was one of the electives. When the electives were tallied, more that 95% of the students from active-learning schools chose science. Fewer that 5% of the students from schools with traditional textbook-based programs chose science.
Mesa was preparing a scientifically literate student population. Those youngsters entered their middle years expecting to continue their study of science. Doubtless a significant number of those students went on to pursue science and science-related careers. And more important, they had been steeped in science inquiry, able to think effectively about science issues, and imbued with a trust for scientific evidence and respect for the scientific process.
We have an enviable reputation for scientific excellence in this country. American scientists lead the march to the frontier of discovery, and American universities train the most gifted candidates from around the world. But with precollege science education in stagnation, will we continue to be the standard bearer? Consider: at this time there are more honors students in China than there are students in the United States. American economic vitality, prestige, and creative problem solving rest, in part, on the excellence of the science and technology base. The next generation of leadership scientists is in residence in our schools right now. Will they be water skiers or SCUBA divers?
Resource Note: FOSS is a comprehensive K-8 science curriculum. The program is designed in three strands-life, earth, and physical science-for each grade level. The content and investigation methodologies increase in complexity as the curriculum advances through the grades.
Each module includes a detailed teacher guide, a kit of carefully crafted student materials, original reading materials, multimedia resources, and strategies for integrating science notebooks and assessment activities into the science inquiry. For more information about the design, philosophy, and implementation of the FOSS program, please visit our Lawrence Hall of Science FOSS Website < www.lhsfoss.org >.
Larry Malone is codirector of the Full Option Science System program at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California at Berkeley, where he has been engaged in elementary and middle school science curriculum development and professional development for 42 years.