Applying Historic Lessons to Current Educational Reform

Draft: For circulation to symposium participants J. Myron Atkin

APPLYING HISTORIC LESSONS TO CURRENT EDUCATIONAL REFORM

J. Myron Atkin

School of Education

Stanford University

In retrospect, the events in science education that were set in motion by the launching of the first Sputnik may have been unique, at least in one respect. Never before had scientists from the highest echelons of the academic community had such a controlling influence on the elementary and secondary school curriculum. Judging from developments of the last 15 years, however, it seems that they may not have quite such a dominant position in the foreseeable future. In this brief statement, I will outline some of the reasons for the degree of curriculum control exercised by university professors from research-oriented universities in the decades immediately after Sputnik, what seems to be happening now, and a general indication of the directions of change in science education in the decade immediately ahead.

First, some of the factors associated with involvement by academics in elementary and secondary education in the years immediately following World War II. Of central importance is the fact that research-level scientists and mathematicians in the country’s most prestigious universities not only voiced dissatisfaction with what they saw in schools (which was far from unprecedented), many of them became deeply and personally committed to changing things. They, and everyone else, had been through a searing and costly war. A significant number of them emerged from their experience intent on doing what they could to prevent another global conflict. They believed deeply that world peace is intimately associated with an educated populace. And so, emboldened by their success in producing war-winning devices like radar and an atomic bomb, they decided to turn their talents to worthwhile peaceful purposes.

Education was something they knew about. Furthermore they now had extraordinary confidence both in their abilities and their potential for influencing world events. If they could build a bomb that shortened the war, they could certainly make significant changes in the education system. They also had the support and good will of an admiring and grateful public. All this gave them new and unprecedented influence in matters of public policy, including education.

Changing Influences since the War

Several factors in this constellation of important elements have changed as the century draws to a close, however. First and most tellingly, the country’s priorities have shifted. University-based scientists no longer have the political influence they had 40 years ago, not even with respect to priorities for their own scientific research. For just one example, the scientific community, speaking collectively, argued that the super-conducting super-collider is of central importance if we are to understand the nature of the universe, and that understanding the universe in its beauty, complexity, and mystery is one of the noblest quests in which humans might engage. When the body politic was asked to provide dollars for the purpose, however, it indicated in forceful terms that its own priorities were elsewhere.

The public during the 1980s and 1990s had become concerned with economic productivity, with environmental deterioration, and with health issues like AIDS, to highlight just a few examples of science-related issues. It would seem that technical expertise should be directed toward problems that are more immediate than fundamental research on the structure of the universe, said the legislators with responsibility for allocating public funds. Basic research may have practical payoffs many years from now, but there is no assurance of such a result nor is that its purpose. Besides such research is expensive, and today’s urgent problems need attention. Scientists are respected today more than they probably were before World War II, but the public is less ready than was the case in the 1950s to accept their decisions about what technically rooted issues need to be addressed and how much money should be spent.

In addition, with respect to curriculum, teachers have become more assertive. In the wave of science education reform activities of the 1950s and 60s, it was always assumed that teachers knew best how to convey scientific content to students, but the responsibility for content identification itself lay with the scientists. No longer. Teachers are pointing out that schools are more inclusive than they were then. Teachers must serve a group of students from a wider array of social and economic backgrounds. Higher percentages of the adolescent cohort remain in school until age 18. Engaging students in science and mathematics is more difficult. To reach a diverse student population, they say, it is necessary to select topics that interest them, presumably those that have more direct connections with their lives. Further, teachers are the ones best able to identify relevant content.

There are additional factors that have altered the circumstances and directions of educational change and that have reduced the influence of research-oriented scientists in academia. One particularly prominent influence on curriculum in the 1980s and early 1990s was that the United States was seen as being in a weakened economic position, characterized by enfeebled productivity and a declining presence in world trade. Students should be taught those subjects that relate directly to their being proficient contributors to the economy. Furthermore, educational policy makers began to realize – as they did not in the 1950s – that no major changes in education are likely to take root unless teachers are involved in the innovations from the start, which probably includes a significant role in content selection. Just as the question of who determines science policy today is less the province of scientists alone than it was 40 years ago, so, too, the matter of who owns science education is more complex and contested. We seem to be in a period when key decisions are made by a more inclusive group of stakeholders: scientists from academia, teachers, parents, scientists from industry, politicians, and others.

Directions of Curriculum Change

Importantly, almost all of these newer influences in determining new directions for science education have combined to exert a force in the same general direction: toward more practical work for students. Both to engage a more diverse student population and to achieve more instrumental goals like enhancing economic productivity and improving public health, curricula in science are being revised to relate more closely to proximate needs.

The result is a clear educational trend that focuses on studies that relate explicitly to the lives of students and the communities in which they live. This trend characterizes not only educational developments in the United States but also in many countries abroad. In a recent study of innovations in science, mathematics, and technology education conducted under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)[1], it was found that in every one of the 13 of the participating countries the clearest general trend was a move toward topics that relate to students’ lives, not only in the sense of more first-hand experience with science but greater relevance of the content to real-world issues.

In designing such courses around the world, teachers often meet with scientists – but it is the teachers who determine the focus. In Germany, for example, teachers of students in grades 5 through 8 in Schleswig-Holstein, after that state moved entirely to untracked secondary schools, embarked on a program to fashion a more relevant curriculum. They chose to focus on water, with an emphasis on how this substance relates to humans and other organisms. Fifth and sixth graders are asked to think about questions like, “What do I need water for?” and “How do I use water?” The aim is for students to understand that water is not a separate object of inquiry, but part of a system in everyday life. While this emphasis was chosen because of its presumed connection to the lives of the students, the teachers worked closely with scientists at the University of Kiel to be sure the content was sound. The topics may not have been those the scientists themselves would have selected, yet the partnership was intense, consistent, and genuinely collaborative. The German example highlights another feature of curricula often associated with real-life issues. It crosses conventional disciplinary boundaries. Physical and biological science were “integrated” as the students embarked on the new German course.

A similar development is evident in Japan. The new (1989) primary science curriculum developed under the aegis of the Ministry of Education is titled “Environmental and Life Sciences.” Because the Japanese are concerned about environmental deterioration, students study topics like acid rain. They go into the local community to find evidence of the effects of acid rain, then learn how it is formed and how its harmful effects might be mitigated. They study the subject not only understand it, but to try to do something about it. In the process, they draw content from chemistry, which explains the effect of pH levels on concrete and other substances; from physics, which helps explain the effects of acid rain on the strength of structures; from biology, which helps students understand how certain forms of life are affected in an acid environment; and from meteorology, which aids in figuring out how weather patterns determine sites of greatest damage.

They learn more. How do communities react to the challenge of reducing pollution? What happens if the smokestack industries that generate acidic gases are required to comply with new environmental regulations? What different interest groups are involved? What public policies about environmental protection make sense? Thus conventional disciplinary lines are crossed not only within the sciences and not only between the sciences and mathematics, but between these technical fields and subjects like politics, sociology, and anthropology.

In the United States there is a new high school chemistry course titled ChemCom, Chemistry in the Community. It was initiated by and developed under supervision of the American Chemical Society and carries its imprimatur. (It may be noteworthy in the context of this analysis to note that a majority of the ACS membership consists of chemists from industry and government laboratories.) The ChemCom text begins with a toxic spill, and a story unfolds that emphasizes how knowledge of chemistry is crucial in preventing such disasters and limiting the damage when prevention fails. The scientific elements of the course lead to consideration of community action. A major attempt is made to help the students understand, through role-playing, the perspectives of different interest groups. Chemistry is brought into the political deliberations on a need-to-know basis.

There is a new officially sanctioned integrated science program in Ontario, Tasmania, and Spain. An emphasis on practical work and integrated science, it should be emphasized, is not confined to courses for students who seem to have limited academic aspirations. Nor is it primarily for those not presumed to be interested in science and mathematics. The University of California now accepts integrated courses at high school level as meeting admission requirements, as does virtually every other university in the country.

Teachers in a special, public, residential high school created in North Carolina especially for students interested in science and mathematics developed a new precalculus program centered exclusively on applications. The teachers in the mathematics department believed that it was crucial for students in the course to learn how to apply mathematics to real-world problems and that this goal is at least as important as their learning mathematical concepts and procedures. In this shift from “pure” to applied mathematics, the aim was to teach students to solve interesting problems from daily life and various professional endeavors. The course makes extensive use of data analysis and relies heavily on data from actual observations or measurements. During the early days of developing the curriculum (which is now a commercially available textbook), the teachers subjected all topics considered for possible inclusion to the test of whether or not the mathematics had a direct application. Conic sections, a subject conventionally taught in precalculus courses was not included in the course.

These examples represent a far cry from science and mathematics curriculum reform of 40 years ago. At that time, content was selected that those in research universities thought most important. The emphasis was on the “structure of the subject,” rather than on applications. Efforts remained pretty much within the boundaries of the various science disciplines as they were taught in universities. Teaching the internal logic of the discipline as it was understood by researchers in universities was the guiding goal. In the physics effort launched by the pioneering Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) in the late 1950s, which served for many years as NSF’s prototypical high school curriculum project, there was little mention of applications in the text. On the contrary, light was examined for its wave-like and particle-like characteristics, but there was scant attention to how such knowledge is used. Little mention was made of gasoline engines or refrigerator functioning, both topics that had received considerable attention in the textbooks that preceded PSSC’s.

In 1960, I became co-director of one of the NSF’s first two curriculum projects below the high school level. It focused on astronomy. The entire first summer of the project was devoted to developing a story line that astronomers and physicists (a Nobelist among them, which wasn’t that unusual in those days) believed reflected the way they themselves conceptualized the subject. Afterward, teachers were brought in to devise methods of presenting the material to students.

Technology Education

The most dramatic development signaling a move toward more practical work for students is the creation of an entirely new subject in several countries: technology. The aim of such courses is not primarily or necessarily to introduce students to the use of computers or to make best use of newer technologies in the provision of more effective instruction. Nor is it intended to develop specific skills in connection with programs of vocational education. Rather the new subject teaches all students about technology to help them understand how it works in meeting human needs and wants, and the resulting social implications. To quote from the federal-level framework developed in 1994 by the Australian Education Council, National Statements and Curriculum Profiles, “Technology is…used as a generic term to include all the technologies people develop and use in their lives. It involves the purposeful application of knowledge, experience, and resources to create products and processes to meet human needs.” Central to this conception of technology education is an emphasis on design. Students identify design possibilities, appraise the plans, build models, and evaluate the product.

Unlike science instruction, technology does not usually offer only one answer or solution to a problem. There is no one best way to build a bridge, prevent heat loss from a house, or power a vehicle. In technology, thought is directed toward action. The test of practical reasoning is to see how a product or process works and to determine whether or not it is feasible. Feasibility might include an analysis of costs and benefits, risk, and public acceptability. Technology is introduced because it relates unambiguously to altering the human condition, but it also highlights an element of intellectual effort that is dominant in every society but that traditionally is neglected in formal education.

In the United States, there was a bold attempt to develop a secondary school curriculum with some of these purposes. NSF supported development of a course called (in a less gender-sensitive era) The Man-Made World. Though it emphasized engineering concepts (like feedback, optimization, modeling, and systems), it did not feature design. The program, however, was used in only a small number of schools, partly because there was little room in high schools for another subject, partly because such activities were perceived by some people to be associated with the low-status field of vocational education, and partly because there were relatively few scientists and engineers from industry involved in the post-Sputnik reform movement.

Challenges Ahead

A great strength of the post-Sputnik efforts was the intensity of the participation and commitment by the university-based science community. Today the science education policy scene is more pluralistic than it was then, with a greater variety of influential players demanding their place in decision-making and believing that they can make a constructive difference. A challenge 40 years after Sputnik is to re-establish that commitment from the university, but at the same time create the settings where other parties, particularly the country’s best teachers, can work with the scientific community in genuine collaboration.