Advancing Science and Mathematics Literacy: Policy issues and Public Action
A Presentation to the Education Policy and Leadership Center
Tuesday, February 26, 2002
8:30 – 9:30 a.m.
Harrisburg Hilton Hotel
Remarks by Dr. Jo Ellen Roseman
Acting Director
Project 2061
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The good news is that today’s parents overwhelmingly agree that a solid understanding of science is essential to their child’s future. This was a significant finding in both a national survey conducted by Project 2061 and of focus groups with Philadelphia parents.
The bad news is that students (even the best students) aren’t learning any important ideas or skills in science. Consider the following evidence:
· In a prestigious Maryland county (much to the surprise of their teachers), even high achieving 8th grade students just completing a physical science course were unable to explain changes in substances in terms of the molecules that make them up. For example, hardly any of the “A” students were able to describe boiling or dissolving in terms of molecules or to explain where the mass of a house that burns to the ground goes in terms of the conservation of atoms. thighscores
· In a similar study, most top biology students in another Maryland county revealed serious misconceptions about natural selection—misconceptions that would make them unable to think about issues in the news like the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria tMicrobesWinning
· And even graduates from MIT were unable to explain where the mass of a tree from (such as a maple tree, which starts out as a tiny seed and grows into a tree weighing hundreds of pounds). (It comes mainly from the carbon dioxide in the air). Weight of the Log videotape: MIT graduates
Clearly, our science curriculum and teaching is failing even our best students. This morning I’m going to tell you about the work Project 2061 is doing to help solve this problem and what we have learned that can inform Pennsylvania’s efforts.
Project 2061’s strategy and reform tools
AAAS Project 2061 is a comprehensive, long term, education reform project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science—the largest and one of the oldest scientific society in the US. Since 1985 (when Halley’s comet was last visible from earth), Project 2061 has been developing tools and providing technical assistance to ensure that all Americans are literate in science, mathematics, and technology in 2061 (the year the comet will return).
Develop a coherent set of important learning goals
2061strategy The approach we have taken is the approach you appear to be taking too: First, develop a coherent set of important learning goals and then ensure that all changes in the educational system are aligned to help students achieve them. Pennsylvania has a new set of science standards and seeks to help all its students to achieve them. This same approach is being talked about at federal and state levels and appears straightforward, but we’re finding that it’s hard to do. Why? First is the issue of the quality of the learning goals themselves. If all this effort is to be focused on the learning goals—or standards, as they have come to be called—the learning goals need to be worth the effort. Furthermore, everyone involved in carrying out the needed changes must understand what the standards mean, and this is no easy task.
Project2061Learning Goals Let me first say a bit about Project 2061’s work on learning goals. The Project has invested 15 years in developing a set of learning goals in science, mathematics, and technology that are important and comprehensible. Science for All Americans recommends a coherent set of knowledge, skills, and habits of mind that constitute adult literacy in science, mathematics, and technology. Rather than starting from what is currently taught, it started from square one—by asking the question: Out of all the possibilities (which is far too much to learn in even 13 years of schooling), what knowledge and skills will students need for living interesting, socially responsible, and productive lives after leaving school? Answering this question took 4 years. It is an ambitious set of goals that includes understanding the nature of science, mathematics, and technology as human enterprises, understanding key concepts and principles of these disciplines and how they relate to one another, understanding some important cross cutting themes like models, systems, scale, and patterns of change that can serve as tools for thinking across disciplines, and having habits of mind that can serve as tools for thinking about how the world works. College faculty admit that they would be delighted if their graduates were science literate according to this definition. Our experience in using these adult learning goals for over a dozen years is that keeping them in mind helps you avoid the temptation to retain the clutter in today’s curriculum. We regularly ask ourselves questions like, “Is knowing the names of enzymes in DNA synthesis important for adult science literacy? Is being able to complete the square in solving polynomial equations? Is being able to plan and carry out carefully controlled scientific experiments?” Science for All Americans helps keep us focused on where a common core for all students is headed.
Benchmarks describes appropriate K-12 steps towards science literacy. For each idea in Science for All Americans, Benchmarks recommends what is appropriate to know by the end of grades 2, 5, 8, and 12. This was another four-year effort, this time working in collaboration with cognitive scientists, education researchers, and teachers. Both the substance of the learning goals and their grade level placement was based on the best available research. By far, the longest chapter of Benchmarks—The Research Base—summarizes that research and cites references. (We are currently updating the research base and adjusting benchmarks, as needed, to correspond). Benchmarks also contains a chapter Issues and Language that describes the issues of substance and style that were encountered when writing learning goals: for example, why the learning goals are mainly expressed in terms of what specific ideas students should know rather than in terms what they should do with that knowledge.
Ways to express learning goals For example, consider two different ways of expressing a learning goal. The top one comes from the Pennsylvania Physical Science standards for grade 10. It says what students should be able to do, but doesn’t give them the knowledge they should use to do so. The bottom statement (from Benchmarks), states what that knowledge should consist of. In cases like this, Benchmarks may be helpful in clarifying some of the Pennsylvania learning goals.
Describe phases of matter according to the Kinetic Molecular Theory (from Pennsylvania Physical Science standards for grade 10)
Atoms and molecules are perpetually in motion. Increased temperature means greater average energy of motion, so most substances expand when heated. In solids, the atoms are closely locked in position and can only vibrate. In liquids, the atoms or molecules have higher energy, are more loosely connected, and can slide past one another; some molecules may get enough energy to escape into a gas. In gases, the atoms or molecules have still more energy and are free of one another except during occasional collisions. (Benchmarks 4D6-8#3)
Both the Research Base and Issues and Language chapters, as well as the benchmarks themselves, can provide Pennsylvania educators with a lens for examining your own standards.
Both Science for all Americans and Benchmarks served as a basis for the National Science Education Standards and numerous state frameworks.
Atlas map Atlas of Science Literacy maps the growth of student understanding towards adult literacy. This recent publication brings together 50 conceptual “strand” maps that focus on key topics—such as the structure of matter, statistical reasoning, and natural selection—that are important for literacy in science, mathematics, and technology. Each map displays the ideas and skills that contribute to an understanding of the topic and shows how the ideas and skills relate to each other and how they progress from one grade level to the next.
For example, this map describes the progression of understanding of ideas on the topic “States of Matter.” Each box contains the text of a learning goal and the arrows indicate which learning goals contribute to which others, starting from grades K-2 all the way to grades 9-12. Each map is accompanied by the learning research on which it is based. These maps can help you map the progression of understanding of your own learning goals. They are currently being used in several states engaged in revising their standards, by curriculum committees seeking to lay out a rational K-12 scope and sequence, and by materials developers trying to design textbooks and curriculum materials that can help students achieve these learning goals. We are also finding them extremely valuable in helping teachers think more deeply about curriculum, their teaching, and student learning.
2061 Learning goals In short, Project 2061 has invested 15 years in developing a coherent set of important and appropriate K-12 learning goals. But even with this enormous effort, we don’t consider them to be set in stone. We use whatever feedback we can get—from new research, and from using them intensively—to improve them.
2061strategy But as I said earlier, developing a coherent set of important learning goals is only the first step. Reforming the system The next step is ensuring that changes in all components of the educational system focus on helping students to achieve them. Project 2061 commissioned background papers to shed light on each of these components of the educational system and consider what changes might be needed. More recently, we have taken an active role in helping to reform some of these components. I’ll focus on our work in curriculum materials, mention what we are doing in assessment, research, and outreach to family and community, and then open up the floor to your questions.
Curriculum Materials. High-quality curriculum materials are critical to helping students achieve the standards. Without them, teachers have a Sisyphean task. Project 2061 first developed a set of criteria to examine the content and instructional quality of curriculum materials and has applied them to evaluate middle and high school mathematics and science textbooks. For each of the evaluations, we identified learning goals within selected topics to serve as the basis for the analysis. For example, for the biology textbook evaluation, we identified learning goals within these four topics, which were identified by teachers and curriculum specialists as representing the most important for students to remember. The evaluation focused on two questions:
Project 2061 Evaluation of Biology Textbooks
The textbooks were analyzed for their treatment of four topics central to biology: Cell structure & function, Matter & energy transformations, Molecular basis of heredity, and Natural selection & evolution.
Reviewers had to answer 2 main questions for each textbook:
- For the Content Analysis, we asked: Are the key ideas within each topic treated and are they coherently related to one another?
- For the Instructional Analysis, we asked: Does the textbook help students learn the key ideas and does the teacher’s guide help teachers teach them?
For students to learn the key ideas, the answers to both of these questions must be “Yes.”
For each topic, we selected a set of related key ideas from Benchmarks for Science Literacy and the National Science Education Standards (on which most states claim to have based their own standards).
Cell Structure and Function: What the textbook reviewers looked for
For the topic Cell structure and function, here is what reviewers looked for:
· the black boxes contain the ideas that served directly as the basis for the analysis, such as Within the cells are specialized parts for transporting materials, building proteins, …and so forth
· red boxes contain prerequisites needed for the target ideas (from the same or even an earlier grade range), such prerequisites as cells carry out many of the basic functions of organisms
· blue boxes contain ideas that are closely related to the Cell topic and that could strengthen students’ understanding of cells. For example, a helpful idea for cell function comes from engineering systems: A system is usually connected to other systems, both internally and externally.
· arrows between boxes show which ideas contribute in any way to which others.
If a textbook addressed all the ideas on the map and made clear their connections, it would likely be telling a coherent story of the topic.
The reviewers looked for these ideas and connections in each teacher’s edition, which contains the student textbook and teacher’s guide. They examined everything relevant to the topic in the learning objectives stated in the text, student readings, discussion suggestions for the teacher, lab investigations, questions and sample answers. Whenever they found something “on target,” they underlined text in the box. When they were done, any text not underlined was “erased” for that book, indicating that the idea or part of the idea was not treated at all. If connections were found between two ideas, the arrow was highlighted. If a connection was not found, the arrow was “erased” for that book.