New Initiatives in Science Education

at the University of Michigan-Dearborn

Gail R. Luera

School of Education

University of Michigan-Dearborn

Dearborn, MI 48128

The 1996 publication of the National Science Education Standards (NSES) has had a profound effect on curriculum development, assessment and state standards for K-12 science. There are now numerous examples of science content courses, based on NSES, for elementary and middle school pre-service teachers. Many of these courses employ inquiry-based learning since that is emphasized by the NSES and by most state standards for science. While examples of these courses are scattered throughout the country, there are not many programs that require an extensive inquiry-based science education program for all elementary and middle school pre-service teachers. The vast majority of programs offer inquiry content courses only when a science faculty member is interested in teaching with that method, or as part of the required science methods course. What is lacking is an integrated learning experience, consisting of numerous courses that model and link inquiry-based pedagogy, science content and science skills.

It is a commonly held belief that teachers teach as they were taught and that constructivist teaching in one course will not result in changes in the teaching practices of future teachers. Based upon these two beliefs and the NSES emphasis on inquiry, the science education program at the University of Michigan-Dearborn was recently revised. A group consisting of three science educators from the School of Education, three adjunct science educators, and a core group of three scientists from the Department of Natural Sciences in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters, created a sequence of six courses that not only teach science content and science process skills but also model learning by inquiry pedagogy.

These courses include a science methods course and a unique capstone experience described in more detail below. This six course sequence is required of the nearly 500 elementary education pre-service teachers in the School of Education. We plan to expand this sequence to include courses for in-service teachers as part of a soon to-be-created master’s degree in science education.

As part of the six course sequence, we created three new science content courses that employ inquiry-based pedagogy as the instructional mode. These new courses were specifically designed to teach science content in life, physical and earth/space sciences, while modeling the pedagogy of inquiry-based learning throughout each course. We have gone further by creating a web-based portfolio that will reflect student learning in all six courses in the sequence with contributions from each of the science content courses as well as the education courses (please see The content of these courses is driven by the Michigan Curriculum Framework for Science (MCF-S) and the National Science Education Standards (NSES). The MCF-S and NSES are nearly identical in terms of content prescribed for K-8. The new science content courses (NSCI 231, 232, and 233) were offered for the first time beginning with the 2000-2001 academic year and are required of all new students beginning Fall, 2000.

Thus, all students earning an elementary education teaching certificate regardless of their major will be required to take each of the six courses below. The capstone course will be offered for the first time in the Fall 2001 term.

  • EXPS 220: Science for Elementary Teachers (3 credit hours) (focuses on process and nature of “doing” science and serves as a prerequisite for all other courses).
  • NSCI 231 Learning by Inquiry: Physical Sciences (3 credit hours)
  • NSCI 232: Learning by Inquiry: Earth and Planetary Science ( 3 credit hours)
  • NSCI 233: Learning by Inquiry: Life Science (3 credit hours)
  • EDD 485: Methods of Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School (3 credit hours)
  • EXPS 420: Science Capstone (2 credit hours)

The Capstone course, perhaps the most unique feature to the program, is taken after completing all three science content courses. The focus of the Capstone course will enable students to look anew at the “big ideas” they encountered in the science content courses. The intent is to deepen their understanding of the major themes connecting the sciences. Other reform efforts in teacher preparation lack an opportunity for students to integrate the knowledge of science gained in several disciplinary courses in terms of the unifying themes or “big ideas” of science such as scale and structure, models, stability and change, systems and interactions, and energy. Courses frequently introduce these large, underlying concepts in the context of disciplinary-based instruction, but do not truly integrate them across science. We cannot assume that students will be able to integrate their knowledge simply because they havebeen introduced to these concepts, nor can we assume that they will have this ability because they have learned how toconduct inquiry learning for themselves and their future students. True integration of a unifying concept such as energy, or scale and structure, comes from developing a deeper understanding of the concept by additional exploration that is focused on how the concept is used and presented in different scientific disciplines. The Capstone course will integrate these "big ideas" across multiple science disciplines.

The second unique aspect of the Capstone experience is an introduction to action research. The pre-service teachers will design and conduct an action research project which focuses on their own and elementary students' misconceptions of a "big idea" in science. By participating in action research with in-service teachers in actual classrooms, pre-service teachers will gain experience in the techniques of research and will begin to participate in an extended learning community that includes in-service teachers.

We received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create the three science content courses (NSCI 231, 232, & 233) and we received funding from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) to create the unique science capstone course (EXPS 420). In addition, we have been awarded two Eisenhower grants from the State of Michigan. One Eisenhower grant is to train faculty at Henry Ford Community College (HFCC), the source of most of our transfer students, to offer the science content courses at their campus.

This comprehensive science education program is an important step towards realizing the ambitious goals of NSES. More importantly, the UM-D program will enable future teachers to practice inquiry-based pedagogy with a strong science content background.