BSCS addresses the Standards
As has already been observed way back in our Fall 1992 issue, BSCS may stand for Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, but they have not limited themselves to biology. In addition to developing an elementary curriculum (p. 3, Fall 1992) and a middle level curriculum (p. 3, Spring 1993), they have co-developed Teaching About the History and Nature of Science and Technology (p. 3, Fall 1993). More recently, they have involved themselves in the development and implementation of the National Science Education Standards (NSES) -- by convening two conferences, in October 1993 and November 1995, and publishing their proceedings: Redesigning the Science Curriculum (BSCS, 1995) and National Standards & the Science Curriculum: Challenges, Opportunities, & Recommendations (Kendall/Hunt, 1996).
"Writing reports about the reform of education and actually reforming education are two very different activities," wrote Rodger Bybee in Redesigning the Science Curriculum. "The former requires that a small group agree on a set of ideas and express these ideas clearly and with adequate justification. The latter requires that millions of school personnel in thousands of autonomous school districts change their school science program, instructional practices, and assessment strategies." (p. 17)
Bybee has been in a unique position to make this kind of observation, having moved between the two BSCS conferences from BSCS through chairing the Content Working Group of the National Science Education Standards Project to become the Executive Director of the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education (CSMEE) of the National Research Council.
"Although the Standards are well thought-out . . . they do not lend themselves to easy interpretation . . . do not provide descriptions of processes for translating [themselves]. . . .," Bybee writes in National Standards & the Science Curriculum. "Describing the process of implementing the Standards was not the purpose of the NRC project. . . . The Standards recommend, but do not provide, coherent and coordinated instructional sequences and associated assessments." Bybee sees this as not a weakness but rather a strength, because it "avoids the unintentional consequences of framing a national curriculum." (p. 145)
Bybee sees the Standards as a "helm to grasp" and charts the "course to steer" in science education reform in terms of "4Ps": purpose, policy, program, and practice. He sees Project 2061's Science for All American s as a statement of purpose and the Standards as a statement of policy, an important "linkage between purpose and programs," which was missing in science education reform of the 1950s and 1960s. "Our current situation is at the interface between policy and program," he adds. And, as Susan Loucks-Horsley writes about the "4Ps" in the same volume, "In moving from purposes to practices, the phases take longer periods of time, involve more people, become increasingly local, are more difficult to do, and reap more benefits to students." (p. 84)
It was to deal with this interface between policy and program that BSCS convened its 1995 conference; as Bybee wrote in the Preface of National Standards & the Science Curriculum, "With widespread dissemination of the National Science Education Standards, educators need adequate guidance for the implied transformation of curriculum materials, instructional practices, and assessment strategies." (p. xi)
Several basic themes pervade this book, the first of which is that the Standards should be used to develop a vision of the future teaching of science, the content and assessment of science education, the training an d professional development of science teachers, and programs and systems of science education. There is more than one reference to the "spirit of the Standards," with two such listings of interest to note (see boxes).
the "spirit of the Standards," according to Susan Loucks-Horsley (National Standards & the Science Curriculum, p. 89)
1. Learning by doing through active engagement. 2. Learning through inquiry by asking questions and investigating. 3. Learning through collaboration to construct knowledge together. 4. Learning over time to develop deep understandings. 5. Developing personal meaning by applying what is learned.
the "spirit of the Standards," according to Arthur Eisenkraft and B. Ellen Friedman (National Standards & the Science Curriculum, p. 100)
1. Pedagogical approach should be inquiry- and design-based. 2. Curriculum should be structured to allow time for reflection, thus encouraging the student to absorb, construct, and use what is learned. 3. Content should be scientifically accurate. 4. Content should be taught in the context of history, technology, and the larger view of the nature of science and its role in society. 5. Connections should be made to other subject areas such as mathematics, and to everyday life. 6. Assessment must be authentic and an integral part of materials and teaching.
The Standards are also hailed for their uniqueness in offering a vision. Angelo Collins cites that their development "brought together expertise that would not have been available in any single state" (p. 39); and Nancy Ridenour and William Cairney laud the Standards because, among other things, they "do what state and local areas cannot do because of limitations of time and funds" and "represent the combined efforts of educators and scientists and the critical review of thousands of individuals." (p. 108)
A second basic theme is to enlist a broadly-based committee to support the vision. As Janet Carlson Powell and Pamela Van Scotter write, "Without coordinated and complementary efforts, school systems will revert too easily to old assessment practices that do not align with the Standards and that do not provide students with the most appropriate assessment opportunities." (p. 124)A third, and perhaps most important, theme is that the Standards should be employed in toto. Although the focus of National Standards & the Science Curriculum is curriculum, the standards for teaching, professional development, assessment, programs, and systems are addressed along with those for content by the conference working groups, whose reports comprise the "Recommendations" section of this volume.
Following Bybee's listing of eight "Responsibilities of the Curriculum Developer," ten "Design Specifications for Improving the Science Curriculum," and twelve psychological principles from The American Psychological Association, Eisenkraft and Friedman make recommendations for "Development of New Curriculum," Ken Bingman and Don Maxwell make recommendations for "Adapting the Current Science Curriculum," and Ridenour and Cairney do the same for "Adopting Curriculum Materials." One especially interesting recommendation of Eisenkraft and Friedman, which Eisenkraft has employed in developing the Active Physics units (see page 1, Spring 1994 issue), is "Write the assessments first; revise them after the curriculum is drafted."
Audrey Champagne's assertion that "the Standards call for assessing all of the components of student achievement, not just those which are easily measured" (p. 76) is reflected in the recommendations of Powell and Van Scotter: "Teachers should be teaching what we say we value in education, and therefore, we need to find ways to assess what we say we value, not just what is easy to assess. . . ." (p. 121) =
And Loucks-Horsley's observation that "What the professional developer does to facilitate learning for participants in professional development is as important as what teachers do to help their students learn" (p. 87) is echoed in the recommendations she and Nancy Landes make on "The Role of Professional Development" ("Because teachers 'teach as they were taught,' no one can expect them to create significantly different learning environments for students if their only professional-development experiences have been . . . traditional inservice workshops," p. 133) and the recommendations of Paul Kuerbis and Lynda Micikas on "Teacher Preparation in Light of Standards-Based Reform" ("Prospective teachers need opportunities to develop the attitudes, the habits of mind, and the skills required to take effective responsibility for their own growth and for supporting the growth of their students," p. 125).
Kuerbis and Micikas also observe that when science and education faculty at colleges and universities are called upon to provide opportunities for prospective teachers to learn science as the Standards expect them to teach it, the colleges and universities need to support their faculties in doing this. Furthermore, they add, "state agencies should not issue emergency or alternative licenses that weaken the vision of teacher education. . . . We do not issue waivers or emergency licenses in medicine or law, not even in trades such as plumbing and electrical contracting. Yet, in the country's largest profession -- teaching -- state agencies all too often engage in practicing a double standard." (p. 127) Loucks-Horsley and Landes add in their recommendations that "A new view of professional development involves . . . moving away from a perspective that professional development is something done to teachers rather than with them." (p. 131)
Making recommendations on the implementation of the Program Standards are Harold Pratt and Gail Foster, who recall how the Program Standards Working Group thought in terms of a district-wide action plan. Although the System Standards are not specifically addressed in National Standards & the Science Curriculum, Patrice Legro, Scott Roberts, and Cathrine Monson make recommendations for communicating about the Standards to the public, especially given "some concern that science education standards are a 'ceiling'. . . ." and "that science education for all, as stated in the Standards, will result in the curriculum becoming less challenging." (p. 137)
A final basic theme in National Standards & the Science Curriculum is patience, which is one of the principles advocated by Pratt and Foster ("be prepared for an effort that takes a minimum of three to five years," p. 117). Impatience is cited as a potential problem by Project 2061's F. James Rutherford. Bingman and Maxwell warn against such pitfalls as "expecting too much too soon; viewing change as an event rather than a process; saying we have changed without doing so. . . ." (p. 107) "If sufficient time is not allowed for the current reform to develop and take hold, it will be declared a failure before it even begins," writes Collins.
Given the Standards as a "helm to grasp" and "course to steer" from purpose to practice, to use Bybee's analogy, what is the port we are seeking? Earlier in National Standards & the Science Curriculum, Loucks-Horsley suggests that it is Goal No. 4 of The National Education Goals ("United States students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement"), but in his summation Bybee "propose[s] that Goal No. 3 presents a more reasonable and focused goal . . . consistent with the National Science Education Standards . . . up to national, state, and local prerogatives, not other nations and teams of assessment specialists" (p. 147):
By the year 2000, American students will leave grades four, eight, and twelve having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including . . . science; and every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy.
"Each of us has an important role to play in making certain that reform in K-12 schools occurs as envisioned in the Standards" (p. 129), write Kuerbis and Micikas. "It is too easy to place responsibility and blame elsewhere and wait for the reform to happen," Bybee writes in his summation (p. 152). "Hope lies in each individual assuming that he or she is a key decision maker for some aspect of the reform." The need for involvement of all teachers is put even more strongly by Yale biologist Timothy Goldsmith, who argued that "The central challenge in finding a hospitable home for standards and benchmarks is to professionalize the profession of teaching" in Redesigning the Science Curriculum (p. 117) and added in National Standards & the Science Curriculum that "For Standards and Benchmarks to become central pieces in our educational system, it will be necessary for teachers to develop a greater sense . . . of involvement. . . . they need to put more of their stamp on Benchmarks and Standards. . . . this requires a much greater professionalism. . . ." (p. 20)
So how are we doing? In National Standards & the Science Curriculum, Project 2061's Jo Ellen Roseman reports that Project 2061 has designed its workshops in view of the experience that "Most educators use Benchmarks without understanding their meaning" (p. 56), "Most educators do not take time to study Benchmarks" (p. 59), and "Most educators need examples that directly relate to their background and intended use" (p. 63). The kind of familiarity with Benchmarks intended from the redesigned Project 2061 workshop is the same kind of familiarity with the Standards required by Winston King, Pratt, and Foster in their discussion of "Desigining Curriculum Aligned with the National Science Education Standards."
More recently, NSTA Executive Director Gerry Wheeler writes in the Dec 96-Jan 97 issue of NSTA Reports! that, according to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), "about four years after the release of the NCTM standards, most mathematics teachers report being familiar with them. . . . Yet, TIMSS found little evidence of the standards actually being practiced in the videotaped classrooms," although "teachers who were videotaped reported they thought that they were implementing the NCTM standards." The Oct-Nov 96 issue of NSTA Reports! cites a major indictment of American teacher preparation by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future in What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future.
Redesigning the Science Curriculum costs $10 and is available from BSCS, Pikes Peak Research Park, 5415 Mark Dabling Boulevard, Colorado Springs, CO 80918-3842. National Standards & the Science Curriculum: Challenges, Opportunities, & Recommendations (ISBN 0-7872-2589-4) costs $17.90 and is available from Kendall/Hunt, 4050 Westmark Drive, Dubuque, IA 52204-1840.
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