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Re: Review of Middle School Physical Science Texts (part 2)



Hugh Haskell has done a fine job in justifying the aims and outcomes of
the
Packard report on middle school science textbooks . Unlike college
textooks
which are subjected to extensive peer review, the middle school science
textbooks are usually written by the in-house staff of the publisher with

a small amount of input from "consultants" here and there and very
little
peer review afterwards.

Several members of this PHY-L net have questioned the qualifications
of the Packard reviewing committee to judge textbooks written for
middle school science. I can say "unequivocally" (- : that all
of the reviewing members of the Packard middle school science textbook
committee, including myself, are experienced physics teachers who
have been involved in one or more of the following: They...

...... actually taught science in the middle schools for several years.
...... taught college courses for students who would become middle
school science teachers.
...... supervised pre-service and inservice science teacher training.
...... prepared syllibi and science curricula for state departments of
education and
and local boards of education.
...... were involved as "authors" and "consultants" in the preparation
of middle school
science textbooks.

Herb Gottlieb

On Sat, 24 Feb 2001 16:28:14 -0500 Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>
wrote:

Hubisz's report condemned all the books it reviewed. It did not
rank them in order of least evil, nor even draw any comparisons among
them.
It did not judge them against any systematic criteria, so the reader
cannot draw comparisons with any confidence. I hope someone will
conduct a
more-systematic investigation of this important area.

I was going to be involved in this project at the beginning, but
circumstances kept me out of it (I believe Herb Gottlieb was
involved and can perhaps confirm or deny my impressions). I was asked,
not
because I am or was a middle school teacher but because I had some
experience working with middle school teachers, and I believe that
was the criteria for many, if not most, of the reviewers that John
Hubisz gathered together for this project. For the most part, I
believe, the reviewers were looking not for errors in middle school
pedagogy bur for errors of fact. It is unfortunately true that all
too often the teachers themselves are not qualified to detect these
errors, especially those in the physical sciences, since most of
them, if they have any science background at all come from the life
sciences (and, unfortunately, many do have no science background at
all, and so their understanding of the nature of science, and much
of its lore, is minimal). But teachers and scientists with expertise
in their disciplines and knowledge of the middle school environment
are qualified to make the type of reviews that Hubisz was asking for,
perhaps moreso that the MS teachers themselves, sad to say.

It would have been great if the group could have found some or any
exemplary texts. It would be great to be able to say to a textbook
selection committee that book A is not acceptable but book B is a
good one and should be used. All to often there is just no example
of
a "Book B." Feynman's experience, recounted in "Surely You're
Joking . . ." is probably a bit extreme, but not atypical.

Over the years, I suspect not unrelated to the way by which they
are chosen, science texts at the pre-college level have descended to a
pretty sorry lot. There is no such thing as a textbook without
errors, and as the debates that get started on this list can
attest, there is no universal agreement as to what constitutes an
error.
Some are easy, others are subtle, controversial, and often of more
lasting consequences. But once errors are identified and pointed out to
the
publishers, it is often next to impossible to get the publishers to
correct them. Many are inserted in the ancillary material--sidebars,
illustrations, problems, supplementary text material, etc.--over
which the authors usually have virtually no control. All too often
the author or authors of a high school or pre high school text are
little more than hired hands who do not own their work and thus
have little or no ability to influence the publishers to make
corrections.
I have heard of occasions where the names of a review panel for one
book were simply placed in another, unrelated text, that the
reviewers had never even seen, and without the permission of said
reviewers. And the publishers are loathe to make the corrections
because to do so would increase their expenses and reduce their
profits, and the existence of the errors does not seem to be a
serious impediment to sales, so there is no economic interest in
making the product better. All too often the adoption decisions are
made based on criteria that have nothing to do with the accuracy of
the material, and it is in these areas that the publishers
concentrate their revision efforts. Since errors are pretty far
down on their priority list, they tend to remain through edition after
edition and just accumulate.

If the scientific community would take a serious interest in this
problem and apply pressure to textbook adoption committees to
reject books that are full of errors, regardless of how beautiful the
production is, then the publishers would find it to their advantage
to improve the quality of their books. Until that happens, the
situation will not change. The Hubisz report is an effort to move
the scientific community and the public in that direction. It may not
be a perfect vehicle, but right now it is just about the only one
we've got.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows
because they
have to..
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