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Re: The End of Hands-On Science Activities in California's K-8 Classrooms?



Richard Hake wrote:

If you reply to this LONG (19kB) post please do not do so by hitting
the reply button (the bane of discussion lists) and thereby
inflicting it yet again on suffering subscribers.

Unfortunately I feel I have no choice but to hit the "reply button", as
Hake's misleading and alarmist emails continue to indiscriminately flood
the various mailing lists. At least I'll keep this short.

As I have previously indicated [Hake (2004a)], California's
regressive "Criteria For Evaluating K-8 Science Instructional
Materials In Preparation for the 2006 Adoption" [CCC (2004)], was
passed by the California Curriculum Commission (CCC) on 16 January
2004, even despite the forceful anti-"Criteria":
...
Among the anti-hands-on provisions of the "Criteria" are:

LINES 102-106: "A table of evidence in the teacher edition,
demonstrating that the California Science Standards can be
comprehensively taught from the submitted materials WITH HANDS-ON
ACTIVITIES COMPOSING NO MORE THAN 20 TO 25 PERCENT OF SCIENCE
INSTRUCTIONAL TIME . . .

In other words, the textbooks must only OFFER AN OPTION of teaching with
20-25% hands-on activities. The criteria do not say that textbooks cannot
offer also 50% hands-on option, or 75%, or even more -- they only have to
show that they ALSO support teaching with at most 25%.

LINES 156-157: "A program organization that provides the option of
PRE-TEACHING the science content embedded in any hands-on activities."

Pre-teaching science content is indeed important before labs, as otherwise
the labs tend to turn into "cooking exercises." The criteria do not imply
that all labs need to have the background material pre-taught -- they only
say that such OPTION should exist for any hands-on activity, and it is the
teacher's responsibility to decide which activities s/he prefers to teach
with pre-teaching, and which s/he prefers to approach as a "discovery lab"
-- unless someone believes that certain topic MUST be approached as
"discovery labs". If someone does, I would appreciate to see specific
examples of topics which should NEVER be pre-taught.

LINES 299-300: "Suggestions for how to adapt each hands-on activity
provided to DIRECT INSTRUCTION methods of teaching."

This statement is in line with California's approach of supporting multiple
pedagogical approaches and leaving the final pedagogical selection to the
teachers. I don't believe the state should espouse a mandated pedagogy to
teach any particular science subject. It is unclear to me why Hake seems to
object to California making sure that teachers indeed have multiple options
at their disposal, rather than the hands-on option only.

The California anti-hands-on movement has been spearheaded by
biologist Stan Metzenberg (1998a,b; undated)] with the backing of a
politically appointed and educationally naive State Board of
Education [<http://www.cde.ca.gov/board/>, see members' bios at
<http://www.cde.ca.gov/board/bio.htm>].

I particularly liked the "educationally naive State Board of Education"
line. I guess that the so-called "naiveté" can be clearly seen from SBE's
rejection of "Whole Language" and of "Fuzzy Math" in California, a
rejection by which SBE finally began to pull California out of the
educational morass inflicted by that fuzzy foolishness of the 90's...

Unless positive action is taken very soon it seems likely that:
...
b. science education in California will follow the downward path of
math education [Becker & Jacob (2000), Sowder (1998)].

This my favorite line in Hake's post. Why should he care about the
documented large improvement in the mathematical performance of California
students over the last 5 years, complete data of which are widely available
at http://star.cde.ca.gov? Hake prefers an early (and data-less) opinion
piece by doom-sayers. A hallmark of true science...

Ze'ev