In his EvalTalk post of 29 Apr 2004 22:45:41 GMT titled
"Fw: Rejected posting to EVAL-SYS@LISTS.EVALUATION.WMICH.EDU," Mel
Tremper wrote [bracketed by lines "TTTTTTTTTTT. . . ."]:
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Recently Hake. . .[Hake (2004a)]. . . . wrote about science teaching.
Part of his message included . . . [introductory paragraphs from
Handelsman et al. (2004)]. . . which began as below:
"Since publication of the AAAS 1989 report "Science for all
Americans" [AAAS (1989)] commissions, panels, and working groups have
agreed that reform in science education should be founded on
"scientific teaching," in which teaching is approached with the same
rigor as science at its best [AAAS (1990)] Scientific teaching
involves active learning strategies to engage students in the process
of science and teaching methods that have been systematically tested
and shown to reach diverse students [SOM (2004)]"
I forwarded the entire piece to my brother in law who teaches science
in high school in a large eastern city. . . . . [He responded]
"All of this academic research results talk is nonsense. Until these
guys get down and get dirty in one of the urban minority schools, and
get in some actual teaching time at one of these schools, they are an
irrevelant, disconnected from reality laugh."
This kind of attitude goes far in explaining why evaluation findings
don't always result in a rapid change in practice.
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In my opinion, Mel Tremper's brother in law is correct in the sense
that that the academic research results on reform science teaching
cited by Handelsman et al. (2004) and Hake (2004a,b) have had little
impact on the vast majority of urban minority schools.
But consider:
(a) References in Handelsman et al. (2004) and Hake (2004a,b) were
concerned primarily with undergraduate education. However, there are
many articles documenting the success of reform science education in
K-12 [for reviews see e.g, Doss-Hammell (2004), Lowery (2003), and
Hake (2004c)].
(b) Teddie Phillipson, in his EvalTalk post of 30 Apr 2004
00:20:45-0400 titled "Re: Fw: Rejected posting to
EVAL-SYS@LISTS.EVALUATION.WMICH.EDU)"
:-( , made the excellent point that:
"Since our future teachers take these introductory courses and tend
to model how they were taught when they have their own classrooms,
experimenting with these alternatives could be valuable to
generations to come."
(c) the interactive-engagement "Modeling Method" [Wells et al.
(1995)] of physics instruction has been employed effectively in many
urban high schools and some of them may have been predominately
minority - do Modelers have any data on this?
(d) Some definitive evidence that academics working on reform methods
of education may not be a totally "irrevelant, disconnected from
reality laugh" for urban minority schools in the U.S. comes from Alan
Shoenfeld (2002) who wrote (my CAPS):
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Pittsburgh serves about 40,000 students in 97 public schools (59
elementary, 19 middle, 11 high, and eight other). ROUGHLY 56% OF THE
STUDENT POPULATION IS AFRICAN AMERICAN AND 44% IS WHITE/OTHER; MORE
THAN 60% OF THE STUDENTS QUALIFY FOR FREE OR REDUCED-PRICE LUNCHES. .
. . .
The overall results of Pittsburgh's systemic efforts are seen in
Figures 1 and 2. Note that the 1996 and 1997 cohorts had studied the
traditional curriculum; the 1998-2000 cohorts had studied one of the
major reform curricula.
As Figure 1 indicates, scores on concepts and problem solving
increased with the implementation of the new curriculum, and
continued to rise as the teachers became increasingly familiar with
it. In 1997 roughly 10% of the traditional students met or exceeded
the standards for concepts or problem solving; in 2000 roughly 25% of
Pittsburgh's (now reform) students met or exceeded those standards.
Although there is still huge room for improvement, the fact that two
and a half times as many students than before met or exceeded those
standards is impressive. Of course, problem solving was not a focus
of the traditional curriculum. It is in the area of skills that the
most surprising data emerge. Traditional measures of skills such as
the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) show that the reform curricula
more than hold their own against traditional curricula with regard to
skills. Even in the first year of new curriculum implementation,
1998, greater percentages of students scored above the 50th and 70th
percentiles on the ITBS than in previous years, and fewer students
scored below the 25th percentile. Skill scores on the New Standards
examinations are more dramatic. Under the traditional curriculum,
less than a third of the students met or exceeded the skill standard
on the New Standards reference exam. With the new curriculum
significantly more than 50% (and in 2000, 60%) do. That is, with the
switch from traditional to reform curriculum the proportion of
students performing well in terms of skills doubled from 1997 to
2000. In short, the fears of anti-reform groups that reform curricula
would cause a decrease in student skill levels appear to be
unwarranted.
DATA SUCH AS THESE INDICATE THAT COHERENT APPROACHES TO TEACHING
MATHEMATICS FOR CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING PRODUCE SIGNIFICANT
IMPROVEMENTS ACROSS THE BOARD - NOT ONLY IN CONCEPTS AND PROBLEM
SOLVING, BUT IN SKILLS AS WELL.
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Oh, one more thing: Mark Hammer, in his EvalTalk post of 30 Apr 2004
17:03:08-0400 titled "Re: Fw: Rejected posting to
EVAL-SYS@LISTS.EVALUATION.WMICH.EDU)" :-( , wrote:
". . . wouldn't it be lovely to have a standardized knowledge test
available for the first day of classes so you could measure how much
was retained from before so that you could then be in a relatively
strong position to compare methods from year to year. In the absence
of such measures, it's bit like
trying to stay motivated on a diet when there is no scale and no mirrors
around."