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The Inertia of the Educational System (was PER for physics departments)



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In his terse PhysLrnR message of 28 Sep 2004 12:00:50-0700 titled
"Re: PER for physics departments," Larry Woolf wrote [bracketed by
lines "WWWWWWW. . . .":

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Some references on how to get people to change:

The Change Game
<http://www.ufrsd.net/staffwww/stefanl/tlrbse/change/>

The Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM)
<http://www.nas.edu/rise/backg4a.htm>
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

The more informative academic references [seldom used on discussion
lists :-( ] are Stefaniak (undated), and Loucks-Horsley (1996).

The difficulty of getting people to change their educational
practices is largely responsible for the inertia of the educational
system. In "Design-Based Research: A Primer for Physics Education
Researchers" [Hake (2004)], I wrote [see that online article for
references other than Wilson & Davis (1994), ER (2003), and Goodlad
(1990)]:

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
The U.S. educational system's monumental inertia - witness the
stagnation of K-12 education and the inaction on the potentially
fruitful plan of Wilson & Davis (1994) - was considered in a volume
of "Daedalus" (1998) that contains essays by researchers in education
and by historians of more rapidly developing institutions such as
power systems, communications, health care, and agriculture; and that
set out to answer a challenge posed by Wilson:

"If other major American 'systems' have so effectively demonstrated
the ability to change, why has the education 'system' been so
singularly resistant to change? What might the lessons learned from
other systems' efforts to adapt and evolve have to teach us about
bringing about change - successful change - in America's schools?"

Aside from Wilson & Barsky's (1998) vision of a new applied research
discipline called "change science" [that "Daedalus" (1998) might
still serve to initiate], that potentially seminal issue of
"Daedalus" did not, as far as I know, provoke any operative ideas for
overcoming the inertia of the educational system.

But more recently Slavin (2002) has argued that randomized control
trials (RCT's - see Sect. IV) will lead to successful change in the
education system - never mind (at least for science education), the
problem of inadequately prepared teachers and the rudimentary state
of exploratory research [see e.g., Lipsey & Wilson (1993, Table 1,
Sect. 3.5.1].

RCT's may not be the gold bullet that will transform K-12 education
as maintained by Slavin, but the "Daedalus" (1998) discussions of the
relatively rapid development of non-educational systems and the DBR
literature [e.g., the articles in ER (2003) and references therein],
suggest that DBR MIGHT DEVELOP INTO A FORCE SUFFICIENT TO ACCELERATE
THE PONDEROUS EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM." As an example, I think that the
pre/post testing movement [see Sect. V and VI below], stimulated to
some extent by DBR in physics education, has the potential to
drastically improve undergraduate science/math (SM) instruction and
thereby upgrade K-12 SM education.

What is the (generally unrecognized) connection of undergraduate and
K-12 SM education? Just this: currently, many prospective K-12
teachers derive little conceptual understanding from traditional
undergraduate introductory SM courses and then either tend to teach
as they were taught (with similar negative results), or else attempt
reform curricula without the conceptual
understanding and pedagogical content knowledge [Shulman (1987)]
required for their successful implementation.

As emphasized by Goodlad (1990) to deaf ears:

"Few matters are more important than the quality of the teachers in
our nation's schools. Few matters are as neglected . . . . A central
thesis of this book is that there is a natural connection between
good teachers and good schools and that this connection has been
largely ignored. . . .IT IS FOLLY TO ASSUME THAT SCHOOLS CAN BE
EXEMPLARY WHEN THEIR STEWARDS ARE ILL-PREPARED." (My CAPS.)
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<rrhake@earthlink.net>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>

"The academic area is one of the most difficult areas to change in
our society. We continue to use the same methods of instruction,
particularly lectures, that have been used for hundreds of years.
Little scientific research is done to test new approaches, and little
systematic attention is given to the development of new methods.
Universities that study many aspects of the world ignore the
educational function in which they are engaging and from which a
large part of their revenues are earned."
Richard M. Cyert, former president of Carnegie Mellon Univ.
in "Problem Solving and Education: Issues in Teaching and Research," ed. by
D.T. Tuma and F. Reif (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1980)


REFERENCES
ER. 2003. Educational Researcher, Jan/Feb, devoted to the theme "The
Role of Design in Educational Research," online at
<http://www.aera.net/pubs/er/toc/er3201.htm>.

Goodlad, J.I. 1990. "Teachers For Our Nation's Schools." Jossey-Bass.

Hake, R.R. 2004. "Design-Based Research: A Primer for Physics
Education Researchers," submitted to the "American Journal of
Physics" on 10 June 2004; online as reference 34 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>, or download directly as a
310kB pdf by clicking on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/DBR-AJP-6.pdf>.

Loucks-Horsley. 1996. "The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM): A
Model for Change in Individuals"; online at
<http://www.nas.edu/rise/backg4a.htm>.
Reprinted with permission from the chapter entitled "Professional
Development for Science Education: A Critical and Immediate
Challenge," by Susan Loucks-Horsley, in "National Standards & the
Science Curriculum," edited by Rodger Bybee of the Biological
Sciences Curriculum Study. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing
Co., 1996.

Shulman, L. 1987. "Knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new
reform," Harvard Educational Review 57: 1-22.

Stefaniak, L. undated."Organizational Change and Making Change for
School Improvement," online at
<http://www.ufrsd.net/staffwww/stefanl/tlrbse/change/>. Linda
Stefaniak <http://www.ufrsd.net/staffwww/stefanl/index.htm>, is a
science teacher at Allentown High School in Allentown, N.J. and a
"first tier teacher" (FTT) in TLRBSE, an NSF-funded "Teacher Leaders
in Research Based Science Education
<http://www.ufrsd.net/staffwww/stefanl/tlrbse/index.htm>. Some of the
content of <http://www.ufrsd.net/staffwww/stefanl/tlrbse/change/> is
attributed to Kathy Stiles
<http://eo.nso.edu/tlrbse/people/kathy.htm> of the TLRBSE staff and
Co-Director of WestEd's <http://www.wested.org/> National Academy for
Science and Mathematics Education Leadership.

Wilson K.G. and B. Daviss. 1994. "Redesigning Education," Henry Holt;
a description is online at
<http://www-physics.mps.ohio-state.edu/~kgw/RE.html>.