ABSTRACT: Rob Tomosho of the Wall Street Journal reports the backlash
from parents and teachers against the San Diego school district
implementation of Leon Lederman's "Physics First" in the ninth grade
through the use of Author Eisenkraft's "Active Physics." Among
possible reasons for the backlash are:
(a) "parents in affluent schools often resist changes that affect
students who are already thriving," as indicated by Kati Haycock of
the Education Trust,
(b) unfamiliarity of parents and teachers with the mountain of
evidence for the superiority of interactive engagement over
traditional methods in enhancing students' understanding of the
concepts and nature of science, and (c) insufficient preparation of
classroom teachers to *effectively* implement non-traditional science
pedagogy. Better prepared teachers might be attracted to classrooms
if their salaries and working conditions were drastically upgraded
and they were treated as the valued professionals they are.
If you reply to this very, long (30 kB) post please don't hit the
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In his PhysLrnR post of 14 April 2006 titled "WSJ on Active Physics,"
Sanjoy Mahajan (2006) wrote [bracketed by lines "MMMMMMMMMM. . . .;
my inserts at ". . . [.....]. . ."]:
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"An interesting article. . . .["Textbook Battle: Top High Schools
Fight New Science As Overly Simple; San Diego's Physics Overhaul
Makes Classes Accessible, Spurs Parental Backlash; Test Scores Barely
Budge" Tomsho (2006a)]. . . on what must be an interesting curriculum
change.
From the article:
Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington-based
advocacy group for at-risk students, says parents in affluent schools
often resist changes that affect students who are already thriving. . .
. . [probably in term of grades rather than actual learning]. . ..
Alfie Kohn .. . .[(1998)]. . . has an article on this topic . . . ."
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Doubtless to the consternation of those who are blind to the Fair Use
provision of the U.S. Copyright Code [see CLS (2006)], Sanjoy had the
good sense to copy the entire article into the PhysLrnR archives. I
did much the same for a previous provocative Tomsho (2006b) article
"What's the Right Formula? Pressure From New Tests Leads Educators to
Debate How Best to Teach Science."
In addition to the passage quoted by Sanjoy above, Tomsho (2006a)
also wrote [My inserts at ". . . [.....]. . ."] :
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When San Diego's school district began overhauling its
science-education curriculum five years ago, it wanted to raise the
performance of minority, low-income and immigrant students.
But parents in middle- and upper-income areas, where many students
were already doing well, rebelled against the new curriculum, and a
course called Active Physics in particular. They called it
watered-down science, too skimpy on math.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kim Bess, a former teacher, says she was struck by disparities in the
San Diego school district when she became director of its science
department in 2000. San Diego high-school teachers were largely free
to teach what they wanted. While top-performing schools offered
specialties like marine science, those in low-income neighborhoods
offered less challenging fare such as a course in cooking with
chemistry aimed at preparing students for food-service jobs.
Under pressure to boost reading and math achievement, some elementary
and middle schools had stopped teaching science altogether. At many
schools, classroom experiment kits went unused.
One spark for the curriculum overhaul was a 2000 district study
showing that less than one-third of recent graduates had completed
the course work required to gain admission to California's state
universities. The district also found that about one-third of its
freshmen failed biology, and that fewer than 20% took chemistry or
physics.
In many ways, the changes San Diego decided to make followed
strategic lines long advocated by groups such as the National Science
Foundation. The new program de-emphasized textbook learning in favor
of hands-on activities designed to engage students with little
science background or limited English skills
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The curriculum San Diego chose for ninth-graders was Active Physics.
. . [consistent with Leon Lederman's (2001) "Physics First" approach
to science education]. . . Developed with funding from the National
Science Foundation, its approach was far from conventional. The
course employed breezily written booklets focused on physics in
arenas such as sports and medicine. They were full of short blocks of
text and cartoons, including recurring images of a pint-sized
scientist with wild Einstein hair.
The course also included kits containing boccie balls, toy cars and
other items for classroom activities. To explore Newton's laws of
motion, one suggested exercise had one student gently pushing another
while both stood on skateboards.
Arthur Eisenkraft, a professor of science education at the University
of Massachusetts. . .[- Boston
<http://www2.www.umb.edu/directory/person_detail.php?id=6284>]. . .
who designed the Active Physics curriculum, says he aimed to create a
course that could provide all students with an appreciation for
physics, even those who didn't have the math skills usually demanded
by the conventional course.
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Among references to Eisenkraft and his "Active Physics," are:
******************************************
(a) a New York Times report [Slater (1998)]:
" 'The course [Active Physics] is taught in individual chapters,'
said Dr. Eisenkraft, who headed the active physics project, which
resulted in the textbook made possible by a $1.2 million grant from
the National Science Foundation. 'It took six years and was tested on
5,000 students.' Dr. Eisenkraft supervised a group of about a dozen
college teachers across the United States in honing the text. The
students were also selected nationwide. . . . . Dr. Eisenkraft, who
began his teaching career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, either
wrote or edited each chapter of 'Active Physics' as head of the
project. He received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science
Teaching in 1986 at the White House and five years later was given a
$2,500 grant as Science Teacher of the Year by the Disney Corporation
in their American Teacher Award Program, which was started in 1990."
(b) a blurb from "It's About Time" at
<http://www.its-about-time.com/iathome2/aboutus.html>: "It's About
Time," the publisher of "It's About Time is an innovative company
that specializes in developing math and science programs that are
research-based, and have delivered solid, positive results for all
students. MANY OF OUR PROGRAMS ARE FUNDED BY THE NATIONAL SCIENCE
FOUNDATION, AND ALL FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES OF THE NATIONAL SCIENCE
EDUCATION STANDARDS AND THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF
MATHEMATICS. [My CAPS.] We publish these programs because our primary
concern is increased learning in math and science for all students.
It's About Time believes that students learn math and science the way
that practicing scientists and mathematicians do. They learn when
something grabs their attention...when the content is relevant to
their lives. They learn when we allow them, in fact encourage them,
to talk to one another and question each others' results. They learn
when we permit them to get their hands on the subject matter. In
short, when we allow students to use all of their senses, they make
sense of math and science."
(c) Arthur Eisenkraft (1998): "[Active Physics was] never met to
replace the course that has been successful. . .[what's the evidence
??]. . for 20% of high school graduates who traditionally study
physics. . . [it's] providing an opportunity for inquiry-based
science for the other 80% of our high school population."
(d) John Roeder (1998), a member of the AAPT publications committee:
"Active Physics has been used as a ninth grade physics course for the
past four years. The Calhoun School was originally drawn to the
curriculum because of its activity-based approach and its relevance
to students' lives and social concerns. During our years of
implementation, Active Physics has proved successful as evidenced by
the quality of student work and the influence that its philosophy has
had on other courses."
(e) Education Week reporter David Hoff: "Active Physics, the
curriculum Mr. Callahan uses with all of his freshmen and juniors, is
recommended by Ohio and West Virginia for use in those states' high
schools, according to Thomas A. Laster, the executive vice president
of It's About Time, the Armonk, N.Y. based publisher of the
curriculum. Other states are requesting added physics content as they
approve 9th grade science textbooks. . . . Just how much physics 9th
graders should learn is the subject of debate throughout the science
education community. Leon M. Lederman, the winner of the 1988 Nobel
Prize in physics, has been pushing schools over the past five years
to put that discipline ahead of biology and chemistry in the high
school curriculum. Physics, he and others argue, is the foundation of
all science and is the easiest to observe through experiments with
gravity, waves, and objects in motion, such as the bungee-jumping
dolls in Mr. Callahan's class. All of that can be taught without the
algebra and trigonometry that have come to be the basis for the
physics courses taught in U.S. high schools. 'Conceptual physics is
relatively unmathematical,' said Mr. Lederman, the resident scholar
at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, a state magnet
school in Aurora, Ill., who won his Nobel Prize for research he
conducted at the nearby Fermi Laboratory. 'You can use only the math
that students are learning in the 9th grade or have learned in the
8th grade.' A few schools are making the switch, although not as
quickly as Mr. Lederman would like."
(f) Texas John Clement (2006): "I would not hold a brief for Active
Physics. From what I saw of it, the units were very uneven and they
did not seem to me to use a learning cycle. I was at an AAPT meeting
where one group tested Active Physics and reported that they did not
see very good gain." I assume that Clement may be using "gain" to
mean *normalized gain" on some physics diagnostic test such as the
Force Concept Inventory (FCI) of Hestenes et al. (1992) or the Force
Motion Concept Evaluation (FMCE) of Thornton & Sokoloff (1998). Of
course, a relatively low normalized gain could be due to faulty
implementation rather than deficiencies in Active Physics, and more
data over many courses and instructors would be required to assess
the general effectiveness of Active Physics.
******************************************
Joe Bellina (2006) responded to Sanjoy's post as follows [my insert
at ". . . [.....]. . ."] :
" . . . . . . Curiously, in this same region the country, the El
Centro school district, there have been amazing gains in student
learning in science and writing at the elementary level using student
centered curricula with a emphasis on keeping science notebooks. . .
.[I *assume* Bellina is referring to the study by Klentchy et al.
(2002). Tomsho DID refer to that work in Tomsho (2006b), but then
stated "But there are few large studies, educators say." NONSENSE -
see the references on pages 5 & 6 of Hake (2005)]. . . The wsj has
no mention of the successes, only the negative pieces. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . ."
It's extremely unfortunate that the impressive data of Klentchy et
al. was evidently never published in the peer reviewed literature.
[Please correct me if I'm wrong.]
Among factors that could be partially responsible for the San Diego
backlash, in addition to that cited by Kati Haycock, are:
1. Ignorance of many parents and teachers of the mountain of evidence
[see the references on pages 5 & 6 of "Will the No Child Left Behind
Act Promote Direct Instruction of Science?" Hake (2005)] showing that
interactive engagement methods of science instruction are vastly
superior to traditional methods in promoting students' understanding
of the concepts and nature of science.
2. Insufficient preparation of classroom teachers to *effectively*
implement non-traditional science pedagogy. This is due in part to
the general failure of higher education to properly educate K-12
teachers. It is generally appreciated that the *effective*
implementation of interactive engagement methods of science
instruction - such as might use "Active Physics" [Eisenkraft (2000)]
as a starting point - require teachers with considerable teaching
experience and both content and "pedagogical content" knowledge.
What's "pedagogical content knowledge"? Lesson #7 of the generally
ignored "Lessons from the physics education reform effort" [Hake
(2002c)] is [see that article for the references]:
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L7. TEACHERS WHO POSSESS *BOTH* CONTENT KNOWLEDGE AND "PEDAGOGICAL
CONTENT KNOWLEDGE" ARE MORE APT TO DELIVER EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION.
"Pedagogical content knowledge" is evidently a term due to Shulman
(1986, 1987), but its importance has long been well known to
effective classroom teachers. The difference between content
knowledge and "pedagogical content knowledge," can be illustrated by
consideration of the Halloun-Hestenes-type question given in the
Introduction. CONTENT KNOWLEDGE informs the teacher that, according
to Newton's First Law, while the brick is moving vertically upward at
a constant speed in the inertial reference frame of the lab, the
magnitude of the force on the brick by the student's hand is constant
in time and of magnitude W, so that the *net* force on the brick is
zero. On the other hand, PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE would inform
the teacher that students may think that e.g.: (a) since a net force
is required to produce motion, the force on the brick by the
student's hand is constant in time and greater than W; or (b) since
the weight of the brick diminishes as it moves upward away from the
Earth, the force on the brick by the student's hand decreases in time
but is always greater than W; or (c) no force is exerted on the brick
by the student's hand because as the students hand moves up the brick
must simply move up to stay out of the hand's way. In addition,
pedagogical content knowledge provides a hard-won toolkit of
strategies (see, e.g., the list of "Popular IE Methods" in II-C
above) for guiding the student away from these misconceptions and
towards the Newtonian interpretation. Unfortunately, such knowledge
may take many years to acquire (Wells et al. 1995).
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What can be done to improve K-12 teachers' effectiveness? In the
generally ignored "Direct Science Instruction Suffers a Setback in
California - Or Does It? " [Hake (2002)] I wrote:
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In conclusion, I strongly urge the California State Board of
Education, Governor Schwarznegger, Secretary of Education Riordan,
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, and
members of the California legislature to place the educational,
social, technological, and business interests of California and the
U.S. above a blind and unscientific faith in the efficacy of "direct
instruction," and take immediate action to:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. Attract outstanding teachers into California's classrooms by
treating them as the valued professionals they are. This means giving
them control of their own teaching materials & practices (rather than
top-down dictation through adoption of only
direct-instruction-oriented texts and materials), and drastically
upgrading their salaries and working conditions.
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" . . . I know from both experience and research that the teacher is
at the heart of student learning and school improvement by virtue of
being the classroom authority and gatekeeper for change. Thus the
preparation, induction, and career development of teachers remain the
Archimedian lever for both short- and long-term improvement of public
schools."
Larry Cuban. 2003. "Why Is It So Hard To Get Good Schools?" Teachers
College Press.
REFERENCES [Provided by Ricardo's Ready References Software Inc. Tiny
URL's courtesy <http://tinyurl.com/create.php>.]
Eisenkraft, A. 1998. "Active Physics," AAPT Announcer 28 (2): 120.
Eisenkraft, A. 2000. "Active Physics." Published by It's About Time
Inc. "A Leading Publisher of National Science Foundation
Inquiry-based Programs" [see
<http://www.its-about-time.com/index.html>, &
Amazon.com information is at <http://tinyurl.com/ggjbu>.
Hake, R.R. 2002c. "Lessons from the physics education reform effort,"
Ecology and Society 5(2): 28; online at
<http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol5/iss2/art28/>. Ecology and Society
(formerly Conservation Ecology) is a free online "peer-reviewed
journal of integrative science and fundamental policy research" with
about 11,000 subscribers in about 108 countries.
Hestenes, D., M. Wells, & G. Swackhamer, 1992. "Force Concept
Inventory," Phys. Teach. 30: 141-158; online (except for the test
itself) at
<http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>. The 1995 revision by
Halloun, Hake, Mosca, & Hestenes is online (password protected) at
the same URL, and is available in English, Spanish, German,
Malaysian, Chinese, Finnish, French, Turkish, Swedish, and Russian.
Kohn, A. 1998. "Only for My Kid: How Privileged Parents Undermine School
Reform," Phi Delta Kappan 79(8): 568-577., April 1998; online at
Alfie Kohn's website <http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.html> /
"Articles" where "/" means "click on" or download directly by cliking
on <http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/ofmk.htm>.
Lederman, L. 2001. "Revolution in Science Education: Put Physics
First." Physics Today 54(9): 11-12; online at
<http://physicstoday.org/pt/vol-54/iss-9/p11.html>: "Laboratory work
must be inquiry dominated (the opposite of cookbook labs) and
designed to illuminate concepts. . . . The three-year sequence must
include a lot of process in addition to content. How does science
work? How did we discover some of these things? Why is science such a
universal culture? How do the traits of skepticism, curiosity,
openness to new ideas, and the joy of discovering the beauty of
nature affect the process of science? Long after all the formulas,
Latin words, and theories are forgotten, the process will be
remembered. The goal of teachers using the new curriculum would be to
produce high-school graduates who will be comfortable with a
scientific way of thinking." See also "Physics First: Opening Battle
in the War on Science/Math Illiteracy?" and "Physics First: Precursor
to Science/Math Literacy for All?" [Hake (2002a,b)].
Thornton, R.K. & D.R. Sokoloff. 1998. "Assessing student learning of
Newton's Laws: The force and motion conceptual evaluation and the
evaluation of active learning laboratory and lecture curricula," Am.
J. Phys. 66(4): 338-352.
Tomsho, R. 2006a. "Textbook Battle: Top High Schools Fight New
Science As Overly Simple; San Diego's Physics Overhaul Makes Classes
Accessible, Spurs Parental Backlash; Test Scores Barely Budge," Wall
Street Journal, 13 April; freely online for only about a week at
<http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB114488997269924686-lMyQjAxMDE2NDE0MzgxODM5Wj.html>,
or more compactly at <http://tinyurl.com/rn7cn>. For a more
permanently available copy see Mahajan (2006). I thank Keith Tipton,
manager of Physhare, for bringing this Tomsho's report to my
attention.
Tomsho, R. 2006b. "What's the Right Formula? Pressure From New Tests
Leads Educators to Debate How Best to Teach Science" Wall Street
Journal, 19 January; freely online at <http://tinyurl.com/cn4kx> for
a few days and more permanently for educators at
<http://tinyurl.com/apmp9> (scroll to the APPENDIX).