Re: percent success HERE ARE SOME STATS

["Daniel L. MacIsaac" <Dan.MacIsaac@nau.edu>]

Here are real, genuine stats for Elementary Teaching Majors at NAU (an 
ex-Normal School and source of a large proportion of AZ elementary teachers).
These stats were collected for an Eisenhower proposal instantiating an
integrated science course.

All elementary teachers require 2 x 4hr science credits, one of which MUST
BE Env101 (environmental Studies)*; of 391 registrations randomly selected then
determined to be classifible for their science courses this semester:

Science Course		# students		%
Environmental Ed	159			40
Biology			123			32
Geology/Earth Sci	80			20
Chemistry		18			5
Astronomy		10			3
PHYSICS			1			0.3

Note that fewer than 8% (rounded) took Chem+Ast+Phys combined.  I believe 
that the requirement to take Env Ed (besides legislating a lot of jobs 
teaching Env Ed) helps steer them into Earth Sci rather more than I would 
have thought otherwise.  So AZ Elementary teachers are well-equipped to 
teach environmental science and biology, but things go downhill from there.
No wonder Elementary Teachers feel insecure teaching science.

> I think the word gets put out against physics by elementary school teachers who
> don't know much (if any)physics and feel afraid of it....and they project that
> to their students....and the cycle continues...
Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu  http://www.phy.nau.edu/~danmac/homepage.html