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Re: Advice on teacher education?



From Kyle Forinash's posting it appears Indiana is about to do what Ohio
just did. Ohio has broken its teacher licensing into three major
categories: Early Childhood (K-3), Middle Childhood (4-9), Adolescence to
Young Adult (7-12).

Middle childhood (MC) is what Kyle is asking about. This is a very
problematic area. In Ohio, the college student preparing to teach MC has to
pick TWO areas of concentration. Choices are Math, Science, Language Arts,
Social Studies.

Notice how wide a range of age levels this applies to. The MC teacher could
be teaching fourth grade science, or could be teaching ninth grade science.
We have to be sure the prospective teacher can teach a good ninth grade
physical science course, but also has the skills to work with fourth
graders. This is quite a challenge.

Kyle mentioned that Indiana is making MC teachers pick one area of
concentration. On one hand that's good because they can concentrate more.
On the other hand that's bad because it means they have a more limited
choice of jobs to apply for.

Since our students choose two areas, we are limited to a range of 20-25
semester hours in each "concentration." We are actually able to offer a 31
hour requirement in science because the college has a 7-hour
general-education requirement in science for all students. MC teachers have
those 7 hours waived, so their 31-hour science concentration only adds a net
24 hours to their total college program.

Ohio specifies that MC teachers should experience a broad science
preparation including Life Science, Physical Science (understood as
chemistry/physics) and Earth/Space Science (understood as astronomy,
geology, meteorology, etc.). So we have to divide our total science hours
over these areas. Here is what Bluffton College submitted to Ohio Board of
Education and they have approved our program:

Life Science - two courses with labs - 8 hours
everyone takes Botany
students can then choose one of Genetics, Anatomy/Physiology, or
Invertebrate Zoology
Physical Science - 15 hours
everyone takes General Inorganic Chemistry with lab -- 5 hours (first
chemistry course for majors)
everyone takes Physics for Scientists and Engineers with lab -- 10 hours
(full year calculus based course)
Earth/Space Science - 8 hours
everyone takes Astronomy with lab -- 4 hours
everyone takes Earth Science with lab - 4 hours (mostly a geology class)

This breaks down "almost equally" between biology (8), chemistry (5),
physics (10), and earth/space (8).

Here are some rationale and thoughts...

In Life Science it was pretty clear we needed a "plants" type of course, so
Botany was a natural choice. However, in middle school there is not only
interest in things like anatomy, but also bugs, worms, etc., and also
genetics. Since we cannot require all these, and since we don't have a
"general biology" course, we allow the MC students to choose one of these.
Most seem to choose Invertebrate Zoology, which is a good choice.

Some wonder why there is one chemistry course and two physics courses. We
believe MC students are not ready for a significant amount of chemistry.
The concept of a mole and stoichiometry is probably a bit much especially at
the early end of this age level. On the other hand, mechanics, heat, sound,
light, electricity and magnetism are big topics for MC science. Therefore,
although some chemistry is important, we feel general physics is more
important for this age level.

We do have a problem that we do not have enough students to have both an
algebra-based physics as well as a calculus based physics. Therefore we put
everyone through calculus-based physics. This does imply that the students
have had at least one semester of calculus. In general this works, because:
(a) many students interested in MC science already took calculus in high
school, (b) since MC teachers have to choose two areas of concentration, the
most likely paring for students seems to be math and science. Therefore we
do not have to worry about the math. Occasionally we have students express
interest in pairing science with language arts or with social science.
These students would need to take a semester (5-hours) of calculus-1; but
that gets them "out of" a campus-wide 3-hour math requirement.

Our earth/space requirement is pretty routine, we give them one course each.

Some say that putting our MC teachers into the first courses designed for
science majors is giving them too much or too high level of science;
especially if they are headed toward fourth grade. We disagree. We think
anyone teaching science in the school system ought to have experienced
"real" science courses at the freshman/sophomore level in college. We don't
think that's expecting too much... we think anything less is too little.
Plus, remember that someone thinking they're headed into fourth-grade
teaching could actually end up teaching ninth grade. I would think that any
person teaching science to my kids (I have a daughter in eighth grade right
now) ought to have passed entry-level science courses, i.e.
freshman/sophomore college-level science.

We think our middle-childhood science concentration is a good program. Now
the problem is finding college students who want to do this. We are
forecasting a huge shortage of MC science and math teachers in Ohio. Kyle
suggests that difficult courses such as a semester of physics may drive
prospective teachers away from science. That might be true, but maybe
that's not all that bad. My feeling is that someone who cannot do physics
at the entry-level in college ought not be teaching physical science at any
age level. What we have to do is convince prospective teachers that this
entry level course is not only passable, but also an interesting course.
Virtually everyone who takes it and passes it agrees that they learned a lot
of really interesting things. But they also agree they worked hard. Can't
we expect that from future teachers?


Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817