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[Physltest] [Phys-L] Direct Instruction In Science Is More Effective ??



In his Math-Teach/Math-Learn post of 10 November 2004 titled "Direct
Instruction In Science Is More Effective," Wayne Bishop (2004a)
copied Sean Cavenagh's (2004a) entire Education Week article "NCLB
Could Alter Science Teaching." Bishop gave no justification for the
misleading title of his post.

WHY IS BISHOP'S TITLE MISLEADING?
In my post "Will NCLB Promote Direct Instruction of Science?" [Hake
(2004a)] I wrote [bracketed by lines "HHHHH. . . ."]:

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
. . . . my interpretation of Klahr's research is rather different
than that of direct instruction zealots such as Math-Teach's Wayne
Bishop.

Bishop (2004b), in reference to Adelson's (2004) report on Klahr's
research, opined: "Deliberate, direct instruction is more effective
yet again. Surprise, surprise. Replicate a replicable experiment and
you get the same results. It's the scientific approach."

Although there's a mountain of scientific evidence demonstrating the
relative effectiveness of "inquiry" or "interactive engagement"
methods in science education [for references see Hake (2004b)]; as
far as I am aware, there's ZERO evidence for the superiority (in
conceptually difficult areas of science education) of "direct
instruction."

Of course, neither "inquiry" nor "interactive engagement" should be
confused with the extreme "discovery learning" mode, researched by
Klahr & Nigam (2004). Their research suggests that, not surprisingly,
an EXTREME mode of "discovery learning,in which there is almost no
teacher guidance, is inferior to "direct instruction" for increasing
third and fourth grade children's effective use of the control of
variables strategy, a so-called "process skill." It might be
interesting for Klahr & Nigam to extend their study to more guided
forms of "discovery learning" and to children's acquisition of
"operative knowledge" [Arons (1983)].
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


Furthermore, in Hake (2004c), I wrote:
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
According to Adelson (2004), Klahr's research shows that (at least
for many of the multistep procedures used in science) "direct
instruction" (DI) is more effective than "discovery learning" (DL).
As I have discussed [Hake (2004b, pp. 20-21)] popular terms such as
DI, DL, "Hands-on," and "Active Learning" are rarely defined
OPERATIONALLY. What does Klahr mean by "direct instruction" and
"discovery learning"? Klahr & Nigam (2004) write:

"In our discovery learning condition, there is no teacher
intervention beyond the suggestion of a learning objective: no
guiding questions and no feedback about the quality of the child's
selection of materials, explorations, or self-assessments.
Correspondingly, we use an extreme type of direct instruction in
which the goals, the materials, the examples, the explanations, and
the pace or instruction are all teacher controlled with respect to
both its content and its epistemology."

THUS KLAHR'S RESEARCH COMPARES AN EXTREME AND RARELY USED FROM OF
"DISCOVERY LEARNING" WITH A FORM OF "DIRECT INSTRUCTION" DEFINED IN
SUCH A WAY THAT MANY EXAMPLES OF "INTERACTIVE ENGAGEMENT" [e.g., Hake
(1992, 1998b)] WOULD PROBABLY BE CLASSED AS "DIRECT INSTRUCTION" BY
KLAHR.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) featured
Klahr's research at their recent national science "summit"
<http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2004/05/05042004a.html> earlier
this year.

To further emphasize its Direct Instruction orientation, the USDE has
appointed Douglas Carnine, notorious for:

(a) his extremest positions favoring Direct Instruction [Carnine (2000)], and

(b) his baleful effect on California math education [Schoenfeld (2003)],

to membership on its 13-member Technical Advisory Group (TAG)
<http://www.w-w-c.org/about/memberlist.html> of the "What Works
Clearinghouse" <http://www.w-w-c.org/>.

TAG, bereft of anyone knowledgeable in science education, is composed
primarily of psychologists, psychometricians, sociologists,
economists, and education specialists. These are to advise the USDE
on what works in science education?

Regarding Carnine, Alan Schoenfeld (2003) wrote [bracketed by lines
"SSSSSSSSS. . .":

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Carnine, like Hirsch. . .[1996]. . ., is anti-research; see his piece
"Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices (And What It Would
Take to Make Education More Like Medicine)" . . . .[Carnine (2000)].
. . written for the Fordham Foundation. Carnine advocates direct
instruction, and he is an author of two direct instruction programs
currently being marketed in California: "DISTAR" and "Connecting Math
Concepts," produced by Science Research Associates (SRA)/McGraw-Hill.
Thus, Carnine stood to profit financially from a State Board
endorsement of direct instruction. That would appear to be a conflict
of interest, but the State Board proceeded in any case - with Carnine
being the sole purveyor of research on effective instruction to the
Board.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the report was shoddy at best. The
methodology was questionable, so much so that the American
Educational Research Association's Special Interest Group for
Research in Mathematics Education, a collection of specialists in the
area, wrote a public letter to the State Board disputing Carnine's
methods. Summaries of many of the papers reviewed were inaccurate,
and some of the report's conclusions were not clearly related to the
research summary. Nonetheless, Carnine's report went on to serve as
the basis for the section on instructional strategies in the
Board-approved 1999 "Framework."
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Regarding "Research-Council Studies to Explore Teaching and Testing
of Science" Cavenagh (2004b), it might be hoped that NRC's expert
science education committees will steer the U.S. Dept. of Education
away from promoting direct instruction, the antithesis of the NRC's
own recommendations for inquiry methods [NRC (1995, 2000, 2003].

It would appear that the continuing California Direct Instruction vs
Inquiry Battle, described in "Direct Science Instruction Suffers a
Setback in California - Or Does It?" [Hake (2004b)], virtually
ignored in the meeting programs of the American Association of
Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the American Physical Society (APS), has
now moved to the national scene.

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>

"Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas'
- that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind
without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
Alfred North Whitehead, "The Aims of Education" (1929).


REFERENCES
Adelson, R. 2004. "Instruction versus exploration in science
learning: Recent psychological research calls 'discovery learning'
into question," Monitor On Psychology, 35(6):34; online at
<http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/instruct.html>.

Arons, A.B. 1983. "Achieving Wider Scientific Literacy," Daedalus,
Spring. Arons wrote: "Researchers in cognitive development describe
two principle classes of knowledge: figurative (or declarative) and
operative (or procedural). "Declarative knowledge" consists of
knowing "facts," for example, that the moon shines by reflected
sunlight, that the earth and planets revolve around the sun . . . .
"operative knowledge", on the other hand, involves understanding the
source of such declarative knowledge (How do we know the moon shines
by reflected sunlight? Why do we believe the earth and planets
revolve around the sun when appearances suggest that everything
revolves around the earth? . . . .) and the capacity to use, apply,
transform, or recognize the relevance of the declarative knowledge to
new or unfamiliar situations.

Carnine, D. 2000. "Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices
(And What It Would Take to Make Education More Like Medicine),"
online as a 52kB pdf at
<http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/global/found.cfm?author=72&keyword=&submit=Search>.
The Fordham Foundation's Chester Finn introduces Carnine's paper by
stating that: "After describing assorted hijinks in math and reading
instruction, Doug devotes considerable space to examining what
educators did with the results of 'Project Follow Through,' one of
the largest education experiments ever undertaken. This study
compared constructivist education models with those based on direct
instruction. One might have expected that, when the results showed
that direct instruction models produced better outcomes, these models
would have been embraced by the profession. Instead, many education
experts discouraged their use."

Cavanagh, S. 2004a. "NCLB Could Alter Science Teaching," Education
Week 24(11): 1, 12-13, November 10; online at
<http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2004/11/10/11science.h24.html> and
also
<http://lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0411&L=aera-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=1219>.

Cavanagh, S. 2004b. "Research-Council Studies to Explore Teaching and
Testing of Science," Education Week 24(11): 12-13, November 10.
<http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2004/11/10/11nrc.h24.html> and
also
<http://lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0411&L=aera-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=1328>..

Bishop, W. 2004a. "Direct Instruction In Science Is More Effective,"
Math-Teach/Math-Learn post of 10 Nov 2004 09:39:10-0800; online at
<http://mathforum.org/epigone/math-teach/skungphaflon/5.1.0.14.2.20041110093401.05874ba0@exchange.calstatela.edu>

Bishop, W. 2004b. "Direct Instruction in Science" Math-Teach post of
26 Jul 2004 07:43:03-0700; online at
<http://mathforum.org/epigone/math-teach/quunphelthee/5.1.0.14.2.20040726073633.04440bd8@exchange.calstatela.edu>.

Hake, R.R. 1992. "Socratic pedagogy in the introductory physics lab."
Phys. Teach. 30: 546-552; updated version (4/27/98) online as ref. 23
at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>.

Hake, R.R. 1998a. "Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A
six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory
physics courses," Am. J. Phys. 66: 64-74; online as ref. 24 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>.

Hake, R.R. 1998b. "Interactive-engagement methods in introductory
mechanics courses," online as ref. 25 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>. Submitted on 6/19/98 to the
Physics Education Research Supplement (PERS) to Am. J. Phys. but
rejected by its editor on the grounds that the very transparent
Physical-Review-type data tables were "impenetrable"! PER suffers
because it has no Physical- Review-type archival journal.

Hake, R.R. 2004a. "Will NCLB Promote Direct Instruction of Science?"
online at
<http://lists.nau.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0411&L=phys-l&O=D&P=16592>.
Post of
11 Nov 2004 21:03:44-0800 to AP-Physics, Phys-L, PhysLrnR, Physhare.
Later sent to AERA-C, AERA-G, AERA-H, AERA-J, AERA-K, AERA-L, ASSESS,
EvalTalk, & Math-Learn.

Hake, R.R. 2004b. "Direct Science Instruction Suffers a Setback in
California - Or Does It?" AAPT Announcer 34(2): 177; online as
reference 33 at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>, or download
directly by clicking on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/DirInstSetback-041104f.pdf> (420 KB)
[about 160 references and 180 hot-linked URL's]. A pdf version of the
slides shown at the meeting is also available at ref. 33 or can be
downloaded directly by clicking on
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/AAPT-Slides.pdf> (132 kB). See
also Hake (2004c).

Hake, R.R. 2004c. "Re: Direct Instruction in Science," online at
<http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0407&L=pod&O=A&P=14775>.
Post of 29 Jul 2004 to Math-Teach, AERA-C, AERA-K, AP-Physics,
Math-Learn, Phys-L, PhysLrnR, & Physhare. The date, 1 Jan 1904, given
on this post is slightly in error.

Hirsch, E.D. Jr. 1996. "The Schools We Need: Why We Don't Have Them."
Doubleday. See also the "Core Knowledge" site
<http://www.coreknowledge.org/>.

Klahr, D. & M. Nigam. 2004. "The equivalence of learning paths in
early science instruction: effects of direct instruction and
discovery learning." In press at Psychological Science; online at
<http://www.psy.cmu.edu/faculty/klahr/papers.html>.

NRC. 1995. National Research Council, "National Science Education
Standards," National Academy Press; online at
<http://books.nap.edu/catalog/4962.html>.

NRC. 2000. "Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A
Guide for Teaching and Learning," National Academy Press; online in
HTML at
<http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9596.html>. See especially Bruce
Alberts' (2000) Forward: "A Scientists Perspective on Inquiry" for a
good operational definition of "inquiry."

NRC. 2003. "What Is the Influence of the National Science Education
Standards?: Reviewing the Evidence," A Workshop Summary, National
Academy Press; online at <http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10618.html>.

Schoenfeld, A.H. 2003. "Math Wars," ["almost final draft of 5 August 2003"]
to appear in "2004 Politics of Education Yearbook," edited by B.C.
Johnson and W.L. Boyd; online as a 76 kB pdf at
<http://www-gse.berkeley.edu/faculty/aschoenfeld/>, along with some
other worthwhile papers, or access directly by clicking on
<http://www-gse.berkeley.edu/faculty/aschoenfeld/Math_Wars.pdf> (76 KB).
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