Physics educators may or may not be interested in a recent post "Are
U.S. University Math & Science Departments Partially Responsible for
U.S. Students' Relatively Poor Showing on the PISA-2006 Math &
Science Tests?" [Hake (2008)].
The abstract reads:
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ABSTRACT: Greene and Shock (GS), in an article "Adding Up to
Failure: Ed schools put diversity before math," report that Ed School
course titles containing words like "multiculturalism" exceeded those
containing words like "math" so as to yield a
"multiculturalism-to-math ratio" of 1.82. They then imply that U.S.
students' relatively poor performance on the PISA math literacy test
is linked to the fact that Ed Schools are more concerned with
multiculturism than math. However, EDDRA subscribers pointed out a
glaring fault in the GS analysis: most pre-service teachers take
their math courses from math departments outside the Ed Schools, so
GS's "multiculturalism-to-math ratio" is deceptive. GS might also
have calculated a "multiculturalism-to-science ratio" greater than 1
and linked it to U.S. students' relatively poor performance on the
PISA science literacy test. But here again such a ratio would be
deceptive because most pre-service teachers take their science
content courses from science departments outside the Ed Schools. The
question then becomes: ARE U.S. UNIVERSITY MATH & SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS
*PARTIALLY* RESPONSIBLE FOR U.S. STUDENTS' RELATIVELY POOR SHOWING ON
THE PISA-2006 MATH & SCIENCE TESTS? Judging from the appalling low
pre-to-post test normalized gains for traditional passive-student
courses in astronomy, geoscience, math, and physics, the answer may
be YES.
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REFERENCES
Hake, R.R. 2008. "Are U.S. University Math & Science Departments
Partially Responsible for U.S. Students' Relatively Poor Showing on
the PISA-2006 Math & Science Tests?" online at
<http://tinyurl.com/2c3gjv>. Post of 16 Jan 2008 14:59:25-0800 to
AERA-L and PhysLrnR.