Precollege Science Research Articles

Assessing Precollege Science Education Outreach Initiatives: A Funder's Perspective

We describe an assessment of the collective impact of 35 grants that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) made to biomedical research institutions in 1999 to support precollege science education outreach programs. Data collected from funded institutions were compared with data from a control group of institutions that had advanced to the last stage of review but had not been funded. The survey instrument and the results reveal outcomes and impacts that HHMI considers relevant for these programs. The following attributes are considered: ability to secure additional, non-HHMI funding; institution buy-in as measured by gains in dedicated space and staff; enhancement of the program director's career; number and adoption of educational products developed; number of related publications and awards; percentage of programs for which teachers received course credit; increase in science content knowledge; and increase in student motivation to study science.

Inquiry in science education: International perspectives

AbstractThis paper set emerged from an international symposium that aimed to shed light on issues associated with the enactment of inquiry both as means (i.e., inquiry as an instructional approach) and as ends (i.e., inquiry as a learning outcome) in precollege science classrooms. The symposium contributors were charged with providing perspectives from their countries on the following major themes: (a) philosophical and practical conceptions of inquiry in the science curriculum; (b) images of the enactment of inquiry in the curriculum, curricular materials, classroom instruction, and assessment practices; and (c) factors and conditions, internal and external to the educational setting, which facilitate or impede inquiry‐based science education. Another major theme that emerged from the symposium was related to the very conceptions of inquiry teaching. The individual contributions and synthesizing commentaries demonstrate that despite their situatedness and diversity, many themes and issues cut across the represented locales, and serve to show the significance and potential fruitfulness of any discourse regarding inquiry in science education that this paper set might, and we hope will, trigger in the near future. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 88:397–419, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/sce.10118

A New Type of Partnership for Science Outreach: Princeton Center for Complex Materials, Strange Matter and the Liberty Science Center

AbstractAll National Science Foundation funded MRSEC centers have education, outreach and community service as one of their major objectives. The Princeton Center for Complex Materials (PCCM) takes this commitment very seriously. PCCM runs a full slate of education activities including a host of Pre-college science and engineering programs and a research experience for undergraduates and teachers program each summer. Our outreach programs are designed to increase awareness, appreciation and knowledge of materials science.Liberty Science Center (LSC) in Jersey City, New Jersey and the Strange Matter traveling exhibit allowed PCCM to expand its outreach program to include tens of thousands of family audience members. LSC gets 1000's of visitors each weekend, and has expertise in communicating with this audience. Princeton University scientists have expertise in materials science. This partnership required coordination between the LSC staff and the PCCM outreach director in facilitating the training and presentations by faculty and other scientists from Princeton. Together we developed a program that sent over 30 scientists from Princeton University to the liberty science center to offer their enthusiasm for material science to the public. Scientists can reach a much larger audience at a science center than at their home institutions. This can be repeated anywhere in the country where there are science centers is and university research centers willing to work together.

Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education. By John L. Rudolph. (New York: Palgrave, 2002. x, 262 pp. Cloth, $65.00, isbn 0-312-29501-4. Paper, $22.95, isbn 0-312-29571-5.)

During the early years of the Cold War, American public school education came under withering criticism. Leading educators, sensitive to declining intellectual standards and concerned that education focused more on life adjustment than life enhancement, emphasized that conceptual frameworks were years out of date and that too few students were being educated in science, mathematics, English, and history. Even in 1949 the National Education Association argued that Communism and furious preparations for war were the major realities around which educational policy must revolve, while the “fall” of China and the successful Soviet nuclear program intensified fears that the United States was actually losing the Cold War. Thus by the early 1950s defense needs had coalesced with the need to restructure American education, a process that took more than a decade to consolidate. It is in this historical context that John L. Rudolph examines the role of elite academic scientists in the reconstruction of science education. We learn much about the workings of the scientific community and the collaboration of the federal government and the National Science Foundation in developing new curricula in physics and biology. Although Rudolph utilizes other excellent studies such as Barbara Barksdale Clowse's Brainpower for the Cold War (1981), Scott L. Montgomery's Minds for the Making (1994), and Peter B. Dow's Schoolhouse Politics (1991), his work now stands as the finest analysis we have of the place of pre-college science education in Cold War America.

The Ongoing Educational Anomaly of Earth Science Placement

The geosciences have traditionally been viewed with less “academic prestige” than other science curricula. Among the results of this perception are depressed K-16 enrollments, Earth Science assignments to lower-performing students, and relegation of these classes to sometimes under-qualified educators, all of which serve to confirm the widely-held misconceptions. An Earth Systems course developed at San José State University demonstrates the difficulty of a standard high school Earth science curriculum, while recognizing the deficiencies in pre-college Earth science education. Restructuring pre-college science curricula so that Earth Science is placed as a capstone course would greatly improve student understanding of the geosciences, while development of Earth systems courses that infuse real-world and hands-on learning at the college level is critical to bridging the information gap for those with no prior exposure to the Earth sciences. Well-crafted workshops for pre-service and inservice teachers of Earth Science can help to reverse the trends and unfortunate “status” in geoscience education.

A Student-Centered Approach to Teaching General Biology That Really Works: Lord's Constructivist Model Put to a Test

tin the comments section of a course evaluation a student once wrote, sleep throughout most of my Biology lectures. My professor tries hard but I just get tired of listening to so much information. This was the end of the spring semester of 1998, and I suddenly realized that I had to change the way I taught! This realization took me a long time, for in the past decade educators have been concerned with the way science is being taught, and several national efforts have been directed to redesign the instruction of pre-college science courses (AAAS, 1993, 1994; NRC, 1996). The main concern was that traditional science teaching has relied primarily on lecturing facts, and frequently requires memorization of long lists of specific vocabulary (Leonard et al., 2001). In general, the results of such teaching have been in lack of student motivation for the sciences, and limited learning reflected on poor content retention, few scientific skills, and inability to apply concepts. When professors started to examine college instruction, they found that the same traditional teaching model was followed throughout the universities, and identified serious repercussions on the quality of science education acquired by higher level students (Adams & Slater, 1998; Anderson, 1997; Rice, 1996; Yager, 1991). Thomas Lord (1998) questioned why college students demonstrated difficulty when making connections between concepts that they had learned before, or when applying their knowledge to problemsolving situations. He thought that these problems might be a consequence of the traditional way science courses were taught, because the traditional method does not provide time for discussion, or engagement of students on inquiry-based exercises. Subsequently, Lord dramatically modified his method of instruction. Lord's innovative teaching method is student-centered and uses constructivism, active teaching, and cooperative groups. His method has proven effective in lectures and laboratories for General Biology and Environmental Science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (Lord, 1997, 1998, 1999). Because I was impressed with the positive results of Lord's teaching techniques, and the potential application of his methods to large and small PATRICIA A. BURROWES is Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00931-3360; e-mail: pburrowe@upracd.upr.clu.edu.

Geology as an Historical Science: Its Perception within Science and the Education System.

For much of the 20th century, geology has largely been ignored as a pre-college science subject in many English-speaking nations. In this paper, we examine some of the historical based influences which have affected its status within the educational system. A key factor is that as a science, geology has sometimes been treated as being derived from physics. This is supported by episodes in which geology and physics have interacted. Thus, in the late 19th century, many geologists accepted Lord Kelvin's restricted calculation of the earth's age even though the fossil record spoke differently. More disturbing, are events in which geologists have attempted to replicate physics' methodology. Thus, Charles Lyell defined the principle of uniformitarianism on the basis of Newton's ‘Vera Causa’ in which only those processes operating today would be accepted as geological causes. Lyell believed that uniformitarianism had to be defined as such, if geology, like physics was to be considered a valid, logically based science. However, the adoption of such restrictive principles is short sighted because it does not consider geology's unique defining characteristics, its historical interpretive nature. These characteristics complement the physical sciences, and also provide students with another route to scientific literacy, a major goal of Project 2061. The environmental crisis, with its large collection of interconnected variables, emphasizes that the systemic methodology of the earth sciences has much to contribute in the future to both science and education, specifically, and the welfare of the planet, generally.

Fueling educational reform: the HHMI professors.

Is fundamental change possible in the tradition-bound world of college and university science education? The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) believes it is and recently announced new grants to empower individual scientist-educators—the HHMI Professors—to develop innovative approaches for changing the way they teach biology to undergraduates. Central to the Professors program is the goal of connecting contemporary scientific research and teaching, particularly at large research universities—an objective advocated in numerous reports and studies (e.g., Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Universities, available online at http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf/). Although virtually all universities offer opportunities for their undergraduates to conduct laboratory research, the number of students who can take advantage of such opportunities is limited. Are there untapped ways of expanding undergraduate research opportunities and integrating discovery research into the mainstream undergraduate curriculum, particularly at the introductory levels? Another key objective for the Professors is to identify exceptional strategies for meeting the needs of students in the sciences. How can undergraduate science education be personalized to attract and retain students, including those from groups traditionally underrepresented in science? Are there practicing scientists who could significantly expand the number of students they mentor and provide the kind of academic and career counseling essential to student success? What role could scientists play in engaging graduate students and postdocs in undergraduate education while maintaining their own research, and what role could they play in helping these individuals prepare for their future roles as researcher-educators? The HHMI also sought to support faculty who could organize and present the latest knowledge and approaches to modern science to undergraduates. Can research-active scientists be engaged in devising new educational tools and materials? Are there faculty uniquely positioned in emerging fields who could develop new teaching strategies and produce timely materials to fill important niches? How can fresh connections be established between fields, such as between biology and chemistry or between biomedical engineering and quantitative physiology? In September 2002, the HHMI announced the appointment of 20 research-active university faculty members as HHMI Professors, who will each receive $1 million over 4 yr to undertake creative initiatives in undergraduate and, in some cases, precollege science education. These individuals were selected following a national, peer-reviewed competition involving more than 80 research institutions that were each invited to nominate two candidates. This initiative for individual faculty complements the HHMI's undergraduate grants program to institutions, which has awarded approximately $560 million for innovative science programs to 240 colleges and universities since 1988. Although the Professors' projects are each unique, and many address a range of objectives and approaches, aspects of their work can be summarized in five illustrative categories, as follows: Student–faculty research groups: Several Professors will significantly expand the number of undergraduates in their labs and create teams of students who will be integrated into existing research groups. In addition to providing more undergraduates with a research experience, these efforts are intended to help graduate students and postdoctoral researchers engage with undergraduates and gain teaching experience while continuing their own research. Research courses: Another approach to increase the number of undergraduates who receive a real research experience is to create courses in which groups of students, including nonscience majors, deal with various aspects of an ongoing research project. These courses will be at advanced and introductory levels, and some will span a multiyear period to enable students to develop their own research programs. Interdisciplinary science education: Because some of the Professors are working in new areas, at the intersection of existing disciplines, they know uniquely where these new directions are headed. Activities in this area will include new cross-disciplinary research experiences, courses, and curricula, and new course materials in areas so new that the Professors will need to create their own. New science teaching tools: Some of the Professors have turned to creative development of teaching materials in ways that parallel their scientific work and will cover development of new computer-assisted and web-based instructional tools, and other activities. In addition to supporting these efforts, the HHMI will help to widely disseminate successful products to the science education community at large. Student mentoring and broadening access: One aspect of all the Professors' projects—mentoring and academic counseling—is the focus of several of the awardees' activities. Efforts will be directed at providing undergraduates, including women, students who are disadvantaged, and first-generation college-goers, and students from underrepresented minority groups, with the tools to succeed in scientific careers through mentoring, team research, and activities that build a science community. The HHMI plans to encourage the Professors to become national resources and promote broad dissemination of their activities and results to the science education community. Additional background on the program and a list of the Professors and their projects may be found at http://www.hhmi.org/professors. This web site will be updated with information on the Professors' projects as they evolve.

Time for Antarctic scientists to reach out

In the United States there has been a move afoot to try to stimulate federally funded investigators to explore meaningful ways of communicating their scientific activities through educational outreach programs. The goal is to help improve the quality of mathematics and science education in both early and secondary education. Dr Rita Colwell, the current Director of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), feels strongly that the time has come for higher education to do its part to help improve precollege science education, a persistent problem in the United States and many other industrialized countries. After all, institutions of higher education stand to benefit by seeing students enter college with sound fundamental science skills, and the taxpayers, who ultimately fund national science programs, benefit from an economy fuelled by both renewed and improved scientific talent.

Gender differences in introductory undergraduate physics performance: University physics versus college physics in the USA

Efforts to ameliorate gender disparity in pursuit of science careers in the USA have focused on equalizing girls' participation in pre-college science courses and out-of-school activities. Our examination of nearly 1500 US college students at 16 universities found that gender and preparation both have an impact on success in introductory college physics courses. In terminal, algebra-based physics females perform better than their male classmates. However, in calculus based introductory college physics courses, which are prerequisite to advanced study in many fields, women do significantly worse than their male counterparts with the same background. For both genders, taking a high school course that limits coverage and concentrates more time in in-depth study is associated with better performance in college physics. We conclude that efforts to ensure the success of women entering the physical sciences should concentrate on increasing the depth and reducing the vast coverage of most high school physics courses as well as addressing the apparent bias in college courses that mark the first step in careers within scientific research and engineering.

Performance Assessment of a Standards-Based High School Biology Curriculum

JN response to what was widely perceived as inadequate teaching of precollege science in the United States, the National Science Foundation supported the development of the Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS 1993) and the National Science Education Standards (NRC 1996). One of the specific problems addressed by these national standards efforts was that secondary science historically has been taught primarily through lecture with emphasis on long lists of trivial facts and vocabulary words, which often are to be memorized (Bowyer 1990; Brandwein 1981; Champagne & Hornig 1987). This practice has been widely supported by traditional, encyclopedic science textbooks which continually grow in size as more information is added to each new edition. Both AAAS and the NRC attempted to aid science curriculum developers in content selection by identifying a small subset of the most important science concepts rather than a long set of facts that attempt to cover an entire subject, as is the case for many traditional science curricula. Also, unlike the dominant traditional curricula, AAAS and NRC strongly recommend that science curricula devote significantly more time to developing scientific thinking skills and understanding the nature of science. Both organizations promote student learning through engaged investigation as opposed to passive listening and speak also to the desirable role of the teacher as being distinctly student-centered and inquiryoriented. Science curricula recently funded by the National Science Foundation have aligned themselves with the Standards and Benchmarks by reducing numbers of concepts and topics and de-emphasizing less central concepts and topics in favor of additional activities that require student thinking, decision-making, inquiry, collaboration and communication. Observers of students using these new curricula have noted that they are engaged extensively in serious discussion and scientific inquiry. Since the national standards and corresponding curricula developed to meet the standards are quite recent, there is yet little research literature on the effectiveness of these curricula. ChemCom (Sutman & Bruce 1992, 1993; ACS 1998), a high school chemistry curriculum developed with funding from the National Science Foundation and the American Chemistry Society predated the National Science Education Standards. Developers of ChemCom say that it matches the standards, especially in its 1993 and 1998 editions. One study of ChemCom at the University of Texas (Mason 1998) compared student achievement in college general chemistry by students who had either a traditional high school chemistry curriculum or the 1988 or 1993 editions of ChemCom. After eliminating variables such as having taken AP Chemistry or a second year of advanced chemistry in high school, there were no statistically significant differences in performance between students who had one year of ChemCom versus those who had one year of a traditional chemistry course in high school. Biology: A Community Context (Leonard & Penick 1998a) is an introductory high school biology curriculum developed in response to the national standards and needs. Funded by a $2.3 million National Science Foundation grant to Clemson University, the project goal was a teacher-developed curriculum that would be standards-based, activity-oriented, inquiry-centered and overtly constructivist. As part of the evaluation component, we were interested in knowing if this standards-based curriculum would produce any greater learning of selected science concepts identified in the Standards and Benchmarks and any greater understanding of scientific inquiry skills than did the traditional curricula that dominate schools today. BACC was designed to encourage broad goals (Penick & Bonnstetter 1993) by following a research-based instructional strategy (Leonard & Penick 1998b; Penick 1999).

Science Achievement Growth Trajectories: Understanding Factors Related to Gender and Racial–Ethnic Differences in Precollege Science Achievement

Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and longitudinal data from the first three waves of the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88), we examined achievement and growth rates in precollege science by racial–ethnic and gender subgroups. We found socioeconomic status and previous grades strongly and positively related to students’ eighth-grade achievement across all racial–ethnic by gender subgroups. We also found locus-of-control to be strongly related to eighth-grade science achievement for all subgroups except Asian American males. In modeling the growth rate, we found that the quantity of science units completed in high school was the only consistent predictor of science growth rates across all racial–ethnic by gender subgroups. The relationships between individual-level factors and science growth rates differed greatly for the remaining individual-level variables, highlighting the need for further research that both disaggregates data by race–ethnicity and gender.

Science Education for the 21st Century

Paul DeHart Hurd was a biology teacher and science supervisor in Colorado and California high schools and junior colleges for 20 years and a professor of science education at Stanford University for 22 years. He has authored 11 books and monographs on developments in the sciences and over 300 articles on various aspects of science education in the US and foreign countries. He has served on the National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee for Science Education and as a special educational consultant to the National Academy of Sciences, Commission on Life Sciences. Honors include the Apollo Award from the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, the Distinguished Contributions to Science Education Through Research Award from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, and the Award for National Leadership in Science Education from the National Science Teachers Association. Dr. Hurd is currently focusing his writings on the history of science and technology education in the US over the past 200 years and current activities to modernize the precollege science curriculum.

The STRATegy COLUMN for Precollege Science Teachers – Just How Glacial are Glaciers?

We think of geologic processes as being very slow, yet many occur at rates similar to rates of change in everyday life. Glacial data available on the World Wide Web allow students to investigate rates of geologic change firsthand.

Engineering Competitions in the Middle School Classroom: Key Elements in Developing Effective Design Challenges

Engineering challenges that involve both the design and building of devices that satisfy constraints are increasingly employed in precollege science courses. We have experimented with exercises that are distinguished from those employed with elite students by reducing competition and increasing cooperation through the use of tests against nature, large dynamic ranges in performance, initial prototype designs, and alternative methods of recording and presenting results. We find that formulating easily understood goals helps engage students in fascinatingly creative processes that expose the need for a scientific methodology. Such challenges engage male and female students equally, helping to erase the gender disparity in familiarity with the technology and skills common to physical science.

Equity for Black Americans in precollege science

Equity for Black Americans in precollege science

Equity for Black Americans in precollege science

The purpose of this article is to explore many of the experiences that Black Americans have in science education in the United States and propose changes so that Black Americans have an equitable opportunity to engage in and learn quality science. The outcome of quality science is the possession of science knowledge and skills of Black American students to either maintain or change their world as they choose. Science for All Americans delineates the themes and habits of minds that scientifically literate high school graduates should possess; however, these are the preparatory fundamentals for Black American students if equity is to exist for them in science education. Equity in science learning, science teaching, science schooling practices, and quality science opportunities are discussed. The science learning of Black American students continue to be championed; however, the debate persists on the efficiency of culturally relevant science learning. The instruction of many impoverished rural and urban Black American students is very inadequate because of low teacher expectation, inadequate science knowledge and skills of teachers, teachers' poorly clarified professional and cultural beliefs and values, and science curricula that do not focus on the knowledge and skills outlined in Science for All Americans. Some progress toward schooling practices has occurred; however, few have been implemented long enough to determine their impact on Black Americans' science learning. Proposed solutions aimed at providing equitable opportunities for all students to learn quality science include preparing multicultural science teachers, eliminating tracking in schools, equipping classes with science curriculum materials and technology, and supplying financial resources. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed84:154–179, 2000.

An Interactive, Process-Oriented Geoscience Exhibition

The introduction of a geoscience component in the New Zealand precollege science curriculum, the development of interactive science-technology centres in New Zealand, and a funding opportunity provided the incentive for an interactive exhibition (Earthworks) that comprised simplified models or simulations of a variety of the processes that form and modify Earth's surface features. The exhibits are described and the linkages to the themes within the curriculum are explored herein. The assessment of teacher and student response to the exhibition suggests the experience was worthwhile.

The STRATegy COLUMN for Precollege Science Teachers – Learning From the Fossil Record

Fossils can be used to teach students not just about ancient life but also about the nature and practice of science. The Paleontological Society special publication Learning From the Fossil Record offers many excellent activities for using fossil evidence to develop student scientific problem-solving skills. Other information and classroom activities are available on the World-Wide Web.

A program to enhance k-12 science education in ten rural New York school districts.

The Rural Partnership for Science Education, designed by educators and scientists in 1991 with funding from the National Institutes of Health, works in two rural New York State counties with students and their teachers from kindergarten through grade 12 to improve pre-college science education. The Partnership is an alliance among ten rural New York school districts and several New York State institutions (e.g., a regional academic medical center; the New York Academy of Sciences; and others), and has activities that involve around 4,800 students and 240 teachers each year. The authors describe the program's activities (e.g., summer workshops for teachers; science exploration camps for elementary and middle-school students; enrichment activities for high school students). A certified science education specialist directs classroom demonstrations throughout the academic year to support teachers' efforts to integrate hands-on activities into the science curriculum. A variety of evaluations over the years provides strong evidence of the program's effectiveness in promoting students' and teachers' interest in science. The long-term goal of the Partnership is to inspire more rural students to work hard, learn science, and enter the medical professions.