US Science Education Research Articles

Myths and matters of science education: a critical discourse on science and standards

In this forum paper, I grapple with critical questions about our understanding of science as a discipline and the education standards formulated within that framing. My exploration is contextualized in our current socio-political climate and is presented in discourse with Charity Winburn’s Meeting the needs of the individual student in the post-pandemic era: an analysis of the next generation science standards. I draw on Winburn’s astute observations about the narratives and epistemologies that shape our current science standards as a springboard for diving deeper into questions about the ways of knowing and types of knowledge traditions that are uplifted in US science education. Through a dialogic process, I outline a critical analysis of the myth of neutrality, the prioritization of epistemologies, and the standardization of learning ingrained in traditional science curricula. I conclude by building on Winburn’s hopes for science education with my own aspirations for bringing joy into our collective science learning experiences.

Flipped Learning Model: An Effective Approach to Primary School STEM Education

As early as 1986, the US National Science Board published Undergraduate Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education, which is regarded as the initiation of STEM education (NSB, 1986). In October 2005, the National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Center jointly submitted to the Congress of the United States Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, a report that put forward relevant recommendations to promote STEM education (Bybee, 2010). In October 2007, the US National Science Board issued A National Action Plan for Addressing the Critical Needs of the US Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education System, proposing to expand STEM education from colleges to primary and secondary schools (NSB, 2007). In 2009, former President of the United States, Barack Obama, emphasized the need for the nation to prioritize the development of STEM education. Since then, the US federal government has heavily invested in STEM education research across all levels, from kindergarten through higher education. Educational communities in other countries have also begun researching and implementing STEM education practices. Numerous studies and extensive practice have demonstrated the potential of STEM education in promoting students’ cognitive development, enhancing their critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity skills, as well as improving their emotional and spiritual well-being.

A case study of science teachers' goal conflicts arising when integrating engineering into science classes

AbstractThe Framework for K‐12 Science Education details new goals to guide improvement of US science education. Among the new goals, the inclusion of engineering core ideas and practices stand out. We report a case study of four 8th‐grade science teachers who chose to integrate engineering core ideas and practices into their science classes by teaching four STEM design challenges (SDC). This study focuses on understanding the goal conflicts arising from these teachers' choice and how they resolve their goal conflicts. Primary data come from semistructured interviews conducted with each teacher. The goal conflicts expressed by our teachers fell into one of two broad categories: pacing conflicts and mandated testing conflicts. Pacing conflicts exist between the goals of teaching the SDCs in full and the goals of following the district‐wide pacing guide and covering all state mandated standards. Mandated testing conflicts were those goal conflicts arising between teaching the SDCs and ensuring that students were successful on officially mandated tests from the state and the district. The science teachers resolved their conflicts through goal balancing, where actions taken to satisfy one goal (teaching the SDCs) allow a person to subsequently pursue actions toward satisfying a conflicting goal. In this study, goal balancing is exhibited by teachers partially completing each SDC before moving on to the next topic. Finally, we discuss these findings in relationship to the existing literature on science teachers' goals and provide implications for science teachers' professional development and for research.

Nature of Engineering Knowledge

The inclusion of engineering standards in US science education standards is potentially important because of how limited engineering education for K-12 learners is, despite the ubiquity of engineering in students’ lives. However, the majority of learners experience science education throughout their compulsory schooling. If improved engineering literacy is to be achieved, then its inclusion in science curricula is perhaps the most efficient means. One significant challenge that arises, however, is in the framing of engineering relative to science by both teachers and curriculum. Science and engineering are both distinct and interdependent. The nature of the contributions of science and engineering to one another has been an area of some examination in philosophy of technology and engineering, but little framing of this relationship has been conducted with K-12 science and engineering education contexts in mind. Nature of science (NOS) is a critical layer of scientific understanding that has been used to explicitly support literacy in K-16 science classrooms for decades. However, engineering cannot be authentically and appropriately supported by NOS framing. There is an immediate need for discourse on the nature of engineering knowledge (NOEK) but not in isolation of NOS. Given the increasing inclusion of engineering in science classrooms, relationships between NOS and NOEK are in need of explication and argument. Our purpose is to promote a discussion about NOS, engineering, and the relationship between them without misrepresenting engineering as a subdomain of science or as an oversimplification of itself.

Moving the lab into the field: The making of pathologized (non)citizens in US science education

ABSTRACTThis article examines how notions of health and citizenship have become entangled in US science education reforms targeting particular populations. Current science education policy assumes that marginalized groups have been historically ignored, and that new research is required to “make diversity visible” in order to adapt instruction for those students. This article questions that premise, asking instead how key practices of US science education emerged in response to the fabricated presence of racialized (non)citizens. Interweaving lines of inquiry from cultural studies and science & technology studies, I analyse a set of pedagogies that circulated across US science education, public health, and colonial projects in the early twentieth century. I explore how this pedagogical apparatus doubled as a strategy of governance, rendering citizenship into a biomedical status that had to be proven rather than assumed. Finally, I raise questions about recent reforms that hope to leverage public health concerns (e.g. obesity) to make science instruction more inclusive and culturally responsive. A danger is that efforts to respond to the needs of “diverse groups” may inadvertently reinscribe diversity as pathology. This can occur when reforms continue to rely on educational practices that mark exclusionary boundaries of biomedical citizenship.

THE NEW CURRICULUM STANDARDS FOR ASTRONOMY IN THE UNITED STATES

Há um grande interesse em restringir a ampla gama e vasto domínio dos possíveis temas que poderiam ser ensinados sobre astronomia em uma estrutura gerenciável. Embora não haja nenhum currículo nacional obrigatório nos Estados Unidos, uma análise dos três esforços nacionais recentes para criar uma sequência apropriada de conceitos de astronomia por idade para serem ensinados nas escolas primárias e secundárias revela uma considerável falta de consenso a respeito de quais conceitos são mais apropriados para cada idade e quais tópicos devem ser cobertos. O esquema de padronização mais recente para a educação científica dos EUA, o Next Generation Science Standards (Padrões em Ciência: Nova Geração), sugere que a maioria dos conceitos de astronomia devem ser ensinados apenas nos últimos anos de educação do aluno; e no entanto foi recebido com críticas consideráveis. Uma comparação dos esquemas de aprendizagem da astronomia nos Estados Unidos e uma breve discussão das críticas levantadas podem proporcionar aos educadores de astronomia internacionais dados de comparação na formulação de recomendações em suas próprias regiões.

On the ‘Fabric’ of our global science education research community: The art and science of writing for theJournal of Research in Science Teaching

On the ‘Fabric’ of our global science education research community: The art and science of writing for the<i>Journal of Research in Science Teaching</i>

The next generation of US science education

<xhtml:span xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">Although the Common Core standards for mathematics and English proficiency have been widely adopted, a similar set of standards for science has been less successful.</xhtml:span>

Ecoliteracy in informal science education settings

Ecoliteracy in informal science education settings

Elementary Teachers' Classroom Practices and Beliefs in Relation to US Science Education Reform: Reflections from within

This study unveils the stories of 3 public school elementary teachers from the USA who reflected on their beliefs about science education reform, and implementation of the reform in their classroom teaching, in response to state recommendations for change in science education. The teachers' stories show how various factors assisted or impeded the implementations of reform in their teaching, the various challenges related to their grade-level teaching, and the teachers' personal struggles to make sense of reform recommendations. Within each case study, we describe 4 common themes from the teachers' interviews. These themes are related to teachers' science teaching strategies, their science teaching efficacy beliefs about adopting reform, the types of science learning outcomes teachers target, and the types of teaching resources available to them. Implications for teacher education and practice are discussed in relationship with study findings.

A Missing Link: K-4 Biological Evolution Content Standards

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) is one of the most influential documents in US science education. The NSES has been utilized by local schools and districts, state departments of education, and national curriculum groups to form the backbone for curriculum frameworks, programs, and assessment systems to guide science education. The NSES provides national biological evolution content standards for fifth grade through high school but not for kindergarten through fourth grade. This article presents K-4 biological evolution content standards that can be used in conjunction with the current NSES K-4 life science and earth science content standards, brief examples of integration activities using the K-4 biological evolution content standards, and supplemental teacher information for the K-4 biological evolution content standards. The biological evolution content standards and the additional materials can guide teachers when teaching biological evolution to K-4th grade students.

Experimental comparison of inquiry and direct instruction in science

There are continuing educational and political debates about ‘inquiry’ versus ‘direct’ teaching of science. Traditional science instruction has been largely direct but in the US, recent national and state science education standards advocate inquiry throughout K‐12 education. While inquiry‐based instruction has the advantage of modelling aspects of the nature of real scientific inquiry, there is little unconfounded comparative research into the effectiveness and efficiency of the two instructional modes for developing science conceptual understanding. This research undertook a controlled experimental study comparing the efficacy of carefully designed inquiry instruction and equally carefully designed direct instruction in realistic science classroom situations at the middle school grades. The research design addressed common threats to validity. We report on the nature of the instructional units in each mode, research design, methods, classroom implementations, monitoring, assessments, analysis and project findings.

Science as an ideal: teachers’ orientations to science and science education reform

Two policy trends have characterized US science education in the last two decades: a strong movement to examine issues of science in society, and widespread adoption of state standards mandating curriculum courses related to science, technology and society, scientific literacy, and socio‐scientific issues. However, these changes have not found an entirely positive response among teachers. This paper suggests that the value orientations which motivate many teachers in their work should be taken into account in curriculum policy‐making. This paper identifies two types of value orientations that lead secondary‐school science teachers to oppose or favour dealing with socio‐scientific issues in the classroom: a ‘traditional’ view of science as objective and value‐free; and a ‘higher vision of science’ with strong metaphysical, moral, or aesthetic connotations. In addition, a significant number of science teachers examine science and society issues from the perspective of, e.g. often environmental or social, not science‐related values. All three of these phenomena play a significant role in the controversies connected with science‐education reform.

Narrating International and National Trends in US Science Education: An Autobiographical Approach Showcasing Dr. Robert Yager

This biographical piece is based on a conversation involving Bob Yager, Geeta Verma, and Lisa Martin-Hansen which took place at the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference in March, 2008. The unique aspect of this autobiographical piece is that it highlights Dr. Yager’s account about the emergence of the science education field of study and his engagement with the field over a period of more than 50 years. The piece is organized using conversation topics through a biographical narrative format that starts at the beginning of Dr. Yager’s career, establishing science education at The University of Iowa, the emergence of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) ideas, existing intersections between STS and Socioscientific Issues (SSI) ideas, his reflections on work with doctoral students, and a consideration of the goals and aims for future directions in the field.

Professional Development Needs and Outcomes for Education-Engaged Scientists: A Research-Based Framework

Involvement of scientists in education is essential to strengthen quality and access to US science education at the K-12 and higher levels. Yet little research evidence exists to help practitioners understand scientists' education and outreach interests, beliefs, and motivations, and the barriers that must be addressed to involve them effectively. The ReSciPE Project (Resources for Scientists in Partnership with Education) has offered professional development workshops and resources to a wide audience of working scientists who undertake individual or institutional education and outreach activities. While seeking to increase the effectiveness of these “education-engaged scientists,” the project also conducted research on scientists' involvement in education. We report findings from qualitative analysis of 30 in-depth interviews and propose a comprehensive framework for addressing scientists' needs for professional development in this domain, placing these findings in context of national needs and efforts to engage scientists in education.

US Science Education: The View from a Practicing Scientist

AbstractScience and mathematics education in the US is failing to produce an adequate number of American scientists. Foreign postdoctoral fellows and students who typically remain in the US and become permanent residents and citizens increasingly populate US research laboratories. Were these foreign scientists to return home upon completion of their training, we would be facing a severe shortage of well‐trained research personnel in US laboratories. The contributions of foreign scientists to US scientific research have been important and impressive, but as noted above, there are dangers in relying on other countries to provide the basic education of scientists to fill our US laboratories.

It takes a village to raise an idiot: fixing US science education

It takes a village to raise an idiot: fixing US science education

It takes a village to raise an idiot: fixing US science education.

For years, tests and surveys have highlighted a paradox in American science education: the nation that leads the world in research brings up the rear in public understanding of science. How can this be? The Third International Mathematics and Science Study, begun in 1995, yielded an important insight. Comparing the educational systems of 50 countries, the study found that US students scored near the top of the group at the fourth-grade level. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill after that. By the eighth grade, the American students drop into the average group, and they almost reach the global bottom by the time they finish high school. The US research enterprise compensates for this nosedive by focusing on undergraduate and graduate student training. This approach explains the paradox in which an ample pool of highly qualified scientists drives competitive research while the general public remains largely ignorant. Still, the kindergarten-through-12th grade (K–12) educational decline has far-reaching implications for research, none of which are positive. As Costello Brown, Director of Educational System Reform at the National Science Foundation (NSF; Arlington, Virginia, USA) puts it, “We are not even going to have the people who can vote responsibly as Americans on issues surrounding global warming, the environment, and whatever else if they don’t know the difference between a pound and a millimeter.” Education experts like Brown often speak in the future tense, but current policy debates on issues like stem-cell research, cloning, and the teaching of evolution (see “In the beginning, there was darkness”) show the legacy of this ongoing problem. Now professional organizations and some individual researchers are coming to appreciate the volatility of a system in which a benighted public underwrites ground-breaking science. The problem can no longer be ignored, and the scientif-ic community needs to become part of the solution.

It takes a village to raise an idiot: fixing US science education

It takes a village to raise an idiot: fixing US science education

Facing the consequences: Using TIMSS for a closer look at US mathematics and science education

Facing the consequences: Using TIMSS for a closer look at US mathematics and science education