Transcript Document

Pressure from Below? How the New K12 Science Education Standards Will
Require a Very Different College
Science Education Experience
Martin Storksdieck
SENCER Summer Institute
August 2, 2012
Changing Demands
• STEM pathways and demand for STEM jobs
• Improvements of undergraduate STEM education
• New pressures from K-12
• Need for different future teachers
• Public understanding and engagement
So why are we educating undergrads again?
•Complete basic education and become a lifelong learner,
a citizen and a (critical) consumer – (Miller, Falk)
•Enculturate them into a system of learning and
scholarship (within a discipline)
•Convey “life skills” or 21st Century Skills
•Deepen knowledge, skills and dispositions for future
careers
Skills for the 21st Century
• Social skills (communication,
reasoning, empathy, tolerance, etc.)
• Learning skills (knowing how to learn,
identity as learner, self-efficacy, selfreliance, etc.)
• Thinking skills (creative and nonroutine problem solving, creative
thinking)
• Decision skills (deciding under
uncertainty, optimizing, commitment,
etc.)
• Implementation skills (persistence,
resilience, risk-taking, harnessing and
using resources, goal orientation,
etc.)
Challenges and Opportunities
• Start at home: “teach your children well” = educate
your undergrads better
– DBER report
– PCAST
• Understand the connection to K-12
– Framework and Next Generation Science Standards
– AP Redesign
– Next Generation Science Teachers
Challenges and Opportunities
• CoSTEM and GAO: Federal STEM Education
Inventory and Strategic Plan
– If not now, then later – information, accountability and the
changing marketplace of higher education
• The tsunami is here: online and blended environments
– Economies of scale?
– Branding and choices – “are you being served?”
• Be a good citizen: broader impact?
– Collaborate
– Integrate
– Professionalize
“Engage to Excel” Recommendations
1.
Catalyze widespread adoption of empirically validated
teaching practices.
2.
Advocate and provide support for replacing standard
laboratory courses with discovery-based research
courses.
3.
Launch a national experiment in postsecondary
mathematics education to address the mathpreparation gap.
4.
Encourage partnerships among stakeholders to
diversify pathways to STEM careers.
5.
Create a Presidential council on STEM education with
broad leadership.
Discipline-Based Education Research
Understanding and Improving Learning
in Undergraduate Science and
Engineering
What is Discipline-Based Education Research?
• Emerging from various parent disciplines
• Investigates teaching and learning in a given
discipline
• Informed by and complementary to general research
on human learning and cognition
Contributions of DBER: Conceptual
Understanding and Conceptual Change
• In all disciplines, undergraduate students have incorrect
ideas and beliefs about fundamental concepts.
(Conclusion 6)
• Students have particular difficulties with concepts that
involve very large or very small temporal or spatial scales.
(Conclusion 6)
• Several types of instructional strategies have been shown
to promote conceptual change.
Contributions of DBER: Problem Solving and the
Use of Representations
• As novices in a domain, students are challenged by
important aspects of the domain that can seem easy or
obvious to experts. (Conclusion 7)
• Students can be taught more expert-like problem-solving
skills and strategies to improve their understanding of
representations.
Contributions of DBER:
Research on Effective Instruction
• Involving students actively in the learning process
can enhance learning more effectively than lecturing.
• Effective instruction includes a range of wellimplemented, research-based approaches.
(Conclusion 8)
Future Directions for DBER: Translating DBER
into Practice
• Available evidence suggests that DBER and related
research have not yet prompted widespread changes in
teaching practice among science and engineering faculty.
(Conclusion 12)
• Efforts to translate DBER and related research into
practice are more likely to succeed if they:
– are consistent with research on motivating adult learners,
– include a deliberate focus on changing faculty conceptions about
teaching and learning,
– recognize the cultural and organizational norms of the department
and institution, and
– work to address those norms that pose barriers to change in
teaching practice. (Conclusion 13)
Future Directions for DBER: Recommendations
for Translating DBER Into Practice
• RECOMMENDATION: With support from institutions,
disciplinary departments, and professional societies,
faculty should adopt evidence-based teaching practices.
• RECOMMENDATION: Institutions, disciplinary
departments, and professional societies should work
together to prepare current and future faculty to apply the
findings of DBER and related research, and then include
teaching effectiveness in evaluation processes and
reward systems throughout faculty members’ careers.
(Paraphrased)
Problems in K-12 US Science Education
Goals for US Science Education
Key Ideas from Research
on Learning
• Organize science learning
(=standards) around core
ideas and learning
progressions.
• Study of science needs to
reflect science.
Phase I
Phase II
1990s
1990s-2009
7/2011 – 3/2013
1/2010 - 7/2011
Major Educational Goals of the Framework
• Coherent investigation of core ideas across
multiple years of school
• More seamless blending of practices with core
ideas and crosscutting concepts
• Making science (education) relevant and
significant for the learners
Organized around core explanatory ideas
“The next generation of standards and curricula … should be
structured to identify a few core ideas in a discipline and
elaborate how those ideas can be cumulatively developed
over grades K-8.” (Taking Science to School, 2007, Rec. 2)
Criteria for core ideas
•Disciplinary significance
•Generative for understanding and investigation
•Relevant to people’s interests, life experiences
•Teachable and learnable from K to 12
Organized in learning progressions
Learning complex explanatory ideas…
•…unfolds over time
•…requires revisiting core ideas in new contexts that
force students to extend them
•…requires that students engage in tasks that force
them to synthesize and apply ideas
“Standards should be organized as progressions that support
students’ learning over multiple grades. They should take into
account how students’ command of the concepts, core ideas, and
practices becomes more sophisticated over time with appropriate
instructional experiences.” (NRC 2011, Rec 7)
A Progression of Explanatory Ideas
9-12
6-8
3-5
K-2
Molecular model of biochemical reactions
for matter and energy in food.
Chemical reactions model for matter and
energy in food, drawing on particle model of
matter and energy transfer model.
Simple food model: food consumed or
produced is made of matter and provides
energy for organisms.
General needs model: Organisms get what
they need to survive from the environment.
The Dimensions of the Framework
Crosscutting
Concepts
Core Ideas
Practices
What is new?
1. Organized around core
explanatory ideas
2. Organized in learning
progressions
3. Key role of scientific practices
Science and Engineering Practices
1. Asking questions (science)
and defining problems
(engineering)
2. Developing and using models
3. Planning and carrying out
investigations
4. Analyzing and interpreting
data
5. Using mathematics and
computational thinking
6. Developing explanations
(science) and designing
solutions (engineering)
7. Engaging in argument
8. Obtaining, evaluating, and
communicating information
Cross-cutting Elements such as:
• Patterns, similarity, and diversity
• Cause and effect
• Scale, proportion, and quantity
• Systems and system models
• Energy and matter: flows, cycles and conservation
• Form and function
• Stability and change
A core idea for K-12 science instruction is a
scientific idea that:
• Has broad importance across multiple science or
engineering disciplines or is a key organizing concept of a
single discipline
• Provides a key tool for understanding or investigating
more complex ideas and solving problems
• Relates to the interests and life experiences of students
or can be connected to societal or personal concerns that
require scientific or technical knowledge
• Is teachable and learnable over multiple grades at
increasing levels of depth and sophistication
Creating performance expectations from core
idea + practice
Practices:
Developing
explanations,
argument from
evidence
Core idea: Matter and energy in organisms (grade 8): Plants, algae,
and many microorganisms use the energy from light to make sugars
(food) from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water through
the process of photosynthesis, which also releases oxygen. These
sugars can be used immediately or stored for growth or later use.
Animals obtain food from eating plants or eating other animals.
Within individual organisms, food moves through a series of chemical
reactions in which it is broken down and rearranged to form new
molecules, to support growth or to release energy. In most animals
and plants oxygen reacts with carbon-containing molecules (sugars)
to provide energy and produce waste carbon-dioxide…
Performance expectation: Students construct and defend an explanation for
why the air a human breathes out contains a lower proportion of oxygen than
the air he or she breathed in. The explanation needs to address where in the
body the oxygen was used, how it was used, and how it was transported there.
NGSS Middle School Sample
a. Construct and use models to explain that atoms combine to
form new substances of varying complexity in terms of the
number of atoms and repeating subunits.
b. Plan investigations to generate evidence supporting the claim
that one pure substance can be distinguished from another
based on characteristic properties.
c. Use a simulation or mechanical model to determine the effect
on the temperature and motion of atoms and molecules of
different substances when thermal energy is added to or
removed from the substance.
d. Construct an argument that explains the effect of adding or
removing thermal energy to a pure substance in different phases
and during a phase change in terms of atomic and molecular
motion.
Summary of Important Changes
Less
More
Focus on solely eradicating
misconceptions
Build on prior knowledge, interest and
identity when possible
Inquiry as isolated activity
Practices embody inquiry as how one
does and learns science
Science as a body of knowledge
to be memorized
Science content is learned through
engagement in practices—along
developmental progressions
Select curriculum coverage of
applications of science,
engineering and technology
Greater emphasis on engineering and
applications of science and technology
Only older children able to learn
science
Young children are quite capable and
interested in science learning
Focus on ambitious science
learning goals for select students
Focus on ambitious science learning
goals for all students
• Engaging K-12
and higher
education
• New definition
required
• Evidence
gathering
• Policies to
support quality
implementation
(e.g., graduation
requirements)
• Effects on K-12,
higher education,
and workforce
• State Coalitions
• Engaging the
business
community
• Communications
strategy
College and
Career
Readiness
NGSS Support
Science
Education
Policies
Adoption and
Implementation
Planning
• Supporting
states in
planning for
adoption
• Supporting
states in
planning for
implementation
“So these kids will start becoming the
demanding customers of the
postsecondary learning factories we refer
to as colleges and universities”
Find out more!
• www.nap.edu
• www.nas.edu/bose
• http://www.nextgenscience.org