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Curricular Goals for the Near Future
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Time for Science
Science knowledge about the natural world and the processes by which
that knowledge is acquired is a basic subject. To pretend otherwise is to
deceive, but we perpetuate the deception in our schools. To present science as a
basic subject, we need to make some substantial changes, starting with the time
that is allocated to science in elementary school. We believe that during those
early years, students should receive science-related instruction. As much time
should be spent on science as is spent on the other basics reading, writing,
and mathematics.
Wherever possible, the presentation of science should dissolve the historical
boundaries between educational disciplines. Knowledge about the natural world
should become integrated with reading, writing, and mathematics. Examples of
written science materials that could be incorporated into the normal language-
arts lessons include stories about nature and organisms, travel, and how the
universe operates. Such reading materials should be written in an interesting
style, be filled with visual accompaniments, and be conceptually accurate. Lists
of resources of this nature are available, for example, The Museum of Science
and Industry Basic List of Children's Science Books (Richter and Wenzel, 1986,
1987).
But the suggestion of more time for science involves something much
more important than reading and writing about science. The time should be
used primarily and most importantly for hands-on exploration by the students.
The emphasis should hinge on engagement with, observation of, and direct
experience in the natural world. Instruction should not be narrowly focused; it
13
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FULFILLING THE PROMISE
should not suggest at the start of the lesson that something unusual, esoteric,
or difficult is about to be studied. The most important goal is to make science
attractive and interesting to the students. Many organizations are currently
working toward that end, as noted in Science for Children (NSRC, 1988), a
compilation of curriculum materials, supplementary resources, and sources of
information and assistance for elementary-school teachers.
Many districts throughout the country are now developing hands-on science
programs for elementary-school children. These districts find it necessary to
support their teachers through a comprehensive inservice education program
and a science-resource center that supplies modular science kits. At regular
intervals, the kits which include a teachers guide, a set of student activity
books, and a set of equipment for the classroom are circulated from one
teacher to another after being checked and resupplied with disposable materials
at the district level. Such kits are being designed at the national level in several
places, including the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, California, and
the Education Development Center in Newton, Massachusetts. The National
Science Resources Center (NSRC) in Washington, D.C., is developing 24 kits
of this type: four each for grades 1-6. The first three kits, scheduled for
commercial availability in the spring of 1991, deal with plant growth, with
electricity, and with microscopes.
Natural History as One Focus
The K-6 years are the appropriate years for developing an "intuitive"
(rather than a formal, taxonomic) understanding of biological diversity and the
relationships of living organisms. Students should be engaged in observing and
caring for a wide range of organisms that can be housed in the classroom,
with emphasis on local plants and animals. Many animals can be raised in
terrariums or aquariums. Students should assist in feeding and rearing animals
to understand their needs, their behavior, and their life histories.
Because plants are especially easy to grow and care for, students at every
grade level should be involved with gardening projects, using outside space,
window boxes, or potted plants. Both domesticated and native plants should
be grown and observed. The ecological and agricultural importance of plants
should be a major point of emphasis. The historical importance of agriculture
in the development of the human race provides an ideal opportunity to integrate
the social and natural sciences.
Students should visit both pristine and disturbed habitats often to observe
and study the web of life and how it is influenced by natural and human-related
factors. Local resources should be used, such as museums, natural areas, parks,
the zoo, and any municipal facility where local talent can be tapped. Local
school districts should work together with local resource people to develop
appropriate field trips and study sites that can be used routinely by classes. The
same sites should be visited periodically throughout the school year to follow
the annual weather cycle, thereby stressing continuity and change over time.
Every school should provide transportation to appropriate field sites. A
reasonable pattern is two trips per month (on the average) away from the school
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15
site and frequent trips around the school grounds or local neighborhood. The
self contained classroom model in place in most elementary schools lends itself
nicely to scheduling half-day or all-day trips. In contrast, the departmentalized
or rotating classroom model in place in most secondary schools makes the
scheduling of field trips almost impossible. The enriching experience of the field
trip is thus logically the domain of the elementary-school science curriculum.
The Need to Explore
The existing emphasis on learning facts derived primarily from reading is
inadequate. It should be replaced by learner-centered lessons that allow students
to observe nature directly and practice the skills of inquiry. By inquiry we mean
several related processes. Students need to become actively engaged in thinking,
asking, and problem-solving. The students' role should be to experience, discuss
their experiences with each other, and write about the experiences. The teacher's
role is to listen, encourage, ask questions, and lead, but not to act as a font of
knowledge, pouring information into empty vessels. Lessons in science should
develop skills in careful observation, comparison, measurement, questioning,
and communication. As the next step, they should then engage the students in
formulating interpretations, conclusions, and explanations. In short, they should
reflect more accurately the processes by which science is done and scientific
understanding achieved.
Ideally, units of study should be designed as projects, rather than as isolated
topics or chapters in a book. During each project, students can produce a tangible
product related to the unit of study for display at school and presentation to
their families. This approach of "discovery, project, and product" helps each
student to develop skills in communication, promotes pride in creativity, engages
family support, and develops a positive self-image. The products can include
posters, models, photo essays, measurements and presentations of growth or
seasonal changes, and the like. Emphasis should be on successful and creative
completion of such projects and then on re-examination of results, rather than on
worksheets or written examinations, which promote a competitive atmosphere
that is detrimental to most young children. Projects also lend themselves well
to integrating mathematics and social studies into the units of study.
Achievement Tests
The public's desire to see evidence of school improvement carries a danger.
The danger lies not in the understandable wish to see improvement, but in the
primitive measures available for assessing what students have learned. This
subject is taken up in more detail later in the report (Chapter 4), but a word of
caution is in order here.
If education in science in elementary school is to improve, achievement
tests must not be allowed to drive the curriculum in wrong directions. Tradition-
ally, such tests have emphasized factual recall and have led teachers to design
curricula that "teach to the tests." The tests seriously compromise curricula that
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are devoted to teaching science as a participatory process and to developing
skills in observation and inference.
The California Assessment Program (CAP), an example of a testing pro-
gram of a different sort, does not monitor specific students or even specific
teachers, but attempts to monitor only the overall effectiveness of a schoolwide
curriculum. The California Science Framework and Science Framework Adden-
dum are statewide documents that attempt to define the educational approach
and curricular emphases on which CAP testing is based (Science Curriculum
Framework and Criteria Committee, 1984~. Since the institution of the eighth-
grade science test in 1985-1986, test scores have improved each year (results
provided by the California State Department of Education). Although the test-
ing program still has far to go to meet the stated goals of an instrument that
evaluates conceptual and process-oriented understanding, the attention currently
focused on the CAP and a statewide emphasis on meeting the objectives in the
State Science Framework are helping to fuel a reform of the science curriculum.
Students should leave elementary school with a strong love for and appre-
ciation of nature and for their own world around them and with the recognition
that science is an important way to learn about the world. In elementary school,
every student should feel successful in learning science and should look forward
to additional instruction. Emphasis should therefore be placed on active partic-
ipation in science activities, and not on highly competitive grading procedures.
These objectives are far more important than either acquisition of the kind of
knowledge that is measured by traditional examinations or attempts to identify
and reward future scientists. If every student entering the middle-school years
already had positive attitudes toward science, the lifelong curiosity about the
natural world that would be in place could be exploited in later years.
Science Education of Elementary-School Science Teachers
Teachers of science in elementary school must be far better prepared than
are most at present. To disguise their anxieties about science, most elementary-
school science teachers have hidden behind textbook-centered lessons that stress
vocabulary and memorization of facts. Given the minimal amount of science
instruction taken in college by most elementary-school teachers, that attitude
is understandable. But the situation must change to achieve quality science
instruction in the elementary schools. Because of the breadth required to teach
interdisciplinary science well, and because of the very poor science background
of most elementary-school teachers, science specialists might be needed to
introduce science instruction into most elementary schools.
A science specialist should be trained and certified specifically for teaching
science in elementary schools. Such training will require more than the conven-
tional college-level courses in science. The specialist needs training as well in
teaching elementary-school science with approaches that engage children in the
excitement of the subject. Few programs for preparing teachers currently offer,
let alone require, such training for future elementary-school teachers, even those
who will teach science.
If elementary schools were to rely primarily on science specialists for
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science instruction, it could be a major change from the current practice
of assigning one teacher to teach everything (except perhaps an occasional
lesson on music or art). Such a use of science specialists, however, presents
two dangers. First, it could preserve the place of science as a peripheral or
supplementary subject, taught only when a specialist is available. Second, it
could postpone the necessary preparation of other elementary-school teachers to
teach science. Science specialists must therefore be used imaginatively and in
ways that do not compromise other goals. One possibility is teaming assigning
a team of two or three teachers with different strengths to teach two or three
classrooms of students. Students need not change classrooms; members of the
teaching team can move from one classroom to another. Successful models
of teaming exist nationwide (see discussion, for example, in the report of
the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989, pp. 38-40~. With
appropriate cooperation, science specialists' skills can complement those of
other teachers on the team, making them more comfortable with science in the
classroom. Furthermore, the skills and knowledge of science specialists can be
used in inservice programs to assist their colleagues. We see a role for science
specialists in the classroom as a short-term expedient. Preservice education of
elementary-school teachers should prepare all teachers to present science with
the other basics.
Conclusions
The last 20 years have seen the transformation of the United States into a
society that is increasingly dependent on science and technology, but awareness
of that reality has not yet permeated our system of education. Science must be
treated as a first-priority subject, beginning in the crucially formative years of
elementary school. Our general failure to treat it thus is a major reason why
secondary-school students perform poorly and harbor negative attitudes about
science.
Substantially more time needs to be devoted to science in elementary
schools. Biology should focus on natural history, be integrated with other
subjects wherever possible, and emphasize observation, interpretation, and
hands-on involvement, rather than memorization of facts.
Recommendations
The first three of the following recommendations are starkly worded. Each
raises other issues, and each confronts us with numerous obstacles that will
have to be overcome before it can be implemented. Most of the rest of this
report deals in more detail with how the obstacles can be met and overcome.
(In Chapter 8, which addresses the need for national leadership, we propose a
means of monitoring and encouraging progress on many fronts.)
· State departments of education should not only make science a
basic subject in elementary schools, but ensure that science instruction is
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of adequate quality. This will require much more than token observance
of new regulations.
· All programs for preparing elementary-school teachers should in-
stitute preservice and inservice activities to assist teachers in presenting sci-
ence to young children. Likewise, licensing and credentialing boards should
require rigorous training of those who will seek to teach elementary-school
science. All elementary-school teachers should become more familiar and
comfortable with science, so that the subject can be truly integrated into
the elementary-school curriculum.
· Statewide or district tests should be used only if they are consis-
tent with the goals of a concept-oriented and hands-on elementary-school
science curriculum. Achievement tests, when used, should stress concep-
tual understanding and development of problem-solving skills, rather than
acquisition of detailed factual knowledge for its own sake. Inclusion of
performance-based exercises in any testing program is also desirable.
· Industry, government agencies, universities, professional societies,
and other organizations should assist school personnel and cooperating local
resource people in identifying field sites and appropriate field trips to be
used by elementary schools. For example, many members of conservation
groups and birding clubs have extensive knowledge of local natural history.
Local groups could provide summer financial support to help develop
programs of study that use those resources in conveying how science is
related to the immediate world of the students.
· Attention should be given to the integration of "science stories"
into language-arts lessons. Reading and writing about natural phenomena
appropriate for the range of readers in elementary school should be an inte-
gral part of language-arts and reading instruction. Readings could include
stories and other narrative forms and introduce and increase expository
science materials over the elementary-school years. Writing should give
students opportunities to explain their observations and findings and to
examine feelings about the natural environment.
MIDDLE SCHOOL
Human Biology as a Focus
Science courses in middle schools must meet the specific needs and interests
of early adolescent students. There are doubtless a number of ways to achieve
that goal, but we conclude that the most appropriate formula for the life sciences
is one that makes the student the object of study. Rather than perpetuating the
life-science course as an anemic version of high-school biology or as a maze of
discrete topics distributed throughout textbooks of general science, we would
make human biology, broadly defined, the theme. This perspective should raise
the student's level of motivation and thereby generate a continuing incentive to
learn. In addition, it will provide an appropriate continuation of the science that
we propose be taught in elementary schools.
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Adolescents at the middle-school level are especially curious about them-
selves, so links should be forged between the middle-school health-science
course and the life-science course. That will necessitate extensive change in
the format of both courses. Properly taught, human biology provides a cross-
disciplinary perspective on the nature of humankind and what it means to be
human. For students, human biology should be learning to know oneself, un-
derstanding other human beings, and appreciating their relationships to all other
forms of life and to the biosphere. For the teacher, teaching biology means
providing a curriculum that not only focuses on understanding oneself, but also
increases human potential by developing responsible attitudes about the health
of self and others, by reducing maladjustive behaviors (e.g., unhealthy eating
and drinking, smoking, and the use of illegal drugs), and by fostering respect
for the environment and for the need to sustain a biosphere favorable for the
survival of life.
Course Structure
A human-biology course for a middle-school life-science program could
be designed as a 2-year sequence that would fill the curricular time slots
now occupied by life-science and health-science courses. The subject matter
would have both a biological and a cultural and social dimension. The course
should include conceptual strands to reinforce ideas of relationships, community,
ethics, one's place in the universe, and understanding of self. State requirements
regarding teaching about topics related to health and safety should be integrated
into the presentation.
Investigative activities should be designed in which students are most often
the objects of study for example, examining human cells, studying genetic and
physical diversity in a class population, and studying the local environment.
We must not underestimate the effort that will be necessary to effect the
suggested change in the middle-school life-science program, because it cannot
be achieved by tinkering. The subject matter for a curriculum in human biology
needs to be drawn from several disparate fields of scholarship, and that will
require the efforts of others besides biologists. Fortunately, some models are
already being developed. One such program is the Carnegie-Stanford human
life-science curriculum that is being formulated by researchers from the Stanford
University departments of biology, sociology, psychology, and anthropology;
the school of medicine (including departments of general practice, psychiatry,
and pediatrics); and the Families Study Center (Hurd, 1989a). Representatives
of those fields all have teaching assignments in Stanford's Program in Human
Biology. Other groups are in the preliminary stages of developing middle-school
science curricula that focus on the development of the early adolescent and the
inclusion of science-technology-society (STS) themes (NSF, 1988; BSCS, 1989~.
Another group, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), has initiated
the Scope, Sequence and Coordination project that addresses science teaching
in grades 7-12 (Aldridge, 1989~.
Creation of a syllabus is only the start. Courses need to be field-tested,
appropriate textbooks must be written, new modes of examination need to be
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developed, models for preservice and inservice training must be created and
tested, and the relationship with health courses and with teachers responsible
for that component of the middle-school curriculum must be redefined. (For
example, persons not trained in science should not teach science.) The necessary
changes are not matters that can be dealt with by casual administrative fiat;
they require extensive cooperative ventures by many people who must make
the necessary commitment of time and energy, and every school district in the
nation will have to be willing to reexamine cherished practices. Many of the
potential barriers to implementing curricular change are discussed at greater
length in Chapters 4 and 5.
Conclusions
The middle-school life-science course needs drastic revamping. An ori-
entation to human biology holds great promise for both sustaining students'
interest in science and addressing a variety of educational goals important to
society at large.
Recommendations
· Several models of refashioned middle-school life-science curricula
are being developed. Therefore, the greatest need is not to undertake
new initiatives, but to create a process by which programs can be tested,
monitored, and evaluated in the science and education communities. As
new programs enter the classroom, we will need to know what is working
for which socioeconomic, ethnic, and cultural groups; whether a given
program has paid sufficient attention to long-term aspects, such as inservice
training, and to the development of appropriate testing materials; and what
is needed to ensure not only high scientific quality in individual programs,
but wide dissemination of the most successful ones. Unfortunately, the
argument that good educational programs necessarily push out bad ones
rings hollow. Therefore, in Chapter 8 we propose a mechanism for the
continuous evaluation and monitoring of science education in the nation's
schools.
HIGH SCHOOL
When this committee began its deliberations, we found ourselves wrestling
with the content of the high-school biology course what it was and what we
thought it ought to be. The more we discussed the details of the curriculum,
however, the more we saw that we could not convey our vision of the future with
yet another syllabus. We fully expect some readers to pick up this document
with the hope of finding an outline for the perfect course. They will be
disappointed, for our message is vastly more complex than can be conveyed in
a syllabus. The high-school biology course, like the other high-school science
courses, requires fundamental changes.
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Teachers have no shortage of lists and skeletal outlines of topics to be
presented in their courses. Those forms of guidance are in fact part of the
problem. Putting down yet another bare-bones description of a course will send
just the wrong message, for it will invite teachers and publishers alike to look
for the topics that they "cover" and, on finding them, to conclude that they must
be doing the right thing. Furthermore, academics will complain if their favorite
corner of biology is not mentioned. We discuss textbooks in Chapter 4.
We have argued that students who reach the high-school course in biology
should already have experienced 9 or 10 years of formal exposure to science.
Specifically, we have suggested that the biology to which they were exposed
in elementary school should have focused on natural history and that middle
school should have helped them to understand themselves as living organisms.
By the time they reach high school, teachers should be able to build successfully
on that foundation.
We can indicate what the high-school course should be doing by contrasting
it with the present version. The explosion of scientific knowledge in the
twentieth century confronts us with the need to choose carefully the material to
be presented at every level. In making these choices, we must be clear in our
own minds about the criteria we are using. All too often, selection is driven by
the calendar: If a fact was unearthed last year it must be important. Or if we
understand something in great detail, we should teach that detail. The notion
of punctuated equilibrium might be but a ripple on the surface of evolutionary
theory; because it is current, it has received considerable attention. We know
an enormous amount about the molecular details of intermediary metabolism,
but to whom are those details important? Certainly not to students with no
previous formal exposure to chemistry.
We need a much leaner biology course that is constructed from a small
number of general principles that can serve as scaffolding on which students
will be able to build further knowledge. Further knowledge can come from
reading the newspaper or from course work, but the scaffolding should include
an understanding of basic concepts in cell and molecular biology, evolution,
energy and metabolism, heredity, development and reproduction, and ecology.
Concepts must be mastered through inquiry, not memorization of words. The
number of new words introduced must be kept to an absolute minimum.
Examples of What Is Needed
A high-school course with the above aim embodies a substantial departure
from the current course. Several examples drawn from different topics will help
to convey our intent.
Development and Reproduction
The present course is so burdened with terminology that concepts are lost.
For example, the emphasis on naming structures permeates the biology course
from molecules to organisms. Consider the process by which the chromosome
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number is reduced so that each sperm or egg receives a single copy of each
chromosome. Many teachers and most textbooks today present the details of
meiosis I and II, the specific structures of chromosomes in meiosis I, and the
details of meiotic recombination by introducing as many as 20 terms. The
names and details of the events during pairing and synapsis are not important
in teaching that the process of meiosis halves the number of chromosomes.
Students should learn that some chromosomal breakage and rejoining occur
and that they increase genetic diversity, but the details can obscure the main
function of meiosis genetic recombination and preparation for fertilization.
The teacher could enrich the topic for some students by posing the question of
how chromosomes find each other to pair. The students could make their own
predictions, inasmuch as the answer is not yet known.
Energy and Metabolism
Many high-school textbooks handle energy superficially. Students must
develop an intuitive grasp of the meaning of energy, its different forms, its
conservation, and its relation to order and organization of matter in the world
of their personal experience before an exploration of energy as the universal
requirement for self-sustenance will hold any meaning. The capture and use of
energy constitute a common theme that is encountered at the levels of cells,
organisms, and ecosystems, but the theme is seldom well developed in the
classroom.
Much is known about the details of intermediary metabolism, but ninth- and
tenth-grade students need not be burdened with structural formulas of organic
molecules and the details of the Krebs cycle. The role of cellular respiration
should be developed by focusing on the essential chemistry, involving the
stepwise oxidation of organic molecules to form CO2 and the concomitant
reduction reactions in mitochondria in effect, the charging of a battery that
in turn forms adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Expenditure (hydrolysis) of ATP
is then coupled to the manifold activities of cells that require energy: making
muscles work, building proteins and other molecules, pumping ions out of cells,
and so forth.
Finding imaginative analogues in the world of the students' experience
and interest is essential. For example, comparison with an engine is instructive,
because both boys and girls at this age are developing strong (if superficial)
interests in automobiles. Because enzymes enable the reactions to proceed at
room temperature, less energy is wasted as heat, and the efficiency of energy
conversion to work is high, compared with that in an engine. The formal
and reciprocal relationship of cellular respiration with photosynthesis can be
developed from the same small number of principles, and green plants lead
naturally into the realm of ecology and the Earth's energy and food balance.
The latter issues are now usually treated separately, if they are mentioned at all.
Cell and Molecular Biology
Today's students are presented with generalized diagrams of a cell and
required to memorize the names of all the subcellular structures, associating each
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with a function, such as inheritance, secretion, energy production, or digestion.
Instead of viewing the cell as a complex of independent factories, it would be
more sensible to adopt a functional perspective in which various structures-
such as the endoplasmic reticulum, lysosomes, and Golgi apparatus-can be
thought of as part of an extra-cytoplasmic region involved in shifting proteins
from one compartment to another and out of the cell. In the nucleus, the
main concept is that the synthesis of RNA on a DNA template is physically
separated from the synthesis of proteins, because the RNA has to pass through
the nuclear membrane before it can be translated into proteins. The nucleolus
(a prominent structure inside the nucleus with an unfortunate name) is not
of special importance functionally for tenth-grade biology students. Other
morphological terms, such as centromere and centriole, are merely confusing.
Students need to know only that during mitosis the duplicated chromosomes
split apart and are moved by the spindle structures to opposite spindle poles.
Students need not memorize the names of the various stages of mitosis.
Cells communicate with other cells by a few mechanisms. This important
topic is not covered at all in high-school classes, yet it forms a scientific basis
for understanding many biological problems, including the action of brain-
altering drugs. In many kinds of cell-cell communication, signals must be
interpreted by a cell, which then responds in specific ways. These responses
occur during signal transmission from nerve cell to nerve cell and from nerve
cells to muscles and glands. Other examples are response to light in the retina,
response to signaling by hormones, response to artificial drugs (such as opiates),
and the response of an egg to a sperm. Although these responses seem very
different, they involve a few common mechanisms that start with the binding of
molecules outside the cell (the signal) to proteins embedded in the cell's plasma
membrane. The cytoplasmic tails of the receptors (the part inside the cell)
respond to these external signals by inducing one of a few types of chemical
response. In general, chemical responses follow a unified pattern of signal
transmission and reception over a time scale from milliseconds in the brain to
months in hormonal control of pregnancy. The general pattern is important, but
the biochemical details of the chemical responses are varied, often complex,
and totally unnecessary to memorize for a student to understand the general
. · ~
slgnlncance.
Evolution
The current handling of evolution is egregious. The meaning of the word
"theory" has been so corrupted as to spread confusion about the process of
science throughout the biology course. As Lerner and Bennetta (1988) have
documented, not only do textbooks use "theory" synonymously with myth,
legend, or any idea that might pop into the head, but the word is also used as
an antonym of "fact." How can a student understand what is meant by "cell
theory" or "kinetic theory" when assaulted by such nonsense?
Evolution must be taught as a natural process, as a process that is as
fundamental and important in the living world as any basic concept of physics
one can name. The evidence that supports evolution-physical measurements
of the age of the earth, the fossil record, patterns of similarity in body plans, the
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records left in the primary structures of nucleic acids and proteins should all
be examined, and students should be led to see how such disparate knowledge
knits together to form an elegant and coherent whole.
The existence of evolution should be distinguished from the mechanism by
which it occurs; Darwin's contribution was enormous, but its nature should be
made clear. Students should understand that natural selection is the principal,
but not the only, factor that leads to evolutionary change; they should learn
something about the concepts of populations and species; and they should
understand the differences between changes that take place in an individual
during development and changes that take place in a lineage as a result of
evolution.
Evolution is a process and should not be confused with classification,
which is a static way of organizing information about organismic diversity. The
study of evolution as a process will be most successful if students have acquired
some feeling for biological diversity in earlier years through the study of natural
history. The study of evolution does not require an extensive knowledge of
classification, but knowledge of the evolutionary process provides a framework
in which information about systematics will appeal to students. Conversely, dry
taxonomic detail by itself is as appealing to learn as the table of organization
of a large corporation. Consequently, systematics should appear in the biology
course only to the extent necessary to illustrate the process of evolution and
satisfy curiosity about the organisms with which most students are familiar. The
amount and type of systematic information appropriate might therefore vary,
depending on the location of the school and the backgrounds of the students.
Our proposals for injecting a great deal of natural history into the earlier years
should free much time that is now devoted to systematics in the high-school
course.
Ecology
Ecology is often slighted in school; by one estimate, only about 20% of
biology teachers find time to treat the subject at all in their courses. The section
on ecology often comes at the end of a long text, and classes commonly do not
get that far.
Ecology involves connections between organisms and between organisms
and their environments and students need to develop a feeling for this inter-
relatedness as part of their high-school course. We have concern, however,
about the effectiveness of the present curriculum with its pervasive emphasis
on names and terms. For example, rather than have students memorize lists of
every conceivable biotic and abiotic factor on the globe, how much better it
would be to engage students in field observations! Rather than have students
learn the conventional descriptions of various biomes, we could engage them
more productively in analyzing local communities with which they are already
familiar. The measurement of microclimatic factors and diversity could serve
as the base for studying first-hand the effects of perturbation in similar nearby
habitats. Concepts developed from that sort of direct experience will have
lasting meaning when they are generalized to the unfamiliar.
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Conclusions and Recommendations:
The Scope of Change
The several examples presented here do not constitute a course. They are
offered solely to suggest how the teaching of biology needs to change. Skillful
teachers will recognize the formula, and many will be able to offer more and
better examples. For the most part, however, our schools have little experience
in teaching scientific concepts, reasoning, and learning through inquiry; for a
teaching force accustomed to lecturing, the demands are imposing:
Verbal inculcation, however lucid, has very little effect in enhancing reasoning
and concept formation. This is not to disparage clear explanation and
presentation; it would be foolish to advocate unclear explanation or none
at all. Too many teachers, however, labor under the illusion that clear
explanation is all that is necessary, and this illusion is a significant source
of student failure in development of understanding. Not only is hands-on
experience essential, but students must be led to articulate explanations and
lines of reasoning in their own words. They must interpret their own hands-
on experience, and they must be able to define new terms through appeal to
shared experience and simpler words having prior definition [Arons, 1989].
In that brief passage, we have before us the scope of change:
· In designing a course, we must identify the central concepts and
principles that every high-school student should know and pare from the
curriculum everything that does not explicate and illuminate these relatively
few concepts.
· The concepts must be presented in such a manner that they are
related to the world that students understand in a language that is familiar.
· They must be taught by a process that engages all the students
in examining why they believe what they believe. That requires building
slowly, with ample time for discussion with peers and with the teacher. In
science, it also means observation and experimentation, not as an exercise
in following recipes, but to confront the essence of the material.
We are concerned as much with how science is taught as with the substance
of what is taught, and we have considerable doubt about the success of any
"reform" that fails to address both parts of the problem. Some will be nervous
with this approach, having memories of open classrooms and other educational
promises that stumbled. Reform that is perceived as a fad generates disquiet, if
not resistance. In such a climate, the slogan "back to basics" might capture the
imagination, for its ring of directness and simplicity makes it appealing. But in
teaching biology, the conventional promise of "back to basics" is without hope,
importance, or meaning. Consider first what is taught the content. Neither
much of the biology of today nor the culture in which it has relevance existed
in previous generations, so there is no solid core of basics to which we can be
seeking a return. As for how it is taught, it is true that the methods of teaching
high-school science have not changed much in the last century; but, as we have
explained, there is little cause for pride in that record.
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FULFILLING THE PROMISE
The high-school biology course should instill in students a recognition
that science is a process that gives us ways of knowing about the natural
world. Students should engage in that process themselves, learning by first-hand
experience the skills of measuring and the limits of measurements, becoming
acquainted with the practice of reasoning from observation and with the meaning
of causation, developing a feeling for scales of size and time that lie beyond
direct human sensory experience, and understanding the role of chance in natural
phenomena. They should come to see that, although scientific understanding
represents our best available analysis and is always subject to revision on the
basis of new information, some knowledge is in fact secure and unlikely to
change fundamentally, whereas other knowledge is tentative and certain to be
refined in the near future.
These goals are more simply stated than accomplished. Inspiring textbooks
and skillful teaching are works of art. Like a virtuoso performance on a mu-
sical instrument, they require- in various proportions time, training, practice,
encouragement, and inspiration.
In Chapters 4 and 5, we turn to the substantial obstacles that must be
overcome before we can achieve the desired goals in a majority of the nation's
biology classrooms. We examine there what teachers are taught and how they
are taught to teach, how we assess educational success through testing, how
textbooks are produced, and what research scientists and university teachers
contribute both to the problem and to its solution.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
elementary school
