EDUC 6470 Final Project

For EDUC 6470, a project to examine innovative teaching, to search the literature, and to develop ideas. See EDUC 6470 Final Project-Discarded Topics for two topics I considered before settling on this one.

Relationships between innovative teaching and innovative curriculum

Abstract

In a course at Cornell University, Innovative Teaching in the Sciences, we have studied several pedagogical innovations. The author finds and draws links between those innovations and interesting reforms in curriculum. Some new pedagogies are well-suited to new curriculum, while some tend to support traditional curriculum. The authors conclude that inquiry, perhaps the most important focus of reform, can be seen as both a pedagogy and a curriculum, and perhaps it can be best taught explicitly as the focal content.

About the author

Shawn Reeves is a high school physics teacher, also president of EnergyTeachers.org, a network for educators interested in energy production and use. He studied the physics and its history for his B.A.; the applicability of the then-new Math, Science, and Technology Standards for New York State for his M.A.T., and most recently is studying the slow change in the canon as presented in introductory physics textbooks.

Introduction

In Cornell's Education course, Innovative Teaching in the Sciences, taught by Dr. Barbara Crawford, we have studied several pedagogical innovations. I have sought to link those innovations to my research focus on curriculum change. One difficulty in making connections is that there is very little literature on curriculum change, so this work is a survey of what might be done to make connections and examine curriculum with the best pedagogical innovations in mind.

Curriculum change, specifically examining and questioning the choice of content in early physics courses, is a rare topic in physics education research. In discussing curriculum change, or specifically curriculum diversification with teachers and researchers, I see connections between the resistance to curriculum change and the belief that physics is separate from humanity more than most any other subject, something to be discovered then sanctified. Some resistance may also be attributed to the unmoving standard subjects in mandated and national tests for high schools, a sense of back-to-basics among conservatives in education, a nationalization of curriculum (more notable in other english-speaking countries), and an unwillingness on the part of textbook publishers to remove any concepts from textbooks.

Since the late 1980s, documents have appeared that ask curriculum leaders and teachers to begin to teach more about the nature of science, and to use "inquiry-based" methods to teach science, at the expense of rote content. That movement has been very slow most likely because inquiry has mostly been accepted by practitioners only as a way to better teach that same rote content. Many instruments used to measure progress, which has been slow by any measure, only measure improvement in understanding the same content that existed on those instruments before states added sections on inquiry and the nature of science to their guiding documents.

There are different measures of progress which interest different parties. Since H.A. Rowland's "Plea for Pure Science" in 1883, leaders in physics have been questioning whether, in America, we should offer physics to a broad base of students or focus on lifting the highest achievers even higher.<bibref>Rowland:1883</bibref> This tension between equity and excellence may be treated as a zero-sum game erroneously, as we might have both if we can teach excellence for all, most notably planned by Project 2061 in "Science for All Americans."<bibref>Rutherford:1990Science-for-allAA</bibref>

Another measure of progress, also related to equity, might be a measure of how females fare in early parts of the pipeline to a career in physics. It is important to question whether the content of the curriculum should have anything to do with this question. Two different feminist views might have differing answers, one acknowledging a feminine culture, the other seeking parity in an existing world as paramount.

Common measures of progress are in international test scores, in other more traditional instruments, in participation rates in courses or majors, and in success rates within those courses or majors. As we will see, teachers when making decisions about curriculum may base them on predicted success on state-mandated tests rather than the standards documents on which those tests are only loosely based. No Child Left Behind, in asking states to implement with a standard measure of performance, without funding new testing methods, has served to lessen the possibility that states will have time and resources to develop better measures of more realistic skills and understandings.

On the other hand science education researchers have developed new pedagogies and curricula that incrementally push towards inquiry and new understandings, and for more than a century there have been movements to diversify, intensify, and update teaching and learning, so change is happening despite resistance. For example, England is pushing back against its own nationalization of curriculum towards multiple pathways after age 14.(Pring:2009, p. 98)<bibref>Pring:Education-for-aAA</bibref>

This all leads to my driving question:

Driving question

How can the powerful movement in innovative teaching be brought to help the movement in innovative curriculum?

Questions

To examine the driving question, I seek information on separate fronts, then see where connections might be drawn. I seek to enumerate innovations in curriculum and pedagogy, make connections between the two, then seek specific ideas useful to physics, to science, and to the educators with whom I work:

1. What innovations in curriculum are documented?
2. What innovations in teaching are documented?
3. What innovations in teaching are closely linked to considerations of content?
4. What innovations in teaching are specific to physics?
5. What innovations in teaching are specific to science?
6. What innovations in teaching are specific to my audiences?

Definitions

For the sake of clarity, we take a bit of space to state what we mean when we use certain broadly-used terms in this paper.

Curriculum

Curriculum is the set of ideas, skills, and tools students are expected to learn. There can be differences between the curriculum advanced by standards, by states, by administrators, by teachers, and the curriculum actually learned by students.

Pedagogy

Pedagogy is the methods, tools, and styles teachers use to serve students. In some ways, it is inextricably linked to the curriculum, as certain methods, tools, and styles are appropriate or important to certain subjects or topics, as we will examine later.

Inquiry

As we will explore in this paper, inquiry is an approach to teaching, learning, and research in science, based on the nature of science, which allows for multiple methods, requires intellectual rigor, sees the building of understanding as a goal instead of the sanctity of a bit of knowledge, and requires practitioners to construct and test explanations while interacting with information about their world. Different disciplines in science have different, appropriate standards for what inquiry-learning looks like. When learning through inquiry, students will be limited by instrumentation, theory, and their own conceptual frameworks.

Standards

Standards are documents and ideas that organizations and governments publish as guides or mandates for practitioners.

Considerable Issues

1. There is a tension between getting more people to follow the traditional science curriculum, often touted as a path to equity and to prosperity, and changing the curriculum to address the needs of more modern people. This tension is made manifest in the efforts to open the most traditional curricula of physics and engineering to more females. [?]

Curriculum Reforms

1. Study less topics, more deeply.
2. Study new topics. The idea that the canon needs revision is introduced in "The Saber-Tooth Curriculum" by Harold Benjamin. <bibref>Benjamin:1939Saber-tooth-curAA</bibref> In Mintzes et al., Catherine Middlecamp discusses her long-term exploration of the relationship between specific scientific topics and their worth in the socially-situated classroom.<bibref>Mintzes.etal:2006</bibref> (pp. 279-288)
   1. Update schedules to offer courses around the scientific topics of interest to current society.
   2. Offer a course about science and society.
3. Study only essential topics, approach new topics on a need-to-know basis. Cultural leaders or leaders in each discipline define what is essential.
4. Stick to a nationalized or statewide "Core Curriculum." This reform is enforced by governmental grants that require professional developers, curriculum writers, and other grantees to show how their programs support the core curriculum.
5. Remove old subject-divisions. See Beane, James A. (1995). Curriculum integration and the disciplines of knowledge. Phi Delta Kappan, 76(8), 616. Retrieved May 4, 2010, from Teacher Journals. (Document ID: 1761432). <bibref>Beane:1995Curriculum-inteAA</bibref> Also in Kaleidoscope:Readings in education, ninth edition. Also see two references suggested by Robyn Stewart from this class: Verma, G. (2009). Science and Society in the Classroom: Using sociocultural perspectives to develop science education. McComas, WF - Robyn thinks it's in Science Teacher. A project where Cornell University grad students in biomedical engineering help secondary school teachers develop new lessons "will also help teachers focus on interdisciplinary ways of teaching science, moving away from the traditional hard lines drawn between such fields as chimstry, physics, and biology." (Anne Ju in "BME Grad Students Helping Science Teachers." Cornell Engineering Magazine, Fall 2009, p. 5.)
6. Study the nature of science, including theory-dependence of observation, tentativeness, social relevance, empiricism, etc. (See NSES.) For an example of research on the teaching of the nature of science, see Carol Smith and Laura Wenk, Relations among Three Aspects of First-Year College Students' Epistemologies of Science, 2006, JRST 43:8, 747-785. Hodson (1986) calls for teachers to examine the curriculum to check for content incompatible with modern philosophies of science. (p. 222) Define NOS, Lederman (1998) is helpful. AAAS tries to make clear that science concepts should not be taught without accompanying "habits of mind." (AAAS, 1990, pp. 201-203)<bibref>Rutherford:1990Science-for-allAA</bibref>
7. Teach a "socially responsive" science curriculum. See an example from the Alaska Science Consortium: http://ankn.uaf.edu/publications/handbook/index.html

DIscussion

George DeBoer questions whether we can separate the impact of specifying content standards from the impact of accompanying standardized tests. (in Sunal, 2006, pp. 30-31)<bibref>Sunal:2006The-impact-of-sAA</bibref> Research to answer that question might look at whether any impact can be measured between the time standards are specified and tests are required. Here in New York State, there was an eight year delay between the publishing of new standards and a graduation requirement for science tests.

Dennis Sunal and Emmett Wright undertook a fascinating survey in 2004 of Alabama teachers, finding that some teachers considered the state tests (18%) and textbooks (8%) to set the content-standards for their classrooms.(Sunal 2006, p. 132)<bibref>Sunal:2006The-impact-of-sAA</bibref> They also found that most teachers see the state science standards as content-only standards, not pedagogical or implementation guides. (p. 147) But those teachers who were trained to use the state science standards were more adept at describing classroom activities that would be considered "inquiry learning" as opposed to "transmission learning." (p. 148) In conclusion, they find that a quest for excellence as required by the 2002 No Child Left Behind legislation, in focusing on accountability standards over learning standards, acts against the the national standards focus on science for all, on equity. (p. 149)

Pedagogical Reforms

Here are some of the many reforms in teaching and innovative approaches to the classroom, most which we studied in Innovative Teaching in the Sciences. For each reform, we examine whether there are any special compatibilities or possibilities for each of the curriculum reforms mentioned.

1. Inquiry or guided inquiry. See Erin Marie Furtak's (2006). The Problem with Answers:An Exploration of Guided Scientific Inquiry Teaching. Science Education 90(3), 453-467. Furtak shows how different teachers wrestle with allowing students to ask their own questions and to seek their own answers. If students are not choosing their own variables, not deciding what to control, not bringing their own theory to the table, and not linking claims and counter-claims to data, then they are not using inquiry.
   1. Inquiry should be very compatible with the goal of studying less topics more deeply, for two reasons. First, students will need time to practice inquiry to approach any topic; second, inquiry itself is an important topic, rarely taught.
2. Computer aided simulations and microcomputer-based laboratories. See, for example, Redish et al. 1996: http://filer.case.edu/bjk13/RedishSaulSteinberg_Microcomputer.pdf
   1. Since it is easy to analyze results and activities on the computer, instructors can use computer-based classwork to more quickly get to the deep parts of topics.
   2. Computer simulations and labs, since much of the activities is managed by software, which is easily transferred between schools, allow the rapid spread of an instructional unit. The dilemma is that this can serve both to allow the rapid dissemination of new curricula and to allow the rapid homogenization of some curricula. Miri Barak (2006) shows how using 3D models in chemistry courses and computer-aided information-accession allows students to be trained in modern research processes.<bibref>Mintzes.etal:2006</bibref>
   3. Computer-aided classwork might be made and distributed to help focus courses on essential topics, while providing the instructor with performance data to quickly address need-to-know concepts.
3. Teaching what you don't know. Discussed in a book of the same name by Therese Huston, this is the situation where experts in their subject are teaching something new to themselves. <bibref>Huston:2009Teaching-what-yAA</bibref> Although this situation may merely be an expedient for schools that can't find a teacher for a new subject, I will consider it here as a reform, since it will be required when we want to teach new curricula.
   1. One benefit of teaching new topics is described by John Bean, professor of English at Seattle University, quoted by Huston: "Each time I've taught a literature course I've wanted to have different readings. The teaching that I try to do is not simply the expert giving information to the novice; I'm teaching them how to make knowledge out of stuff that's confusing." (p. 12) Can we apply this idea to science education? It might be argued that the sequence of topics in physics is too strict to allow much change in topics, but I would like to explore the argument against such a restriction.
   2. Teaching new-to-everyone topics seems quite compatible with the depth-before-breadth reform in curriculum. If a class is expected to explore a topic for longer than in a traditional survey course, everyone, including the teacher, is given the opportunity to explore how best to learn the topic.
4. Using student-generated questions. If we allowed students to pose questions in the field of the course, they might generate novel areas of research or approaches to a question. Huston suggests that leading students in a course "that involves reading primary sources, evaluating their claims, and constructing new interpretations" would be a better springboard for a professor's research. (p. 34)
5. Measuring with standardized tests.
   1. Standardized tests might help with getting courses to cover less content better, if the standards distill their conceptual array.
   2. But, they will have negative effects on the study of new topics, since they will lag the cutting edge of curriculum. They will re-establish a canon at the expense of the diversity of learning any nation needs for its citizenry, its workforce.
6. Measuring with concept inventories
   1. Concept inventory pre-tests and post-tests allow educators to measure gains in conceptual understanding, but may only help with the learning of concepts for which inventories are published. This may serve to measure how to learn some concepts more deeply, but will, like standardized tests, impede the movement towards new topics or student-chosen curriculum.
7. Using peer instruction exercises ((Consider Mazur; see chapter 5 of Huston)).
8. Generating mind maps and concept maps. Such views of the constructed frameworks of knowledge and understanding among students may help us more quickly address the essential content, or reach the depth required in a depth-over-breadth curriculum.
9. Team-teaching
10. Teaching the nature of science. Is the point of a high school physics course to help students be able to predict when a ball will clear the back fence, or to help students be more intelligent about physical science in general? A statewide test appears to give a different answer than a statewide standards document. Maybe start with the document File:BruceWilson2002InnovativeCurriculum.pdf as an innovation in curriculum? Bruce Wilson wrote that we need to reduce the amount of required concepts in standards documents, in favor of allowing students to work on essential concepts so well that they learn them well. Leaving off issues of who gets to say what those essential concepts are, what innovative teaching is compatible with such a reform, and what innovative teaching necessitates such reform?
11. Learning Communities. See Crawford, Krajcik, and Marx (1999).
12. Hiring Lecture Facilitators. See French and Russel (2001).<bibref>NSTA:2002Innovative-techAA</bibref>
13. Using learner gains instruments. See Heady (2001).<bibref>Heady:2002Gauging-StudentAA</bibref>
14. Offering science for all instead of weed-out courses. See Tobias (1990).
15. Having students publish or create something. See Slater Prather and Zeilik (2006) page 49.<bibref>Mintzes.etal:2006</bibref>
16. Incorporating primary literature as a learning tool. See Rybarczyk (2006).<bibref>Mintzes.etal:2006</bibref> Brian Rybarczyk writes that instruction with primary literature can promote skiils of "interpreting data, applying concepts, and synthesizing information." (p. 159) In his entire article, however, Rybarczyk only lightly alludes to any possible connection between the use of primary literature and topical content.
17. Using open inquiry labs. See Russell and French (2006).<bibref>Mintzes.etal:2006</bibref>
    1. Donald French and Connie Russell developed open inquiry labs partly to help teach the nature of science and the process of inquiry.
    2. French and Russell also report that their open inquiry labs removed a gender difference of participation that existed in traditional verification labs.

General conclusions

1. Just as scientific theories are inseparably mixed from instrumentation and procedures, pedagogy that utilizes new equipment and new procedures will emphasize certain content beyond the traditional curriculum that depended on traditional equipment and procedures.
2. Inquiry is limited when teachers approach it as merely a pedagogical tool to help transmit a required set of content. Inquiry is a curriculum and a pedagogy, it is both the way students may learn and something for them to learn. Presently, inquiry is often used as a pedagogical method to teach known content that will certainly appear on a mandated test. Perhaps such tests will need to measure the inquiry-related skills of students more directly before inquiry itself will be seen as something that needs to be taught.

Why I chose this project to pursue for EDUC 6470

I can apply the pedagogical innovations discussed in class with the curriculum innovations that interest me, thus cementing the content of this course to my existing frameworks. If constructivism is all it's cracked up to be, then I should learn deeply from this exercise.

References

See Week 10 notes on Donald French's 2006 paper. <bibreferences />