 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
||||||||
 |
 |
|
|||||||
 |
|
||||||||
The Intersection of Policy and Practice in Teacher Education: Perspectives from the Work of the U.S. National Research Council
Jay B. Labov, Ph.D., National Research Council
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The U.S. National Academies serve as Adviser to the Nation in Science, Engineering, and Medicine and has been deeply involved with studies and other activities to help improve science and teacher education. This presentation describes the structure and work of the U.S. National Academies and their role in advising government on matters of science (including science, mathematics, and other areas of education), engineering, and medicine. It then provides an overview of education systems in the United States for both Grades K-12 and higher education. It focuses on the changing landscapes of science and teacher education and professional development based upon emerging research findings on human learning and cognition, and public policy related to education. It also describes the increased emphasis on assessment and accountability, and the development and implementation of curriculum standards that are being required in U.S. schools based upon federal legislation that was adopted nationally in 2001. It offers suggestions about how the K-12 and higher education communities might work with each other to improve science education for students of all ages.
I. The Role of the NationalAcademies in Science and Policy in the United States
What are the effects on human health of low-level electromagnetic radiation from power lines? Are silicone breast implants safe? How reliable are polygraph tests? Is there evidence of global warming? When the U.S. Government and other organizations seek unbiased, independent analysis of such complex and controversial issues in science, technology, and medicine, they often turn to the National Academies. Similarly, when educators want analysis and synthesis of research that can help improve teaching and learning, they too turn to the National Academies for such guidance.
The National Academies are comprised of four organizations: The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the Institute of Medicine (IOM), and the National Research Council (NRC). The first three organizations are honorific and include pre-eminent scientists, engineers, and medical experts from across the U.S. and around the world—many members of the NAS are Nobel laureates. Members and foreign associates are elected by current members. Election is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded scientists, engineers, or medical experts.
The National Academy of Sciences is the parent organization of the National Academies, chartered by an Act of Congress in 1863. The Act of Incorporation states that the NAS, “shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art . . .”
However, the charter also stipulated that “…the Academy shall receive no compensation whatever for any services to the Government of the United States.” This last clause has defined the unique nature of the NationalAcademies and its relationship to the U.S. government for the past 140 years. The Academies are completely independent from the federal government but depend upon the Government to fund its work. This clause in the charter has led to the establishment of a vast volunteer effort to advise the government on matters of science, technology, and medicine, which typically occurs within the National Research Council, the research and operating arm of the National Academies.(1) The NRC also hosts many workshops and other convening activities to explore specific issues from a multidisciplinary perspective.Reports from the National Academies play important roles in helping researchers, practitioners, and policymakers better understand and synthesize the research literature, make policy decisions based on available scientific evidence, and structure future research efforts. The Academies publish between 250 and 300 reports annually all of which are available for reading without cost on the website of the National Academies Press, which publishes all reports from the Academies (http://nap.edu) (2). More than 150 reports are available on many aspects of K-12 and higher education.
The National Academies perform other roles, including serving as a neutral convener for experts in workshops and roundtables where government officials are permitted to be full partners in the conversation. The Academies also oversee various fellowship and internship programs for graduate and postdoctoral students and other scholars. A number of standing boards and committees advise government agencies on an ongoing basis. All of the Academies’ activities can be found at http://nationalacademies.org.
The NRC’s Center for Education is the locus for many education initiatives within the Academies. The Center’s standing boards include the Board on Science Education, the Mathematical Sciences Education Board, and the Board on Testing and Assessment, and the Teacher Advisory Council and focus on a multitude of issues in K-12, postsecondary, and adult education. Many other units throughout the Academies also undertake or are planning education projects that focus on their particular areas of expertise (e.g., life sciences, ocean studies, engineering); many of these units collaborate with the Center for Education in their work. Additional information about the Center and its boards and other activities is available at http://nationalacademies.org/cfe.
The National Academies are committed to offering the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education communities at all levels a variety of resources to help them better understand and assimilate research-based evidence into their policy decisions with regard to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development.
II. Policies and Practices that Influence Inquiry-Based Approaches to Teaching and Learning in the U.S.
Unlike many other nations, the K-12 and higher education systems within the U.S. are diffuse and decentralized. The next section provides an overview of the K-12 education system, followed by a summary of the system of higher education.
III.A Brief Overview of K-12 Education
Under the U.S. Constitution, any power or authority that is not specifically granted to the federal (national) government is then vested in the states. Such is the case for education. Thus, the fifty states and the District of Columbia (where Washington, DC is located) set their own policies for education. In addition, states often allow individual school districts to set many policies about local education. Currently, there are more than 16,000 districts in the U.S.
Annually, more than $350 billion is spent on K-12 education. The U.S. Government currently contributes about 8% of that total. Various local and state-level funding mechanisms provide the remainder. Many school districts throughout the U.S. depend heavily on local property taxes, so districts that serve affluent areas often spend far more per student on education than do districts where the property tax base is depressed.
While the national government contributes relatively little to supporting K-12 education, the money that it does give to states has a great deal of leverage in supporting national policies. Most recently, the national “No Child Left Behind Act” (NCLB), passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2001, is transforming the ways that schools are held accountable for gains in learning by all students.
NCLB places new requirements for testing and accountability on students, schools, and districts that receive money from the federal government. It currently mandates that all students in Grades 3-8 be tested annually in reading and mathematics on tests that are selected by individual states. Testing in science will begin during the 2007-2008 school year except that students will be tested once in the elementary, middle, and secondary grades. The law also requires that test results be disaggregated by gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, students whose native language is not English, and students with physical and learning disabilities. Schools must demonstrate “adequate yearly progress,” (AYP) or a continual gain in the number of students in all of these categories who show at least proficient achievement. Goals for AYP are established by each state. The Act imposes various levels of sanctions for schools that do not achieve AYP for more than two years in a row.
NCLB also requires that a “highly qualified teacher” be in every classroom by the end of 2006. “Highly qualified” means that teachers must have a bachelor’s degree in an academic subject (rather than a degree in education). They also must be fully certified or licensed and show competence and subject knowledge and teaching skills based on a rigorous entry examination that is given by the state in which the person wishes to teach.
The more stringent requirements of NCLB notwithstanding, the teacher workforce in the U.S. is in crisis, and the problems are especially acute in mathematics and the physical sciences. The number of certified high school science teachers has declined steadily over the past 10 years (Table 1). And, in 2002, the percentage of middle school teachers who were certified to teach science was only 58%, down 5% since 1992.
Table 1: The Percentage of High School Teachers Who Are Certified
to Teach Various Disciplines of Science Has Decreased Between 1990-2002
1990 1994 1998 2000 2002 Source: State Indicators of Scienceand Mathematics Education, 2003. Washington, DC: Council of ChiefStateSchool Officers.
Retention and distribution of qualified teachers in the U.S. are also serious problems (e.g., Ingersoll, 2003; National Commission on Teaching for America’s Future, 2003). Research has indicated that up to a third of all teachers leave the profession after only one year of teaching and nearly 50% no longer teach within five years of entering the profession. Moreover, the teacher workforce in the U.S. is aging and increasing numbers of experienced teachers are expected to retire in the coming decade. This combination of factors has made placing qualified teachers in inner city and in rural schools especially challenging. Part of this problem could be addressed by effective programs for professional development, but each state has its own policies and different states provide very different levels of support for these activities.
In addition, 49 of the 50 states in the U.S. have adopted content standards in science and mathematics. Standards for science in many states are based to some extent upon national documents that were produced in the 1990s by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Benchmarks for Science Literacy, 1993) and by the National Research Council (National Science Education Standards, 1996). These national documents proposed a system of science education that was (and, to a large extent, remains) different from how science has been taught traditionally (Table 2) and how deeper, more conceptual learning of science could be assessed (Table 3). In addition to proposing content standards, the National Science Education Standards also recommended standards for instruction, teacher education, assessment, and the infrastructure to support these new approaches to teaching and learning science. Since the publication of these documents, both organizations have published a series of compendium volumes to help educators better understand how the standards might be implemented (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1997, 2001; National Research Council, 2000a, 2001a).
Table 2: Changing Emphasis in Science Content as Envisioned by the
National Science Education Standards
LESS EMPHASIS ON:
MORE EMPHASIS ON:
Knowing scientific facts and information.
Understanding science processes and developing abilities of inquiry.
Studying subject matter disciplines (e.g., physics, earth sciences) for their own sake.
Learning subject matter disciplines in the context of inquiry, technology, science in personal and social perspectives, and history and nature of science.
Separating science knowledge and science process.
Integrating all aspects of science content.
Covering many science topics.
Studying a few fundamental science concepts
Implementing inquiry as a set of processes.
Implementing inquiry as instructional strategies, abilities, and ideas to be learned
Source: National Research Council (1996), page 113.
However, political and other considerations have led to the development of science standards in some states that do not always reflect the vision of these national documents. Although the research on designing effective assessments is becoming more prominent (e.g., see analysis in National Research Council, 2001b), aligning large-scale assessments with standards has been problematic in many states. There are also few states where teacher preparation programs for new teachers are specifically tailored to educating teachers to have the knowledge and skills that students are expected to learn based on a state’s science standards.
Table 3: Changing Emphasis in Assessment of Student Learning of Science as Envisioned by the National Science Education Standards
LESS EMPHASIS ON:
MORE EMPHASIS ON:
Assessing discrete knowledge.
Assessing rich, well-structured knowledge.
Assessing scientific knowledge.
Assessing scientific understanding and reasoning.
Assessing to measure what students do not know.
Assessing to measure what students do know.
Assessing what is easily measured.
Assessing what is most highly valued.
Assessing only achievement.
Assessing achievement and opportunity to learn.
End-of-term assessments by teachers.
Students engaged in ongoing assessment of their work and that of others.
Source: National Research Council (1996), page 100.
IV. A Brief Overview of Undergraduate Education
There are more than 3500 public and private not-for-profit institutions of higher education in the United States. These consist of both two-year institutions (community colleges) that offer Associates Degrees, various kinds of certification for the workforce, and preparation for continuing education; and four year colleges and universities. Some 45% of undergraduates currently attend community colleges; in some states that percentage is considerably higher.
Support for higher education comes from a variety of sources. The U.S. government supports higher education through loans that are made available to individual students and to institutions through various research programs. Where 8% of funding for K-12 public education comes from the federal government, approximately 13% of the $260 billion spent annually for both public and private non-profit institutions of higher education comes from federal sources (3).
Public institutions of higher education traditionally have received a large percentage of their financial support from state governments, but that revenue source has declined substantially in increasing number of states during the past decade or so. As a result, institutions of higher education have had to rely more on student tuition, higher tuition paid by students who are not residents of the state; great efforts at fundraising from foundations and corporations; alumni, and other individuals; growth of cooperative business ventures; and cuts in various operating budgets.
Accountability systems for higher education are much less stringent than for K-12 education (4). Regional agencies are responsible for re-accrediting individual institutions. Expectations for re-accreditation are beginning to shift toward requiring more evidence of programs that are effective in helping students learn. Similarly, in some disciplines (e.g., engineering), accreditation boards are demanding that schools provide evidence of student learning and achievement (5). The federal Higher Education Act, which authorizes the federal government's major student and institutional aid programs, as well as other significant initiatives, is now being examined by the U.S. Congress for reauthorization (6). State legislatures also expect varying degrees of accountability from public institutions, and there has been increasing calls from legislatures for the colleges and universities that they fund to demonstrate higher faculty productivity and attention to undergraduate students and education (7).
The National Research Council has produced a number of reports to assist faculty and academic leaders in higher education to improve undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Five of them are highlighted here:
- Science Teaching Reconsidered: A Handbook (1997) was written primarily to help new faculty who have had limited or no experience in teaching during their graduate or postdoctoral careers to think more broadly about their responsibilities in undergraduate education. This report provides useful information to faculty on topics including how teachers teach; linking teaching with learning; misconceptions as barriers to understanding science; evaluation of teaching and learning; testing and grading; choosing and using instructional resources; and getting to know your students.
- Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (1999) offers faculty and academic leaders a series of six visions and specific recommendations for improving undergraduate education in these disciplines. The visions focus on pre-college preparation in science and mathematics, quality undergraduate courses, especially at the introductory level, assessment and evaluation, roles of higher education faculty in the preparation of pre-service teachers of science and mathematics, graduate and postdoctoral education, and institutional roles in promoting and sustaining reforms.
- Educating Teachers of Science, Mathematics, and Technology: New Practices for the New Millennium (2000c) presents a broad overview of teacher education and teaching in the United States at the beginning of the 21st century. It calls for teacher education to be considered as a career-long continuum that begins when students declare their intentions to become teachers of science, mathematics, or technology and continues through the college years and into the time when they are actively teaching. The report presents a series of recommendations about new ways that schools, school districts, and institutions of higher education might collaborate on promoting this career-long vision for teacher education and new roles that each sector might assume.
- Evaluating and Improving Undergraduate Teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (2003a) analyzes the research literature on evaluating effective teaching and offers a series of recommendations for making the process more useful for both faculty and academic leaders in higher education. The authoring committee recommends that evidence of student learning must be an important criterion for any assessment of effective teaching. The report also explores the benefits of informal, ongoing assessments of teaching (formative assessment) to help faculty become better teachers and to prepare for the more formal (summative) evaluations that are part of the tenure and promotion process. The report also calls for using multiple measures of teaching effectiveness and more collective responsibility of academic departments in measuring the quality and effectiveness of undergraduate programs in these disciplines.
- Bio2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists (2003b) emphasizes that the biological sciences have been revolutionized in the ways in which research is conducted and communicated among professionals and to the public. Yet, the undergraduate programs that prepare biology researchers remain much the same as they were before these fundamental changes came on the scene. This report builds on the findings of earlier reports on undergraduate education from the National Research Council and other organizations and provides a blueprint for improving undergraduate biology education. Recommendations for teaching the next generation of life science investigators focus on building a strong interdisciplinary curriculum that includes physical science, information technology, and mathematics; eliminating the administrative and financial barriers to cross-departmental collaboration; creating early opportunities for independent research; and designing meaningful laboratory experiences into the curriculum. The report also presents a dozen brief case studies of exemplary programs at leading institutions and lists many resources for biology educators.
V. The Importance of Research on Learning for Education Policy and Practice
Since the publication of the Benchmarks and National Science Education Standards, insights from research on human learning and cognition have played increasingly important roles in helping elucidate ways that teaching and learning in science, mathematics, and other subjects might be accomplished most effectively. Here again, the National Research Council has played a critical role in analyzing and synthesizing this research, producing two major reports on the implications and applications of human cognition to improving education: How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (National Research Council, 2000b), and How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom (National Research Council, 2005). How People Learn emphasizes three critical components of learning (pages 14-18):
- Students come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom.
- To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: (a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application.
- A “metacognitive” approach to instruction (8) can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them.
According to this report, these principles should be applied through the following kinds of educational practice:
- Teachers must draw out and work with the preexisting understandings that their students bring with them.
- Teachers must teach some subject matter in depth, providing many examples in which the same concept is at work and providing a firm foundation of factual knowledge.
- The teaching of metacognitive skills should be integrated into the curriculum in a variety of subject areas.
How Students Learn utilizes these principles to provide sound guidance for educators in linking research on human learning and cognition to classroom environments in science, mathematics, and history.
American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1993. Benchmarks for Science Literacy. Washington, DC.
American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1997. Blueprints for Reform. Washington, DC.
American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2001. Resources for Science Literacy: Professional Development. Washington, DC.Ingersoll, R.M. 2003. Is There Really a Teacher Shortage? Document R-03-4. Seattle, WA: Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy.
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. 2003. No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America’s Children. Washington, DC.
National Research Council. 1996. National Science Education Standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 1997. Science Teaching Reconsidered: A Handbook. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 1999. Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 2000a. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 2000b. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Expanded Ed. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 2000c. Educating Teachers of Science, Mathematics, and Technology: New Practices for the New Millennium. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 2001a. Classroom Assessment and the National Science Education Standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 2001b. Knowing What Students Know: The Science and Design of Educational Assessment. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Available athttp://nap.edu/catalog/10019.html
National Research Council. 2003a. Evaluating and Improving Undergraduate Teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 2003b. Bio2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
National Research Council. 2005. How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
(1) In a given year, between 5000-6000 people serve as volunteers on some 500-600 study committees, devoting anywhere from six months to more than two years of their time in analyzing a specific set of questions. Some 1100 staff members support these committees.
(2) Scientists and educators who live in the nations listed below also may download pdf versions of many reports without cost (countries in bold text participated in this conference). By logging into the website from a computer located in one of these countries, visitors will be taken to a special site where they can then download entire reports. Nations where these free downloads are available include: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Cuba, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Guiana, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines, Samoa, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, West Bank and Gaza Strip, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
(3) Sources: Digest of Education Statistics, 2003, Tables 335 (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt335.asp) and 341 (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d03/tables/dt341.asp).
(4) For additional information, see http://www.chea.org/.
(5) For additional information, see guidelines for engineering education that are now in place and overseen by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET): http://www.abet.org/.
(6) For more information see http://www.policyalmanac.org/education/archive/crs_higher_education.shtml.
(7) See, for example, “Accountability for Better Results: A National Imperative for Higher Education” at http://www.sheeo.org/.
(8) According to How People Learn, ‘metacognition’ refers to “…people’s abilities to predict their performances on various tasks (e.g., how well they will be able to remember various stimuli) and to monitor the current levels of mastery and understanding…Teaching practices congruent with a metacognitive approach to learning include those that focus on sense-making, self-assessment, and reflection on what worked and what needs improving.” (page 12).
