What Does It Mean

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Apr 4, 2002 - EarthComm. New York: It's-About-Time. Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS). 1997. Biological Sci- ence: An Ecological Approach.
What Does It Mean

To Be Standards-Based? Examining Standards and initiatives in the classroom

William Leonard, John Penick, and Rowena Douglas

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hat makes a Standards-based teacher? For the last several years, educators have been faced with a myriad of guidelines and initiatives on how to teach science. But how well are we meeting these Standards? And how can teachers assess the extent to which their instruction likely meets the spirit of the National Science Education Standards (NSES) (National Research Council, 1996) and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993)? We have developed a checklist to help teachers assess their teaching. Before completing this assessment, however, it is useful to examine the respective levels of Standards-based teaching, in light of the following brief history of the Standards.

Benchmarks and standards Two powerful documents make strong recommendations about how students of all ages should be learning science. These proposals are based on the concept of national standards for science education, which has been 36

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around for nearly a decade. The NSES quickly followed the Benchmarks for Science Literacy, the first widely publicized standards. Both the Benchmarks and NSES grew out of a synthesis of research on learning, teaching, curriculum, and best practices for the science classroom. The documents recommend inquiry as the most desired and effective way for students to learn methods of doing science while they also learn to understand, apply, and retain scientific knowledge. In addition to advocating inquiry instruction, the documents contain three general recommendations for science teachers. One is to selectively reduce the number of concepts taught in a given course to promote in-depth learning. A second recommendation emphasizes that students learn the methods of doing science. Skills such as asking questions, crafting hypotheses, recognizing different variables, designing experiments, and collecting and analyzing data should be intertwined with learning science concepts. The NSES maintains that learning how to do science is, in fact, science content. The third recommendation involves giving

FIGURE 1

Checklist of criteria for a Standards-based science teacher. These 20 statements represent desirable characteristics or behaviors described in the Standards documents. You can rate the use of each characteristic by placing a check in one of the three columns (Usually, Sometimes, Rarely) to the right. Then, the number of checks in each column are totaled and calculated according to the scoring rubric. 1. I consciously select concepts for my courses rather than attempt to cover everything.

Usually

Sometimes

Rarely

2. I encourage my students to offer explanations before I give any explanations. 3. I ask for or give explanations only after my students have had direct experiences with a given concept. 4. I make extensive use of a Standards-based curriculum. 5. I provide activities and readings that are interesting and appropriate to all learners. 6. I emphasize deep understanding of concepts rather than memorization of concepts, facts, or vocabulary. 7. My students learn concepts and processes primarily through inquiry rather than by lecture or reading. 8. In my class I stress higher-order thinking and synthesis through active learning, such as in a lab or field setting. 9. My students use multiple hypotheses when investigating questions. 10. I teach my students how to use data resources to make decisions. 11. My students work in collaborative groups, modeling how scientists work. 12. My classroom presents science as tentative, testable, and verifiable. 13. I teach science concepts, process skills, and understanding the nature of science. 14. My students regularly use technology while learning science concepts. 15. My students communicate to others the results of their investigations. 16. I tend to begin my lessons with questions rather than instructions or answers. 17. In my classroom students apply what they learn to familiar or new contexts. 18. My students use evidence to justify assertions or conclusions. 19. I use many different kinds of assessments, including rubrics and portfolios. 20. I test for deep understanding of concepts and processes rather than recall of concepts, facts, or vocabulary. My Total:

Use the rubric below to evaluate the extent to which you are a Standards-based teacher. Scoring Scale: Usually = 2 points

Sometimes = 1 point

Rarely = 0 points

36–40 points: Exemplary. You are a Standards-based science teacher. A visitor to your classroom would see students working together, actively engaged in designing inquiries, collecting data, synthesizing ideas, and attempting to explain their results. You are a model teacher who has many ideas and skills to share. 31–35 points: Very good. You are mostly a Standards-based science teacher. Much like the exemplary teacher above, your class is student-centered and inquiry-oriented. Only a few practices are missing from your repertoire, but these are each critical. Examine your answers and your practice to determine where you are falling short of the mark. Then, adjust your teaching to move up a category. 26–30 points: Fair. You are a developing Standards-based science teacher. While you are achieving some of the desired practices, you are not consistent and often resort to more didactic forms of instruction. Changing only a few of your practices might allow you to move up in the rankings. 0–25 points: Below standard. More of the requirements need to become routine in your classroom. A visitor to your class would note decided and regular inconsistencies in your classroom climate and practice and would say that a number of your classroom behaviors and roles are not supported by current research. April 2002

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students opportunities to understand the nature and characteristics of science. Students should know that scientific knowledge is empirical, testable, verifiable, refutable, and public. The NSES stresses that science does not exist to seek truth. Our current understandings of the natural world (such as theories) can change as new inquiries yield more data and lead to greater clarification and insight.

Standards-based curriculum movement Funded in part by National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, the Benchmarks and NSES propose specific content that should be included in a given subject and grade level. Although these two documents differ slightly in the concepts selected, their overall agreement is remarkably high, especially considering that they were two

This is a place where ideas are born, develop, and thrive. The Standards-based teacher is patient, working to create a classroom climate that supports a need to know and explain on the part of the students.

NSES because they all select science content, emphasize learning science by doing it, and employ constructivist inquiry learning strategies. The so-called “Com” curricula, including ChemCom (American Chemical Society, 2001), added another strategy—taking concepts learned and applying them to familiar settings in the students’ communities. Many other NSF-funded science curricula span grades K–12 and there are implications for higher education. (A list is available at www.ehr. nsf.gov/ehr/esie/.)

Using new curriculum One result of the Standards-based curriculum movement is a need to show teachers how to use these new curricula. For example, traditional instruction usually begins with a lecture or teacher demonstration, followed by worksheets, reading, and an occasional lab to verify what was addressed. Standards-based instruction begins with inquiry using materials and broad ideas, followed by a discussion, presentation of information, and explanations (usually by students). A mechanism to help teachers change their approach to instruction is including with each curriculum an extensive teacher guide that explains general strategies and gives a blow-by-blow preview of the student activities in the curriculum. These teacher guides can be quite long. For example, the Teacher’s Guide for Biology: A Community Context (Leonard and Penick 1998b)—a curriculum that contains over 100 inquiry activities for students—is 630 pages long and twice the mass of the student text. Therefore, most of the Standards-based curricula could not possibly have teacher materials in a simple wraparound version of the student text. Teachers may also learn how to use the modern curricula through extensive workshops given by the developers and experienced users of the respective curricula. The publishers of Standards-based curricula support many such workshops.

Science education reform efforts independent projects developed from an educational research base about teaching and learning. In contrast, little or no research supports traditional science-learning methods, such as lectures and worksheets. During the 1990s, the NSF also funded large curriculumdevelopment and systemic-initiative projects, some of which continue today. Three curriculum projects for high school biology, for example, included Biological Sciences: A Human Approach (BSCS, 1997), Biology: A Community Context (Leonard and Penick, 1998a) initially called BioCom, and Insights in Biology (EDC, 1998). Active Physics (AAPT, 1997), initially called PhysCom, was for high school physics students. Just recently, EarthComm (American Geological Association, 2002) was released. These curricula address the recommendations of the 38

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Much of the initiative and funding for the Standards, including the development of the Standards and many Standards-based science curricula, came from the National Science Foundation. The NSF has historically encouraged the development of science curricula that use learning methodologies supported by current research. In 1990, NSF initiated a new generation of activities involving several facets of science and mathematics education reform (for example, stakeholder partnerships supporting curriculum development, teacher enhancement, school district policy reform, alignment of resources, and assessment and evaluation based on sound research). The first of these large-scale programs was the Statewide Systemic Initiatives Program; in subsequent years, the Urban Systemic Initiatives, Rural Systemic

Initiatives, and Local Systemic Initiatives were developed. These programs were designed to encourage improvements in science and mathematics education through comprehensive systemic changes in the education systems in their respective domains. Several important findings show how to implement successful reform efforts. One finding indicates that a high-quality mathematics or science program—inclusive of the curriculum, instruction, and assessment—is essential for improved student performance. Also important is the critical need for the reform process to be based on research about classroom practice. Implementing effective educational reform requires solid leadership and expertise at all levels to promote and sustain efforts over time. The next generation of large-scale reform efforts began with the administration’s “No Child Left Behind” strategy. In 2002 the NSF—building on its decade-long investments in systemic reform—will address educational reform through support of partnerships that unite the efforts of local school districts with science, mathematics, engineering, and education faculty of colleges and universities. The new effort—the Math and Science Partnerships (MSP)—will introduce elements that address the remaining challenges faced by the nation in moving from promising experiments and individual sites to nationwide implementation of high standards of achievement in mathematics and science in K–12 education for all students.

Working at the state level Parallel to the curriculum development and systemic initiative projects, and inspired by the NSES, nearly all states in the United States have adopted state science curriculum standards or frameworks. Many of these (such as New York, Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina, and South Carolina) now have state curriculum standards that essentially model the NSES. Others, such as California, began with documents that originally modeled the NSES but, following a reactionary backlash, developed very traditional science standards in 1997 (Leonard et al., 2000). Nevertheless, the overall impact of the NSES on what is occurring in typical science classrooms in this country has been widespread and continues to expand.

The Standards-based teacher In addition to improving science education, these reform efforts, together with the publication of the Benchmarks and NSES and the development of programs and state standards, have given us a thorough idea of what a Standards-based teacher is. To this end, we have developed a 20-question evaluation for teachers to determine whether or not their role in the classroom correlates with the recommendations of the Standards (Figure 1, page 37).

We have established that the Standards-based teacher is inquiry- and student-centered. This exemplary teacher attempts to teach science to all and is interested in the development of student thinking and personal development in addition to learning science concepts. The Standards-based teacher is flexible and takes advantage of current events to stimulate interest, motivation, and the application of knowledge. Considerable research supports the teacher and student roles described in the NSES and can be applied in the classroom in various ways. The Standards-based classroom is alive with student activity, is probably noisy, and may initially seem confusing to an outsider. But to those inside the classroom, this is a place where ideas are born, develop, and thrive. The teacher in this classroom is less interested in vocabulary than in ideas and applications. This teacher is patient, working to create a classroom climate that supports a need to know and explain on the part of the students. This is a classroom in which the students and teacher are working with their minds, no holds barred. And, in the process, they are learning science concepts as well as the nature of science itself.  William Leonard (e-mail: [email protected]) is a professor of science education and biology at Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634; John Penick (e-mail: [email protected]) [email protected]),, NSTA president-elect, is head of the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801; and Rowena Douglas (e-mail: [email protected]) is a program officer in Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education at the National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA 22230. References American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1993. Benchmarks for Science Literacy. New York: Oxford University. American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). 1997. Active Physics. New York: Its-About-Time. American Chemical Society. 1998. ChemCom: Chemistry in the Community. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing. American Geological Association. 2002. EarthComm. New York: It’s-About-Time. Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS). 1997. Biological Science: An Ecological Approach. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt. Educational Development Center (EDC). 1998. Insights in Biology: An Introductory High School Biology Curriculum. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt. Leonard, W.H., and J.E. Penick. 1998a. Biology: A Community Context. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. Leonard, W.H., and J.E. Penick. 1998b. Teacher’s Guide for Biology: A Community Context. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. National Research Council. 1996. National Science Education Standards. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

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