Show first two minutes of video: https://www.learner.org/resources/series26.htm

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Where does this gap in science education stem from?

A Framework for K-12 Science

Education: Practices,

Crosscutting Concepts, and

Core Ideas

High Stakes Testing• “Science standardized testing prevents

students from learning material thoroughly and instead encourages test taking skills and memorization.”

• Out of sixty-five students I surveyed about their goals in taking regents physics, forty-five responded with goals strictly about grades.

• “Learning in our schools has become a matter of meeting static, arbitrary and superficial ‘standards’ rather than engaging in the dynamic, endlessly creative process of discovery that children come into the world eager to embark on” (Samtani).

• ELL students• Stereotype threat• Epistemological bias

• Balance content and inquiry• Team Learning• Other options for assessment: tests to only

certain students each year, stealth assessments, portfolios

Reconstructing High Stakes Testing

Teacher and Textbook: Dispensers of Knowledge

• “How am I supposed to do it if you don’t tell me? Hey Phil (across the room), go build a rocket but I’m not going to tell you how” (Steinberg 61).

• Transition toward more student-directed classrooms earlier in education.

• Textbook as a supplemental source and differentiate sources for the different needs of students

Teacher Expectations• There are also noticeable trends between a student’s “first

language, ethnicity, and migration status” and their success in school.

• Predisposition toward creating less challenging classrooms

• Classroom management in denser classrooms creates stricter classrooms

Setting a Higher Bar for our Students

• Project-Based Science: extended authentic investigations, driving questions, collaborative work, learning technologies, artifacts

Teacher Understanding of Inquiry

• 78% believed they “were either proficient or accomplished in their level of understanding of what science inquiry means”

• 62% percent believed they were proficient in using science inquiry in their classrooms (Osisioma 97).

• Once these teachers were questioned about the key elements of inquiry only thirty-nine percent “correctly identified some elements of inquiry” (98).

Improving Teacher Understanding of Inquiry

• Professional Development– Bridge the gap between the science education

research community and the community of teachers

– Continuous process – Experience learning science through inquiry

Disconnection to Science

• One study found that African American third graders pictured scientists as “A mature, intelligent, hardworking, White male, wearing glasses, formally dressed or in a lab coat, who also teaches as a part of work they do” (Walls pg 15).

Connecting Students to Science

• Culturally responsive teaching• Science that matters• Student Discourse• Simulations• Virtual fieldwork

It made me feel smart. ‘Cause. . .I made my own question up, and I never did that before. I felt like a genius when I made my own question. And then I did my own project. I did it by myself, just me and my partner. We were making our own thing. That made me feel like a genius, like a scientist. (Mallucci 1135)

Resources in NYC

Bridge Golf Foundationhttps://bridgegolffoundation.org/blog/