Putting the "wow factor" back in science

Forums: Science, Education, Testing, Advanced Placement
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The College Board is reworking all of it's Advanced Placement testing: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/edlife/09ap-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

From the article:

Quote:

But many of the courses, particularly in the sciences and history, have also been criticized for overwhelming students with facts to memorize and then rushing through important topics. Students and educators alike say that biology, with 172,000 test-takers this year, is one of the worst offenders.

A.P. teachers have long complained that lingering for an extra 10 or 15 minutes on a topic can be a zero-sum game, squeezing out something else that needs to be covered for the exam. PowerPoint lectures are the rule. The homework wears down many students. And studies show that most schools do the same canned laboratory exercises, providing little sense of the thrill of scientific discovery.

....A preview of the changes shows that the board will slash the amount of material students need to know for the tests and provide, for the first time, a curriculum framework for what courses should look like. The goal is to clear students’ minds to focus on bigger concepts and stimulate more analytic thinking. In biology, a host of more creative, hands-on experiments are intended to help students think more like scientists.

......A committee of the National Research Council, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, called attention to these problems in 2002. It criticized A.P. science courses for cramming in too much material and failing to let students design their own lab experiments. It also said the courses had failed to keep pace with research on how people learn: instead of listening to lectures, “more real learning takes place if students spend more time going into greater depth on fewer topics, allowing them to experience problem solving, controversies and the subtleties of scholarly investigation.”

A few top universities have become more choosey about giving credit. In 2007, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, stopped giving credit for A.P. biology, and developed its own placement exam. Stuart Schmill, M.I.T.’s dean of admissions, says the biology department found that even some of the students who scored 5’s did not have the problem-solving skills needed for higher-level courses.

This really underscores what my beef is with testing. I'm so glad to see that things are changing. What about you?

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An opinion piece by someone against the changes: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/Taking-the-Advanced-Out-of-Advanced-Placement-2935

Quote:

Advanced Placement courses are hard. This is why they are called 'advanced.' Were these classes to become easier--or just less tough--they would no longer be advanced. They'd be normal. This hasn't stopped the College Board--the non-profit organization that runs the AP and SAT--from announcing a series of changes to the amount of material many of the tests will cover. By changes, they mean reductions. They want to shift to a focus "what students need to be able to do with their knowledge," according to College Board vice president Trevor Packer, but, reports The New York Times, "A.P. teachers made clear that such a shift was impossible unless the breadth of material covered was pared down."

Lest you think the new exams--slated to debut in 2014 or 2015--will somehow destroy your old AP chem teacher's raison d'etre, New York Times education reporter Christopher Drew offers a sweeping defense of the College Board's changes, suggesting the classes have demanded too much of American teens in recent years. Already preoccupied with chaste vampires and fictional glee clubs, Drew notes students enrolled in AP courses have also had to keep tabs on "breakthroughs in genetic research and cellular organization, and momentous events like the cold war, the civil rights movement, Watergate and the war on terror."

Recognizing the course of history seldom stops to accommodate the needs of high school juniors, the College Board has gone about crafting a curriculum that stops it for them. Drew explains what this means for U.S. history test-takers:

.......

0 Replies

@boomerang,

Quote:

A few top universities have become more choosey about giving credit. In 2007, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, stopped giving credit for A.P. biology, and developed its own placement exam. Stuart Schmill, M.I.T.’s dean of admissions, says the biology department found that even some of the students who scored 5’s did not have the problem-solving skills needed for higher-level courses.

I definitely like this.

Advanced should mean advanced - harder - more challenging.

I've got concerns about universities doing their own testing, but harder is better.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

I think that they should be more challenging too.

I think the changes the Board is making will make the classes more challenging. Devising your own experiment to test your own hypothesis sounds much more difficult than successfully repeating steps 1-whatever of an instruction sheet.

I can see a school having it's own placement test if it's designed to show that the student knows certain facts and should perhaps get to bypass some prerequisite course.

0 Replies

@boomerang,

Quote:

A.P. teachers have long complained that lingering for an extra 10 or 15 minutes on a topic can be a zero-sum game,

Thats because we dont demand "The best" for our science teachers. Most of HS science teachers are barely literate in their subjects. So they are hardly qualified to stimulate a bunch of bright AP kids. There are a few really good teachers who can keep their kids stimulated and demand the best, but they are few and far in between.

Years ago (when, as a grad student needing cash) Ive taught summer NSF programs in physics and earth sciences to HS science teachers who were certified in their districts AP, EP. and ADSCI programs,and most of the teachers in those courses knew the system so well that they were just there to get their"tickets punched" and didnt really want anything more than a small vacation with little work, scale pay all at a remote field site.

I know a bunch of my college colleagues who didnt get tenure decide to teach at HS's and after they got their "certificates" were surprised at how the school admins didnt want to demand too much from theior kids.

2 Replies

@farmerman,

But that's not what the problem is, farmerman, the problem is how much information they have to cover:

Quote:

That obviously became harder to do as breakthroughs in genetic research and cellular organization, and momentous events like the cold war, the civil rights movement, Watergate and the war on terror, began to elbow their way onto the lists. College professors could pick and choose what to cover in their introductory survey classes. But because the A.P. test can touch on almost anything, high school juniors and seniors must now absorb more material than most college freshmen.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

I know a bunch of my college colleagues who didnt get tenure decide to teach at HS's and after they got their "certificates" were surprised at how the school admins didnt want to demand too much from theior kids.

that is definitely what I hear and see

the kids have to put a lot of TIME in, but not enough of it is on learning to learn

0 Replies

@boomerang,

Quote:

But that's not what the problem is, farmerman, the problem is how much information they have to cover:

I understand your point. I just dont agree with it. We have sevarl options for really bright kids as well as above average who can(and will) do the work. We have
1 magnet schools with separate hiring and firing policies than those of the school districts

2 Charter schools that have developed special skill matrices for their own specialties. Unfortunately we also have some such schools that specialize only in trades.

3 Parochial and Prep schools. These require a sizeable cash outlay from parents who must, in addition to pying out the almost college level tuitions, must also pay school(property or wage based) taxes of their districts.

Its the fault of the teachers . Ive seen magnet school science teachers with PhD's IN THEIR SCIENCE , not some bogus, watered down "doctorate of Education" degree in which the degree is loaded up with bullshit "theory of education" . There are teachers in our colleges who could make the grade to go as far as they can in their science education and not get stymied by the rules of public school tenure. Sorry if I seem cruel in my assessment of HS science teachers. Often the teachers get in the way of the really bright students education. Moat school districts dont demand excellence, they demand fealty to the Administration (most Admins have no idea about education anyway)

2 Replies

@farmerman,

I'm not really disagreeing with you.

I think what schools define as "excellence" really sucks.

0 Replies

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Putting the "wow factor" back in science

It's an uphill battle because too much of (US) society has an "I'm proud to be dumb" attitude.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Quote:

Ive seen magnet school science teachers with PhD's IN THEIR SCIENCE , not some bogus, watered down "doctorate of Education" degree in which the degree is loaded up with bullshit "theory of education" .

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. There is a lot more to being a good teacher then knowing the subject matter. Someone who is going to work as an educator had damn well better have a good understanding of the "theory of education".

I agree that science teachers should have a certain expertise in science. I disagree that they aren't educators who need to master the craft of education. But someone with an advanced degree in a scientific field without an understanding of what education means is going to be a crappy teacher.

Seeing as even the best high school students have at most a half a semester of college physics or mathematics,I doubt that a PhD is worth a damn in a high school classroom

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Most all the teaching staffers in UNiversities DONT have ed courses behind them. (The teachers in the Secondary and elementary education departmenst do so I dont say "ALL" ).
All the science instructors and professors are , primarily, credentialed in their areas of expwertise, not in areas of education.

I dont deny that some courses in ed are helpful and necessary for secondary ed and very necessary for primary ed teachers. However, this topic is about EP, AP (other so called)advanced SCIENCE .
When the teachers arent as bright as the students, its gonna be chaos. Smart kids are like border collies, they need constant qworking until theyre tired. They need intellectual stimulus or else they will suffer.

The AP teachers cant teach this from prepackaged syllabi. They need to be on top of the science and need to weave the new into the structure of the courses. EG , genetics is making daily leaps and whats true today refutes what was true last year.

2 Replies

@farmerman,

Quote:

The AP teachers cant teach this from prepackaged syllabi. They need to be on top of the science and need to weave the new into the structure of the courses. EG , genetics is making daily leaps and whats true today refutes what was true last year.

I certainly agree with you on this. In the discussions on education in this forum I have always been against prepackaged syllabi and the "prepackaged" standardized that are pushed on students and educators.

Quote:

When the teachers arent as bright as the students, its gonna be chaos. Smart kids are like border collies, they need constant qworking until theyre tired. They need intellectual stimulus or else they will suffer.

I don't really know what you are getting at. I have seen some very "bright" high school science teachers who do a great job teaching AP science.

The real problem is not teachers, it is society. I took ed courses. I am not a teacher. The reason is simple, I make well over twice as much in a private company then I would make in the classroom.

And there are no thread where people come to bash engineers.

If you really want credentialed elite scientists to work in public school classrooms, we are going to have to pay a lot more and provide a lot more respect and prestige to this profession. This is a question of priorities in our society.

That being said, there are plenty of students who are getting a damn good science education from public high schools. And, with all the whining about how bad our education system is that has been taking place for the past century, our economy and industry and innovation keeps growing and advancing.

Kids in wealthy school districts in the US get quite a decent education, especially the kids who are taking advanced science courses. The real issue with education is the disparity between rich and poor school districts.

0 Replies

@rosborne979,

Quote:

It's an uphill battle because too much of (US) society has an "I'm proud to be dumb" attitude.

I think most of this is posturing. I remember it from back in the olden days when I was in school. I knew some kids like that and they weren't dumb.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Quote:

The AP teachers cant teach this from prepackaged syllabi.

I think that's exactly what the College Board is saying.

0 Replies

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Quote:
It's an uphill battle because too much of (US) society has an "I'm proud to be dumb" attitude.

I think most of this is posturing. I remember it from back in the olden days when I was in school. I knew some kids like that and they weren't dumb.

Most people aren't "dumb". There's a difference between intelligence and education. But when even intelligent people (teens are the first to enact this behavior) shy away from being considered "brainy" in preference for being "cool" then it perpetuates a societal behavior that diverges Brainy and Cool. Social acceptance is paramount in most teenagers lives and I think this behavior pattern becomes ingrained and carries through to adult life without people even realizing it. Education becomes something they "have" to do to get a job, rather than something they "want" to do to understand things. This in turn makes it very difficult for teachers because their job goes from handing out information which is desired, to pushing information which is resisted.

If we want to really solve the education problem we have to reach back into society at an adolescent level and find a way to alter the dynamic so that brainy is cool, or at least desired. I bet most oriental students (who seem to do so well in school lately) actually "want" their education, even if it's because their parents are pushing them for it. Whereas many American students disdain their education.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

I think the problem with the school dynamic is that there is really only one way to be "smart", and thats to absorb the information your required to absorb. There are a thousand subgroups of cool, most of which don't think the other subgroups are cool (the musicians are "cool" and the athletes are "cool" but they don't think of each other as cool). Many of the "cool" kids are really smart too, but not smart in the way that is rewarded by schools.

Using my son as an example (because he's the kid I know best) -- he's amazingly smart about nature and science and history and geography but those things aren't being taught in his grade so he isn't really valued as a student, he isn't "smart", according to the school.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

That's a good point; but socially, the REAL problem is that smart kids who are openly smart actively make other kids (who may not be so smart) feel bad about themselves. This then transforms into social isolation as the kids who are hurt strike back in the only fashion they know how - ridicule and anti-intellectualism.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

I can say that my experience in dealing with the lower grades is that some of the "smart" kids are kind of bullies about it. Mo gets teased horribly (by one "smart" girl in particular) about being in special education. And, yes, it makes him feel terrible about himself.

And I do absolutely worry about this as he gets older. School is a major part of a kids life. Most of them find a way to bring attention to themselves.

Mo's most likely not going to ever be a stand out student so I try really hard to make him a stand out human.

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Putting the "wow factor" back in science

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