How Awesome Are We at Teaching Science?

[Image: http://25.media.tumblr.com/5KwO8p82JgilhvccvsumgOG7o1_500.jpg]

Not awesome. Now there is a lot of variance from school to school, but overall the United States is failing at teaching science. There are a number of tests, both intranational and international, which measure performance across school systems. I will focus this blog on PISA.


PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, is a test given every three years to fifteen-year-old students around the world with sixty currently participating countries. The purpose is to allow these countries to benchmark their progress in reading, mathematics, and science literacy over time and with other nations. Questions are organized into 13 testing booklets that students take selections from, each booklet with 2 clusters of questions. Every three years the test focuses more on one of the three areas, the most recent having focused on reading.


Reflecting a current trend and emphasis on open-ended inquiry, PISA offers some straightforward multiple choice questions as well as open-ended questions. They are grouped into units in with a few questions about a real-life topic. PISA uses the term “science literacy” to express a student’s knowledge of science content and ability to apply this knowledge to real-life situations and new contexts. They break this term down further into four aspects: context (recognizing science situations), knowledge (knowing science content information as well as science inquiry, experiments, and analysis), competencies (identifying science issues, and using evidence), and attitudes (showing interest and support in science as well as letting science inspire you to act responsibly with life choices). Furthermore, PISA also broke down units into sections of health, natural resources, environment, hazard, and frontiers of science and technology. At every level, the test asks students to consider science with regards to their personal lives, their surrounding community, and the world at large.


The cool thing about PISA is it takes a real-life dilemma and probes students about it. Although we don't often teach a unit directly on acid rain, we should train our students with the ability to assess questions on acid rain. A sample question on acid rain asked the students about an experiment in which a piece of marble was placed in regular water and rainwater and the student measured the mass loss after the marble was submerged for a day.


Sadly, students in the United States overall did pretty poorly. Only 9.2% of students scored at a 5 or 6 (out of 6) proficiency. Finland had 18.7% score at a 5 or 6, and many more students at level 3 and 4 than we did. Other countries that whipped our butts were New Zealand, Japan, Australia, and Germany.

Also, Finland is gorgeous.

[Image: http://www.mr-photography.com/galleries/helsinki_winter10/mr100111_img_1880.jpg]

Below is the 2009 PISA science data for the average score in the "science literary scale", a scale designed to have a mean of 500 with a standard deviation of 100. I took this off of the PISA report, which you can find for free online at this link http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004.pdf. It's scary to see Shanghai being nearly a standard deviation higher than we are (so there is a lot of room for growth), but at least US is around the median score (so we aren't terrible by world standards, we are just mediocre).

I think the main thing to take from this is that clearly South and North Korea have united.

Now there is some room for hope. Certain states have performed on par with these countries in the past decade (New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, and others). We have success in our backyard. I think the biggest thing we need to look at is how to recruit high-caliber teachers. I read a very sad fact in my book for class, Surpassing Shanghai (Link to Amazon). It quotes on p. 180: "The College Board reported in 2008 that when high school graduates going on to college were asked what their intended major was, those who had decided on education scored in the bottom third of their SATs. Their combined scores in mathematics and reading came in at fifty-seven points below the national average." Keep in mind, our national SAT average is not stalwart.


So if you are a reader out there and you are intelligent, please consider teaching because gosh darn it we need you! Furthermore, if you are an educator, let's be proud in our calling. We have the privilege of serving our youth. Believe that they can succeed and teach as if you are a student learning to get better at your craft daily. We can reach our kids if we work hard and love them.

I got 99 problems but to enrich (my students) ain't one

So today in Physics I wasn't sure of how well my students were sold on the content. We had discussed over the last several weeks Newton's Laws, making free-body diagrams, doing ramp problems, centripetal acceleration, and gravity. Crunch time is a week from today when we have our next test but I want to know that they have the material down before we get things started. I wanted to make sure they had it down.

Thank you xkcd [Image: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/centrifugal_force.png]

I had a couple things working against me. I wanted to work on problems, but problem solving by itself is seen as boring. An inquiry-based experiment would be cool, but would take time and couldn't get all the concepts and practice problem-solving I wanted. Furthermore, I had a fair bit of differentiation in my class and when I did group work, my better students tended to band together, leaving some of my weaker students in a group.

My solution? I divided the students up into random groups of 2. Over the weekend, I made 5 problems which were a good cumulative review of the last 3-4 weeks of class. Each problem was on a different sheet of paper and had the answer to the last problem on it. I made this into a scavenger hunt! The students got the first problem at the beginning of class. The answer to each problem gave them a clue as to which locker to find the next sheet over or which cabinet in my room to look in (I numbered all my cabinets and drawers 1 through 28). The last answer sheet (sheet #6) had only the answer to the last problem and also a small piece of extra credit on it (I call them high fives - students get +5 points on a homework or quiz). It took about an hour and a half to adjust the numbers to get things to work out, but was well worth the time. Of the 6 groups, 3 finished right at the end of class and I told the other 2 that they could continue working and get it done any time today. One group finished with about 15 minutes left and I told them to circulate the room and help others with their work. My students did a good job of identifying errors and walking the students through rather than telling them the answers.

One student told me her brain was stimulated and ready to go (my class was the first this morning). Other students raced through the assignment and were so excited to find each next page. Overall it was a huge success. My students learned, moved around, and had fun. The moral of the story here is to be creative with how you teach. Your kids will adore it if you show them you love them by doing something fun and innovative. Perhaps you're more open to failure but your students will appreciate you taking a risk and, furthermore, your chances of a successful lesson and of earning your kids' respect will be much, much higher.

Is' all about respek [Image: http://www.comecorrect.net/img/AliG.jpg]