National standards and school science and mathematics

School Science and Mathematics, Oct 1997 by Bybee, Rodger W, Ferrini-Mundy, Joan, Loucks-Horsley, Susan

A second perspective has to do with the emphasis of content. We can clarify this perspective using a design metaphor from art. When evaluating a curriculum, one can ask, "What science or mathematics content is in the foreground of a lesson, unit, or course and what content is in the background?" Instructional materials for school science tend to keep life, earth, and physical science in the foreground and other content (such as inquiry, personal and social perspectives, or science in personal and social perspectives) in the background. A different perspective on curriculum design suggests a variation in emphasis may be appropriate, (Roberts, 1995) in that inquiry, history and nature of science, technology, and personal and social perspective should all have appropriate time in the foreground. In mathematics, the curriculum might look quite different if problem solving, reasoning, and communication became foreground issues.

The third perspective is closely related to the second, as it entails attention to the depth and breadth of opportunities for students to learn content. Here the central questions are as follows:

Taken as a whole, have students experienced a curriculum that is mathematically or scientifically coherent?

When and how have students had the opportunity to develop the abilities and understandings described in the standards?

Do these opportunities fit together in a way that emphasizes the connections among concepts and topics?

Does the curriculum enable students to build on and expand their understandings?

Standards are not meant to present a menu of content choices that can be offered to students in random order: Curricular decisions that provide for sequencing, coherence, and connections must be considered by teachers and other educators who are using standards, and therein lies an interesting challenge.

The Challenge of Increasing Instructional Effectiveness

In the United States, the use of short "hands-on" activities pervades elementary school science, paralleled in mathematics by strong focus on building arithmetic skills, often using manipulatives. At the secondary level in both science and mathematics, conventional teaching usually includes daily review, presentation of content, occasional demonstrations and laboratories, and examinations that primarily emphasize recall of vocabulary and procedures (NCES,1996; Schmidt et al., 1997; Stigler & Stevenson, 1992). Instruction is narrow and shallow.

With the considerable evidence about student learning (Bruer, 1993; Cobb & Yackel, 1991; Driver, Guesne, & Tiberghien, 1985; Driver, Squires, Rushworth, & Wood-Robinson,1994; McGilly,1994; White & Gunstone, 1992), classroom teachers must meet the challenge of selecting from a variety of instructional strategies and approaches to their practice and increasing instructional effectiveness. Walberg (1991) synthesized educational research and proposed several factors that contribute to increased student learning or productivity. Specifically related to instruction, Walberg proposes that the amount of time students engage in learning and the quality of the instructional experience (which includes the psychology and curriculum content) are the critical factors related to effective instruction. In mathematics education, researchers are finding that instruction building explicitly on student knowledge can be highly effective (Fennema et al., 1996; Hiebert & Wearne, 1993) but requires very deep teacher skills and knowledge (Ball, 1997). Several educators have proposed models to increase instructional effectiveness (Bybee, 1997; Osbourne & Freyberg, 1985). Ultimately, standards now challenge teachers to combine knowledge about content, student learning, instructional models, classroom experience, and standards-based ideas to most effectively enable students to develop scientific and mathematical understandings and abilities.