Chapter 10 - Case Study: The False Crisis in Science Education
The Case
At a 2-day conference for science teachers, the featured speaker on the first day, Alexis Soledad, a well-known education reporter for a major east coast newspaper started her talk with this quote: "Despite the doom and gloom rhetoric popular among science educators, what scant data there are indicate that Americans are getting better at science, not worse." She went on to say that there has been a long history of national professional groups announcing the newest crisis in education. She said in her talk that even with the infusion of billions of dollars of cash into education with accompanying reform, little has changed in terms of what and how students learn. She also pointed out that generally there has been no statistical data to support the "bottom falling out syndrome" and indeed she showed graphs in which the average adult actually knows more than young adults decades ago. And the third reason to doubt a crisis is that with all the rhetoric on increasing science achievement scores, science education researchers and teachers are not convinced that what is being tested for (higher levels of content knowledge) is of value to citizens. They point out, she said, that what schools ought to be doing is producing scientifically literate citizens, not candidates for the scientific elite. In the audience is a representative from the National Assessment of Science. During the question and answer session, he tells the speaker that there is a crisis in education, and the international and national tests show it.
The Problem
Is there really a crisis in "science" education? How would you have reacted to Ms. Soledad's speech? Note: You might want to read the article by Gibbs and Fox, "The False Crisis in Science Education online (http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm).