Vonny

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Creative Brains Tend to Work More Slowly - Good to Know for Educators

A post by the Drs. Eide points out research that shows the most creative brains work slower than other, less creative brains. There seems to be convergence of data and studies that show students who are creative, gifted, or who have ADHD or dyslexia, all have thinner prefrontal cortex patterns. The areas of the brain where, say, creativity depend, have numerous side-roads and neural branches that differ from pure intellectual pathways, that are described more as superhighways. The extended branching off of that 'superhighway' allows for a variety of different neural connections that can produce new thoughts and ideas. To me it seems like the situation where you are sitting in a meeting, very focused and engaged in the flow of information being presented (i.e. the superhighway of the brain is engaged with information flowing and being processed rapidly), but then for a few seconds or minutes you suddenly find yourself daydreaming or having new thoughts not related to the exact information of the presentation (i.e. taking an exit off the superhighway to some off-the-beaten path side-road). You find yourself 'snapping back' to attention to re-focus on the meeting. I suspect this is related to the model being proposed in this new research, where the daydream or new, distinct but unconnected idea comes from the off-road pathways in the brain.

The analogy then makes sense in terms of understanding why creative thought requires more time. It is quicker to travel on superhighways than going on side-roads.

Now put all this in the context of how schools are run. Our education system, more often than not, is focused on getting through content. Often there are fixed standards that need to be covered, or a fixed number of chapters in a textbook that have to be completed during the school year, and this is typically done regardless of the ability of the students to comprehend all that information. It is a race where not covering lots of material determines the losers of the race. But as a teacher, I am well aware of the effect of this - sure, lots of material is covered. But a good portion of that material is not learned. Many have questioned the logic of this approach in education: depth or breadth, which is more important? It is an endless debate.

With studies of creativity showing present students being significantly less creative than past generations of students, this may be a key step into understanding why. In our sprint to teach content, we are preventing young brains from having the time to take off-road excursions. Here is a case where we need to sit down, take a deep breath, and put all the various studies and research on the table to sort it out and determine how it all connects. What is the big picture brain research is trying to tell us when it comes to the education system? I don't think this has happened yet, but it absolutely must happen. I suspect there is a great deal classroom teachers can do differently to enhance and unleash creativity while still getting to content, but perhaps not as much content as we presently teach. In a world where creativity is one of the absolute essentials, educators need to get this right so students are prepared for their futures.

Are Students Prepared for Community College, Let Alone 4-Year College?

Through my School Board Association, I read an article pertaining to the necessity of vertical alignment between high schools and community colleges. With even state schools such as my alma mater University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign costing some $25,000 per year for in-state students, community colleges will continue to play a vital role in education and the training of our future work force. For many, going for two years to a community college is the only feasible way of affording college. Many students go for two years, while working full-time, to save for two years at a four-year institution, allowing the student to get a bachelors degree.

What is disturbing about the article is that 58% of students in community colleges are enrolled in at least one remedial course. When a majority of high school graduates, who are supposed to be prepared for basic college courses, are in fact behind standards and need to repeat high school material, there is a glaring issue that needs to be resolved sooner than later. The same issue exists at the K-8 to high school transition here in Illinois. For years it been known that the Illinois elementary and middle school test, ISAT, has standards that are not properly aligned with the high school standards as defined by the Prairie State Exam (PSAE). Half of the PSAE is the ACT exam, meaning every junior in Illinois is taking a primary college entrance exam. Many eighth graders who meet ISAT standards are being fooled that they are ready for high school, since high school standards are set higher. It is insanity at its finest. Now it appears as if the same is true for high school to community college transitions.

How difficult is it for the powers that be to sit down and align curriculum so that students have a clearly defined path through the entire education system? Everyone is off in their own little worlds, doing their own thing, and the students are the ones who are affected. By the way, the same study, which was done by Prof. Debra Bragg of the U. of Illinois, also found that 30% of students who attend non-selective four-year schools are also enrolled in at least one remedial course. These are discouraging numbers. And anecdotally, the many professors I know from top, selective schools (such as Northwestern, UIUC, UIC, U. of Chicago, etc) state almost unanimously that there are noticeably large numbers of students who lack basic skills in areas like science, to the point where they have had to modify their curriculum. The downturn in science skills is not a total surprise, however, since science has not been part of K-12 AYP tallies in No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Many districts have cut back on science, as well as social studies, because of NCLB.

The lack of preparation for community college is yet another issue that needs to be not only addressed, but fixed. It is not a well-publicized issue, but an important issue for the future.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Evolution in Action - Superbugs

I just read a report that describes the discovery of a new gene that, in bacteria, allows them to be resistant to just about all antibiotics and other medications we have in our biological arsenal. The gene, New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1,has been found in South Asia, and scientists are worried about the vast potential for bacteria with the gene to spread globally. International travel allows for this potential.

This is yet another good example of evolution in action. Bacteria, with their incredible exponential reproductive rates, multiply rapidly and, in some small percentage of cell divisions, have genetic mutations. Depending on which portion of the DNA mutates (i.e. which gene mutates), the mutated daughter bacteria can have new traits expressed in their phenotypes. Every so often, a mutated bacterium has a resistance to one of our drugs that will kill the previous type bacteria. As the older type are killed off by our drugs, the new mutant strains remain alive, and they then reproduce exponentially. Such change and variation is one of the prime actions in evolution. The rapid process that single-celled critters have for reproduction and genetic variation is why they were here long before humans existed, and why they will almost certainly be around long after humans are gone.

The new bacteria are presently most prevalent in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and dozens of cases have been reported in Britain in patients who were recently treated in those Asian countries. We will see what becomes of this new threat in the weeks and months coming up.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Creativity on the Decline?

A common theme I come back to when I think and write about education and our school system is creativity. A growing consensus amongst educators, CEOs, scientists, and others is that the key skill/characteristic/trait one needs for the 21st century is creativity. But there is evidence that today's students are actually in decline when it comes to the ability to develop creative solutions to problems. This is outlined in a recent Newsweek article (many thanks to Linnea for pointing this out to me).

I can especially relate to the anecdote the author tells about an American visitor who is in China:

"Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”

I understood this when I met with Singapore educators back in 2004 at Northwestern University. They were studying how the American system worked, and how, that's right, creativity was taught or included within a student's studies. With No Child Left Behind, I fear that we have prevented a generation of students from learning how to be creative in all disciplines. Neuroscience suggests creativity can be taught, and that it can be practiced. We have moved to a point where teachers are working with students about how to take a test, rather than how to do true problem solving and taking risks as to how they solve complex problems. Let's hope we realize this and do not repeat the mistake with the final version of Race to the Top.

The Drs. Eide have picked up on this same study. Their post is at
http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/getting-all-as-but-flunking-life-iq.html.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Is There a Shortage of Scientists, or Science-Related Jobs?

For some time, there has been a deep worry in the U.S. that we are quickly losing our lead in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (or STEM) fields of study to up-and-coming foreign rivals, particularly Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, India and, the one that gets the most attention now, China. China, for example, has been producing hundreds or thousands, if not millions, of scientists and engineers over the past decade, as their economic growth has been on a steep ascension for many years. The U.S. has been producing tens of thousands of scientists and engineers. Certainly, simply looking at the 'production' numbers, we have a need to worry about the future prospects of the U.S. maintaining its clear lead in STEM areas since World War II.

Furthermore, the 2005 report from the National Academies, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, was a tipping point for policy makers to lead a new charge into pushing for the production of more STEM graduates and a larger workforce to keep up with developing nations. But while the production numbers of the U.S. cannot compare to those in a country like China, is this the right number to be concerned about? Do we have a shortage of STEM talent, graduates, and workers, or are there other data to help mold a more accurate picture of where we are at the top levels of STEM fields to remain competitive and in a lead position for our economic growth and national security?

An analysis of such questions is done in the Miller-McCune story, The Real Science Gap. It argues that, if one looks at the whole picture, we do not have a shortage in numbers of PhD level STEM graduates, but rather we have no system in place to ensure that these graduates have appropriate research jobs when they graduate. For example, many are now saying there is, in reality, not nearly enough tenure-track faculty positions in American universities to accommodate the graduate students and postdocs in the pipeline. Such positions are the goal of most students who enter PhD programs, and such positions largely drive the pure research that takes place in the country to make scientific advancements. For the relatively small number of tenure-track positions that open up during the course of a year, many hundreds of candidates apply for those jobs. What used to be 1-2 year postdoc positions now extend into 3-6 year postdoc positions. I am familiar with several cases of this as I came up through a PhD program some fifteen years ago, and met a number of postdocs who were having trouble finding faculty positions. It is clear that many industry jobs for STEM graduates have been lost to out-sourcing and to the economic issues of the recession. A question becomes, will STEM jobs lost to the recession still be there as a recovery takes place? That remains to be seen as companies reorganize and develop updated strategies for their future research and development efforts.

There was a second report published by the National Academies in 2005 that I was not aware of, entitled Bridges to Independence: Fostering the Independence of New Researchers in Biological Research. This study reported that the average age of scientists who won their first NIH grant, went from the high twenties several decades ago to 42. This is a telling signal that many scientists are not becoming faculty with their own labs until they are significantly older than what used to be the case. And there is an argument to be made that an age such as 42 is already beyond the most productive and creative intellectual ages of one's twenties and thirties.

Here is a telling set of statistics from The Real Science Gap article:

"In fact, three times as many Americans earn degrees in science and engineering each year as can find work in those fields, Science & Engineering Indicators 2008, a publication of the National Science Board, reports. The number of science and engineering Ph.D.s awarded annually in the U.S. rose by nearly 60 percent in the last two decades, from about 19,000 to 30,000, the report says. The number of people under 35 in the U.S. holding doctorates in biomedical sciences, Indicators note, rose by 59.4 percent — from about 12,000 to about 19,000 — between 1993 and 2001, but the number of under-35s holding the tenure-track positions rose by just 6.7 percent, remaining under 2,000."

What seems to be lacking, in my opinion, in this discussion and debate is any sense of targeting fields individually. Some fields have a surplus of PhD students, with limited job opportunities within the field. My specialty field, high-energy physics, is likely one of those. Many Americans in this field have to go overseas to the CERN facilities in order to do their research, and one finds that the limited number of faculty positions that open up have those hundreds of applicants. In fact, Miller-McCune article states only nine faculty positions were hired nationally in particle physics last year! There are many hundreds of graduate students in the pipeline. However, if one thinks about fields that are likely to see growth, and will need highly trained STEM workers, think about a field like nuclear science and engineering. If the U.S. begins to build numerous new-age nuclear power plants, there will be a dramatic increase in the number of nuclear engineers needed to design, build, and maintain those facilities. This will also be a multiple decades area of growth. The need to study nuclear waste disposal, as well as be involved in nuclear no-proliferation work around the globe, will continue to fuel the need for more workers in these areas. Environmental engineering and positions related to the energy industry will need growth, as those appear to be the job-creation mechanisms in the global economy.

To generically say "we need more scientists and engineers" appears to be a misleading message to send to students who are interested in STEM fields. Perhaps it is time for the U.S. to develop a system that accurately reflects specific needs and projected areas of growth in order to guide the education system and its students, so they can pursue degrees that will actually result if jobs related to those degrees. As a high school teacher, I know we do not receive such specific information or guidance that will help us advise and guide interested students into fields of growth. Part of the reason for this is a lack of communication in general between the K-12 and university levels of education, as well as a disconnect between the STEM industrial complex and K-12 education - we need to know something about the jobs prospects in order to help students pursue degrees where there is a more likely payoff at the end of four years or at the end of ten or more years if a student pursues a doctorate degree. It also would help for high school teachers to be aware of the numerous jobs that branch off a primary STEM degree. Again, I have experience with this as I went into high school teaching rather than pursuing a university position after earning my doctorate. Thinking about and planning for a student's STEM future needs to find its way into his or her high school education.

As for the American K-12 education system, I do want to once more re-state my position that our top students can compete with any other nation on the planet in STEM areas. And one aspect of this issue that is often overlooked and ignored, precisely because of an obsession over test scores, is that American students are among the most innovative and creative thinkers in the world. Because our students have nearly unlimited access to information, because they study the arts and history, because there are opportunities to begin doing research while in high school and participating in numerous competitions in STEM fields, they have been encouraged to learn from mistakes and take chances to 'think outside the box,' or as I like to tell students, to 'think outside a textbook,' when looking for solutions to tough problems. I will gladly take a hit in test scores where students have to regurgitate information, if those same students are creative problem solvers and thinkers, and are capable of communicating and collaborating with each other in the most diverse society the world has ever seen.

There is a reason we are the lone superpower. There is a reason American scientists and engineers have produced the most patents, publications, and won the most Nobel Prizes. Our K-12 system really does play a role in that, and I hope the effects of No Child Left Behind and the upcoming Race to the Top does not hurt the creative side of education and problem solving too badly because of the need to assess students and districts strictly by snapshot testing that drives the system. Producing students who have the creative and technological skills and foundational knowledge base to feed into the top university system in the world, with a more focused sense of what degrees to pursue that will lead to related jobs, can help keep the U.S. in the elite group of STEM nations for decades to come. Students also need to be aware that there are more, diverse opportunities outside of becoming a professor, both in academia and in the private sector. I am confident we will continue to produce the best-trained students in STEM, and continue to have the top intellectual infrastructure on the planet for many years to come. We just need to use some of that creative brain power to build a system to ensure jobs are available to encourage interested students in pursuing technical fields.

Friday, July 09, 2010

Choice in Education - No Silver Bullet

Some anticipated studies have been released concerning the two main 'school choice' options many are advocating as the fixes to our education system. Those options are charter schools, which are receiving a lot of attention from the Obama administration and the development of Race to the Top, as well as in a recent talk given by Bill Gates, and voucher programs, long a favorite of the political right. Charter schools are public schools where children in the hosting district may apply via lottery, and these schools generally have themes around which they build their curriculum - it could be the arts, science, the environment, or others. Voucher programs will take monies from the public school district, give that money directly to parents, and then parents have the choice to use the money to send their children to any school, including private schools (regardless if they are secular or religious private schools).

The studies conclude that there are no statistically significant differences between those students who went to charter schools or were recipients of vouchers than their peers who were in the public school system. The charter study looked at a variety of charter schools across 15 states, and when students who won the charter lottery are compared to those students who did not win the lottery and had to attend the public school district, no significant differences in math and reading are found. The voucher system that was studied was the Washington, DC, program, which is the first federal program ever tried. While graduation rates were better than the public school rate, achievement was, on average, no better than what students achieved in the public schools.

This does not surprise me, as it does some others I know. Anyone who is involved in education understands that there is no silver bullet. We are dealing with students, who are human beings, and each individual student comes with his or her own 'baggage' from outside the school. Until we learn how to get effective and efficient with more individualized instruction and learning, it will be very difficult to achieve significant increases in student achievement across the board for the vast majority of students. There is no single model of education that will work for all students, just like there is no single physical health regimen that will work for all people. We go and see our doctors for our physical health and progress and treatments on an individual basis, simply because every body is different. We will not fix our children's mental and intellectual health until we 'see them' on an individual basis in schools, simply because every brain is different. Yes, there are great individual charter schools and great individual private schools who are involved in voucher programs, but there are also poor charters and private schools, too. Keep in mind that there are great public schools, too...I would put my students up against students from any other school (and in fact do in a variety of competitions), and they normally shine at the local, state and national levels. But there are also poor public schools.

But bottom line is, we are not there yet in education, and charters and vouchers programs are not, in and of themselves, the final solutions to our education problems.

Monday, July 05, 2010

H.B. Phillips - Forseeing the Future of Technological Progress

I came across a truly interesting quote from a mathematician, H.B. Phillips, who, in an article published in October of 1948 in American Scientist, said:

Advances will be most frequent when the number of independent thought centers is greatest, and the number of thought centers will be greatest when there is maximum individual liberty. Thus, it appears that maximum liberty is the condition most favorable to progress.

Phillips understood, as does every scientist and academician, that science and academia revolve around communication of ideas. When trying to solve the toughest problems in the most difficult realms of human thought and experience, even the Newtons and Einsteins of the world need to 'stand on the shoulders of giants' who lived or worked prior to themselves. Knowledge, ideas, problem solving, and innovation are mass produced industries - individuals can spark new, original ideas, to be sure, but to do anything with those ideas requires support from others. Even brilliant individuals need to learn about their area of work and interest, and learn what has already been done. This requires access to knowledge and previous thoughts and ideas about the subject (although the other avenue to discovery is the 'accidental' discovery).

In Phillips's day he would have had access to journals, book, conferences, personal correspondence using traditional 'snail' mail, and some telephone, telegraph and radio communication. The phone and radio networks, however, would have been more limited, of course, prior to global hook-ups and networks. Large information packets would have taken days or weeks to be passed along between individuals, as whole books and articles would have had to been physically delivered. He did not possess the Internet, fax machines, teleconferencing, virtual anything, or global satellite communication. But he understood the concept that is at the heart and soul of academic, technological and theoretical progress. Difficult problems involving complexity need multiple brains working on them to make progress in figuring out the complexity. His term 'thought centers' is, in my mind, a broad statement that presently could refer to any one of a collection of entities: individuals on the Internet, think tanks, research groups, R&D departments of industry, academic departments in universities, blog groups, and generally any type of grouping of people who are collaborating to figure something out.

The Internet provides unprecedented access to information. And anyone can plug into that information. Strangers communicate and bounce ideas around every day and instantly with each other. Information and progress have, as a result and as Phillips foresaw, exploded exponentially as the number of 'thought centers' increased. And what is perhaps most important, the free exchange of information and ideas that the Internet provides has been key to this progress. Innovation, creativity, and problem solving now have tools available to anyone with access to the world wide web to see rapid and original progress, as interconnectivity runs to all regions of the planet.

As crazy as the rate of progress has been over the past decade (as personal computing has blossomed), there is room for even more progress. The second condition Phillips talks about is 'liberty.' This would seem to indicate that there is a need, in present times, for individual freedom and access to information, as well as the continued free exchange of that information, outside any type of censorship or restrictions to information. We see such restrictions to access and to personal freedom in many countries around the world, with the obvious major example of China. What will happen when China alone gets to the point where some 1.6 billion more people have unfettered access to the Internet, journals, and other forms of information access, trying to solve the plethora of problems the world is facing? Time will tell, but I do appreciate when deep-thinking individuals identify trends and 'see' where the future is headed.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Examining the Beginnings of Modern Science

I am reading a very interesting book, "The Science of Liberty" by Timothy Ferris. Mr. Ferris argues that science was the thrust to liberal democracy, and while about a third of the way through, he presents a strong case for his thesis.

Beyond his main theme, I am also enjoying the history behind the founding of modern science thought and its process. This history includes the two most famous giants, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton. But some others, who most forget about, include Nicolas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, William Gilbert, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, John Locke (a contemporary and good friend of Newton),and Robert Boyle. There are certainly a number of other important early scientists, but I find this group the most intriguing.

For centuries the Aristotelian approach to thinking about the physical world dominated. Logic and perceived common sense were the 'tools' through which one should reach conclusions about why things work the way they do. The classic example is dropping a heavy object along with a light object. Of course, without knowing anything about basic physics, most would think the heavy object should hit the ground first. Makes sense, in a logical frame of thinking, since gravity is obviously pulling harder on a heavy object. And that is the end of the discussion. For whatever reason, which is so foreign to modern thinking, no one simply picked up two different sized rocks and dropped them...no one did the experiment. At least there is no documented instance of this happening prior to Galileo's famous experiments. Tradition (especially religious), respect for past genius, a mindset that what was in books was the final word on a subject, and a culture that did not yet appreciate the notion of some process resembling experimentation, kept limiting advances in human thought, at least when it came to the physical world. Part of the reason for this was the fact that there was no formal public education for the masses. Smaller groups of the 'elite' and privileged, both aristocratic/governmental and religious, dictated life, kept the masses in a static intellectual state, and worked to maintain the status quo.

Liberal democracies did not exist in those times, up until the scientific revolution had begun through the work and sacrifice of the names listed above. Science is based on facts, physical evidence, open minded thinking, and the ability to test ideas and observe results of those tests. Science is a collaborative process. It relies on the exchange of ideas and findings, and allows curiosity to cross geographical and geopolitical borders. Science does not care what one's socioeconomic status is, but rather whether one has done careful, thoughtful and thorough work that leads to evidence that supports one's conclusions. It is a mindset, a process, and a culture all in one. There is no single leader, for everyone's work is put through the ringer of independent tests and possible rebuke by the rest of the scientific community. If a better idea or theory arises based on new experiments, then old theories are abandoned. Even the great Newtonian mechanics in Newton's Principia, which was the greatest singular piece of work in science history (for it formally established the power of the scientific process and showed the world what science was capable of), met its match with Einstein's relativity theories.

Wherever the word science is used in the above paragraph, substitute in 'liberal democracy.' Does it fit into such a description of characteristics? Largely, yes. Democracies depend on ideas being exchanged. Ideally, it depends on large educated groups of citizens and followers. It is a mindset, a culture and a process. There is no singular leader, but when someone else comes along with a better idea and can convince the masses that he or she is correct (and preferably with evidence that it is a better idea), then that person becomes the new leader. The founders of the early democracies, for example in the United States people like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams either were scientists or endorsed the scientific process. The early Founding Fathers were all highly educated and committed to the principles first introduced and practiced with good results in the scientific revolution that began in the late 16th and 17th centuries. Liberal democracies did not exist prior to the science revolution, which still persists today. These are Ferris's arguments in his book.

One quote that sticks with me is from William Gilbert in 1600:
"In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from pure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators...Men are deplorably ignorant with respect to natural things, and modern philosophers, as though dreaming in the darkness, must be aroused and taught the uses of things, the dealing with things; they must be made to quit the sort of learning that comes only from books, and that rests only on vain arguments from probability and upon conjectures."

This approach and way of thinking is precisely what jump-started the science movement and revolution that followed. Galileo and then Newton took this approach and ran with it, along with others who are not as well known, and world history changed forever. In keeping with this relationship between science and liberal democracy, we still hear about the "Great American Experiment" which is our own democracy. Science, and therefore democracy, is not static, but instead dynamic and evolving. If something works, it lasts, but when evidence shows it is not working, the machinery is in place to make change. Only time will tell where we will end up.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

A Wonderful Interview with Zenpundit

I wanted to put up a link to an interview of my very good friend, fellow teacher, and historian extraordinaire, ZenPundit (aka Mark Safranski), who was a featured guest interview on Steven Pressfield's site. Check it out!

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Physics Screencasts - How to Videos for AP Physics

National Core Standards Released

Over the past year, a national committee has been working on K-12 Core Standards for language arts and mathematics. I still need to look through the details, but here is a clip from the introductory material.

Core Standards http://www.corestandards.org/

(From Key Considerations, page 4 of document)

"Grade levels for K–8; grade bands for 9–10 and 11–12
The Standards use individual grade levels in kindergarten through grade 8 to provide useful specificity; the Standards use two-year bands in grades 9–12 to allow schools, districts, and states flexibility in high school course design.

A focus on results rather than means
By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers,curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be
reached and what additional topics should be addressed. Thus, the Standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or the full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need to monitor and direct their thinking and learning. Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards.

An integrated model of literacy
Although the Standards are divided into Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, and Language strands for conceptual clarity, the processes of communication are closely connected, as reflected throughout this document. For example, Writing standard 9 requires that students be able to write about what they read. Likewise, Speaking and Listening standard 4 sets the expectation that students will share findings from their research.

Research and media skills blended into the Standards as a whole

To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new. The need to conduct research and to produce and consume media is embedded into every aspect of today’s curriculum. In like fashion, research and media skills and understandings are embedded throughout the Standards rather than treated in a separate section.

Shared responsibility for students’ literacy development

The Standards insist that instruction in reading, writing, speaking, listening,and language be a shared responsibility within the school. The K–5 standards include expectations for reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language applicable to a range of subjects, including but not limited to ELA. The grades 6–12 standards are divided into two sections, one for ELA and the other for history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. This division reflects the unique, time-honored place of ELA teachers in developing students’ literacy skills while at the same time recognizing that teachers in other areas must have a role in this development as well.

Part of the motivation behind the interdisciplinary approach to literacy promulgated by the Standards is extensive research establishing the need for college and career ready students to be proficient in reading complex informational text independently in a variety of content areas. Most of the required reading in college and workforce training programs is informational in structure and challenging in content; postsecondary education programs typically provide students with both a higher volume of such reading than is generally required in K–12 schools and comparatively little scaffolding.

The Standards are not alone in calling for a special emphasis on informational text. The 2009 reading framework of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) requires a high and increasing proportion of informational text on its assessment as students advance through the grades."

On the surface, I like what is stated here, as I agree and have argued for this sort of educational philosophy for years. I do hope in practice this approach still prevails. We will need to see what happens during the implementation phase with state Boards of Education. I am sure there will be much more to come on this one.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

A New Age - 'Creating' Life

Just published on the journal Science's online platform, a group from the Craig J Venter Institute has created a bacterium using an entirely synthetic genome. This is effectively the first time humans have created life from inanimate substances.

Everyone knew it was just a matter of time before this was done, and the future is now. However, while I am entirely for new scientific discovery and inquiry, this really is an eye-opening research result, where humans are 'playing God.' We need to have a very serious discussion on the ethics behind such research, and consider as best we can the unintended consequences of such research. While this was a case of creating a known bacterium, what happens when someone creates a new organism that literally is a brand new, never before seen life form? How can we know what will happen if something that never has existed in Nature comes out of a test tube? While we have that potential on a daily basis with mutations of existing single-celled organisms, this adds a new layer to the possibilities of life that could arise. Ever since humans have learned to genetically engineer organisms, there has been the potential of manufacturing new organisms that could become the ultimate biological weapon, or create scenarios that were once unimaginable. These are issues that most people are unaware of and don't consider, but this must change so political leaders from the global community can address the issue, sooner than later. With new global energy being put into nuclear proliferation, this is the next step in addressing matters that have profound effects on nothing more than global security and the future of human existence on the Earth.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Happy Anniversary - 50 Years of the LASER

Ah, the laser...this stands for Light Amplification of Stimulated Emission of Radiation. They are spread throughout our society, and most of us do not even realize it. Laser pointers. Security systems. CD players. DVD players. Construction. Grocery store scanners. Surgery. Industry. Making holograms. Telecommunications.

The laser was invented some 50 years ago, and the applications only become more numerous by the day. Check out Scientific American's tribute to this amazing device, first predicted in the 1920s by none other than Albert Einstein.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Some Thoughts on Where We Are...

Life right now is, in a word, interesting, is it not? The world keeps going 'round, the sun comes up in the morning and sets in the evening, and here in the Midwest we have actually had quite a nice spring thus far. I noticed a truly beautiful sunset this evening, after helping coach my son's first baseball practice of the year. What a way to get some perspective, to remember what is important in life, to see the boys out there getting dirty and having a truly enjoyable time playing a great game, with my daughter and countless other children playing in the background in a park.

I think we adults around the country need to enjoy such moments more frequently, take a deep breath more frequently, and remember what it is like to be caring, thoughtful, responsible, passionate as well as compassionate, and even a bit civil towards our fellow men and women in this country, as we consider, debate, and contemplate where we are as a country. Never in my life, which began in 1968 at the height of civil unrest with Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and shortly thereafter Watergate, have I seen so much of the polar opposite of what I just mentioned amongst adults. I've been relatively quiet on this blog about current events and politics, mostly because of a complete absence of time to dedicate to writing, but also because I am near speechless about the extent of incivility, irrationality, utter partisanship, and downright, for lack of a better word, hatred so many Americans have been showing towards each other in our body politic. As I say so many times to students as well as other adults who know me, we are in a greatly extended period where emotion seems to outweigh logic and honest debate of issues, regardless of one's political slant, ideology, and opinion.

We are in a time when the extremes of both the right and the left have forced themselves to center stage and have the microphone, throwing around accusations, blame, and doomsday rhetoric about our country. We see so many arguing the talking points that feed on emotion to try and drive the masses into a frenzy, never mind facts and evidence that inconveniently get in the way.

We see a time when decades of neglect and inaction on many fronts have finally managed to converge on us all at once, which has developed an environment where emotion is able to trump logic and common sense because of the scope and magnitude of the issues we now face simultaneously. There is an interconnected set of problems that need to be solved, some time very soon, if we are to avoid near catastrophe as a nation. And I do not want to be seen as being nothing but a partisan when I say this, because I truly say this in all sincerity and with as much an open mind as I can - President Obama is the only major player and person in a position of power I see who seems to understand the scope of interconnectedness of the many major issues we face. Think about it - who else has given speeches that go beyond one or two points? Who else makes a case for any sort of political solution to a problem without mentioning how it is related to multiple other problems and issues? I try to think of others who do this consistently, on either side of the aisle, but cannot think of anyone else (Bill Clinton comes to mind, but he is on the sidelines).

The economic collapse of the past couple years. Health care. Social security. Jobs. Energy policy. Climate change. Foreign policy, national security and two wars. The state of education. Immigration. Budget deficits and national debt. Tax policy. The role of government. National infrastructure. The American Dream and our standard of living.

This is all heavy stuff, each one being a major problem that requires serious discussion, debate, compromise, and both short- and long-term solutions. For any administration, taking on any single one of these over the course of a year or two and getting any sort of major deal on it would be a huge accomplishment. Well, having ignored just about every single one of these issues for multiple decades, there is a logjam on the presidential and congressional plates. We have someone who is willing to take on the political risk to actually confront them. Not because he necessarily wants to...but because he necessarily HAS to. And tough problems that require enormous amounts of work and effort and thought make the average person twist in the wind and want to run and hide. Tough problems we do not necessarily like to think about, precisely because they are tough, make many of us mentally adn intellectually shut down. Do you remember being a student in a math or science class, or some other subject you may have struggled in a bit, and you get to a topic or problem that simply does not make any sense when you first see it? What is your instinct? As a teacher, I see this most days of the week with a number of individual students...the tendency of many, perhaps most, is to step away and resist having to work on it. Serious thought...I am talking about the wrack your brain over a number of days or weeks thought about a single tough problem...is utterly exhausting. It can be entirely frustrating. It can lead one to want to quit altogether. It can lead to anger and emotional outbursts because it is easy to feel utterly stupid and inadequate when a solution continues to hide in the dark, and you are without a flashlight.

This is where we are with the problems we face, and the ugly side of problem solving is upon us. Emotional outbursts and anger have arisen from the collective 'wracking the brains over extended periods of time.' The issues are terribly complex. There are no easy solutions, period. Sorry to say, but "Drill, baby, drill!" really will not solve our energy crisis...simplicity, while desirable, is nothing more than wishful thinking and allows us to create catchy, folksy, bumper sticker quotes that dangerously puts the uninformed and short-sighted thinker into an emotional frenzy. Simply saying "Deport all illegal immigrants!" is not a real solution to our immigration woes. Nor is it practical...good luck hunting down 13 million people living in the background and shadows covering millions of square miles. Think about how hard it has been over a nearly ten-year period to hunt down just one person in a vastly smaller area on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. As much as I, too, am not thrilled with all I pay in taxes, simply cutting taxes is not the solution to our jobs and fiscal problems. It is just a tad more complicated than that.

Thinking in terms of the ten-word phrase found during political campaign season is dangerous, because it completely masks the complexity of the serious issues facing the nation. An example is energy policy. What you do with energy affects infrastructure, which affects the budget, which affects tax policy. It affects industry and the type of manufacturing that will take place in the country over the next few decades. This affects jobs. The nature of those jobs affects the type of education we must provide to our children, who make up the next generation of the workforce. What we do with energy affects global pollution, our standard of living and climate. The nature of pollution from energy production and distribution affects health care (for example, as I point out to students when they asked about Obama wanting to begin building new nuclear power plants, no one in the US has ever died from us using nuclear power over the past five decades...but tens of thousands become sick and die from the pollution of coal, oil and gas power plants each year...not sure why this is never pointed out in the media). What we do with energy affects foreign policy and national defense.

This is why I say "Drill, baby, drill" is nothing more than a catch-phrase for the masses you want to emotionally charge up and fool into thinking that this is a serious policy statement. Nothing more ever follows those three words in terms of anything that resembles a solution to a tremendously serious, complex issue that is interconnected and intimately related to numerous other serious, complex issues. This is why I say Pres. Obama, whether you agree or disagree with his politics and proposals for issues, is the only one I see out there even attempting to seriously recognize the complexity and severity of the nature of the interconnected problems.

By the way, so you know I am not a complete partisan who thinks Obama can do no wrong, I am disappointed that the President recently authorized new offshore oil drilling. The right keeps saying that with modern techniques and technology, this is a safe endeavor. Tell that to the people on the Gulf Coast, as we have a new disaster in the making from the offshore platform that exploded and is now causing a natural catastrophe of much of the Gulf ecosystem. As bad as this is going to be in terms of environmental damage to all sorts of species, I kept arguing during the campaign when McCain proposed all sorts of new drilling that, when you consider the long-term, this is going to also be our drinking water. There is an impending shortage of clean, potable water in many parts of the US (as well as many parts of the world), and we will have to begin using ocean water some day (sooner than we might think)for our own survival. But no one likes thinking about this issue, so it has been put on a back burner, just like we have done with health care, social security, energy, infrastructure, immigration, and so on. We are paying a heavy price right now for that lack of action and foresight, and we will keep being shortsighted with issues like off-shore drilling and the interconnectedness to other issues like drinking water. History does repeat itself; this is a cliche for a reason.

I am frustrated by the majority of our elected officials who are in campaign mode and who are, perhaps, incapable of thinking about more than one thing at a time. I am worried that short-sighted, emotional outbursts are drowning out facts, evidence, expert opinion and proposals to serious, complex issues, that quite frankly the average person may not be able to comprehend, nor wants to make an effort to understand. I worry about those who resort to name calling and who attack another person's character and integrity if they do not agree with one's own opinion or political slant. It does not make you a 'traitor' or unpatriotic if you do not agree with me. In my mind, if your intent is to help solve a problem and make our nation better, that makes you a patriot, plain and simple, whether I agree with you or disagree with you! Being able to peacefully disagree with each other is largely what makes America unique and great! Why do we want anything less than this? This is why a blanket philosophy of "You are either with us or against us" is so terribly dangerous and UN-American. This is where many Americans are on both the left and the right. My kids' future is up for grabs right now, and I desperately yearn for a day, very soon, where facts and evidence are valued, and where serious and rational thought, debate and compromise will show its face and put this emotionally, partisan-driven nonsense in its grave.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Rest Before Mental Work a Plus

The Drs. Eide had a brief post about the positive effects of taking a nap prior to doing mental gymnastics that relate to memory and learning. A UC-Berkley study showed a significant gain in learning for those who nap/rested prior to doing the mental activity compared to those who did not nap.

I like the example they use where, at Google, employees have access to what are effectively napping modules (nap pods) that block light and sound. By resting for, say, 30 minutes or so, worker productivity, innovation and creativity should be enhanced by being able to take that quick rest period, particularly if it is just prior to a working group meeting or research period. The brain literally has a chance to reset and blood flow to the hippocampus increases, which is good preparation for the parts of the brain where learning and memory physically take place.

This has implications for education. If there is a more intense period of learning planned towards the end of a class period, where students have already been working for some period of time, a brief few minutes to rest may in fact enhance the learning immediately prior to the more intense learning period. Many teachers, myself included, know that using something like a 20-5 strategy works with students (meaning 20 minutes of activity followed by 5 minutes of practice/rest) seems to be effective for many students. This type of research helps explain why such strategies work, and suggests we should do more of work-rest periods in the classroom help our students maximize what they get from a lesson or activity. A detailed article about what is happening with the brain can be found here.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Interesting History at CPAC

I'm sitting here watching Michelle Bachmann speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference annual conference, and I'm hearing a really interesting account of history. I'm learning some new things tonight:

- FDR took over a "manageable recession" and spent the U.S. into the Great Depression (last I checked, FDR was sworn in in January of 1933, which, if my math is correct, was some 3.5 years into the global economic collapse);

- Obama is solely responsible for the 'bail-out nation.' (I, too, forgot that there was another bailout prior to Obama taking office. The start of the bank bailout really wasn't during the Bush administration, back in the fall of 2008...Obama was elected and was able to go back in time and do that one...I have forgotten about that);

- the Dems want nothing but 'a state of decline for America.' I guess this must be the case because they don't agree with everything the conservatives believe in. I seem to remember vaguely that a battle-cry from the far right goes something like 'you're either with us or against us' which then translates into 'if you don't agree with me you are not a patriot.' This was then followed on Obama's inauguration day with the cry of 'I hope he fails,' led by Rush himself.

- oh, and as John Pence said during his speech, the solution to all our economic woes is for government to get out of the way, deregulate the market so there are no restrictions on them, and cut taxes across the board, especially for the rich. Well, that was what happened during the last 8 years under Bush...oh, I forgot that was the flawless plan that worked perfectly. The current Great Recession was not started with any issues of a greatly deregulated marketplace. It was all Obama's fault, which he was able to make happen during that same trip back in time he made to start the bailouts. Yes, Mr. Ponce, you are so right...you have the answer for getting us out of this Obama recession.

- There are many Republican state and local officials (such as Gov. Tim Pawlenty of MN) who, in front of one set of cameras, rail against the Obama stimulus bill and how it has done nothing but waste money and create zero jobs, but then in front of another set of cameras back in their states brag about balancing state budgets (such as Pawlenty) and go to ribbon cutting ceremonies for new bridges, highways, buildings, and other infrastructure projects that did produce jobs, that were funded through the stimulus bill. So, which is it? Oh, I forgot they get it both ways, as long as they sneak in that this is another attempt by Obama to help America decline.

- They discount the Congressional Budget Office's (non-partisan office responsible for providing Congress with budgetary projections and analysis) confirmation of White House numbers that some 2 million jobs have been saved or created since the stimulus bill was introduced that otherwise would have disappeared, flatly saying it is not accurate or true, but then turn around and use the CBO numbers for deficits and long-term budget projections...so is the CBO only competent when the data support your causes and agendas, and completely incompetent when they contradict what you want to say?

- One of the catch phrases every speaker is using is the 'bail-out nation' that Obama has created, and they tie it into the stimulus bill. Again, interesting history I apparently had incorrect in my own mind. I was under the impression these were two completely different bills (TARP vs ARRA). The bank and auto industry bail-outs were done initially in order to save the once thought 'too big to fail' corporations that screwed up the national and global economies. I seem to remember that it was the Bush administration that started the TARP process...and yes, some were throwing around the D word, depression, had this not happened. By the way, I did not hear any speakers yet mention that most of the TARP money given to the banks has been paid back, with a goal of getting it all back in the next few months. Even GM has plans of beginning to pay back money from the auto rescue (by June), that prevented hundreds of thousands of other jobs being lost. The stimulus bill (ARRA) is centered on some $250 billion in tax cuts and credits (the CPAC speakers failed to mention that one for some reason), infrastructure projects (which most reasonable people know we are desperately in need of all around the country; I certainly appreciate the road work that was just completed where I live that would not have happened without the stimulus money), education (as school budgets are imploding around the country, and especially here in Illinois, because of state budget catastrophes and the housing collapse that began under the Bush administration, although I have heard some Republicans even put this one on Obama), transportation (such as the frantic race to submit high-speed rail proposals in red and blue states), and energy (funding for alternative energy projects and businesses, which is already beginning). The new thrust by Obama into construction of new nuclear power plants is going to come from some of the stimulus money. I thought he would get some credit for this last one, but I am waiting for the far right to criticize him some how for going with something the right has wanted for years.

I guess this is a useful history lesson for me because I had it all wrong, apparently. On a serious note, I lose respect very quickly for anyone who twists, or worse, simply makes up, their own self-declared facts and evidence to promote their cause, whatever it is. And because these are 'distinguished' people who are on TV with big microphones, many people who are not familiar with true facts and reality will believe them.

It is all in the name of winning an election, this one being the midterms coming up in November. Heaven forbid they all just shut the f*$& up and work for the many millions of American people who are having a difficult time right now. I am becoming a fan of Evan Bayh, who said the other day that the American people need to vote the incumbents out of both parties who do nothing but contribute to the nasty political gotcha games...screw politics, and do what's right for a change. Reasonable people can sit down and come up with reasonable solutions and compromises to solve many of our problems. There really is a political middle majority within America, and CPAC is NOT that middle. More than one has said since I have been watching that they don't want Republicans elected, but rather Conservatives. This is not the average American being represented, and average Americans will hopefully be able to distinguish true history from CPAC fantasy.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Hope Springs Eternal - Beginning to Develop STEM Standards

I've been writing and talking about needed STEM changes in our science and technology classes for years, and this includes the last deluge of recent posts below. By chance, just today in Education Week is an article describing the just formed national task force charged with developing the initial framework for new STEM standards that will fit into the Obama administration's education policy.

Presently, 48 states are working on new sets of learning standards for the primary areas of reading and mathematics, and this new task force, which is coming out of the National Research Council (NRC), has just stated that the primary philosophical goal is to break away from learning a thousand individual and often disperse facts and concepts, and include a much stronger focus on thinking, reasoning and analytical skills. This is music to my ears!

As wonderful as this news is, we must keep in mind that this new group's purpose is to soley develop the 'conceptual framework' for new standards. Then the results and recommendations from this task force must go to the states and the Department of Education for review and for the details. My hope is that none of these groups go too far in either direction. We need some core concepts and subject knowledge (i.e. content), to be sure. But it is widely believed, and certainly by yours truly, that we have reached a point of near saturation of content knowledge in today's classroom. What we cannot do is go entirely to open-ended and project based classes that then totally ignores subject content. We need balance, where content knowledge is gained, but then also used and applied in a variety of creative and innovative ways, which is where deeper thinking, analystical and reasoning skills are developed and deeper science understanding and literacy are reached.

I have told students, colleagues and many others many times that, personally, I could care less how we do on international tests, which tend to focus almost entirely on content knowledge and recall. I'll gladly take a hit on national testing results in favor of developing a deep thinking, creative generation of students who can solve everyday, complex problems in new, innovative ways. While some different countries place first in international testing, I always like to ask, "OK, but how many Nobels have you won? How many important patents or publications do your scientists produce? How many new industries have you created?" For most countries the answers are none. Innovation, problem solving, analysis, recognizing and making progress in complexity/chaos/networks, communication within multidisciplinary collaborations, and so on are the future in a global economy adn society. This is a first step that is on the right track of reforming our education system so the next generation is properly prepared for such a world.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Summary of STEM Posts

We have issues with STEM education in America. My last three posts go into great detail about different aspects of the problem, and suggestions of how to fix the STEM education system. Unfortunately some may not want to read through the long posts, so here is a much shorter summary.

The main problems, as agreed upon at a recent conference of experts from all education levels, industry and STEM professionals include:
• We do not have appropriate teacher training and certification systems in place to ensure STEM teachers in Preschool – High School can in fact provide what is needed for students. Reform and progress in STEM areas cannot ever happen if we do not have teachers in place who can properly work with students;
• Federal education policy places a focus on content only, and not skills needed to reach levels of ‘critical thinking’ and complex problem solving. This runs contrary to what is needed in STEM education and for college to be successful in STEM;
• We continue to treat education in America as five disjointed, and at times disconnected, levels. We must move into a mindset of one continuum of education, Preschool – college, and then use this to our advantage and vertically align the system to reach the end goals we want.

We have limited success stories out there of schools that are producing high-powered STEM students, to be sure. But these stories are, unfortunately, few and far between. Assuming that federal mandates and education policy continue to emphasize content only for the foreseeable future, educators and STEM experts need to be clever about how to try and get more success stories to blossom, despite the systemic obstacles that are placed in our way.

A start is to make use of technology and network with each other. From our conference, there is a new Ning setup for such communication. This is at http://stemdist219.ning.com/. For those of us who have had some successes, we need to share our methods and experience and encourage our colleagues in other districts to try it. Blog about your ideas, tell us what works and what does not. For example, I have put a large amount of information and documents on my school research web site. There are links to past student papers (which shows the high level high school students can work at when unleashed!), links to university departments with suggestions of how to make contacts and how to develop research ideas, and a research booklet with all sorts of suggestions that have worked for me as I tried to establish a research program. I will put some references to published articles I have written at the end of this post, so you can get more details about some things that have worked for me over the years.

If you are unable to get research started, then perhaps getting students involved in STEM competitions is a possibility. We get at least our top kids involved in JETS TEAMS contests, WYSE Academic Challenge, the STEM Olympiads, Physics Bowl, science essay contests, bridge building competitions, independent studies into any area of science or math that they are interested in (such as quantum mechanics, relativity, cosmology, particle physics, robotics, Lagrangian mechanics, and so on), writing computer simulations with C++, Java, Matlab or other software, peer tutoring and mentoring (to get them thinking more deeply about STEM subjects), and whatever else you can think of. Students being able to actively do things they want to do is invaluable for building a love of STEM subjects and get them deeper into the process and skill-building that is necessary at the college and professional levels. By getting them into projects of any kind outside of classwork, a new level of independence is reached, and often more involved problem solving and synthesis of new, challenging material are required. This is the value of academic extracurriculars. Just provide outside opportunities for kids, and let them lose. Often you will be amazed at what they end up doing! These are the things we no longer have time to do in classes, because we need to focus on content for ‘the test.’ I don’t see this changing any time soon, even with the Obama administration. However, if we are willing to work on projects and contests outside of class time, we can begin to hook more students into STEM areas, and properly prepare them for advanced work in college and beyond. We have no choice if the system does not change. It is more work. It is more difficult than it needs to be. But our children’s future and the country’s future depend on such efforts.

While we are at it, please share any thoughts or activities that have been successful for you. Join the Ning and join the discussion with a larger network. We should organize and contact political leaders who are in charge of education policy, as well as State Boards of Education and University deans for schools of education to adopt new training and certification programs to develop well-trained STEM teachers of the future. There is much to get done, as quickly as possible.

Let’s get to work!

Some references related to how to build and maintain high school STEM/research programs:

1. M. Ngoi, M. Vondracek, “Working with Gifted Science Students in a Public High
School Environment.” Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, vol. XV, no. 4,
141-147 (Summer 2004).

2. R. Horton & M. Vondracek, “Creating and Maintaining a High School Physics
Research Program.” The Physics Teacher, vol. 42, 334-338 (September 2004).

3. M. Vondracek. “Diminishing the Gap Between High School and University
Research Programs – Computational Research.” The Physics Teacher, 44 (Oct.
2007).

How to Fix STEM Education

In my previous post, I asked the question, “Where are we with STEM education?”

The brief answer is we are systemically set up in precisely the wrong way to bring about any large-scale reform to STEM education. The main reasons, in my opinion, include: we are presently a test-crazed society, which has prevented schools from having the time to create programs that work on the skills needed to get children to the often mentioned realm of ‘higher-level” or “critical” thinking skills, terms that you hear a lot in education and from politicians; our teacher training and certification programs do not produce STEM educators that have true research experience, and though everyone wants more hands-on and inquiry learning as well as more student research, we do not have the personnel in the classrooms who know what this involves; and we have a mindset issue by thinking of our education system as a series of separate, distinct levels – pre-school, elementary school, middle school, high school, and college – rather than simply thinking of it as a continuum that needs to have flowing communications and be vertically aligned from one year to the next.

What needs to be done to change this mixed up system? I could just say “A LOT” and run for the hills, but let me offer some suggestions.

I could take the easy way out and simply say we need more money to fix all the problems. While STEM education does cost large sums of money for equipment, supplies, facilities, and properly trained teachers, there is much more to it, unfortunately. I mentioned above that it is a systemic problem, and mean this in every sense of the word ‘systemic,’ from top to bottom.

A major issue is that we are not doing a very good job of getting quality science and technology education to our youngest students in pre-school. This is where we want to hook them into the process of STEM disciplines. While content expertise cannot be expected with 3-4 year olds, that is not the point of good STEM exposure at this age. THEY ARE NATURAL SCIENTISTS AT THIS AGE and we should be encouraging them to observe, question, think, analyze, and present their thinking in as many ways as possible, so that they learn this is the expectation for learning and that it is fun to do. Every single presenter, for example, at a STEM conference I recently attended emphasized the need to excite students about STEM subjects throughout their schooling, and that having skills was as important as any content knowledge they possess by the time they get to college. Any teacher knows bad habits are harder to break as a student ages, so let’s give them good habits and great encouragement and energy when they first start formal ‘schooling.’ Check out an earlier post about pre-school STEM education, and an attempt to get a real curriculum for that age level.

Building process and skills in pre-school leads children into elementary school (K-5). But here we begin running into systemic problems. It is well-known that K-5 teachers generally have the strongest background in language arts and mathematics, and that a good majority acknowledge their weakest subject area is science. Let’s fix this, once and for all by modifying the certification training for elementary teachers. We know that the good jobs of the future are going to be largely STEM jobs, so why do we continue with the same old teacher training programs? It does not make sense. Require more science, and more importantly require some minimal time in science labs working on slightly longer-term projects so elementary teachers learn what the actual scientific process is and what skills are needed to do science. Again, at the youngest ages developing skills and understanding how to do science is as important, if not more important, than content, and this will not happen if teachers do not know what the process is or what is needed to do science.

A second problem has arisen in the past decade. No Child Left Behind (NCLB). While the idea of being accountable for every child learning is undeniably the right idea, how NCLB has been administered has done great damage to STEM education. Because school standing, known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), relies on a standardized test and performance in math and English/reading, that is where schools are literally forced to focus. Content is everything, and skills have fallen effectively out of sight. Students need to be able to regurgitate facts and follow a prescribed writing format in order to do well on the test. Schools have no choice but to spend numerous hours, days, and weeks on test prep rather than on hands-on and portfolio assessments, where students can have a chance to be creative and perhaps select from a variety of activities. Creativity from students and teachers has suffered, as has innovation in the classroom, because that will not help with scoring well on the test. In addition, AYP status and yearly increases suggest the belief that all kids should be at the same place, across the board, at the same time. Any reasonably intelligent adult knows for a fact that this is a ludicrous belief, and therefore reject the premise behind the assessment of NCLB. Politicians who are in control of education policy, however, find this to be politically reasonable. In the end, most elementary schools have cut back on science and social studies time in order to focus on the tests for math and language arts.

Similar problems exist at the next educational level, middle school. Teachers in STEM subject areas generally have coursework in that subject area in college, however the same problem of not having any real time and experience in the lab holds true. This problem continues for the vast majority of high school teachers, too. Because the training of teachers places emphasis on content almost exclusively, that is what is presented in class in middle school and high school. While content is important, as there are numerous facts, theories, principles, calculations, and simple experiments to understand if one wants to advance to higher levels of learning in the field, we need to keep in mind what every college professor and instructor at the conference said: more important than content coming into a college STEM program is enthusiasm and skills!

If a student can think, analyze data, understand and interpret graphs, know how to do basic measurements, how to report findings, how to find information about specific questions that arise in research, how to take large volumes of information and data and figure out what is important and what is not, and find patterns in data and observations that can lead to logical, evidence-backed conclusions, they will teach you the content. But not knowing how to test content and what to do with content, that is much more difficult to teach to older students. Bad habits have been formed, misconceptions have been developed, and there is not the time in a semester class to make up for 13 years of either mis-training or no training at all in how to do STEM. It is ironic that many of the professors who were making these statements are at universities that trained the K-12 teachers in the first place…and they did not train them with the skills necessary to get students to where they need to be in order to be successful in STEM college programs. STEM departments do not communicate very well with schools of education within the same university structure.

We are shooting ourselves in the foot, and it is a systemic problem!!

However, here is another level of complexity to the system. State Boards of Education.

A State Board of Education is generally a politically appointed body. It may vary tremendously from state to state what the expertise of Board members include, but I would guess not many on state boards have extensive STEM expertise, and I would also guess not many members have a great deal of experience in K-12 classroom education. Many are administrators, some are from business areas, and some are politically well connected with the governor’s office. Whatever the case, the important piece is that the state Boards set certification criteria for teachers in the state. For real reform to occur in STEM areas, state boards of education need to change the current standards. Teachers in training MUST be required to have some amount of STEM research in the lab. Science teachers must know what scientists actually do, and how the process works. Teachers must know what goes into setting research questions, how to develop and plan experiments, how to properly analyze data and present it, and how to interpret data and observations to draw reasonable conclusions. Learning about the scientific method is very different from a textbook than from actual experience in a laboratory.

I guarantee that present calls for more research and higher-level research for high school students will NEVER happen within the current system simply because more high school science teachers do not know how to do research themselves. It is that simple.

Communication between levels in the education system
Let’s assume we get more research trained STEM teachers into classrooms. There is then the issue of lacking facilities and equipment to do any sort of high-level, original research with students. This is a real problem at the vast majority of middle school and high schools around the country. There is a growing list of options becoming available to pre-college teachers and students, due in large part to the Internet.

Many people may be surprised at how easy it can be, especially in the physical sciences (life science research tends to require more expensive and sophisticated equipment than chemistry or physics), to use more basic equipment to do clever science research in a high school, or even in a student’s home. But to learn how to do this for the first time, and to even get an understanding that this is possible, requires help. It is my own experience that the vast majority of professors are very willing and able to give suggestions for research topics and ways of studying the topic. Sometimes they will make their own equipment available for certain measurements, or even take in a student into their lab. Other times they will email a relevant article, or put us in touch with a colleague who can be of more assistance.

Many professors are willing to be e-mentors for high school and even some middle school students. This, I suspect, is in its infancy, and more and more college level research groups will make members available to give ideas and some amount of guidance to young students while they do their work in some other part of town or even in other parts of the country. This can be done effectively and efficiently with email, video conference calls, distance learning platforms, webcasts and podcasts, online videos for demos or illustrations or even online lectures about the topic, remote access to lab equipment (such as with the iLab Network), computer simulations, some Google applications, wikis and Nings, and other clever uses of Web 2.0 applications and technologies.

The point is it is very possible for one-on-one contact with university experts and advisers, but this is presently being done on a small scale, with individual high school teachers. A system could be developed to make it easier for more Preschool-12 teachers to contact experts for advice and help.

Systemically, we need to take an approach for STEM education to identify, at the professional and college levels, what skills are absolutely essential by the time a student enters college and the workplace in a technical industry. These need to be fed to a State Board of Education, so they then can put in place policy and certification criteria for teachers in that state. The State Board needs to work with the teaching training colleges and get them to develop the necessary courses to meet those certification criteria. Then those newly and properly trained teachers will filter into the preschool-12 education system. This is not an easy process, but a necessary one. This will be difficult to do if we do not change the mindset that we have a single education system, rather than five different levels and parts of the education system. Better vertical alignment is needed if we are to do this right.

All of what I just suggested becomes a moot point if the federal education policy does not change. With a continued emphasis on content being proposed in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top law, the status quo will remain. If STEM training is to be the dominant area in the 21st century schools, time must be provided for students to have research experiences in STEM classrooms. They will not be able to develop skills needed in college otherwise. We need to lobby political leaders in control of education to get off the testing bandwagon and onto the STEM bandwagon, where students will truly learn more advanced analysis skills and how to think, ask questions, and find good information among the endless online resources.

I fear the politicians will not change education policy or assessments any time soon, and we will continue to have isolated bright spots in the education landscape, but nothing on a scale that the country needs to maintain its dwindling lead in STEM. China produces millions of engineers a year, and send large numbers of their top college students to American schools for the skills training that has kept American scientists ahead of the rest of the world for the past 60 years. Our dominance is not quite where it used to be, and with us producing scientists and engineers in far fewer numbers (some 2-3 orders of magnitude less than the Chinese, not to mention India, too) we can expect further declines in our STEM lead. Those of us in education, and specifically in STEM education who know what is needed and what needs to change, need to mobilize and address our concerns to the powerbrokers at the state and federal level. This is a call to action!

Where are we with STEM Education?

The 21st century is being labeled with a number of names, ranging from the Age of the Internet; The Information Age; The Age of Globalization; and a new one I just heard, the Age of Conceptualization. And still others call it the Age of STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. I’ll stay away from the Age of Terror that I’ve heard some mention in a more political/warfare sense. In many ways, it does not matter if one chooses any of these because at a basic level they are referring to the same thing.

I was recently at an all-day conference on STEM in the Chicagoland area, where leaders in education (middle school through college was strongly represented), industry, science and engineering (speakers included an astrophysicist, a particle physicist, a robotics specialist, a nanotechnologist, and lead engineer who designed and built the Dubai Tower), and politics (the keynote speaker was Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, Illinois 9th) met at Niles North High School to begin a networking group focused on how we should be approaching STEM in schools, with an additional focus on how to improve student research and active involvement in STEM areas while in K-12 schools. It was a wonderful turnout (some 140 leaders from dozens of high schools), and I had the pleasure of being asked to be the table leader for student independent research. Many thanks to the gang from Niles North for putting this together and hosting. I also must compliment Niles North for being a leader in developing a broader STEM program that includes a wonderful facility for research and for getting large numbers of students doing true research.

Where are we with regards to STEM in K-12 education? Like so much in public education, the answer to this question depends almost entirely on where you happen to live. The leaders in STEM tend to be from wealthier suburban districts or magnet-type schools such as the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), whose charter mandates students to do research and pursue scientific/technical activity. The major reason such schools lead the way is that it requires money for students to do research on a larger scale, as well as to recruit and hire instructors with strong research backgrounds to begin setting up programs for students. In Illinois it is especially difficult to break this cycle because of the way schools are funded, which depends severely on local property tax revenue.

News headlines have for some time had a focus on how poorly the U.S. compares on international tests of science and math to the rest of the world. The average American student does not hold up well on such tests. Our top students continue to do extremely well, but there is a growing gap for the overall average. A couple reasons were identified at the conference and there has been a growing consensus over the last couple years as to why this is the case. These include:
• A lack of training and research experience of teachers at all levels of K-12 education. Even in high schools, a shockingly large percentage of science teachers have never actually done research, meaning they have never actually done science. There is a Grand Canyon sized gap between coursework from textbooks and actually doing long-term research in the lab;
• A lack of expertise and time devoted to science and technology in early grades (typically K-5). This has continued to worsen in the age of No Child Left Behind, as time is taken away from science and social studies to focus on reading and math, the two subjects that are tested and go into a school’s AYP status;
• A lack of funding in K-12 education, in terms of having facilities and equipment/supplies to do higher level research. In Illinois and other states that have enormous deficits, this will continue to be the case;
• A disconnect between K-12 and college levels of STEM, largely because of a lack of communication. And I’ll include industry as well. High schools can be at a loss in terms of understanding what, exactly, are the required skills colleges and the workplace are looking for. This has been exasperated by the fact the high schools have been under intense focus for specific science content in order to pass state tests for No Child Left Behind mandates. Colleges and employers are not necessarily only interested in what specific content students have had, but rather they have become more interested in what skills students have developed in order to be successful in college STEM programs and in the workplace.

What can we do about all this? What should we be doing about all this? The answers are NOT being addressed by the federal mandates, and that includes the soon to be new education policy called “The Race to the Top,” which will be the Obama administration’s education policy that replaces the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind. By being on a school board, I have had early exposure to Race to the Top because we had to decide whether or not to send in a Memo of Understanding that was required to be registered with the state board of education in order to be eligible for money coming out of competitive grants. There is a competitive grant program set up between states to meet a large number of criteria in the Race to the Top legislation that will be given to Congress in the not so distant future.

There is a similar flaw in the national and state education policies that have then been dumped on local school districts. It has to do with the mindset of those writing the laws, almost all of whom have never taught in classrooms before. This is what we get by having non-experts writing education policy. What I mean by mindset is that too many still think of education as five separate entities. There is preschool; there is elementary school; there is middle school; there is high school; and there is college. Finally, there is the workplace. There are separate districts in many locales, where preschool is its own entity, then there may be a K-8 elementary district that then feeds into a separate high school district. The districts are often within different boundaries, meaning a K-8 district could feed into multiple high schools, as is the case where I live. There are state tests that are given to K-8, which are written separately from the state tests that are given to high schools. This has been a disaster in Illinois, for example. The elementary test, called ISAT, tests a set of standards that are not aligned with high school standards. In other words, for the past ~8 years of testing for No Child Left Behind, kids passing the ISAT have been promoted to high school thinking they are well prepared, but then they find out they are behind because the standards for the high school test, called the Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE), are set at a higher level. So a good number of freshman in high school find out their levels of reading and math and already behind where they need to be to meet the standards set up for their junior year of high school, which is when the PSAE is given according to federal law. How messed up is this??? And the tests both come from the same state board of education.

The MINDSET of thinking about 5 levels of education is entirely flawed! We need to think about this as a continuum, not as a disjointed system of education and learning. I am convinced, as are all the other participants at the conference after I brought up the concept of mindset to the group, of an overarching Preschool – College education system. The entire system must have some level of communication and organization that allows for some level of vertical alignment of curriculum and skills-building. This mindset would put us in a model of a pipeline with a continuous laminar flow for students, rather than the turbulence that results from transitions between districts and standards that vary from one level to the next due to nothing more than the rear not knowing what the front is doing. Without this model and way of thinking about education, I fear no reform is possible. Period.

If we buy into this mindset of a continuous, flowing education, then what? How do we begin to fix specific problems with STEM education? For starters, we need to think about where students need to end up by the time they get to the workplace in their early twenties. What skills are going to be needed twenty years from now, for a young child today to be able to compete in tomorrow’s world, where we do not presently even know what jobs are going to exist? This gets tricky because it requires long-term projections and planning, but it is a very good guess that the bulk of good future jobs will require STEM backgrounds. But here’s the thing so many cannot get their heads around – we have to be thinking in terms of SKILLS as much, if not more so, than CONTENT.

Content is important, don’t get me wrong. Going through school, one needs to learn how to write and spell correctly and understand the basic rules of math, and know about the Constitution and how the country works, and know some fundamental principles that science is built upon. Such facts and content is vital in order to continuously build knew knowledge. But whether it is No Child Left Behind or the new proposals in Race to the Top, the end results are focused entirely on content. Schools have been rated in NCLB solely on those tests at the end of the year. Race to the Top will in principle do a little better because the claim is it will focus on academic growth of students, rather than the ridiculous notion that all students should be at the same place at the same time as NCLB assumes. However, the end game is going to be on end of year testing. Race to the Top will take it even one step further, with teacher and principal evaluations being based on test results (that is good for me since I teach AP, and my kids will pass state exams 100% of the time; what about the special ed teacher, though, whose juniors come in reading at a 3rd grade level, and not a single one will pass the test? Am I a better teacher than she is? Probably not, but federal law treats me as far superior since my kids passed the test…a crazy way of doing education!).

End result of both federal education laws: Content is going to continue to rule the day.

Now here is the kicker. To a person, when asked at the conference what does a college professor want from an incoming freshman, every professor in attendance I spoke with and who participated in table discussions as well as the eight featured speakers to the whole group, not a single one mentioned content! They did not care about how much content, beyond the basics that is, a student had in their STEM area. They can teach the content, they all said. But what IS needed, and what IS presently lacking from a majority of incoming college freshman, are skills. For STEM areas, students need to be able to do 2 things according to every professor: be able to read technical literature for understanding, and have the ability to think about and find information to reach logical conclusions, i.e. problem solving (this includes being able to identify how to know what you don’t know, and then be able to go figure out the answer). Skills matter as much and more than specific content for college. The underlying reason for this, by the way, is that many believe we are in a paradigm shift of ages – we are moving from the “Information Age” into the “Age of Conceptualization.” We have collected more information in the past twenty years than human civilization collected in the past 10,000 years combined, and now we have moved into an age of having to figure out what to do with the information. This is why higher-level thinking and problem solving and creative skills come in, for STEM fields have progressed from single disciplinary to multi-disciplinary. We have moved beyond knowing what is in the textbook, and into an age where textbooks in some fields are changing every few months with new discovery…students must be trained to think on the fly and how to synthesize large volumes of information and find the connections between topics from different fields.

Because we treat our education systems as separate blocks of education, we have systemically developed a lack of communication between the blocks. We are focused on the wrong things in the test the content dominated K-12 blocks compared to what the kids should be doing to properly compare for college and the workplace.

We need to take the end result, higher-level thinking and problem solving and creative skills, and work backwards. What do we need to do year-to-year in pre-college education in order to reach the end goals? What are some best practices that allow us to develop not only good content knowledge in students, but also provide an environment and system where skills are developed, too?

Future posts will focus on these last questions.