Research

State of STEM Report – CEPA

The National Science Foundation recently released "Science and Engineering Indicators 2008"
(http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/pdf/volume1.pdf), with appendix tables located at (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/pdf/volume2.pdf). The report includes data on education, workforce, research and development, and public support related to science and engineering fields in the United States and its relative position in the world.

Articles -



Which Technologies Will Shape Education in 2008?

by Dave Nagel – T.H.E. Journal

Mobile broadband, collaborative Web technologies, and mashups will all significantly impact education over the next five years, along with "grassroots" video, collective intelligence, and "social operating systems." This according to a new report released last week by the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative, the 2008 Horizon Report.

The report focuses on the six key technology areas that the researchers identified as likely to have a major impact on "the choices of learning-focused organizations within the next five years," broken down into the technologies that will have an impact in the near term, those that are in the early stages of adoption, and those that are a bit further out on the horizon.

In the near term--that is, in the timeframe of about a year or less--the technologies that will have a significant impact on education include grassroots video and collaborative Web technologies. Grassroots video is, simply, user-generated video created on inexpensive consumer electronics devices and edited and encoded using free or inexpensive consumer- or prosumer-grade NLEs. Internet-based services supporting the sharing of these videos have allowed institutions to mingle their content with consumer content and "will fuel rapid growth among learning-focused organizations who want their content to be where the viewers are," according to the report. The second near-term trend, collaborative Web technology, is already in wide use in education at all levels. The complete report (see link below) provides further details.

In the mid-term, mobile broadband and data mashups will make their mark on education. Mashups, according to the report, will largely impact the way education institutions represent information. "While most current examples are focused on the integration of maps with a variety of data," the report said, "it is not difficult to picture broad educational and scholarly applications for mashups." Mobile broadband too is in the early stages of adoption for educational purposes, from project-based learning activities to virtual field trips.

Further down the road, according to the report, come "collective intelligence" and "social operating systems." Collective intelligence includes wikis and community tagging. A social operating system is "the essential ingredient of next generation social networking" and "will support whole new categories of applications that weave through the implicit connections and clues we leave everywhere as we go about our lives, and use them to organize our work and our thinking around the people we know," according to the report. The time to adoption for these last two will be four to five years, the report said.

Beyond these six technologies, the report also looks at the challenges facing education institutions and the trends--or "metatrends"--that have emerged in the five years since the first edition of the report was released. The complete 2008 report is freely available online via the link below.

More Information:

Report: Further Declines in Computer Science, but Turnaround May Be on the Horizon

by Dian Schaffhauser – T.H.E. Journal

A computing research organization said that enrollments and degrees at United States-based computer science departments dropped further in 2006 and 2007. The non-profit Computing Research Association, which is composed of academic and private industry members, has done survey work on computer science degrees since 1974, tracking enrollment trends among 170 Ph.D.-granting schools.

According to the CRA, after seven years of decline, the number of new CS majors in fall 2007 was half of what it was in fall 2000 (15,958 versus 7,915). According to a preview report from CRA, "The sustained drop in total enrollments and student interest in CS as a major suggests that degree production numbers will continue to drop in the next few years."

However, the report also noted the number of new majors increased slightly in 2007, which means that the downward spiral may actually be starting to flatten.

This drastic drop in degree production among CS departments mirrors what happened during the late 1980s. According to the report, between 1980 and 1986 undergraduate CS production nearly quadrupled to more than 42,000 degrees. "This period was followed by a swift decline and leveling off during the 1990s, with several years in which the number of degrees granted hovered around 25,000," the report stated. "During the late 1990s, CS degree production again surged to more than 57,000 in 2004."

Full results from the survey will be released in May. http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22191



Report: EETT Cuts Threaten NCLB Goals

by Dave Nagel - T.H.E. Journal

Slashing EETT ("Enhancing Education Through Technology") has become an annual event in federal budget planning. A little more than a month ago, the Bush administration again proposed eliminating funding entirely for the program for fiscal year 2009. But a new report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), released today, suggests that cuts imperil the scope of programs that have improved academic achievement and helped to ensure teacher quality.

EETT is part of Title II Part D of the No Child Left Behind Act, designed to support the deployment and integration of educational technology into classroom instruction. It provides the sole source of federal funding in NCLB specifically supporting education technologies.

So why is it so consistently targeted for cuts?

In explaining the proposed elimination of EETT funding for FY 2009, the United States Department of Education last month stated: "Schools today offer a greater level of technology infrastructure than just a few years ago, and there is no longer a significant need for a State formula grant program targeted specifically on (and limited to) the integration of technology into schools and classrooms. Districts seeking funds to integrate technology into teaching and learning can use funds from other Federal programs, such as Improving Teacher Quality State Grants and Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies."

But cuts to federal funding do have a detrimental effect on education programs, according to SEDTA's 2008 National Trends Report, which compiled data on funding for Round 5, FY 2006, in which funds had been slashed by about 45 percent from the previous year. Fifty states and the District of Columbia participated in the SETDA survey, conducted in the fall, representing nearly 16,000 local education agencies (LEAs). Twenty-one of these states indicated that they do not have "any state funds explicitly targeted for educational technology," according to the report. And for those 21 states, EETT is the primary source of funding, so LEAs are hard-hit by these cuts.

"The cuts took place in a year when 52 percent of the states were conducting multi-year grant programs through their competitive awards," the report said. "These multi-year grants are important on several fronts. First and foremost, they enable the LEA to focus their educational technology funds on a specific target over several years, increasing the likelihood of sustainability. Second, they provide an opportunity for LEAs to conduct high-quality evaluation and/or research studies once programs are solidly in place, thus evaluating the true efficacy of a program rather than its potential during startup. And third, they reduce the administrative burden on SEAs and LEAs, enabling them to dedicate a larger portion of time and money on implementation rather than grant application writing, processing, and administration."

"Research and data have shown that educational technology programs help to ensure that all schools have highly qualified teachers and provide students with the academic resources necessary to compete in a global economy," said Mary Ann Wolf, executive director of SETDA, in a statement released in conjunction with the report. "Effective professional development and leadership are key to the advancement of the NCLB II D program goals. The ... slash in EETT funds in Round 5 forced states to eliminate highly effective programs or to scale back successful programs."

The 2008 report identified several trends supporting the position that federal funding has helped to ensure that education agencies aim to meet NCLB IID goals in Round 5. Among them were: Participants in the study also indicated that the cuts "severely" compromised the ability of LEAs to meet the academic and technological goals of NCLB IID.

"While the findings for Round 5 indicate that the states are implementing the NCLB IID program as prescribed by law," the report stated, "the cuts have caused significant reductions in the scope."

"From professional development models in inner city New York to technology integration programs in rural North Dakota to comprehensive school reform in North Carolina, educational technology programs and models raise student achievement," SETDA's Wolf said. "We know what models and programs work, and EETT is one fundamental component to transforming more schools and ensuring our students are prepared for the 21st Century global economy."

Further information can be found at SETDA's site here. A PDF of the complete report, with detailed findings, can be downloaded here.

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22184



Encouraging Girls in Math and Science

This National Center for Education Research (NCER) Practice Guide is the second in a series of IES guides in education. Developed by a panel of experts, this guide brings together the best available evidence and expertise to provide educators with specific and coherent evidence-based recommendations on how to encourage girls in the fields of math and science. The objective is to provide teachers with specific recommendations that can be carried out in the classroom without requiring systemic change. Other school personnel having direct contact with students, such as coaches, counselors, and principals may also find the guide useful. The guide offers five recommendations and indicates the quality of the evidence that supports the recommendations. Together, the recommendations make a coherent statement: To encourage girls in math and science, educators need to strengthen girls' beliefs about their abilities in math and science, spark and maintain greater interest in these subject areas, and build associated skills.
View, download, and print the full report as a PDF file (1.3 MB)


The New York Hall of Science Volunteers Try Science (VolTS)

Front-End Program Evaluation Executive Summary and Discussion http://www.tryscience.org/se/pdfs/RK&A_2006_NYHoS_VolTS_front_summary_final.pdf



Mathematics and Science Partnerships

Title II-B of the No Child Left Behind Act, Mathematics and Science Partnerships (MSP), is intended to increase the academic achievement of students in math and/or science by enhancing the content knowledge and teaching skills of classroom teachers. This grant provides districts and schools with the opportunity to partner with faculty from the science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) departments in institutions of higher education. Partnerships must include STEM faculty in institutions of higher education and at least one "high need" local school district. Other partners may include public charter schools or other public schools, businesses, and nonprofit or for-profit organizations concerned with mathematics and science education.

MSP programs provide enhanced and ongoing professional development for math and science teachers with the goal of increasing teachers' subject matter knowledge and promoting the effective use of research-based teaching methods. Over 40 Colorado districts have been involved in Mathematics and Science Partnerships, and an additional 47 more districts will participate beginning July 1, 2007.

http://www.cde.state.co.us/FedPrograms/NCLB/msp.asp


A Rural Community’s Perceptions of the Importance of Math And Math Education in Appalachia

Summary Report: The Padua Project
Presented by David M. Lucas, Ph.D. and Team Folknography
February 2005

Abstract:
In an effort to discern the perceptions of the importance or value of mathematics education held by ordinary people in Appalachia, a qualitative research study was performed in accordance with an agreement with the ACCLAIM Research Initiative. The study engaged the qualitative research method known as folknography and targeted the community of Padua (a pseudonym), in a state in the Appalachian south. The study was conducted in late March, 2004, by undergraduate students previously enrolled in a related course taught by the principal investigator. This report was developed from data analyzed after the completion of the field work. The student researchers collected nearly 650 surveys and conducted nearly 250 interviews with informants in three age groups (youth, adults, seniors). Overall, Padua residents were quick to respond and eager to discuss mathematics and mathematics education. Informants were found to value mathematics principally for its utility, to esteem good mathematics teaching and good mathematics teachers, and few blamed any failure to understand mathematics on teachers. Many, however, appeared to believe that some mathematics teachers could be more sympathetic in their instructional role. Across age groups, informants easily related mathematics to other life experiences. Possibly because of the prevailing utilitarian outlook, many informants saw little use in the community or region for higher forms of math should the current economic decline persist in the region. Without improvement, youth were predicted to leave in search of more acceptable employment choices.

http://www.southern.ohiou.edu/folknography/pdf/LUCASMG-1.pdf


Mathematics Education for Young Children: What It is and How to Promote It

A new brief on early childhood mathematics education (ECME) comes by way of the latest issue of SRDC's Social Policy Report. Authors Herbert P. Ginsburg, Teachers College, Columbia University, Joon Sun Lee, Hunter College, City University of New York and Judi Stevenson Boyd, a NIEER research associate and Teachers College graduate student, show how research provides a basis for sound ECME and offer nine recommendations to make it happen. The authors conclude that teachers are generally not well prepared to teach ECME and that teacher training and support should be the first priority.
http://www.srcd.org/documents/publications/spr/22-_early_childhood_math.pdf



American Association of University Women

(AAUW) members across the country are serving as Regional Liaisons for the National Girls Collaborative Project. These Regional Liaisons help the people involved in the NGCP to make connections - to one another, to resources on gender equity, and to AAUW.

AAUW research reports on girls in science, technology, engineering, and math

Under the Microscope: A Decade of Gender Equity Projects in the Sciences examines and analyzes more than 400 gender equity projects specifically aimed at increasing the participation of girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The report reveals trends in the development and support of these projects during the last decade and offers recommendations for strengthening the advancement of gender equity in the sciences for the future. The research for the report was funded by a National Science Foundation grant and conducted by Yasmin Kafai and a team of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Download a PDF copy
Purchase the print report

As violent electronic games and dull programming classes turn off more and more girls to the computer culture, schools need to change the way information technology is used, applied, and taught in the nation's classrooms, according to the report, Tech-Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age, published by the AAUW Educational Foundation. Free copies of this report and a new video and guide are available. In conjunction with Tech-Savvy, AAUW's Tech Check is a guide to help schools assess the technology opportunities they offer female students.

Download a PDF copy
Purchase the print report


What Research Says About K-8 Science Learning and Teaching

Major changes to curriculum sequences within and between K-8 grades are necessary if we want to improve science education.

Principal- K-8 Science » Volume 87 Number 2, Novemeber/December 2007 » page(s) 16-22
by Richard A. Duschl, Andrew W. Shouse, and Heidi A. Schweingruber

Since the aftermath of World War II, there have been two major reform efforts in science and mathematics education. The first was spawned by the creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950, and was fueled by the launching of Sputnik in 1957 and the fear that the United States would lose military superiority and prowess if we did not invest in the education of future scientists and engineers. By the late 1960s, there were nearly 30 K-12 curriculum projects sponsored by NSF; science instruction became investigation- and inquiry-based; ?hands-on? became the mantra; kits became the instructional format in K-8 science programs; and teaching the processes of science to get students to think like scientists became the goal.

The standards movement arrived in the mid-1980s and new curriculum frameworks of instruction were crafted for the reform of science and mathematics curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for teachers.

Today, the clarion warning calls about science and mathematics education, the fading STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) work force, and equipping U.S. students with 21st century skills can be heard, respectively, in the 2006 National Research Council report, ?Rising Above the Gathering Storm? (RAGS) and the 2007 National Center on Education and the Economy report, ?Tough Choices or Tough Times? (TCTT). Each makes recommendations for changing the landscape of schools and schooling. The RAGS report emphasizes attracting and retaining students and teachers in STEM education with an emphasis on Advanced Placement instruction. The TCTT report emphasizes preparing a work force for the 21st century that must engage more and more in creative work and less and less in routine work.

The TCTT report recommends that we ?develop standards, assessments, and curriculum that reflect today?s needs and tomorrow?s requirements,? while a core RAGS issue is ?attracting and retaining students in STEM education.? In this article, we apply K-8 science to these two positions and share research-based recommendations from the 2007 National Research Council report ?Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8? (TSTS).

New Views About Learning Science

In addition to the dynamic reform efforts in science education, during the 50-year period from 1950 to 2000 there has been major research guiding our understandings of cognition, learning, and the brain. There have also been significant developments in our understandings of what science is in a world aided and guided by new tools, new technologies, and new theories. The agenda for science education has broadened in ways that demand, as the TSTS report suggests, a rethinking of approaches to K-8 science curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

We live in a time when there is rapid growth of scientific knowledge, tools, and theories. Like the first science education reformers in the 1950s and 1960s, we are today faced with the challenge of making important decisions about what and how to teach. We now have a deeper understanding of how and under what conditions learning occurs. We also have a richer understanding of the dynamics occurring in the growth of or advancements in scientific knowledge. Essentially, as presented in the TSTS report, we have learned about science learning through advancements in two overlapping scholarly domains that guided the National Research Council committee in thinking about how to reform K-8 science education: In order to arrive at recommendations regarding the learning and teaching of science, the TSTS committee members felt it important to first address the question ?What is science?? There are many competing perspectives about science, but none more pernicious than ?the scientific method? as represented in school science. We recognize and appreciate today that we need to see science as a set of processes that involve logical reasoning about evidence, theory change, and participation in the culture of scientific practices. The hypotheses-testing practices of science are a critical component of what it means to be doing science. But such practices are conducted in service to other equally important dynamic elements of what it means to be doing science: The recommendation of the TSTS committee is that K-8 science instruction should be coordinated around those doing science elements or practices. Furthermore, science learning environments should be designed to support the development of four strands of scientific proficiency for all K-8 students. Students who understand science:
  1. Know, use, and interpret scientific explanations of the natural world;
  2. Generate and evaluate scientific evidence and explanations;
  3. Understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge; and
  4. Participate productively in scientific practices and discourse.
The four strands reflect an important change in focus for science education. One important change is recognizing that young children are more competent than we think. They can think abstractly early on and do not go through universal, well-defined stages of development. Another important change is a shift in emphasis from teaching that focuses on what we know (e.g., facts and skills) to teaching that focuses on how we came to know and develop scientific knowledge and why we believe what we know.

The emphasis on how and why reflects the TSTS committee recommendation that science learning must be strongly tied to the use and consideration of evidence. This, in turn, leads to the recommendation that science learning be connected through ?learning progressions? that function across modules, units, and years of instruction. The rationale is to facilitate the learning of core science knowledge and practices that are critical for the development of scientific knowledge and of the reasoning inherent in the four strands of proficiency. Developing rich, conceptual knowledge takes time and requires instructional support via sound assessment practices.

Tensions with Established Practices

We face challenges implementing the TSTS recommendations because some established school and classroom practices create tensions. One tension is that the current state of affairs finds science instruction disconnected and frequently separating the teaching of concepts from the teaching of processes, skills, and practices. For example, in many K-8 science inquiry programs the emphasis is on domain-general skills (e.g., distinguish observations from inferences) without any attention being given to how these skills relate to the disciplinary knowledge under study processes learning goals are separated from the conceptual learning goals.

Then there is the tension of far too many objectives, benchmarks, and standards at individual grade levels and grade bands. This is the recognized problem of U.S. science curricula being a ?mile wide and an inch deep.? Many existing curricula, standards, and assessments in the U.S. comprise too many disconnected topics given equal priority. The important unifying themes and principles of science are getting lost in favor of concept coverage. Core knowledge (e.g., properties of matter), science practices (e.g., building and refining models that account for evidence), and scientific discourses (e.g., collecting, analyzing, and representing data from observations and experiments) are not being carried over from one school year to the next, nor even from one module to the next within a school year. Core knowledge and practices should be central to science curriculum content, accessible to students in kindergarten, and have potential for sustained exploration across K-8.

Conceptual knowledge, scientific reasoning, understanding how scientific knowledge is produced, and participating in science all represent elements that are intimately intertwined in the doing of science. Another tension for implementing the TSTS recommendations is too much sequencing variation in the implementation of the standards. The use of modular units shared across classrooms, and that jump from one topic to another, work against the development of coherent learning progressions. Modules do provide flexibility for sharing materials and textbooks among teachers and across classrooms, but without careful consideration the enacted sequence can confuse rather than enlighten young science learners.

The research on young children’s thinking suggests that children are capable of abstract reasoning and theory building from very early ages in select domains. The research on infants and pre-K children, and research on children’s alternative conceptions, demonstrates that students do arrive at school with core knowledge, and as they experience the world around them they do develop explanations, albeit naﶥ ones at times. Sequence variation can lead to teachers having too strong a focus on fixing students misconceptions that can, in turn, lead teachers to overlook the productive half-baked ideas and intuitions that can be leverage points for learning across coordinated sequences.

Research on early childhood learning reported in TSTS shows that some areas of knowledge provide more robust foundations to build on than others when thinking about the sequencing of curriculum. Promising core knowledge domains for the early development (pre-K-2) of reasoning include: Another tension recognized in the TSTS report is that scientific argument is rare in science classrooms, although central to science. We find that teaching focuses on recall rather than model-based reasoning. The classroom norms of teachers and textbooks providing answers do not facilitate the building of scientific models from evidence. Scientific argumentation, when carefully supported and mediated by classroom teachers, can effectively engage K-8 students in examining the following: Recommendations for Policy, Practice, and Research

With respect to standards, curricula, and assessments, the TSTS report recommends: Regarding instruction and how to teach, the TSTS report recommends that: Professional development is needed for supporting effective science instruction and the TSTS report recommends that: The TSTS executive summary and full report includes 14 conclusions across the categories of learning and learners, curriculum and instruction, and teachers and schools. Implementation of the recommendations listed above will help address concerns about attracting and retaining students to STEM disciplines. Focusing on the TSTS research conclusions will facilitate a reform of K-8 science curricula, standards, and assessments.

Richard A. Duschl is chair of the Committee on Science Learning, Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade, and professor of science education at Rutgers University. His e-mail address is rduschl@rci.rutgers.edu.

Andrew W. Shouse and Heidi A. Schweingruber are co-study directors of the Committee on Science Learning, Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade, and senior program officers with the Board on Science Education at the National Research Council. Their e-mail addresses are ashouse@nas.edu and aschweingruber@nas.edu.

References
National Center on Education and the Economy. (2007). Tough choices or tough times: The report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons.

National Research Council.(2006). Rising above the gathering storm: Energizing and employing America for a brighter future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

National Research Council. (2007). Taking science to school: Learning and teaching science in grades K-8. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

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