Assessing Schools for Generation R (Responsibility): A Guide for Legislation and School Policy in Science Education

448 Pages·2014·5.876 MB·English

by  Deborah J. Tippins, Arthur J. Stewart (auth.), Michael P. Mueller, Deborah J. Tippins, Arthur J. Stewart (eds.)

Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education 41
Michael P. Mueller
Deborah J. Tippins
Arthur J. Stewart Editors
Assessing Schools
for Generation R
(Responsibility)
A Guide for Legislation and School
Policy in Science Education
Assessing Schools for Generation R
(Responsibility)
Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education
VOLUME 41
SERIES EDITOR
Dana Zeidler, University of South Florida, Tampa, USA
FOUNDING EDITOR
Ken Tobin, City University of New York, USA
EDITORIAL BOARD
Fouad Abd El Khalick, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Marrisa Rollnick, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Svein Sjøberg, University of Oslo, Norway
David Treagust, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia
Larry Yore, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
HsingChi von Bergmann, University of Calgary, Canada
Troy D. Sadler, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA
SCOPE
The book series Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education provides a forum for
innovative trends and issues connected to science education. Scholarship that focuses on
advancing new visions, understanding, and is at the forefront of the fi eld is found in this series.
Accordingly, authoritative works based on empirical research and writings from disciplines
external to science education, including historical, philosophical, psychological and sociological
traditions, are represented here.
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/6512
Michael P. Mueller (cid:129) Deborah J. Tippins
Arthur J. Stewart
Editors
Assessing Schools
for Generation R
(Responsibility)
A Guide for Legislation and School
Policy in Science Education
Editors
Michael P. Mueller Deborah J. Tippins
College of Education Department of Mathematics
University of Alaska Anchorage and Science Education
Anchorage , AK , USA University of Georgia
Athens , GA , USA
Arthur J. Stewart
Oak Ridge Associated Universities
Oak Ridge , TN , USA
ISSN 1878-0482 ISSN 1878-0784 (electronic)
ISBN 978-94-007-2747-2 ISBN 978-94-007-2748-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-2748-9
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013939322
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
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Praise for Assessing Schools
for Generation R (Responsibility)

Indira Nair, Professor and Vice Provost for Education Emeritus, Carnegie Mellon University
Education has changed its role from transmitting “old wisdom” and propagating conventional
mores only, to changing the world or at least being competent in navigating the world, and particu-
larly a technological, global, world. It is vital that our education prepare a new generation of students
to move from a very occupation-minded, instrumental view of their education to one that puts
social responsibility on their life map even if not at the center. In this pioneering collection, the
authors of Assessing Schools for Generation R (Responsibility): A Guide to School Policy and
Legislation in Science Education articulate and defi ne this new “Generation R”.
The authors, all experienced educators, thoughtfully inquire what has to happen in the domains
of teacher preparation and public education to effect a transition of the youth in the US “from
“complacency” towards a condition of greater civic responsibility”. They remind us that “free
public schools itself was introduced as an aid to democratic well-being, as a vehicle for preparing
citizens who possessed the intellectual wherewithal required to shoulder civic responsibilities.” So,
in a world pervaded by science and technology, that is what science education has to be. They
discuss shifting the priorities of science education, and I would add technological education, to a
place where science becomes meaningful to the students as a way of solving important problems
that they see around them. Students will understand and learn science better in this process. This
would involve among other things, using “caring reasoning” with a systems approach to teach
science and incorporating critical science literacy in place of a “rote knowledge”-based literacy.
Ways of assessing students’ learning would involve measuring their ability to apply science rather
than blindly knowing mechanics and defi nitions to answer disembodied and disconnected science
questions. Such a pedagogy would be embedded “in a constructivist, project-based and hopefully
place-based, approach to science instruction” and contain social responsibility as one of the aims
of science.
This of course has to start with a new type of teacher, and a new type of framework governing
public education. An outstanding and much-needed of synthesis of literature on teaching in a new way,
“Assessing Schools for Generation R”, could produce a new generation of teachers and produce a
real ferment in the way we teach science if the recommendations are followed by those who govern
and plan education and those who prepare and evaluate teachers.
Caren Cooper, Research Associate, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University
How will the next generation develop both the wherewithal to dream of a sustainable future a nd the
intellectual capacity to achieve it? This edited volume brings together inspiring stories, creative
practices, and theoretical work to make the case that s cience education can be reformed to help
students develop affectively and intellectually in order to grow into civically engaged citizens.
Quickly departing from the notion that science education is primarily for those on a science-career
v
vi Praise for Assessing Schools for Generation R (Responsibility)
track, contributors to this book view science education as integral to the development of responsible
citizens. I recommend this read not only to those involved in science education but to those who
have not yet considered science education as a mechanism for sustaining a democratic society.
Nancy Tuana, Department of Philosophy, Penn State University
The rewards and challenges of science education that is grounded in authentic learning and
designed to promote personal, social, and civic responsibility are at the heart of this important
collection of essays. Recognizing that today’s youth will face global environmental challenges, as
well as complex personal and social challenges, this collection of essays provides vital insights on
how science education can be designed to provide a solid foundation for knowledge and action.
Assessing Schools for Generation R (Responsibility) is essential reading for all educators who care
about the future .
Foreword
In June 2009, New York Times journalist Steven Greenhouse coined the term
Generation R to denote the millions of US teenagers and twentysomethings who are
struggling to carve out a future for themselves during the worst economic downturn
in decades. At about the same time, Gill Plimmer of T he Financial Times used the
same term to describe professionals who have prospered during the recession, gaining
much expanded roles and progressing faster than anticipated by taking on the work
of more senior colleagues who have been made redundant through downsizing.
Others have used the term simply to refer to those who graduated from college in
the period 2006–2010. For example, G eneration R ( Recession ) is a Philadelphia-
based study of how the current economic recession is impacting the expectations,
dreams, and aspirations of 150 young people from the high school class of 2006.
In the Netherlands, G eneration R is a longitudinal cohort study extending from fetal
life in 2006 to young adulthood in a multiethnic urban population. Interestingly,
Generation R is the name of a social networking site for Russian Jewish Americans.
For this book, Michael Mueller, Deborah Tippins, and Arthur Stewart replace R for
recession with R for responsibility, such that Generation R now identifi es a generation
of people who are expected to assume much greater levels of social and environmental
responsibility than current citizens, and will be well equipped to do so if the editors
and authors of this book succeed in establishing the kind of science education they
advocate. From a range of social, economic, and environmental perspectives, it is
evident that we live in turbulent times, with increasingly complex problems and
challenges at the local, regional, and global levels, but science education as currently
practiced does little to prepare students to address these problems carefully, critically,
confi dently, responsibly, and effectively. If anything, it serves to reproduce the kind
of thinking and to foster the kind of values that created many of the problems. The
basic message of this book is that we need to take the bull by the horns and imple-
ment a curriculum that focuses clearly and systematically on life in the twenty-fi rst
century in all its complexity and uncertainty; equips students with the knowledge,
skills, attitudes, and values to confront the complex and often ill- defi ned socio-
scientifi c issues (SSI) they encounter in daily life; enables them to reach their own
views through debate and argument about where they stand on major socioscientifi c
vii
viii Foreword
issues, including the moral-ethical issues they often raise; and builds responsible
and engaged citizenship.
My own generation of WWII kids and the subsequent generation of baby boomers
grew up in a very different world. During the 1960s, we were blissfully unaware of
the extent and pace of environmental degradation; jobs were plentiful; ambitions
were high, and despite the constant threat of nuclear annihilation and daily news
bulletins about the evils of the Vietnam War (or American War as the Vietnamese
call it), the social climate was one of optimism for the future. Young people were
confi dent that desirable change could be brought about by collective action (marches,
demonstrations, petitions, and the like), as illustrated by the lyrics of many of the
pop songs of the time. The following fi ve decades have seen a marked decline in
social activism and levels of public participation. During my 40+ years as a teacher
and teacher educator, I have been saddened at the lack of political interest among
teachers and students, disturbed by their complacency and easy acceptance of the
status quo, concerned by the apathy of teachers regarding the values implicit and
explicit in the curriculum they deliver, and disappointed with their lack of courage
to fi ght for a more engaging and socially relevant science education. We need to turn
back the clock and re-instill the view that we can, should, and will strive to change
the world for the better. This book can be the catalyst to reverse the trend and to
fi re up a new generation of people determined to make a difference and to assume
responsibility for social reconstruction and environmental regeneration. The
simple point is that unless we do something substantial to change the ways in which
we live and do it quickly, it will be too late. Our current lifestyles and the impoveri-
shed values that underpin them have put us on a collision course with disaster.
All teachers know that the key to wide-ranging social change is education.
Because the changes we need to effect encompass changes in lifestyle that will be
quite profound and potentially disconcerting for many people in industrialized socie-
ties and will inevitably run counter to the goals, aspirations, and desires instilled in
us by the popular media, current consumerist rhetoric, and the world of advertising,
it is not just school-based education that we need to reform. We need to establish a
new climate of concern and commitment throughout education at all levels, and
we need to involve a much wider range of educational venues, including parks and
gardens, nature centers, museums, zoos and aquaria, science centers, and environ-
mental clubs. We need to revitalize education in the home, in the workplace, and in
community centers and through advertising and public notices. We need to mobilize
effective education through leisure activities; through the print and broadcast
media, the Internet, and social networking media; through movies, theater, literature,
music, and dance; and through examples set by prominent members of the community.
Unprecedented levels of cooperation, support, and collaboration will be necessary
among national and local governments, government agencies and public services,
research establishments, environmental groups, formal and informal educational
institutions, the business and industrial sector, trade unions, cultural and community
organizations, youth groups, voluntary organizations, schools, and families.
Through all these outlets, we need to focus very directly on how we live and how we
should live in the future if we really want to establish and maintain a more equitable
and socially just society and an environmentally sustainable lifestyle.
Foreword ix
As far as school-based education is concerned, we need to rethink the purpose of
education in general and science education in particular. Our current educational
priorities are hopelessly misplaced, inadequate for the task of preparing students for
responsible and active citizenship. There is, for example, way too much emphasis
on preparing students for later study of science or subsequent employment as scien-
tists, way too much emphasis on competition, way too much emphasis on pre-
specifi ed and highly detailed (but often essentially trivial) learning outcomes, way
too much emphasis on rigorous and systematic testing for so-called educational
standards, and way too much teacher-centered pedagogy. As a result, students are
led to distrust and devalue their own knowledge, skills, values, and experiences. In
consequence, they look to experts as the source of all views, solutions to problems,
and decisions on socioscientifi c issues. To affect the kind of changes that Mike
Mueller and his co-editors and authors seek, we need a curriculum that promotes
problem solving, especially real-world, complex, and ill-defi ned problems, not one
focused on the steady accumulation of knowledge. We need a curriculum that fosters
critique and intellectual independence rather than conformity and compliance
yet also promotes the cultivation of interdependence and potential for community
building. We need a curriculum that equips students to make judgments and reach
decisions on complex socioscientifi c issues; develops the capacity to deal with
change, uncertainty, and unpredictability; cultivates the ability to ascertain what is
desirable/undesirable and what is possible in the long and short terms; pays much
more attention than has been usual to values issues and the active promotion of
democracy and social justice; and prepares students for taking direct and indirect
action in pursuit of changes they consider desirable. Of course, if students are to
take effective action, it is essential that they gain robust knowledge of the social,
legal, and political system(s) that prevail in the communities in which they live and
develop a clear understanding of how decisions are made within local, regional, and
national government and within industry, commerce, and the military. Without
knowledge of where and with whom power of decision making is located and
awareness of the mechanisms by which decisions are reached, intervention is not
possible. Thus, the curriculum advocated in this book will require a concurrent
program designed to achieve a measure of p olitical literacy , including knowledge
of how to engage in collective action with individuals who have different competencies,
backgrounds, and attitudes, but share a common interest in a particular SSI. Such
shifts of curricular emphasis will necessarily trigger a shift in pedagogy in the direction
of greater learner autonomy; more extensive and imaginative use of industry,
commerce, and military; and increased involvement in group work.
If students are to come to grips with SSI at any level beyond the merely superfi cial,
they need relevant scientifi c knowledge. Simple common sense tells us that relevant
content knowledge is crucial and that those who know more about the topic/issue
under consideration will be better positioned to understand the underlying issues,
evaluate different positions, reach their own conclusions, make an informed decision
on where they stand in relation to the issue, and argue their point of view. A key
question concerns the manner in which relevant scientifi c knowledge should be
acquired. Should it be through prior instruction or on a need-to-know basis when
dealing with a particular issue? As is so often the case in education, there is no