Tag Archive for ‘science’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Tag Archive for 'science'

Science for Girls

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 29, 2008 in Curriculum and Education Practice. 1 Comment

England’s new Schools Minister thinks single-sex science classes would get more girls to choose careers in science and engineering. “Girls do much better in science in single-sex classes. Sarah McCarthy-Fry tells The Independent. ”They sometimes feel intimidated in mixed-sex classes with the boys hogging the limelight and putting their hands up to answer all the questions.” Mrs Tuck said more people were aware girls learnt differently from boys due to “neurological differences” in the developments of their brains.

“Oh Jeebus, what now? High School Musical-branded Bunsen burners?” groans one wag over at the blog Liberal Conspiracy. “The idea of making the sciences more ‘girl-friendly’ in order to attract more women is not only a crock of s— but, if followed through as a policy objective, yet another nail in the coffin of science education in the UK.”

A slightly more measured take can be found over at Richard Whitmire’s blog, Why Boys Fail.

Unacceptable is the New “Adequate”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 7, 2008 in Curriculum and Educational Policy. 3 Comments

Asked under oath in a deposition if science is ”part of an adequate education” in the state of Georgia, Joanne Leonard said “I think you can do without science.” What about social studies? Is that part of a child’s ”adequate” education? “I would want them exposed to social studies,” Leonard said, ”but I think they can succeed in the world without social studies, and that is my opinion, my personal opinion.”

Ms. Leonard’s deposition was taken in a lawsuit brought by rural Georgia schools, who say the state isn’t giving them enough money to provide the “adequate education” required under law. Much of the case involves defining “adequate” And who is Joanne Leonard? Only the state Department of Education’s Director of Accountability.

I’m trying to think of what the appropriate response to this should be from Georgians, but I can’t think of anything that doesn’t involve pitchforks and torches. But I can think of something else Georgia can do without.

(HT: Joanne Jacobs)

Environmental Education or Advocacy?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 2, 2008 in Curriculum and Teaching. 0 Comments

Interest in environmental education is soaring, due to concerns over global warming and energy prices, notes this USA Today piece. But when does environmental education become advocacy?

Circle Time On the Rug at 08:00 Hours!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 15, 2008 in Teacher Training. 2 Comments

West Virginia wants more veterans in the classroom. Not veteran teachers, just veterans. State education officials are looking to expand their involvement in the federal “Troops to Teachers” program, which was created over a decade ago to encourage more National Guard, reserve and former active-duty military veterans to become teachers.

“Veterans possess a wealth of knowledge, talent, skills and experience that they can share with West Virginia students,” the state’s Superintendent of Schools Steve Paine said in a news release. “Many of them have science, math and engineering backgrounds that we desperately need. They also bring a world view to the classroom that works well with our 21st Century Learning initiative to help our children succeed in a global economy.”

I have to admit that I utterly was unaware of this program, which sounds like a rock-solid idea. It’s surprising to hear it’s been in existence since 1994. A study cited on the TTT web site gives the program high marks for bringing more men, more minorities to education, as well as more teachers in inner cities, especially in special education, math and science.

I’d invite anyone involved in the program to post more about it.

Hint: It’s Not the U.S.

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 24, 2008 in Curriculum. 0 Comments

How does this sound? “A systemic high-quality education, including the most remote and impoverished communities of this vast country, so that all….can acquire the means to become creative and critical thinkers, capable of developing their own opinions and becoming true contributors to solve the challenges involved in constructing a fair and democratic society.” More? A Federal Institutes for Education, Science and Technology, “which will result in the establishment of a network of 354 institutes dedicated to teaching science and technology to high schoolers and training thousands of new teachers in the public education system.”

What country is Scientific American talking about? Click here.

Top-Achieving Nations Beat Top U.S. States in Math and Science

Published by CKF on November 14, 2007 in Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Sean Cavanagh of Education Week reports:

Students in the highest-performing U.S. states rank well below their peers in the world’s top-achieving countries in mathematics and science skill, according to a new study that judges American youths on an international scale.

The study, published Nov. 14 by the American Institutes for Research, compares the performance of 8th graders in individual American states not against each other, but against students in top-performing foreign nations, such as Japan and South Korea, as well as against children in recent lower-scoring ones, such as Bulgaria, Jordan, and Romania.

The analysis found that, on the one hand, most American states are performing as well as, or better than, most foreign nations in the study in math and science.

But it also concludes that even students in states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, and North Dakota, which have scored well on recent U.S. exams, do not match students in top-performing foreign countries.

Read the complete Education Week article

Read the complete American Institute for Research press release

Read the complete American Institute for Research report

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

Published by CKF on December 10, 2006 in Assessment and Testing, Curriculum, Educational Policy and Research and Reports. 0 Comments

By Claudia Wallis, Sonja Steptoe

For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, math tests and closing the “achievement gap” between social classes. This is not a story about that conversation. This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get “left behind” but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can’t think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.

… Right now we’re aiming too low. Competency in reading and math — the focus of so much No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing — is the meager minimum. Scientific and technical skills are, likewise, utterly necessary but insufficient.

… Any number of old-school assignments — memorizing the battles of the Civil War or the periodic table of the elements — now seem faintly absurd. That kind of information, which is poorly retained unless you routinely use it, is available at a keystroke. Still, few would argue that an American child shouldn’t learn the causes of the Civil War or understand how the periodic table reflects the atomic structure and properties of the elements. As school critic E.D. Hirsch Jr. points out in his book, The Knowledge Deficit, kids need a substantial fund of information just to make sense of reading materials beyond the grade-school level. Without mastering the fundamental building blocks of math, science or history, complex concepts are impossible.

Many analysts believe that to achieve the right balance between such core knowledge and what educators call “portable skills” — critical thinking, making connections between ideas and knowing how to keep on learning — the U.S. curriculum needs to become more like that of Singapore, Belgium and Sweden, whose students outperform American students on math and science tests. Classes in these countries dwell on key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence, as opposed to a succession of forgettable details so often served in U.S. classrooms.

Read the complete article