A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

The Coordinated Science program was introduced to the Westview High School science department in 1988 by Karl Tozer, the science department chair. Tozer had caught wind of changes in science education being addressed through the National Science Teachers Association's Scope, Sequence, and Coordination project and California's new Science Curriculum Framework. By the 1992-93 school year, 6 of the 7 science teachers at Westview High School taught Coordinated Science, which includes biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science. The Westview science teachers were attempting to

While the Coordinated Science Program is designed for all students, it is also said to be taught "at a college prep level." Both the content coverage and the depth in which it was pursued are intended to meet the needs of students who will be attending college. To get at their goals of helping students see the connections between different disciplines in science--as well as between science and their own lives--the Program is taught through the use of overarching concepts, ideas, and themes. No one textbook is used for the program.

The teaching in the Coordinated Science Program is different from traditional science teaching in that there are fewer lectures, worksheets, and drill activities, but more laboratory work. They follow the California Science Curriculum Framework standard of at least 40% of class time devoted to laboratory work.

Instead of listening to extensive lectures and doing worksheets, students in the Coordinated Science Program do a lot of labs and hands-on activities, including ones related to their lives. The homework assignments are longer than typical homework assignments and are not designed to have students simply answer questions at the end of a chapter. Students are asked to do writing activities with hopes that through writing, students would engage in the process of integrating knowledge and thinking with it.

In addition to conventional tests, students in many classes also engage in authentic assessments such as performances and portfolios. Performances and portfolios entered into the Coordinated Science Program because of the interest of a few teachers at the school.

It was through teacher collaboration that much of the important reform work occurred at Westview. This process created communication among teachers about developing materials and ideas for their classes. They depended upon each other's expertise for learning different aspects of subjects which they might not have known, as well as new instructional strategies. Teachers also got together to brainstorm their ideas, talk them through, and figure out how to put them into practice in their classes. In this context, mentoring of inexperienced teachers by the more experienced teachers was a routine and normal activity. The teachers who were not so creative benefited from the innovative ideas of other teachers. In addition to knowledge gained--and the more affective dimensions of this collaboration--teachers in the science department shared the work among themselves.

The teachers in the Coordinated Science Program were convinced that the coordinated approach is the most effective way of going about the study of science, in spite of the time and energy demanded to initiate and conduct it.

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[Case Study of Fairview Middle School Science Department]

[Case Study of Edison High School]