Research on Science Education

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Slide 29

Research is Thin

There is something fascinating about science [education]. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Speaker's notes

A final area of promise in terms of improving science education is rigorous evaluation research on both programs and standards. Of the six topics I've covered in national summits, science education has by far the least research that evaluates the effects of programs and practices in use. I could not, for example, find a single rigorous study that evaluated the effects of currently available science curricula. What passes for research on these topics typically involves outcomes derived from surveys given to students or teachers, e.g., how much do you think you learned, and designs that don't involve control groups. Likewise there is no research that has evaluated the effects on later career or college success of national standards that privilege process outcomes over science content. For example, current AAAS and NAS/NRC (NSES) standards favor children learning how to engage in inquiry about rocks over children learning about rocks. What are the consequences of this for later academic achievement and career preparation? We aren't going to make progress in this field until we are prepared to question and measure the outcomes of our programs and initiatives.