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6
Summary of a Research Agenda
American research funding traditions appropriately
emphasize multiple sponsors and multiple agendas. We
believe those traditions will continue to serve the
nation well. Within that framework of variety, we
commend a research agenda focused on the amount of time
devoted to active teaching and learning of reasoning
skills--called "quality learning time. in our report.
Learning to reason is central to learning mathematics,
science, and technology. We contrast reasoning with
recalling facts in essentially the same form as they were
learned. Reasoning involves making inferences from
organized facts or using them to solve problems. It
includes the ability to apply scientific concepts use-
fully. Understanding how to increase the amount of
quality time devoted to learning to reason is a primary
objective of this research agenda.
Quality learning time affects the development of
reasoning ability through basic psychological processes
occurring within the context of lessons. The learning of
concepts or skills from lessons is mediated by instruc-
tors, peers, curricula, and equipment in a learning
situation. Learning situations, in turn, are embedded in
larger contexts of schools, school systems, families,
social norms, communication systems, and political
institutions. Understanding the ways in which students
learn, or fail to learn, mathematics, science, and
technology involves an appreciation of how these factors
and their nested interactions affect quality time devoted
to learning to reason.
Within such a perspective, the agenda recommended here
includes four separable, but closely related, categories
of research:
~1
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52
Research on the development of reasoning;
Research that facilitates increasing the amount
of quality learning time through better
instruction;
Research that facilitates increasing the amount
of quality learning time through better settings
for learning; and
Research that facilitates increasing the amount
of quality learning time through the development
of new learning systems.
.
Separating the agenda into these categories has the
advantage of identifying relatively coherent clusters of
possible research, tapping relatively clear disciplinary
strengths and traditions. It has the potential disadvan-
tage of underestimating the linkages among the clusters,
and of research that explores those linkages. Education
involves a complex combination of experiences and institu-
tions interacting over relatively long periods of time.
A thorough understanding of how children learn or fail to
learn to reason will require fundamental research that
involves the highest order of both disciplinary and
interdisciplinary research skills.
It is also clear that each of these research cate-
gories includes projects that range from research that is
unambiguously basic to research that is equally unambigu-
ously developmental. Historically, the understanding and
improvement of education through research has confounded
simple distinctions. Basic research feeds applications,
and experience with applications has generated material
for the most fundamental research.
RESEARCH ON REASONING
A major research challenge is to understand better the
dynamic process through which reasoning skills are
acquired, the relation between domain-specific knowledge
and general skills of thinking and reasoning, and the
possibilities for precise learning interventions in the
development of such skills. Specifically, the committee
recommends:
.
Research on how competence in reasoning skills i
acquired, including:
-- the mechanisms of reasoning skills,
particularly as evidenced in the differences
between novice and experienced learners;
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~3
.
the dynamic processes -through which reasoning
skills are acquired in the context of
specific domains of knowledge; and
the scientific reasoning skills of children.
Research on reasoning in particular disciplines,
aimed at understanding how abilities to make
inferences, to reason, and to generate new
information can be fostered by ensuring contact
with prior knowledge that can be restructured and
further developed as learning takes place.
Focused research on self-regulatory or metacog-
nitive capabilities--what they are, how they
develop, and how learners can be helped to
acquire them.
Systematic tracking of outcomes resulting from
efforts to teach generalized thinking and
reasoning skills.
RESEARCH ON INSTRUCTION
The development of practical procedures for the
acquisition of reasoning skills in mathematics, science,
and technology requires an understanding of instruction.
This includes attention to the capabilities and motiva-
tions of teachers, to alternative modes of instruction
and materials, and to the effective assessment of the
outcomes of instruction. Specifically, The committee
recommends:
A research program to develop improved
understanding of:
the response to various monetary incentives
designed to attract able individuals to
mathematics and science teaching and keep
them in these fields;
how to improve the subject-matter education
of both pre- and inservice teachers, including
optimal volume and pace of subject-matter
coverage in different sciences and
experiences that develop and enhance abstract
reasoning capacity; and
the effects of alternative requirements for
entering and being certified in the
profession, particularly with respect to
developing an adequate pool of teachers
competent to teach mathematics and science.
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The development of a national data base on
teacher preparation and qualifications suffici-
ently detailed and appropriately stratified to
reflect conditions in different types of school
districts and for varying student populations.
Research on how societal pressures, school
organization, and educational policies affect
teacher effort.
Research directed toward effective instructional
strategies based on explorations of:
the design of pedagogical theories that
students can test, evaluate, and modify;
the techniques of ingenious teachers who are
able to devise such temporary models or
pedagogical theories; and
the design of intelligent computer-assisted
instruction that incorporates interrogation
and exploration.
· Research targeted at:
providing characterizations of the cognitive
skills and knowledge needed for understanding
of and successful performance in techno-
logical systems;
based on such characterizations, development
of usable school curricula in computer
literacy; and
investigating the effects of computers on the
knowledge structure of mathematics and
various sciences and the implied changes for
the school curriculum.
.
Research on the importance of curricular
orientation and context to learning, including:
how important tasks can be embedded in
contexts that reduce the tome needed for
learning;
under what circumstances and in what ways
activity systems using physical objects and
"real. events (whether hands-on experience,
models based on systematic laws, or story
lines that mirror common experiences) can be
used to enhance learning; and
what makes theory-oriented instruction work,
especially with individuals from some
minority groups and women generally said to
require a more pragmatic, utilitarian
approach.
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55
.
A concerted research effort on how educational
curricula and materials are created, their
content, and how they're used, specifically, on
-- whether and how the treatment of substantive
content in current textbooks and software
supports the learning of reasoning, thinking,
and problem-solving skills as well as
lower-order recall and memorization tasks;
the exploration of new content areas within
various fields and at various grade levels
that might be productive additions to
promoting higher-order skills;
the abilities, skills, and perspectives of
those who write textbooks and software (for
example, to what extent do they understand
the importance of curricular context?) and
the means for attracting better prepared
individuals to those fields;
the development of consensus on appropriate
subgoals, content, and sequencing by grade
level to facilitate greater emphasis on
higher-order skills;
the effects of state approval processes on
content issues; and
further studies on the relation between what
is tested and what is included in textbooks
and software and between the intended and the
implemented curriculum.
· Research on:
__
__
__
__
the development of practical tests that
reliably assess reasoning ability, perhaps
using interactive testing made possible by
microcomputers;
improving the testing of mathematics and
science achievement to reflect important
instructional goals and objectives; and
techniques for educating teachers to become
better writers of test questions, particu-
larly of questions that test for the
higher-order intellectual skills and levels
of learning.
RESEARCH ON SETTINGS
Formal instruction takes place in classrooms, but
classrooms are not isolated from the rest of society.
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Classrooms are subject to school policies, explicit and
implicit educational goals, and the mundane realities of
making a school run. Schools, in turn, are shaped by the
social and political context in which they operate. More-
over, schools are not the only settings for learning.
Children and teachers come to class shaped by their homes
and by informal learning and relations outside school.
Thus, a research program directed to augmenting quality
time devoted to learning to reason must include attention
to the social settings of instruction. Specifically, the
committee recommends:
.
Research on how to make student activity groups
successful in multiethnic classrooms for a range
of mathematics and science tasks, including:
improved understanding of the ideological and
pragmatic reasons teachers group their
students by ability and prefer teacher-led
groups to cooperative student-led groups;
investigating systemic factors relating to
societal and institutional pressures on
schools and teachers to arrange their
classrooms and instruction so as to produce
easily measurable performance results; and
developing kinds of teacher training that
facilitate widespread adoption of activity-
centered curricula when this approach is
appropriate.
o Research and development:
__
__
to explore the relationships among the
cultures of various student subpopulations,
the culture of the classroom, and the
cultures of mathematics, science, and
technology and
to understand the role of language and
culture in the teaching of science and
mathematics.
Research on the effects of the policy-making
system on learning experiences in the classroom,
particularly those related to the teaching and
learning of higher-order skills, including:
the effects of federal, state, and local
district policies and procedures;
the understandings that teachers and
administrators have of goals proclaimed at
the national and state levels; and
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57
the decision-making processes of classroom
teachers regarding the amount of time spent
on and emphasis given to various aspects of
the curriculum.
.
.
.
More focused research on the extent to which the
conditions for specific changes exist in
educational institutions, including:
loci for change and how they vary in
different schools;
how curricular and instructional changes are
related to specific conditions; and
special attention to the processes of change
involved in the introduction and use of
computers and information technology in
schools.
· Research on factors associated with the home that
bear on mathematics, science, and technology
education, including:
identification of critical variables and
development of a theoretical framework that
relates them to different types of learning
outcomes;
disaggregating effects for different segments
of the student population, e.g., by age,
ability, ethnic group, and type of school
district; and
studies that distinguish factors associated
with the home from those in the wider
community (e.g., influences of peers,
neighborhoods, mass media) but examine their
interactions and joint effects on learning.
Research on the effects of various nonschool
instructors on children's knowledge and
perceptions of mathematics, science, and
technology, including:
the effects of intentionally educational
programs provided outside school and
unintentional learning or mislearning
acquired through science fiction and other
entertainment programming through the mass
media, especially television, film, and print;
Research to determine how the effects of
instruction that children receive in the school
are influenced by the informal instruction they
receive in the larger world.
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RESEARCH ON NEW LEARNING SYSTEMS
The committee believes that modern computers and tele-
communications provide an opportunity for a significant
increase in the amount of effective learning time devoted
to mathematics, science, and technology education if
properly used. Since there is evidence that improper use
aggravates, rather than relieves, disparities among groups
in the society in their knowledge about mathematics,
science, and technology, a substantial research effort
both to develop information technology as an instrument
of learning and to ensure that it contributes to reducing
reasoning disabilities throughout the population is
essential. Specifically, the committee recommends:
· A systematic program for the development of pilot
.
.
.
educational systems using computers to create
microworlds and tutoring strategies that engage
learners in science- and mathematics-linked tasks
and thereby advance both The acquisition of
knowledge and the learning of reasoning and
problem-solving skills.
Research on how to create "hardy" varieties of
activity-based instructional systems for
mathematics and science education so that they
will be taken up and institutionalized in a wide
variety of school systems.
Research designed to exploit the potential and
discover the limitations of various forms of
after-school activity centers through the
development and evaluation of several pilot
models.
Sophisticated systems analysis on how to create
mixed institutional systems for mathematics and
science education that are sustained rather than
diminished by bureaucratic and social structures.
Design of appropriate models for education
analogous to systems design and engineering
institutions in other fields that would use an
integrative systems approach in applying research
and development to educational improvement.
Characteristics seen as essential to the
integrative function include:
-- strong interdisciplinary teams to design,
develop, and test comprehensive teaching and
learning models in science and mathematics;
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extension of successful experiments and
findings arising from local school
operations;
evaluation of new educational models in the
reality of the classroom and development of
effective implementation strategies; and
an efficient communications network linking
administrators, teachers, university faculty,
book publishers, and public bodies to
important findings and developments.
As a necessary first step, we recommend that
the Department of Education, in concert with the
National Science Foundation, convene a task force
or similar group to think through the best means
for carrying out the integrative and systems
design function that is missing in current
efforts to improve education, including
consideration of such issues as organization,
staffing, budgets, and linkages to other
institutions.
The research agenda outlined in this report builds on
what is already known to suggest basic, applied, and
developmental research that will advance the capabilities
of American society to increase scientific knowledge
among Americans and reduce disparities in knowledge among
groups within the country. m e task we propose is not a
small one. It demands substantial commitment, not only
on the part of the society through its political repre-
sentatives, but also on the part of the research commun-
ity. This committee believes that such a commitment is
possible. We also believe it is essential.
We think that investment in educational research and
development is vital to mathematics, science, and tech-
nology education; we think that more is known about
education than is currently being utilized effectively,
either in research planning or in educational programs;
we think that the research community can respond to a
coherent, relatively focused research agenda that will
make a difference; and we think that the educational
community can improve education by more effective
integration of research and professional experience.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
learning time
