Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education A Research Agenda (1985) / Chapter Skim
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4. Research on Settings
4. Research on Settings
Pages 26-38
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From page 26... ...
-- and are more common in social studies and science than in other subject areas (Stodolsky, 19841. Promising classroom strategies can take hold only where the wider school setting provides a favorable climate.
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From page 27... ...
found that more substantive interaction between students and an instructor is associated with higher levels of student engagements, and that class lessons depending on seat work do not permit the right kind of substantial interchanges crucial to effective learning time. Some strategies based on behaviorist principles have been developed for improving student engagement during seat-work lessons and appear to have been effective for learning simple skills.
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From page 28... ...
Therefore, the committee urges research on how to make student activity groups successful in multi-ethnic 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.
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From page 29... ...
Mall and Diaz concluded that students' reading skills in their native language were seriously underestimated and were not being effectively taken advantage of in the second language setting because the teacher was mistakenly aiming the lessons at the students' oral skills and not their reading skills. They reorganized reading lessons so as to permit students to rely on and display reading skills acquired in their native language, at the same time acquiring advanced reading skills in their second language.
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From page 30... ...
RESEARCH ON THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT OF MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE EDUCATION ffl e goals of mathematics, science, and technology education as stated by planning commissions and scientists consistently emphasize reasoning, thinking, and problem-solving skills (see, for example, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1980; National Science Foundation, 1983; Task Force on Education for Economic Growth, 1983; American Chemical Society, 1984)
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From page 31... ...
The first regards federal and state initiatives as having little more than symbolic impact: the key decisions relating to the organization and morale of individual schools remain in the hands of local principals and superintendents who are selected by local school boards. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, for example, was the first major federal effort to raise the quality of public education.
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From page 32... ...
At best, compliance with federal and state requirements is seen as being accomplished through scrupulous attention to ritual, such as meeting special requirements for certifying mathematics teachers without further attention to what the mathematics teacher does once in the classroom (Meyer and Rowan, 19781. Worse, more regulations, guidelines, and controls are said to frustrate the creative teacher and impose operating procedures that may be entirely inappropriate in many local circumstances (Boyer, 1983; Sizer, 1984)
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From page 33... ...
Sometimes changes that are initiated for the benefit of particular subgroups -- Title I (now Chapter I) providing for compensatory education for disadvantaged children, special programs for handicapped children, the creation of specialized science and mathematics schools and of magnet schools -- result in improved staffing patterns for other students as well and greater attention to curriculum.
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From page 34... ...
Most of the research concerns four characteristics of home settings: the composition of the household, the socioeconomic status of the family, parental attitudes and behavior toward education, and resources in the home. Research on household size and mathematics achievement shows a rather consistent correlation between the number of persons in the household and achievement: larger household size is associated with lower achievement.
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From page 35... ...
Rakow (1984) included parental education in a model of science achievement that used four other predictors : student ability, student motivation, quantity of science ~nstruction, and quality of instruction (as measured by size of the budget for teaching science)
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From page 36... ...
To remedy these limitations, the committee recommends research on factors associated with the home that bear on mathematics, science, and technology education, including (1) identification of critical variables and development of a theoretical framework that relates them to different types of learning outcomes; (2)
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From page 37... ...
to suppose that some unintentional instruction occurs, again, on television, through such programs as Quincy, The Whiz Kids, and Otherworld on film, through motion pictures , such as Ice Man, Quest for Fire, The Swamp Thing, E.T., War Games, and Splash; and also in print through such comic books as Superman, Spiderman, and The Incredible Hulk. Some information has been accumulated on the goals, methods, effectiveness, and relation to school curricula of educational programs provided by the more popular of these media, like television and museum programs.
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From page 38... ...
Much more needs to be known before the potential of the nonschool media for providing quality learning time in informal settings can be adequately exploited. Therefore, the committee recommends research on the effects of various nonschool instructors on children's knowledge and perceptions of mathematics, science, and technology, including both 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.
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