State of School Science: A Review of the Teaching of Mathematics, Science and Social Studies in American Schools, and Recommendations for Improvements. (1979)

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THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM Allocation of Instructional Time The NSF statistical survey indicates that 25 percent of the states and 40 percent of the school districts in the nation set guidelines for the minimum amount of time to be spent on each subject in the elementary grades. In districts that have such guidelines, for grades one through three, the average recommended minimum times are 30 minutes per day for mathematics and approximately 20 minutes per day each for science and social studies. In grades four through six a minimum of 30 to 40 minutes of daily instruction is recom- mended for each of these subjects (Weiss, 1978, p. 22). The elementary teachers surveyed indicated that they "typically" spent about 20 minutes each day on science and 20 minutes on social studies in grades K-3, as compared to 40 minutes on mathematics and 95 minutes on reading. In grades 4-6, upper elementary level teachers estimated that they usually spent about 30 minutes each day on science, 35 minutes on social studies, 50 minutes on mathematics, and 65 minutes on reading (Weiss, 1978, p. 51). The above figures for elementary science do not differ radically from previous estimates; summarizing data from several independent surveys, Helgeson et al. concluded that about 60 minutes per week were devoted to science in grade 1, increasing to 110-140 minutes per week in the upper grades (1977, p. 32). For mathematics, the surveys summarized by Suydam and Osborne (1977, pp. 52-53) indicated that approxi- mately 20 percent of the six-hour elementary school day has generally been allocated to mathematics instruction, a consid- erably larger amount of time than that reported by Weiss. In the NSF case studies, Stake and Easley indicate that the teaching of science had a very low priority in most of the elementary schools visited. Most schools we studied had some written policy about what and how elementary science should be taught, but what actually was taught was left large- ly to individual teachers. By and large, the elemen- tary teachers did not feel confident about their knowledge of science, especially about their under- standing of science concepts. Even those few who did like science and felt confident in their under- standing of at least certain aspects of it often felt that they did not have the time nor material resources to develop what they thought would be a meaningful program. As a consequence, science had been de- emphasized at the elementary school level, with some teachers ignoring it completely.

When and where science was formally taught, the instructional material was usually taken directly from a textbook series. The method of presentation was: assign - recite - test - dis- cuss. The extent to which the emphasis on reading and textbooks pervaded the elementary science pro- gram is illustrated by an episode observed in an elementary life science class where the teacher opened a recitation period with the question: How do we learn? A chorus of students replied: "We learn by reading..." Other than the fairly common practice of learning science by reading from a textbook series, the selection of what was to be read and the actual time spent on reading science varied greatly from teacher to teacher. In most of our school systems, no district-wide elementary science program was identified (Stake and Easley, 1978, pp. 13:5-13:6). Social studies instruction also took a back seat to instruction in the "basic skills" of reading and computation in the elementary schools studied: As a content area, social studies was found to be subordinate to reading and mathematics in the elementary curriculum. At each of the sites there was some kind of social studies curriculum, but teachers and principals readily admitted that instruction in this area was of much lower prior- ity than reading or math. It had about the same priority as instruction in science. Social studies lessons were seen to be given more time than science by most K-6 teachers, perhaps because they were more knowledgeable about social studies than science (Stake and Easley, 1978, p. 13:28). Use of Federally-Funded Curriculum Materials in Elementary Schools Local school district personnel responding to the NSF statistical survey indicated that 31 percent of the districts claimed they were using one or more of the federally-funded elementary science curriculum materials. In social studies, the figure was 25 percent, while only 8 percent of the districts indicated use of any federally-funded mathematics materials. These data are compared with usage prior to 1976 in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Percent of School Districts Using One or More of the Federally- Funded Elementary School Curriculum Materials in Each Subject Subject 1976-1977 Prior to 1976-1977 Science 31 26 Mathematics 8 37 Social Studies 25 24 Source: Weiss, 1978, p. 79. Teachers were also asked to indicate which federally- funded curriculum materials they had actually used in the classroom. The most commonly used federally-funded curriculum materials in each discipline are shown in Table 2, with the corresponding percentages of districts and teachers who indicated use. The reader will note that there is often considerable disagreement between the usage figures reported by school district personnel and the information supplied by teachers. Weiss suggests that the data obtained from teachers are likely to be more accurate, since the respondents for school districts may not have been fully cognizant of the programs actually used in the schools and because not all schools in a given school district use the same programs (1978, p. 82). It should also be noted that the usage figures in Table 2 cannot be used to calculate meaningful subtotals for science, mathematics, and social studies, since school districts and teachers commonly use materials from more than one federally- funded project in a given category. Furthermore, only the most commonly used federally-funded curriculum materials are listed in Table 2. Table 3 tabulates the percent of teachers who were using at least one of the federally-funded curriculum materials during 1976-1977, by subject and grade range. 10

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TABLE 3 Percent of Elementary School Teachers Using One or More of the Federally-Funded Curriculum Materials in Each Subject (1976-77) Science Mathematics Social Studies K-3 20 8 11 4-6 27 10 12 Source: Weiss, 1978, p. 83. The 1976-77 usage figures shown in Tables 1, 2, and 3 are lowest in mathematics. The use of a federally-funded elementary mathematics program was reported by only 8 percent of the school districts and by less than 10 percent of the teachers. However, these figures may be somewhat misleading since the intention of many of the developers was to have their "innovations" incorporated into commercially-developed textbooks and this has occurred to a limited extent. Although the NSF statistical survey identifies the most commonly used mathematics textbooks, no attempt was made to analyze their content. However, the Educational Products Information Exchange (EPIE) Institute did make such an analysis in the National Survey and Assessment of Instruc- tional Materials (NSAIM), which was completed in 1976. This EPIE Report (1977a, p. 22) indicated that the ten most-used materials in mathematics (K-12) were clearly traditional pro- grams, quite similar to each other in instructional design. They were also traditional in the way in which they were developed. Of the ten most-used materials, six were marketed by the same publisher. Among the 32 most popular mathematics materials listed in the EPIE Report, only one was the result of nontraditional development; this development was federally funded. This mathematics material ranked 24th, and was cited by only 2.4 percent of the EPIE survey's respondents. The EPIE evaluators came to the following conclusions: Of the remaining 31 materials in the first group, at best two could be considered to have even a modicum of an R&D base. This is not to say that R&D-based materials are necessarily the "best" or the "right" materials for every classroom, but it is to say that they are more likely to perform as promised when used as directed with an appropriate 12

student population. By R&D-based materials, we refer to materials built upon an empirical data base, as opposed to conventional wisdom, and developed through continuous feedback loops that insure that once obtained data hold steady over time. A traditionally developed material uses little more than "conventional wisdom", that is, usually the manuscript is written by a publishing company's editor, who often is a former teacher, and it receives as "input" critical readings by those who are listed as authors and suggestions from sales representatives and production staff members (EPIE Institute, 1977a, p. 22). In the case of social studies, although the EPIE survey concluded that most of the ten most-used social studies materials were fairly alike, there were some innovative materials in the group (EPIE Institute, 1977a, p. 23). The NSF statistical survey also revealed that some federally- funded social studies materials were among those that were most commonly used in the elementary grades (Weiss, 1978, p. B-46) . The NSF statistical survey's estimates of teacher usage of the three NSF-funded elementary science programs are lower than those which have appeared in earlier studies. Using data from state reports through 1975, Helgeson et al. (1977, p. 18) estimated that Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS) materials were being used in schools in which 17 percent of the K-6 students in the nation were enrolled; Elementary Science Study (ESS) materials were in use in schools which contained 12 percent of the students; for the Science, A Process Approach (SAPA) program the figure was 20 percent. The discrepancy between these estimates and the NSF statis- tical survey data is probably due to the phenomenon mentioned earlier, that state and district supervisors often do not know which materials are actually being used in teachers' classrooms. Also, even though a few teachers in a given school may be teaching one of the new elementary science pro- grams, this does not guarantee that all students are receiving such instruction. During the 1970's several publishers produced "hybrid" elementary science texts which incorporated some of the em- phases of the three NSF-funded elementary science programs (Hausman, 1976). The authors of the NSF science education literature review commented on the impact of these materials: It is evident that the content and activities of these (hybrid) materials is different from the textbooks of the 1950's. Curriculum guides and teacher guides produced by states and local school 13

districts since 1972 are closer in emphasis to the NSF projects and recent "hybrid" materials than to the textbooks of the 1950's (Helgeson et al., 1977, p. 18). However, the NSF statistical survey's data on textbook usage suggest that the second generation "hybrid" materials have not captured a significant fraction of the elementary science textbook market (Weiss, 1978, p. B-44). The four most commonly used elementary science texts listed in the NSF statistical survey utilize for the most part a didactic approach to science, in which most of the learner's time is spent reading and listening (EPIE Institute, 1977b). 14