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Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform (1997)

Chapter: A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation

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Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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reports on the K-12 teaching work force (National Research Council, 1990) and on the responsibilities of scientists in the reform of K-12 education (National Research Council, 1996d) helped shape the present report’s visions and recommendations. Continued, sustained support from the National Science Foundation will be critical if our nation’s teacher preparation system is to achieve the goals outlined below.

A VISION OF SCIENCE TEACHER PREPARATION

Whether working with prospective or in-service K-12 teachers, science faculty at postsecondary institutions play key roles in the continuum of teachers’ professional development. That fact has taken on new meaning in the current era of science education reform. This report presents a vision based on the National Science Education Standards and on research findings about science teacher preparation. It is about the role of postsecondary science faculty who prepare K-12 science teachers, and begins with recognition by science faculty that they are teacher educators, especially when they work with future science teachers. Six proposals for changes in science teacher preparation flow from this premise. Some are specific and can be faculty-driven, such as utilizing new content, pedagogy, and assessment strategies in undergraduate science courses. Some are broad and will require the cooperative effort of many stakeholders over time, such as the dissemination of research findings about the effectiveness of various models of teacher preparation. Taken as a whole, the call for science faculty members to recognize their critical role in the education of future K-12 science teachers and the proposals for enhancing teacher preparation programs, courses, and research constitute an ambitious but essential set of recommendations. When implemented, these recommendations should result in excellent science teacher preparation programs that will attract and retain diverse students of high quality and motivation.

VISION 1:

All postsecondary science faculty will recognize their role as science teacher educators.

In order to achieve this vision, we recommend that the National Science Foundation

  • support programs aimed at heightening science faculty members’ awareness of their responsibility to educate prospective science teachers

Science teacher education is embedded in a college or university education consisting of general education courses, science courses, professional education course work and practical experiences. Although the beneficial, multiplicative effect of improving teacher preparation is enormous, many postsecondary science faculty members have paid little attention to the impact of their courses on future teachers and have not been engaged in national reform efforts. Albert Yates, President of Colorado State University, has observed,

“Not long ago, a college chemistry professor grew angry with the way her daughter’s high school chemistry class was being taught. She made an appointment to meet with the teacher and marched with righteous indignation into the classroom—only to discover that the teacher was one of her own former students (Yates, 1995, page 8B).”

Broadly defined, the term “teacher educator” includes not just members of faculties of education but any faculty member from whom future teachers take courses. Thus, a critical step in increasing

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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awareness by postsecondary science faculty members of their role as science teacher educators is to change their attitude toward K-12 teaching and the students who elect this critically important career path. However, students quickly learn that many science faculty view K-12 teaching as a poor career choice. In their study of current and former science, mathematics, and engineering majors, Seymour and Hewitt (1997) identified a subset who had considered becoming science or mathematics teachers, and tried to uncover some of the reasons they decided to pursue other careers. One student in the study lamented that “you’re pretty much looked down on as a high school chemistry teacher—I mean, there’s still that stigma. The first response would be that you couldn’t cut it in graduate school” (page 199).

There may be a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. Some science faculty have become aware of their critical role in the effort to improve K-12 education and want to be more successful in preparing future science teachers. A significant impetus for this increased awareness has been the release of several national reports on undergraduate science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SME&T) education that emphasize the role of postsecondary education in the preparation of K-12 teachers (National Research Council, 1996a; National Science Foundation, 1996). Kuerbis and Micikas (1996) argue that, through collective action, postsecondary institutions, departments, and administrators must demonstrate that they value science teacher preparation. However, even if such recognition and acceptance of the importance of the undergraduate years in science teacher education were to be realized today, members of the postsecondary education community would still be uncertain about the pathways and strategies they might use to improve their efforts.

Despite the challenge and complexity of science teaching, there are several important ways that science faculty can make a substantial contribution to reform. Because future science teachers take many courses from faculty in science departments, these faculty members provide future science teachers with their most recent and prominent models of science teaching. Science faculty can be powerful influences on how future teachers understand and appreciate science by the ways in which they present their knowledge of science and the modes of investigation they employ to acquire new knowledge. Scientists also can shape prospective teachers’ understanding of the nature of science by involving them in research projects. Numerous opportunities for such activities already exist, including undergraduate research supplements to existing research grants, and science faculty should be encouraged and rewarded through NSF policies to consider preservice teachers for these research positions.

Concerns about promotion, tenure, and salary increases also may limit the extent to which faculty are willing to become involved in science teacher preparation. Many aspects of scholarship compete for faculty members’ time. Many science faculty and their departments and institutions equate scholarship with conducting original research within their disciplines and publishing their results in peer-reviewed journals. However, through critical analysis of one’s own teaching and the creation of new ways of helping students to learn, scholarship also extends into the realm of teaching. (Boyer, 1988). Administrators may say that the improvement of teaching “counts” in tenure and promotion decisions, but ultimately it is the value that faculty members place on teaching that gives it its prestige. External factors such as the availability of and competition for grant funds provide time for research and bring recognition for quality work. Through its grants for education, the NSF has the opportunity to bring added prestige, rewards, and other benefits to science faculty who make the scholarship of teaching a priority.

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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VISION 2:

All science faculty members will structure the content, pedagogy, and assessment strategies in science courses, especially in the lower division, to optimize student learning, thereby providing future teachers with the knowledge, understanding, and skills necessary to teach in accordance with the Standards.

In order to achieve this vision we recommend that the National Science Foundation

  • consider ways to encourage science faculty to modify their courses and curricula to provide in-depth understanding of carefully selected topics, and to include the range of content that the Standards advocate for K-12 students.

  • place higher priority on faculty development programs aimed at enhancing pedagogical skills of undergraduate science and education faculty members, so that they can model the variety of pedagogical and assessment approaches that promote learning, and that prospective teachers will be expected to use in K-12 teaching.

  • support programs to help science and education faculty introduce information technology into their courses.

Undergraduate science programs should provide future teachers with the depth of appropriate content knowledge for the grade levels they will teach. Although breadth of science content is necessary, content specified in the Standards should receive special, and careful, emphasis. This includes traditional subject matter (the facts, concepts, laws and theories identified with physical, life and earth sciences) as well as inquiry, technology, history and nature of science, and personal and social perspectives, as described in the Standards. Although every science course will not necessarily include all of the elements, prospective teachers should have numerous opportunities throughout their undergraduate program to experience these aspects of science content so that they are prepared to teach according to the Standards.

Undergraduate science programs should provide future teachers with the ability to “make conceptual connections within and across science disciplines, as well as to mathematics, technology, and other school subjects” (the Standards, page 59). In a study of pre-service secondary biology teachers, Gess-Newsome and Lederman (1993) found that few students could explain the relationships between key topics they had studied in a sequence of courses required for a biology major. This finding seems to indicate that science faculty should not presume that students understand the relationship between topics in a single course or among those in a series of courses. Therefore, faculty should work with their colleagues to structure sequences of courses in ways that help students understand these relationships. If faculty members do this, prospective teachers’ conceptions and/or organization of a specified field of knowledge may translate into a more coherent view of the subject and may aid the beginning teacher in selecting the most appropriate topics to include in the curriculum.

The presentation of subject matter should be tailored to the level at which a prospective teacher plans to teach. Although most certified secondary science teachers complete a major in one of the science disciplines, some major in education and complete a specified number of credit hours in science. Few future elementary teachers major in science, even at institutions that have eliminated the education major. Their science course work may exceed the institution’s general education requirement in science and sometimes consists of a carefully designed sequence of courses intended to provide prospective elementary teachers with appropriate breadth as well as an understanding of the relationships among the science disciplines.

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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Undergraduate science courses have a profound impact on prospective teachers’ effectiveness. According to Shulman (1990), “how you learn a subject in college affects the way you teach it.” These courses also shape students’ perceptions of the nature of the subject and their attitude toward that discipline (Ball and McDiarmid, 1990). Integrating what prospective teachers have learned from their personal experiences with what they have learned from their formal education can be challenging (Education Commission of the States, 1995).

The first challenge is that science, as currently taught at many colleges and universities, is compartmentalized, with faculty providing too few opportunities for students to relate content in one course to that in other courses or programs in the sciences, humanities and social sciences. The second challenge is that the social and historical relevance of science rarely are explicit components of undergraduate science courses. Omission of such perspectives result either because the faculty members teaching these courses lack this background and training or, more often, because they feel pressured to cover a specified body of content in order to prepare students for subsequent courses. Finally, the complex, multifaceted, and dynamic nature of a science often is not apparent to students who take courses beyond the introductory level in a given science discipline; rather, science can appear highly linear.

Introductory science courses also may create a great deal of anxiety for students because of their “sink-or-swim approach” (National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, 1996; Seymour and Hewitt, 1997). Doubly unfortunate is that students encounter these courses just at a time when they need the greatest amount of support from their instructors to help them make important decisions about their major field and future career (Education Commission of the States, 1995).

The Standards state unequivocally that “Changing the pedagogical practices of higher education is a necessary condition for changing pedagogical practices in schools” (page 238). However, the organization and structure of postsecondary education encourages isolation. While collaboration is routinely encouraged in research, it is not in teaching, although this is slowly changing (Hutchings, 1996). Just as K-12 teachers are unlikely to reform science teaching in accordance with the Standards without debate and careful consideration of their values and beliefs, undergraduate science faculty members are unlikely to make significant changes in their teaching without serious intellectual analysis of their work, careful exploration of alternative means of teaching, and major investments of time.

In the Standards, sections on professional development address the nature of different kinds of learning, present alternative approaches to teaching that foster such learning, and provide models of such teaching. In the context of developing science teacher education that is consistent with the Standards, professional development for postsecondary science and education faculty members is particularly relevant. According to Witkin and Goodenough (1981), variations in students’ cognitive styles demand that instructors use a number of pedagogical methods. Pedagogies that emphasize inquiry are more effective at enhancing students’ conceptual understanding (Laws, 1991; Mazur, 1997). Active learning in collaborative settings and other strategies that have their grounding in research in cognitive psychology and in sociology also should be modeled in prospective teachers’ undergraduate courses.

In addition to using pedagogies consistent with the Standards, postsecondary science faculty need to reinforce prospective teachers’ understanding of alternative assessments, by using some of these methods in their own courses. Assessment approaches need to be consistent with new expectations for conceptual understanding, and there are numerous examples such as student portfolios, videotapes of student presentations, and methods for assessing group work (Banta et al., 1996). Each mode of assessment, including conventional tests, has its strengths and weaknesses, and a true picture of student

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
×

understanding can only be drawn when they are used in combination (Shulman, 1988). Difficulties arise when science faculty are expected to use unfamiliar assessment strategies, including an increased tendency to convert subjective assessments into objective and easily quantifiable ones (Moscovici and Gilmer, 1996). However, when science faculty have opportunities to learn how to incorporate these ideas into their own courses, they are more likely to use assessment methods that are consistent with the Standards.

Likewise, science faculty have had few opportunities to learn how to incorporate new technologies into their teaching and assessment strategies. Computer technology enables faculty to help students learn some things more efficiently (Roblyer et al., 1988; Fletcher-Flinn and Gravatt, 1995). Information technology also can improve students’ conceptual understanding of some science topics (Nakhleh and Krajcik, 1993; Jones and Kane, 1994; Williamson and Abraham, 1995). Science courses at the undergraduate level should use information technology to enhance learning in areas where there is evidence that it is effective, such as in studying dynamic systems, time-space relationships, and three dimensional modeling. The Standards advocate the use of computers at all grade levels, and prospective teachers will need to make informed decisions about the appropriateness of using technology in K-12 instruction. Professional development is desirable for personnel in all facets of the overall institutional program for teacher education, particularly when it is aimed at helping faculty incorporate and model appropriate uses of information technology in their courses.

VISION 3:

All science teacher educators will consider issues of teacher preparation program and curriculum design in light of the Standards.

In order to achieve this vision we recommend that the National Science Foundation

  • enhance opportunities for science teacher educators to examine and contribute to the design of programs and curricula for science teacher preparation in the context of their institution’s mission and resources.

  • place high priority on initiatives that enable science teacher educators to improve the articulation between methods courses, science courses, and field placements for prospective teachers.

Changes in the structure of teacher preparation programs in the past ten years now offer more ways for prospective teachers to enter the profession. Four-year programs and more recent five-year and fifth year programs certify teachers for all grade levels. Depending on the state and the institution, four-year programs include a bachelor’s degree in education or in one of the arts and sciences. Although most education majors are certified at the elementary level, some institutions award education degrees through the College of Education to students who have completed the equivalent of a major in a subject area in the Arts and Sciences and who intend to teach at the secondary level. However, in most cases, secondary school teachers major in the discipline in which they plan to teach and complete additional course work and field experiences to obtain certification. In many instances, this program is difficult or impossible to complete in four years, even for students who do not work while attending college, or who decided as freshmen that they wanted to pursue a teaching career. Many institutions have acknowledged these difficulties by developing a five-year program in which students complete their major and some education course work during the first four years and then concentrate on education in the final year. Fifth-year programs are designed for students who complete their bachelor’s degree before beginning their studies in education. Although some students in post-baccalaureate programs take only required

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
×

certification courses, many students earn a teaching certificate and master’s degree simultaneously. Despite the variety of program types, four-year programs predominate; in 1991, 72% of all newly certified teachers who entered the profession had completed an undergraduate major in education (Choy et al., 1993).

Four-year, five-year, and fifth-year teacher preparation programs consist of three major curriculum strands: general education, subject matter preparation, and professional education. Each of these components is the responsibility of different sets of faculty members, who are in different departments, different colleges within an institution, and in some cases in different institutions. General education courses and, for students with a major outside of education, subject matter courses, are normally taken in the College of Arts and Sciences. The professional education curriculum strand includes general professional education courses, subject-specific education courses, and practical experiences such as student teaching. Professional education course work involves faculty from the School, College, or Department of Education, and these faculty collaborate with K-12 teachers in local schools to provide the practical experiences within the teacher preparation program.

Too often, teacher preparation programs are characterized by a lack of coherence and articulation across the general education, science education, and professional education curriculum strands. In each of these three areas, expectations typically are defined by a list of courses. These courses in turn usually are defined by a body of basic knowledge within the respective disciplines without major attention to the nature of the investigative modes that produced them. Similarly, few courses address the application of this knowledge to societal issues or other matters—dimensions that the Standards say need significant attention in K-12 education in science.

The general education curriculum strand is intended to provide students with the intellectual knowledge, skills and disposition they will need as teachers. General education requirements differ by state and by institution, but typically include courses from the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities. The general education curriculum resembles the purpose and structure of a liberal arts education, which through the years has been treated as an essential component of preparation for teaching (Dewey, 1904; Peters, 1977; Scheffler, 1973).

Faculty in schools of education teach almost all of the professional education courses, which vary by institution and cover a variety of areas including reading and the use of technology. Subject-specific education courses, often called “methods” courses, help future teachers learn appropriate ways to teach subject matter. Institutions with large teacher preparation programs that certify teachers at all levels generally offer distinct science methods courses for future elementary and secondary teachers. Prospective middle school teachers may take a different course, or, depending on the state’s requirements, take either the elementary or the secondary science methods class. More explicit ways of describing the integration of content and pedagogy in “methods” courses have emerged. Shulman (1987) has referred to this domain as “pedagogical content knowledge” that represents the bridge needed between traditional areas of subject matter and pedagogy.

Faculty members who teach science methods courses bridge the fields of science and professional education, and therefore play a special and important role in teacher education through their deep understanding of the content and process of science (Crosby, 1997). If science teacher education is to achieve the goals set forth in the Standards, future teachers must examine and integrate their subject matter work from a variety of perspectives, including psychological, sociocultural, and philosophical. Highly qualified science education faculty members are in the best position to assist prospective teachers in the integration of these intellectual perspectives and help them develop acceptable teaching practices.

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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In some cases, particularly at smaller institutions, science faculty members teach the science methods course. These individuals may or may not have the specific background for their role as science teacher educators, as advocated by national advisory groups (Association for the Education of Teachers in Science, 1997). Smaller postsecondary institutions that prepare teachers may need to consider creative ways to deliver methods classes, such as through consortia of similar institutions in a given area, or through distance education.

Historically, practical experience in schools with children and experienced teachers has been viewed as the foundation of teacher education preparation programs (Conant, 1963; Lortie, 1975). Practical experience in teacher preparation programs takes many forms and has diverse purposes. Included are field experiences, in which future teachers observe in schools and begin their teaching experiences by leading small and large group instruction. These types of experiences are a critical component of teacher education primarily because they provide students with opportunities to experience what it means to teach, and secondarily because they satisfy state certification requirements. Some institutions have introduced field experiences connected to introductory education courses to help students to decide early in their college years whether they want to become teachers (Applegate, 1987). Subsequent field experiences connected to university courses and student teaching often are structured to give preservice teachers opportunities to demonstrate knowledge and model behaviors learned in methods classes (Sunal, 1980). An increasing number of teacher preparation programs are making explicit connections between field experience and science methods courses. Finally, student teaching, which comes toward the end of teacher education programs, is a full-time teaching experience in which student teachers assume the majority of the experienced teacher’s workload and responsibilities.

Increasingly, institutions and states are moving toward fifth-year programs for preparing teachers (Darling-Hammond and Sclan, 1996; The National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, 1996), and this trend has major implications for the overall coherence, improvement, and restructuring of teacher preparation programs. One explanation for the increase in fifth-year programs is that the undergraduate education major has come under substantial criticism. The Holmes Group (1986, page 14) argued that “the undergraduate education major must be abolished,” because it prevents prospective teachers from learning any academic subject deeply enough to teach it well. Furthermore, results of recent studies (Andrew, 1990; Andrew and Schwab, 1995) in which graduates of fifth-year programs were rated as better prepared and more effective than their counterparts from four-year programs will likely mean that the number of fifth-year programs will continue to increase. From the standpoint of program design, the self-contained nature of fifth-year programs means that there is greater overall control of the curriculum, in part because these programs have the potential to tie practical experiences very closely to theoretical course work.

Despite their increasing numbers, science teacher educators have not universally embraced fifth-year programs. The major criticism of fifth-year programs is that they seem to be largely structural changes to the traditional four year model, with little evidence of an alternative conceptual framework (Howey and Zimpher, 1986). Additionally, course work and knowledge from the student’s undergraduate major cannot be explicitly incorporated into the program, because students in fifth-year programs come from a variety of institutions, complete different majors, and have different time intervals between the completion of their bachelor’s degree and their entry into the teacher preparation program. As science teacher educators examine and revise their programs and curricula, they should pay special attention to resolving these issues.

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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VISION 4:

All science teacher educators will have ready access to information about teacher preparation programs, curricula and courses nationwide.

In order to achieve this vision, we recommend that the National Science Foundation

  • support a compilation and synthesis of existing courses, curricula, and programs in science teacher preparation, and disseminate this information widely (such as on the World Wide Web) to faculty interested in science teacher preparation.

  • identify existing models of teacher preparation in settings that are underserved by traditional programs, and disseminate this to institutions considering similar programs.

More than a decade of funding has resulted in many improvements in the undergraduate education of prospective teachers. Nonetheless, recent reports on undergraduate SME&T education (National Research Council, 1996a; National Science Foundation, 1996) point to lack of access to information about improved practices and programs as an impediment to reform of SME&T education. This problem specifically extends to information about successful courses and programs for future science teachers, including models of effective collaboration among science and education faculty members. Abstracts of projects funded by the NSF are readily available, but these provide only a description of what was proposed, not what was actually implemented. Final reports and external evaluation reports when available would be far more useful to anyone who wanted to adapt a particular project to their own institution.

An information database on science teacher preparation would be most useful if it offered some discussion of approaches that have been successful as well as those that have not, and if it provided insight into the sustainability of different approaches. Once such a resource was available, NSF could reasonably expect principal investigators of proposed new projects to have done a thorough search for and investigation of previous projects similar to those proposed. This would help the field of science teacher preparation to move forward with new ideas built on successful projects and to avoid repeated proposals involving less successful ideas. The NSF could encourage faculty to adopt and adapt ideas that have proven successful at other institutions, in much the same way that it is currently funding new proposals in the “Systemic Changes in the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum” program.

VISION 5:

All postsecondary institutions that prepare teachers will develop and implement mechanisms that encourage collaboration among departments, among postsecondary institutions, and among postsecondary institutions and K-12 schools.

In order to achieve this vision we recommend that the National Science Foundation

  • place high priority on multi-year projects that require participation of multiple stakeholders.

  • support short-term development grants to initiate collaboration.

  • encourage further discussion about the implications of K-12 science education reform documents for science teacher preparation.

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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As noted earlier, achieving the vision of reforming science teacher education is a systemic problem that no one stakeholder can solve alone. One explanation for this complexity is that each component is overseen by a different group of individuals (e.g., faculty in Arts and Sciences vs. Colleges of Education), each of which may be physically, philosophically, and culturally isolated from the others. Each of these groups also may be bound by a different set of rules and may vary in the relative importance they place on teacher preparation. Coordination among these groups is essential if colleges and universities hope to provide the kind of coherent science teacher preparation advocated in the Standards. Effective teacher preparation will require collaboration among departments within an institution, among two- and four-year institutions, and among postsecondary institutions and K-12 schools. The System Standards in particular underscore the need for coordination across agencies, institutions, and organizations, and postsecondary institutions are included in this group. Crosby (1996) spells out the need for postsecondary institutions to participate in the teacher preparation process:

“When the Standards are read with the current practices of higher education in mind, the gap between what we expect future teachers to do and what we are willing to do to prepare them is starkly revealed. The colleges and universities are the acknowledged leaders. They prepare the teachers. If, a decade or two from now, the Standards are still a vision and not a reality, higher education will have no one to blame but itself. Reform must start at the top” (page A201).

Given the institution-wide nature of teacher education, collaboration across departmental boundaries is of central importance. Such collaboration runs counter to the culture of most postsecondary institutions. Nonetheless, collaboration on actual projects where faculty members develop courses and teach together—not just serve on program development committees together—may help eliminate misconceptions about science teacher preparation, foster better understanding of science teacher education, and create a context in which faculty members (and others) can reassess their values and beliefs, and move beyond the confines of one particular academic culture. Making interdepartmental collaboration a requirement in course and curriculum development proposals would do much to influence the culture of postsecondary institutions, especially if these proposals included support for faculty from each department. Examples of such collaboration that have particular implications for science teacher education might include combining topics in biology and economics with regard to environmental issues, or more fully integrating topics in science and mathematics to prepare future teachers to themselves integrate these subjects in K-12 schools. Above all, faculty in science and education departments should collaborate in designing effective programs to prepare future science teachers. Where feasible, science faculty should participate in developing, and perhaps even teaching, methods courses offered by the College of Education. Likewise, education faculty should collaborate with science faculty in developing science courses that are both consistent with the Standards and respond to the requirements of state or national accrediting agencies.

Programs that encourage cooperation and collaboration among two-year and four-year colleges should be expanded. Two-year colleges play a significant role in the education of prospective teachers (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1996). In some states, as many as 70% of all teachers begin their postsecondary education in two-year colleges. It is possible for an elementary school teacher to take all of the required science courses at a two-year college before transferring to a four-year institution to complete a bachelor’s degree and obtain teacher certification. Similarly, a future secondary science teacher might take all of his or her introductory science courses in a two-year college. The need for coherence and articulation in science teacher preparation programs implies that science and education faculty at four-year colleges design courses and curricula that build on the experiences of two-year college transfer students. Education faculty in programs which include early field experiences need to identify ways to

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
×

offer such experiences to prospective teachers at two-year colleges, or to offer equivalent experiences to these students when they transfer to four-year colleges. Thus, dialogue among faculty at two- and four-year institutions who are involved with educating pre-service teachers is critical. NSF could catalyze such interactions by making funds available in grant programs specifically for this purpose.

Practical experiences in K-12 schools are an essential component of teacher preparation programs and will be most effective when postsecondary faculty and school personnel work cooperatively. Schools, colleges, and departments of education have long sought K-12 school settings in which they could engage future teachers simultaneously in the theoretical and practical study of teaching. In addition to conventional student teaching arrangements, some postsecondary institutions have organized more comprehensive arrangements with schools under such names as partnerships and professional development schools. The Holmes Group (1990) defined a professional development school as “a school for the development of novice professionals, for continuing development of established professionals, and for the research and development of the teaching profession” (page 1). In some cases, highly qualified K-12 teachers from these schools work directly with undergraduates at the college or university, which in turn provides the salary for replacement teachers in the school. Although most professional development schools are at the elementary level, opportunities exist for similar collaboration at the secondary level. Because high schools are organized by subject area rather than grade level, as is the case with elementary schools, collaboration with individual departments (as opposed to an entire school) is easier to initiate, sustain, and focus. A professional development “school” for secondary teaching may in reality be a professional development “department,” and experiments with this arrangement can be mutually beneficial to the novice teachers and their mentors (Clark and LaLonde, 1992).

Development of effective collaboration among stakeholders in science teacher preparation is a lengthy process, and support for such efforts should be provided over an extended period of time. Science and education faculty interested in improving courses for prospective teachers need time to develop courses, implement them, evaluate their effectiveness, modify them as appropriate, and repeat the implementation. Teacher preparation is at least a four-year process. The real measure of a program’s effectiveness will be the learning gains of a new teacher’s students. If project directors expect to have any results at the end of a typical five-year project, course re-design needs to begin immediately upon receipt of the award. This is feasible only if appropriate partnerships have been established prior to submission of the grant. In situations where this is not the case, small planning grants are needed to support small amounts of travel and release time for those interested in developing larger-scale efforts. Some of NSF’s funding for the CETP program is invested in this way, even though planning grants are not an explicit component of the program as it is currently structured. Recipients of planning grants might go on to submit full proposals, but in some cases, small grants that bring people together can be the starting point of fruitful collaboration, even without further funding.

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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VISION 6:

Science teacher preparation programs of high quality will attract and retain students of high quality from diverse backgrounds.

In order to achieve this vision we recommend that the National Science Foundation

  • help institutions identify ways to attract and retain qualified prospective teachers, especially from underrepresented groups.

  • develop, in partnership with higher education institutions, induction programs for new teachers in settings that are underserved by traditional programs.

Statistical information about prospective teachers shows that teacher education programs attract a disproportionate number of less academically talented undergraduates, as measured largely by standardized testing (Murnane et al., 1991). The same is true for the population of students who complete these programs and obtain teaching credentials (National Center for Education Statistics, 1986; Vance and Schlechty, 1982). One response by schools of education has been to increase admissions requirements for teacher preparation programs. Many teacher education institutions now require higher grade point averages and admissions test scores than before (Darling-Hammond and Berry, 1988). In an effort to improve content knowledge of prospective teachers, some schools of education also have introduced more extensive course requirements in science than in the past. However, newly certified teachers who scored higher on tests of subject matter knowledge (e.g. National Teachers Examination biology and general science tests) were more likely either never to teach or to leave the profession after less than ten years (Shugart and Hounshell, 1995). Thus, the strategy of increasing the science requirements may not have had the intended outcome of improving the science knowledge of the teaching work force.

Underrepresented students must be attracted to careers in science teaching at both the elementary and secondary levels if the teaching force is to reflect the diversity of its students and to serve as a model for the proposition that all students can understand science. In recent years, minority enrollment in public schools has climbed to nearly 30% of the total student population, and exceeds 50% in urban areas (National Center for Education Statistics, 1995). The science teaching work force, on the other hand, has relatively few members of underrepresented groups (National Education Association, 1992), potentially prompting a vicious cycle which steers minority students away from science as profession (Raizen and Michelsohn, 1994). Programs aimed at reversing this trend need to be implemented at institutions that prepare teachers. Additionally, the NSF should consider expanding pre-college programs designed to recruit prospective teachers, such as the South Carolina Teacher Cadet Program (National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, 1996), especially when they are successful at recruiting underrepresented students.

The greatest current shortage in the teaching work force consists of fully licensed, qualified teachers for public schools in settings that are underserved by traditional programs, particularly at the secondary level in areas such as science and mathematics (Oakes, 1990). Teaching positions in urban areas are particularly difficult to fill because prospective teachers tend to return to communities that resemble those in which they were raised, and because only a small percentage of prospective teachers come from urban areas (Zimpher and Ashburn, 1992). Internships or other mechanisms to provide support for new teachers, especially those who are teaching in unfamiliar settings, are critical to teachers’ long-term success in the profession (Darling-Hammond et al., 1995). At present, no agency is charged with implementing and overseeing such an induction process, and guidance from the national level will

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
×

be critical if states, postsecondary institutions, and local schools districts are to collaborate in this important undertaking.

Recruitment programs should be designed to provide incentives for undergraduate students to consider K-12 teaching careers. In their study of current and former science, mathematics, and engineering majors, Seymour and Hewitt (1997) found that while one-fifth of these students had considered teaching science or mathematics at one time, only one-third of this group of potential teachers had decided to enter the profession. Based on extensive interviews, the authors also concluded that more students would have followed their inclination to teach had it been less time-consuming and expensive to complete a teacher preparation program in addition to the requirements for a baccalaureate degree. Financial incentives might encourage students to maintain their interest in education rather than seek higher-paying career choices. Some states offer scholarship programs for prospective teachers, but given the low retention rate for new teachers, such programs may do little over the long term to improve the teaching work force. In North Carolina, scholarships for future teachers include a four-year obligation to teach in the state’s public schools (National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, 1996). This form of financial aid for future teachers would be most effective if structured as a loan forgiveness program with significant financial penalties for failing to fulfill the teaching obligation. Finally, public and private foundations that support scientists make tens of thousands of dollars available to students interested in pursuing doctorates in science, and similar opportunities could be made available to support students who wish to obtain a science teaching credential.

VISION 7:

All science teacher educators will have access to a body of research about the effectiveness of various models for teacher preparation, will draw on that research to improve existing science teacher preparation programs, and will contribute to that body of knowledge as part of teacher preparation program design.

In order to achieve this vision we recommend that the National Science Foundation

  • collaborate with other federal agencies and private funders to promote additional research about the effectiveness of various models of science teacher preparation.

  • collaborate with other federal agencies and private funders to promote additional research on effective curricula for science teacher preparation.

  • disseminate these research findings as widely as possible, so that they will drive future improvements in the science teacher preparation process.

The editors of the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (Houston et al., 1990) assert that “there is a tradition in teacher education…that each teacher-preparing institution rediscovers its own best way of educating teachers, with little or no attention to either other institutions or the research literature.” This statement remains true today, in part because the research literature on teacher preparation has grown very little in the past decade, especially when compared to advances in other areas of education. An extensive review of the research on science teacher preparation led Anderson and Mitchener (1994) to conclude that “there is a comparatively small amount of research on preservice science teacher education…and that it is rather limited in scope and usefulness.” They note, however, that promising new research is showing us how researchers are beginning to think about teacher development, the teaching and learning process, and teacher education programs. Nonetheless, as they note, the field is a long way from having substantive research information to inform the revision and

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
×

refinement of science teacher preparation. Science teacher educators need research information to form the frameworks for science teacher preparation that are consistent with “what research is telling us about teacher thinking, and how teachers come to have an outlook and competencies which are consistent with emerging understandings of student learning” (Anderson and Mitchener, 1994). It seems clear that the community that is most directly involved with the preparation of science teachers needs to know what works, what doesn’t, and in what context or setting.

At present, assessment of science teacher education is in its infancy, and much remains to be learned about what constitutes effective models of preparation. The National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future (1996) offers guidance for teacher preparation. Numerous studies indicate that principals and teaching colleagues typically find graduates of extended programs to be much better prepared and more effective teachers than their counterparts from four-year programs (Darling-Hammond and Sclan, 1996). Thoughtfully designed alternative programs that address teachers’ thinking skills, address the relationship between teaching and learning, include opportunities for a supervised internship, and that are of ample duration, are also effective (National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future, 1996). What similar or dissimilar findings exist specifically for the preparation of science teachers? Additional research to answer this question, followed by dissemination of the results, are essential for the continued reform of science teacher education.

Significant reform in education is a labor-intensive and lengthy process, and this needs to be reflected in the duration and size of awards for science teacher preparation. Funding organizations must offer teacher preparation grants of sufficient duration to allow the gathering of essential data on the effectiveness of these programs. A cohort of preservice teachers needs to be tracked for several years after obtaining their teaching certificates. Such tracking means that five-year grants do not provide enough time to evaluate the impact of teacher preparation reform initiatives. Grants of longer duration, or separate awards for longitudinal research which begin near the end of a multi-year project, are needed to produce a sufficient research base on which to develop future projects.

Although science teacher preparation has a long history, there are no standard curricula for the preparation of effective science teachers. What would a coordinated, articulated program look like? The research literature does not provide an answer. There is a lack of research for producing a framework for teacher preparation programs in general and this applies to curricula for science teacher preparation as well. Each strand of the science teacher preparation curriculum (general education, science education, and professional education) could benefit from research about the effectiveness of various strategies. For example, teacher educators have become divided about the ability of the current general education curriculum to generate broad, cultural knowledge and deep, flexible understanding (Feiman-Nemser, 1990). Whether or not the critics are correct remains an open question, because little research has been done on the effectiveness of general education for prospective teachers (Lanier and Little, 1986). The quantity and quality of a prospective teacher’s science knowledge is significant in allowing him or her to be more effective in the classroom (Druva and Anderson, 1983; Tolman and Campbell, 1991). On the other hand, Trumball (1990) points out the discrepancy between how prospective science teachers typically experience science in their university courses and how they are expected to teach science. When faced with decisions about teaching and learning, teachers need to analyze a situation, consider various viewpoints and incorporate multiple sources of information (Raizen and Michelsohn, 1994). Such reflective practice is one characteristic of effective teachers (Baird et al. 1991). What is the nature of the curricula in science teacher preparation that would prepare such beginning teachers? Is there more than one effective curriculum for the preparation of science teachers? How might four- and five-year curricula be coordinated and articulated among all the key stakeholders involved in teacher preparation?

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
×

Similar questions persist about the professional education component of the science teacher preparation curriculum. The quality of practical experiences in teacher education programs continues to draw attention. Practical experience in preparation programs is often well documented in terms of total hours, but expectations and frameworks are not well articulated (Guyton and McIntyre, 1990). What and how future teachers learn through practical experiences also is not well understood (Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann, 1985). The manner in which field experiences build upon one another remains an unanswered question, and similar uncertainties exist about how these experiences contribute to future teachers’ development as reflective practitioners (Schon, 1983). How the learning of future teachers is addressed in the nature and arrangement of practical experiences leaves much room for investigation. Certainly reform efforts either have ignored or understood only superficially how to make use of these experiences to further teachers’ learning and effectiveness (Sarason et al., 1962; 1986). There is a need for greater clarity and coherence in answers to the question of why and how practical experience is integrated into teacher education programs.

The body of knowledge generated about science teacher preparation will be of little value unless it can be used to improve practice. In writing about research on teaching, Richardson (1994) noted that few teachers make use of such research “…because formal research cannot provide teachers with knowledge for their immediate needs within their unique contexts.” This is one example of a broader assumption about educational research; namely, that it should apply directly and immediately to a particular problem (Shavelson, 1988). The expectation that postsecondary science faculty “be familiar with and use the results of professional scholarship on learning and teaching” (National Science Foundation, 1996, page 65) cannot be met without serious attention to bridging the cultural gap between scientists and social scientists.

This report began with the vision that science faculty view themselves as science teacher educators, and therefore as partners with their colleagues in the school, college, or department of Education. The NSF needs to give serious attention to making the results of research on science teacher preparation accessible to all science teacher educators, so that they may be true collaborators in the effort to reform K-12 science education. The NSF also should examine ways to restructure its grant programs such that all faculty in the sciences recognize their critical role in restructuring and improving the education of K-12 teachers and are encouraged and rewarded for doing so.

Suggested Citation:"A Vision of Science Teacher Preparation." National Research Council. 1997. Science Teacher Preparation in an Era of Standards-Based Reform. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9078.
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