Understanding and Appreciating
Physics from Pre-school On (or The Search for Intelligent Life in
the Universe Should Start Here on Earth)
Wayne Snyder
Several years ago I had the privilege of giving the
keynote address to New Hampshire Science Teachers. While preparing,
I went searching for some readership numbers for the top selling newspapers
in the U.S. With the aid of a helpful librarian I found them. Coming
in at number three was the Sunday edition of the New York Times at
1.2 million readers. In second place was the Friday edition of USA
Today at 1.8 million. And leading the way, with a whopping 4.4 million
loyal readers, was The National Enquirer! And these are people who
at least are reading. What about the masses of people who are glued
to their television sets with rapt attention to every Talk Show of
the Terminally Bizarre that comes on? Why do they not feel the same
appreciation for the wonders of science, particularly for physics?
When was the last time The Jerry Springer Show had a topic like "I
know light is a particle, but my wife insists it is a wave"? Why
are we excited that the percentage of high school graduates in this
country who have taken a course in physics has risen above the 20%
mark when the number should be 100%? And why, when one announces in
a crowd that he or she teaches physics, the crowd moves away as if
your popularity ranking rates somewhere between those of an incurable
leper and a curable leper?
The seeds are planted in the child back through the
primary grades. Research shows that the years of elementary and middle
school determine the student's future participation and interest in
science and math, and that the reputation of physics in particular
is reinforced through high school and college as boring, elitist, and
impossibly difficult.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Elementary children
are fascinated by physics. No, they don't want to sit and memorize
long words and spit out boring definitions or do seemingly random mathematical
calculations. But give them the chance to experience physics and it
is hard to tear them away. They are fascinated by magnets and magnifying
lenses. They enjoy the process of studying sound and electricity. Physical
science experiments can make other subjects such as math and reading
come alive. Young students are naturally inquisitive and creative and
observant, at least until they are socialized by the combination of
society and system.
Is it a hopeless situation, as is so often trumpeted
in the media and from the statehouses? The pathway for any reformation
in science education must pass through the elementary classroom. So
what are the hurdles faced by the education community? How can we get
our elementary students out of the starting blocks and into the race
to be scientifically literate citizens?
Preservice
A great many elementary teachers are physics-phobic,
and the students can instantly sense it. I readily observed this in
a college physics classroom of students seeking elementary education
certification. In this particular college, such certification includes
content courses in both biological and in physical sciences. The future
elementary teachers are almost all female, have accepted the mindset
of their society, and will be key role models to all of their students,
and even more so to the eager little girls they will teach. The stark
reality of the first couple weeks: most of them hated that they were
required to be in a physics course, almost half of them were not confident
enough to light a match, and several were paranoid to even plug in
an extension cord. What message will these teachers convey to their
students if left unchanged themselves?
There is a happy ending to this example. Although
a content course, the methodology is heavily inquiry based. The future
teachers quickly learned that they can understand the physics concepts
and that they enjoy it. Before long rumors were flying that the dorms
were filled with flying Doppler bees, strange polymers that act like
both liquids and solids, and homemade planetariums. The final exams
demonstrated that the students had a comprehension of the terms and
the concepts that was deep and will hold them in good stead when they
themselves are leading their students down the path of scientific knowledge
and appreciation.
College Course Work
 There
is more recognition now than ever before that science course work is
as important for elementary teacher preparation as is course work in
reading and math. However a requirement itself is not sufficient. The
course must be tailored to the specific needs of the target group.
It is not uncommon for a college to require nursing students, elementary
education majors, and first year chemistry majors to all take the same
introductory chemistry course, a course designed for the latter group.
The result of such a requirement is the total turn-off to chemistry
by the first two groups. It could be argued that the reverse would
be more beneficial, that a rigorous course that led to a detailed conceptual
understanding of the concepts would benefit all three groups. The science
majors would have the foundation of understanding to better comprehend
why they were doing all of those complex mathematical computations.
A subject matter course for elementary teachers should be rigorous
in expectations, should be heavily inquiry based, should be separate
from the methods course they will take, should focus deeply on the
conceptual understanding, and should cover appropriate topics to appropriate
depth and at appropriate speed, these topics correlated to the "big
ideas" from the National Standards.
In Service Training
One of the most successful teacher training projects
that the NSF has funded is Operation Physics (OP). This project started
in 1988, and is still active today in local efforts, as part of the
Physics Teaching Resource Agent (PTRA) program, and in its 2.0 version
now being funded by NSF, Operation Primary Physical Science (OPPS).
The unique aspect of OP that pioneered new territory was that educators
had to train and work together as a team, a team consisting of a college
professor, a high school physics teacher, and an elementary or middle
school teacher. This team brought very different experiences, knowledge
bases, and paradigms together. Those teams that meshed had a great
impact in training elementary and middle school teachers across the
country. The program was based on existing research in science teaching
and learning, used hands-on learning, and included a strong training
component. A curriculum alone without training and support will seldom
succeed. The OPPS program is updating much of the OP teacher training
by bringing in more up-to-date understanding of education. Instead
of a series of activities about a topic, the topic is developed in
a spiral fashion that continually reinforces and builds on the key
ideas.
Textbooks
I have done impromptu surveys, asking a roomful of
adults how many of them have read a textbook for enjoyment in the past
few months. Is it a loaded question? Of course it is. So the better
question is why is it a loaded question? The answer is that all adults
instinctively consider that science textbooks are boring and uninteresting
and filled with hundreds of dry definitions to be memorized or hundreds
of pages of derivations of mathematical formulas to be ignored. Furthermore,
an analysis of a typical textbook shows that there is so much information
shoved into the book, even many teachers cannot determine what is very
important, what is less important, and what is actually unimportant.
If a key idea is important enough to be covered, then it should be
covered in a depth appropriate enough to have meaning and relevance,
and the bridges should be evident to both the teacher and the learner.
Yet even as the publishing industry grows ever more
profitable and the glossy pictures grow ever glossier, the actual philosophical
format of the textbooks remains rooted in a continual cycle of repetitious
failure. Standardized test scores have dropped steadily with the decades
of use of traditional texts and straight lecture. But unfortunately,
in today's era of Legislated Excellence, the publishers have developed
more political power than ever before. In many states they have more
power to dictate curriculum and pedagogy than professional science
and science education organizations.
That said, it should be noted that I have an elementary
teacher friend who borrowed my copy of Paul Hewitt's Conceptual Physics,
and I finally had to buy her a copy of her own to read for enjoyment
or risk losing mine forever. Textbooks can be extremely valuable resources.
The written page has been a primary resource since the invention of
the printing press, and it will continue to be so even with the growth
of the electronic information era. The reading resource, the textbook,
should be something that the student wants to read, and it should be
appropriate reading in style, in objectives, in content. The education
community, from the classroom teachers to the practicing scientists
need to push for what is best for the students, and that includes more
properly developed reading resources.
Emphasis on Reading
 One
major issue in elementary science today is the emphasis on reading
scores. The emphasis itself is not bad, particularly when and where
students are not meeting minimum requirements. But it is becoming commonplace
for principals to give ultimatums that "all instruction up through
lunch will be reading and after lunch you can do everything else like
science and history and math and the arts." My immediate response
is "what are they reading?" Why not use "everything
else like science and history and math and the arts" to help the
students become better readers and writers? Why not use graphic organizers
to help the students understand the scientific passage at the same
time they are improving their reading skills?
Ironically, science represents one of the areas that
most emphasizes writing and reading. Scientists keep journals. They
read and evaluate articles. They write papers. They give presentations.
In the CAPSI model (Caltech Precollege Science Initiative), journals
and reading have been an essential component since the beginning. The
combination of inquiry based science (using nationally available quality
kits such as STC, Insights, or FOSS.) with the keeping of scientific
notebooks or journals has had a noticeable affect. One area it is especially
powerful is with non-English speaking students. They can concentrate
on learning the science by recording in their primary language, and
can then take the time to focus on the language translation. In one
study soon to be published, the El Centro School District in California
has found a direct correlation between student reading test scores
and their number of years doing inquiry science and keeping science
notebooks (as determined by which teachers the student has had).
Assessment
The most abused part of education today is assessment.
Assessment should be used as a tool to ensure that all students have
equal opportunities for their future. Instead assessment is being used
to determine which students have what opportunities in life. Based
on test scores that may or may not have much relevance to what they
are used for, students are classified, excluded, and tracked based
on these scores. Standardizing expectations and assessment has many
benefits, as can be witnessed by the concept of the driver license
tests across the nation. But what makes the driving assessment work
(except maybe for that occasional idiot on the freeway)? It must include
specific objectives and expectations, explain exactly what the test
will assess, give opportunity to practice and prepare, assess by both
written and performance assessment, and give formative feedback for
improvement. Some assessment programs today are striving to go in that
direction, but there remains a long way to go, especially with the
standardized tests presently being rushed in as some type of religious
salvation.
Conclusion
So with all of these hurdles, is there hope? Of course
there is. One has only to get into the classrooms to see examples of
quality teacher training, quality teaching, and quality learning. But
it will not happen by itself. It is like the second law of thermodynamics.
Everything is moving towards greater entropy, and it takes a great
expenditure of energy to prevent this deterioration. It takes only
a little more energy to progress. So the secret is to continue to progress,
to improve, to grow. And this applies to all of the players listed
in the National Standards, from the preparers of teachers to the teachers
to the educational systems. Thomas Jefferson argued that American democracy
cannot survive unless all Americans have a quality education. We must
provide all of our students a quality science educational experience
that opens opportunities and opens the mind. And that experience must
start in the earliest years, progress throughout formalized schooling,
and extend into the realm of life-long learning.
Wayne Snyder is Assistant
Director of the Caltech Precollege Science Initiative (CAPSI), and
is specifically involved with the development of science curriculum,
assessment, and teacher development. Certified in physics, chemistry,
and biology, he primarily taught high school physics for 20 years.
For much of that time, he was also an adjunct college instructor
teaching physics content to elementary and middle school teachers.
He has been active in various programs such as Operation Physics
and AAPT Physics Teaching Resource Agent and has served on the AP
Physics Test Development Committee.
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