March 30, 2023 • 45 mins
Get ready for season 3 of Science Connections: The Podcast!
In our first episode, we unpack the research around our season theme of science as the underdog with Horizon Research, Inc. Vice President Eric R. Banilower and Senior Researcher Courtney Plumley. Eric and Courtney dive into the research they’ve found and their experiences as former educators to show how science is often overlooked in K–12 classrooms. We discuss how the science classroom compares to other subjects in terms of time and resources, how schools are a reflection of society, and what’s needed to change science and its impact on a larger scale.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We asked teachers, you know, how much science,
professional development they'vehad in the last three years, and
nearly half of elementaryteachers said none.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections.
I'm your host Eric Cross.
I am super excited to be kickingoff the third season with the
show.
This entire season will beexploring the theme of science
as the underdog, and we're gonnamake the case for science by
showing how and why it can beused more effectively.
In the coming episodes, we'regonna talk about how science can
(00:30):
be better integrated into othercontent areas like literacy and
math, and explore some of thebenefits that you might not be
thinking about good scienceinstruction.
But first, science as theunderdog.
I bet some of you out there feellike science is the underdog in
your community at school.
I know I have at times.
To kick off this season, I'mgonna talk to two people who
(00:52):
really studied this question bylooking at the state of science
instruction across the us.
Eric Bauer is Vice President ofVerizon Research and Courtney
Plumley is senior researcher atHorizon Research.
Eric was the principalinvestigator and Courtney an
author of the latest in a seriesof studies called The National
Survey of Science andMathematics Education.
(01:13):
We're gonna dive into thefindings of their most recent
report to see what the data'sshowing us.
Please enjoy my discussion withEric Bauer and Courtney Plumley.
Courtney, hello.
And thank you so much forjoining us.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Hi Eric.
It's nice to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
And Eric, welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
We're thrilled to be here, so thank you for having
us.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I was reading through the report I 400, a very
thorough report, 400 like 71pages, I think as as I got it.
And
Speaker 3 (01:37):
That's only one of the many reports from that
study.
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (01:40):
You all have done your work, so I'm really excited
to to talk to you about this.
And on this season of the show,we're exploring the theme of
science as the underdog.
And I think a lot of ourlisteners, like we feel like
science is an underdog either intheir school or in their
district.
But you've actually done someresearch on this in a 2018
study, the National Survey ofScience and Mathematics
(02:01):
Education.
So I wanna talk about thisreport, but first I was hoping
you can kind of set the stage.
How did you come to work on thisreport and then big picture,
what were you hoping to findout?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So the 2018 study that, that you just mentioned
was actually the sixth interiteration of a series of studies
dating back to 1977.
And we collect data, um, everydecade or so, you know, plus or
minus a few years.
And really what we're trying todo is get a snapshot of what the
(02:31):
science and math educationsystem looks like in in the
nation.
So my role grew, I I startedworking at Horizon in about 1998
after teaching, uh, high schoolfor five years in California.
And then I'm going to graduateschool.
And right about that time, thecompany was doing the 2000
iteration of the, of the survey.
(02:54):
And I, uh, worked on it with,with the team here at Horizon.
And then we did it again in2012.
And I had a, a much moreprominent role in that study and
, um, became the kind of leaderof the study.
And in 2018, the most recentversion, we, um, just did it
again.
Um, so the goal of this studyis, is really to kind of examine
(03:16):
key aspects of the K-12 STEMeducation system.
And the main audience of thework has traditionally been
policy makers, researchers and,and practitioners who work at
the federal, state and kind ofdistrict level.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So this, this study took kind of a sample size, but
it's reflective of what we tendtrends that we tend to see
across the nation as a whole.
Would that be fair to say?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yes, definitely it is.
It is a, um, a random sample ofschools in the country.
So, um, we start with a list ofall the public and private
schools in the nation and thendo a random sample of those
schools and then work really,really hard to recruit schools
to agree to be in the study.
And that has gotten harder everytime we've done this study for,
(04:00):
for many understandable reasons.
Um, and then once we haveschools on board, we sample
teachers within schools.
So we don't even survey everyteacher in a school.
It's really a sub-sample so thatwe can make inferences about,
about the nation as a whole.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Makes sense.
And so Courtney, what did youfind out about the, the time
spent on science instruction inUS schools?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So, um, I'm gonna talk about elementary teachers
to begin with
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Because you, you, that was your past life, right?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I am a former elementary teacher.
Yeah.
So that's kind of where my headis and that's, uh, relatable for
me.
Right?
So we asked teachers like howmany days of the week or we, uh,
weeks of the year that theyteach elementary school and
fewer than 20% teach scienceevery day of the school year.
They kind of do one or twothings for the most part.
(04:48):
They teach a couple days a weekor they teach every day of the
week, but only for like maybesix weeks.
And then they swap with socialstudies and they kind of do that
across the school year, which isreally different from like math,
right?
We also asked elements,teachers, how often do they
teach math and it's every day ofthe year.
Then we also asked them how manyminutes they teach when they're
(05:09):
teaching and we kind of like didthe math to figure out, all
right, if they taught scienceevery day of the school year,
how many minutes would it be ina single day so that we could
make a more comparablecomparison with math and ela.
If you were to work it out, howmany minutes of science an
elementary teacher teachesacross the year and break it
(05:30):
down to per day, it's like 18minutes for the lower elementary
grades, 27 for the upperelementary grades, which is
like, not a lot and then, butit's pretty much an hour a day
in math and 80 plus minutes inin ela.
So a lot less.
And then, you know, when I wasteaching, the first thing to go
(05:50):
was always science, right?
If there was an assembly, ifthere was, uh, early release or
whatever that was, was the firstthing to go.
So those numbers might even behigher and you know, just
because they aren't factoringthat kind of thing in too.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So what now I'm curious.
That is something that I, I've,I've seen it just anecdotally
and science being the firstthing to go.
I feel like I've seen thatalmost.
It's almost become a meme thatI've, I've heard that so often.
Just in, in your experience, whydo you think that is that that
huge disparity between the two?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Well, I mean, when I was teaching, I was teaching
third grade.
I had an undergrade test in mathand ELA for my kids.
I didn't have one in science.
So the, you know, administrationsaid, Hey, if you're gonna drop
something, drop something that'snot tested.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Simple as that.
And Eric, you past life physicsteacher high school, what did
you see in, in, cuz our, ourlisteners run the gamut from
elementary all the way up tohigh school.
What did you see as far asrelative science instruction in
the kind of secondary level?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Sure.
Um, you know, it's secondary,um, is just a whole different
situation than elementary,right?
Because you havedepartmentalization, right?
I taught science, I didn't haveto teach other subjects and
students had periods and knowthey still do, sorry, they still
have periods even though it'sbeen a long time since I taught.
And you know, they rotate fromone class to another.
(07:22):
So all the classes wereessentially the same length.
Right?
So, you know, when I wasteaching it was about 50 minute
periods.
Um, so in terms of minutes of aclass or minutes on a subject,
it's not really different.
But what is different is whatstudents are required to take in
order to graduate high school.
(07:42):
Right?
Um, one of the things we askedschools about in this study was
how many years of, of a subjectdo students have to take in
order to graduate?
And what we saw was inmathematics, over half the
schools in the nation requirestudents to take four years of
mathematics to graduate.
Okay.
And the vast majority of therest about about 44% require
(08:04):
three years in science.
Most schools require threeyears, very few require four
years.
And, and many, uh, or are fairnumbers still only require two
years to graduate.
So the expectation of whatstudents are taking is lower in
science than it is inmathematics.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So you're, you were seeing the same trend in
secondary essentially.
Yes.
The, the, the amount of timethat ins of devoted to the
instruction of science, we're,we're kind of seeing it mirror
just across K-12 across the
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Board.
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And so, and that's across the country cuz the
sample size represents Yes.
Teachers from Alaska, Hawaii,the south.
Yep.
SoCal everywhere.
So what's been, what's been thereaction to that number?
Like 18 to 20 minutes is, Imean, it's, it's half of my
lunch at our school.
What's, what's been the, thereaction to that number since
(08:56):
this data has been published?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Um, I don't know, Courtney, if you want to, it's
the same take
Speaker 1 (09:00):
That's, it's a lot of what you just did.
Like what, like how is itpossible to teach, you know, all
the things you need to teach insuch a little amount of time?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
What's really kind of , um, surprising to me though,
um, though now that I've workedon three iterations of the
study, it no longer surprisesme, but it did at first is that
these numbers really aren'tchanging since we've started
doing this study.
You know, people thought maybewith no child left behind and
they increased inaccountability, time on science
(09:29):
might actually go down becausethere were more testing in, in
math, in, in English languagearts.
It didn't happen.
It was pretty much constant thatthis has been kind of the state
of science education for a longtime.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So Eric, I'm hearing you right.
The the past studies we're notseeing an increase or a decline.
This has been, it's been thisway for how many years, roughly,
would you say?
Since it's been studied?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
You know, I, I'd have to go back to the 1977 report to
get, you know, kind of thenumbers, but I'm gonna say since
then, it has not changed much,if at all.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
So this has kind of been entrenched, like this is
the, has been the norm foralmost for, for the career of a
teacher.
Almost generationally we'relooking at anyone who's been the
highest levels of leadership tosomeone just entry in the
classroom.
This has been the way it'salways been.
This is kind of for many peoplewhat they've only known.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Kind of become the norm.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
We didn't even have science when I was in elementary
school.
We had a science on a cart thatcame by, you know, every other
week.
So
Speaker 2 (10:28):
This is like, was was that like a, like the, like a,
like a food truck, but like thescience version of it and shows
up and, and does quick scienceand takes off?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Hey, haircut was, I mean, we always watched Voyage
of the Mimi.
I don't know if you ever watchedthat, but that's what we watched
every single time the science onthe cart came.
So it's a, like a marine biologyshow.
It was Ben Affleck was on itwhen he was a kid.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
.
Really?
Yeah.
For, for me it was, uh, Mr.
Wizard or some of my students,even now, bill ny, you know, the
Bill NY show or something would,would come on.
Uh, so what happens when youlook at less wealthy districts?
Is there a relationship betweencommunity resources and science
instruction, or is it prettymuch equal no matter what the
district resources are, theschool's resources are?
(11:10):
Did you see any data there?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Um, yes.
We actually did a lot of, um,disaggregating the data by
community type, uh, studentdemographics in the schools to
look to see whether there wereareas of inequities across the
country.
And, you know, one of the, thefactors we looked at was kind of
a, a measure of socioeconomicstatus, you know, wealth in the
(11:33):
community by looking at likepercentage of students eligible
for free reduced price lunch.
And interestingly, in terms oftime on science instruction,
there is actually not arelationship between income
level and how much time is spentat the elementary level on, um,
science, which actuallysurprised us
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Because you might have expected it to be other way
now.
And granted it's 18 to 20minutes, there isn't much more
to shave off off of that.
But were there otherdifferences, like when you
compared those communities,maybe it wasn't the amount of
science instruction, but wasthere anything else like teacher
preparedness resources, werethere anything else that, that
you did see discrepancies in?
Or was it equal across theboard?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
No, unfortunately there, there have been, and
still are a number of areaswhere community resources are
related to, um, prettysubstantial differences in
educational opportunities thatstudents have.
So, you know, we're talkingabout the high school science,
uh, requirements.
One of the things that we sawwas that, um, high schools in,
(12:37):
um, less wealthy communitiestend to offer less rigorous
science courses than highschools in, in better off
financially communities.
So they may not be AP courses orsecond year advanced courses to
the same extent that there arein the wealthier communities.
Um, that, that's one bigdifference that we saw.
(12:58):
Another one was, was what youwere just saying about, um, sort
of the teachers who teach inthese communities.
You know, I think that for manyyears people have had a feeling
that the best teachers go to thebetter off schools because it's
easier to teach there.
Well, we see that the schoolswith the most poverty, they tend
to have the newer teachers, um,who are just starting their
(13:21):
career.
They tend to have, um, teacherswho are less well prepared to
teach, um, their subject.
And the, there's a host of otherdifferences we found.
And you know, you mentioned the,the pa the report being 400
pages.
This other report that looks atthese differences is also quite
long and, and, you know,identified a number of areas
where there are thesedisparities in the system.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Well, I appre we, we appreciate you synthesizing this
for us because this is superimportant and, and you've
fleshed out a lot of things.
And the fact that it's, it'sdriven by data.
We as science teachers, we asscientists being objective,
really, really value thatbecause this is actually
validating a lot of the thingsthat our listeners and myself we
experience anecdotally.
But you don't have a lot ofthings to network you.
And it kind of, sometimes whenyou see this, you wonder if it's
(14:06):
just you or is are other peopleexperiencing this?
And so is you start talkingabout this data realizing, oh
wow, this is not, this is notsomething in isolation, this is
systemic, this is somethingthat's impacted.
And then Eric, what you saidabout schools that were lower
income, were under-resourced anddidn't offer those advanced
classes.
What are some of the impacts ofthat maybe downstream of, of
(14:27):
doing that, not having those APclasses?
I just kind of wanted to putthat out there and ask you,
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You know, that's, this is a really, um, you know,
and this is a current debateright now about, um, what the
goals of, of schooling K-12should be.
You know, are all kids meant togo to college?
Should there be alternativepaths?
And you know, I know when I wasteaching, I would have students
say, why do I need to know this?
I'm not, not gonna go intoscience.
(14:52):
I'm not gonna study physics.
Why do I need to take this?
And, you know, the answer I usedto give them was, you know, you
never know where your life isgonna end up and what, what
opportunities you'll have.
And by having these educationalexperiences, you have more
opportunities available to you.
Whether or not you choose to godown those paths, you have
(15:14):
opportunities.
And when you don't take thiskind of coursework, you know,
even if you don't want to go tocollege, you limit your, your
potential careers.
Because so many careers nowadaysrequire some technical
knowledge, some knowledge ofscience, even if it's not
explicitly a science job.
It is embedded in our societynow.
We are a technological andscience-based society.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It reminds me of something that I've told my
students that even if you becomea scientist, that's awesome.
I love that.
But if you don't and you want todo you want to be a dancer or an
actor or a lawyer or anythingthat may not be directly related
to stem, I want you to choose itbecause it was a choice and not
a lack of options.
Mm-hmm.
(15:57):
.
So you could always, as long asyou're choosing not to go in
STEM and you don't make thatdecision because you can't or
because you weren't given theopportunity.
So that's how I've always hadthis mindset as a teacher and
I've explained it to mystudents.
So if you say cross, you knowwhat I want to do, uh, I wanna
be an awesome chef, which, youknow, low key this science,
right?
, molecular astronomy,whole, we know, we know that.
(16:18):
But like, you be the best chef,but as long as you're being a
chef because you choose that andyou don't, you're like, I love
science, but I don't wanna gothat direction.
We're good.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Right?
And if you think about, um, alot of, um, kind of social
justice issues with pollutionand climate change, and you look
at which communities are moreaffected by some of these larger
environmental problems andchallenges, it tends to be the
lower socioeconomic communities,the more poverty stricken
(16:48):
communities have worse water,have worse air quality.
And so if, if people from thesecommunities are going to make
informed decisions about whothey're gonna vote for, about
what policies they're gonnasupport, right?
Those are science topics thatyou have to have some
understanding in order to makeinformed decisions in your life.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Courtney, you were one of the Swiss army knife
teachers.
This is how I perceive it forelementary.
You had to teach everything andshout out to all of my
elementary school teachers thathave to be mathematicians and
grammar whizzes and scientistsand PE instructors and social
emotion, all of those differentthings.
Um, you also looked at teacherpreparedness, right?
(17:32):
How did teachers feel aboutteaching science compared to
other subjects like languagearts and math?
What did, what Did you seeanything there?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
We did, we did.
Um, and I'm glad you said, howdid they feel about it?
Because one thing that, um, youknow, in a survey you can't
really do is capture how someoneactually, you know, how good
someone actually, or quality ofsomeone's instruction, but you
can ask them how prepared theyfeel and you can even ask them
like stats, like, what did youmajor in in college?
(18:00):
You know, but really are goingon based on what they, what they
say.
So we ask them how prepared theyfeel to teach all the core
subjects.
And two thirds of elementaryteachers felt very well prepared
to teach reading.
They felt very well prepared toteach math.
But when it comes to science,it's less than a third.
(18:21):
Felt very well prepared.
And you know, like you said,when you're teaching elementary
school, you're teaching all thesubjects, but also in science
there's usually four, you know,main instructional units in a
school year.
And they're all from differentscience disciplines.
So not only are you going on,like maybe I in college took a
lot of bio classes, but I didn'ttake any physics classes and now
(18:41):
I have to teach physics to mykids and I have no experience
there.
So, you know, we also ask themhow well prepared they felt in
these different disciplines.
And the numbers are even, areeven smaller, you know, fewer
than a quarter felt very wellprepared in life science.
And like 13% felt very wellprepared in physical science.
So there's definitely a bigdifference between how much
(19:05):
teachers feel prepared for ELAand math versus science
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And just from a human perspective, when we don't feel
prepared for something, we'renot really gonna probably lean
into it as much as we are intoour strengths.
Like, it just, that's just kindof how we are across the board.
Yeah, I I'm even like that withmy own chores in the house or
when I have things, when I havethings I need to get done.
And I, I, I might not be as goodat doing those things.
It's gonna be a heavy cognitiveload.
I'm gonna have to do somebackground research.
(19:29):
I tend to find other areas tolike excel in like, I'm gonna be
productive in this other area.
I'm gonna really crush it here,but this other thing gets put to
the back burner.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Totally.
And the same reason I might skipscience today, cuz it's
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Scary.
Yeah, exactly.
And, but I love this bookor we could do this math and
let's really, really dive deepinto it.
Yeah.
Now you als did you also look atprofessional development and
instructional resources that arebeing provided?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
We did.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And on the whole, how was the amount, and I kind of,
I'm seeing a trend here, so I'm,I'm I I'm kind of feeling like I
know where this might go, but Iwanted to ask it, did the amount
of professional development andresources for science, was there
much of a difference betweenthat and other subjects?
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Um, well I'll start on this and Courtney, feel free
to jump in.
You know, one of the things thatwe asked was how much kind of
discretionary funding do schoolsdevote to science and how much
to mathematics?
Right?
So for consumables or equipmentand supplies or computer
software for teachers to, to usein the classroom.
(20:31):
And it's hard to compare I thinkacross subjects because the
demands for this kind of, um,supplies et cetera is very
different I think in sciencethan it is in mathematics.
Right?
We have a lot of, you know,equipment for doing
investigations, consumablesupplies in science.
And, and those things need to bereplenished on a regular basis.
(20:52):
It turns out, when we look atthe data for, for school
discretionary spending on thiskind of, um, stuff, the median
school spends less than$2 perstudent at the elementary level
on science compared to over$6for mathematics at the high
school level.
It's, it's kind of reverseschools spend more money on high
(21:14):
school science than they do inhigh school math.
Um, but even still at, at thehigh school, it's less than$7
per student.
Um, which is not a lot of moneybeing devoted to thinking about
all the materials, supplies,chemicals, et cetera, that you
need to teach science.
Well at the high school level,more disturbing is the fact that
, um, you know, we were talkingabout inequities before, schools
(21:37):
that serve less well offcommunities spend less than
schools that, that servewealthier communities by quite a
big amount.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So essentially the the per student thing just kind
of popped out to me.
So like an expensive Starbucksdrink is what we're spending on
science per student
Speaker 3 (21:57):
At the high school level.
Yes,
Speaker 2 (21:58):
At the high school level.
And I, I get those av those uh,catalogs in the mail from all of
those big science companies.
You can't get much for sevenbucks.
Nope.
You, you At least nothing highlevel.
I mean, right.
And I know I do a lot of 99cents store science.
I go down the street, go to the99 cents store.
Thankfully we could do a lot ofawesome science with just, you
know, cheap things.
But a lot of the higher levelexperiences, they're pricey, but
(22:23):
the experiences are so rich and$7, the high school level is
nothing.
It's not much at all.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah.
It, it is definitely, um, youknow, kind of shocking to, to
think about what we're investingin our children's future.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Now, just to put you both in the spot, cuz I feel
like that we've identified some,we're we're seeing a trend here,
we're seeing a pattern, we'retalking about, you know, being
science teachers.
There's a pattern going on here.
Do you think it's fair tocharacterize science as the
underdog?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I think in elementary school it, it is a fair
statement because like we saidbefore, I mean they're gonna
preference math and ELA almostall the time.
I mean, the other thing you'dasked a little bit ago was about
professional development too.
And we, we do have some data onthat and we ask teachers, you
know, how much scienceprofessional development they've
(23:14):
had in the last three years.
And nearly half of elementaryteachers said none.
And I know I didn't have anyscience professional
development.
If I was gonna pick from amongthe catalog, I was picking one
that I needed more like math andmath and LA I keep making that
statement, but it just over andover it's the truth.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
And going back to what you said earlier, because
that's where the accountabilitywas, right?
And that kind of came top downYes.
And influenced everything else.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah.
Now really interesting thingthat we did, um, a year or so
ago, cuz someone asked us, youknow, Hey, could you look at
this is we compared elementaryscience instructional time among
states where science countedtowards accountability versus
states where science doesn'tcount towards accountability.
(24:00):
And at the upper elementarygrades, more time was spent on
science in schools in stateswhere they had science
accountability.
Now I'm not arguing for addingscience to accountability
systems, but that's a prettytelling piece of data
Speaker 2 (24:19):
What gets measured gets done.
Yeah.
Or what gets what was gettingevaluated was getting done.
And that Yeah, that raises, thatopens up a myriad of other
questions about testing and, andwhat that reveals and all of
those different things.
But at the end of the day, whatyou're, you're finding is that
the things that we're gettingtested were the things that were
getting the
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Priority.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
How did we get to this point?
And Eric, you said it goes backat least to 77, but we, we look
at society and we're, I wannasay we're post pandemic, but
we're like, we're not, but we'retrying to, we're trying to get
past that.
But we're looking at, we hadinnovations in biology, we have
innovations right now in greenenergy and electric cars and all
(24:58):
of these things that areSTEM-based.
We know that these are thingsthat have moved humanity forward
and we look at the pipeline ofpeople who are in stem and we,
we see the disparities andthings like that.
Why was science given less of apriority?
Um, I'm just curious, maybeCourtney, we could start with
you if you have any ideas orEric, either, either one.
(25:19):
But how did we get here?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
, I think
Courtney wants me to take that
one.
I'm older so I've seen more.
So, um, you know, I have thegray hair.
She doesn't, um, I think, Ithink it's complicated.
And, and I know this soundscliche, but but schools are a
reflection of society, right?
And, and so science education,you know, if you think back when
(25:47):
Sputnik was launched, therebecame this great demand in
America to improve and, andproduce more scientists and
engineers in response to thisCold War threat.
Right?
And then in the eighties therewas rising, oh, the, the
gathering storm was an economicargument that we needed to
increase science and, and math,um, you know, education and
(26:09):
people going into those fieldsin order to compete economically
against the global competitors.
And I think that America hasalways produced a, a fair
number, a large number of highquality scientists and
engineers, you know, and westill lead the world in many
(26:29):
ways, but where we've identifiedas a problem is who has those
opportunities to go into thosefields.
You know, it used to be a veryselect, a very, you know, male
dominated, white male dominatedfield.
Right.
And other people didn't have theopportunity, or they were, they
(26:52):
were shown the way out prettyearly.
Right.
And we, I think come to realizeas a country that, you know,
the, the greater the diversityof thought that we can get into
these discussions, the moreinnovative we can be and you
know, the more productive as asociety we can be.
(27:13):
And so I think we've had thisshift in the country to, instead
of thinking about just thequality for the select few, but
to be thinking about the qualityfor everyone.
And, and so that makes it seemlike some of these challenges
are, are greater than they usedto be.
And, and I think they'redifferent challenges, right?
(27:35):
We've, we've evolved as asociety and I think schools have
evolved.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
There is a conversation I was in with a, on
a plane with a person who was amaterial manager for a company
that made the adhesive forsandpaper.
And we were flying, I was flyingto Denmark and he was flying to
some other, uh, Scandinaviancountry and we were just talking
about it.
And he came from anotherindustry and I, we were, somehow
the conversation led to science.
(28:00):
I don't know how that happened,but somehow I just started
talking about science and Iasked him about Eric, kind of
what you said about the US kindof leading the way in science
innovation versus the rest ofthe world.
And I asked him why.
And he said one of the reasonswhy is because the heterogeneous
thought the, the, the differentgroups of people that are coming
(28:21):
to a to, to a problem actuallycreate more innovative and novel
solutions versus when it's morehomogeneous and everyone's kind
of, either, either culturally orjust for whatever reason, kind
of thinks a certain way.
While they might have a moreefficient way, the variety of
solutions are not as varied inand not as novel.
(28:42):
I was reminded of that storybased on what you just said.
So it's, it's reallyinteresting.
Right.
Um, so it seems to be that itbenefits if we have more
heterogeneous groups, more folkswho are contributing to stem
because that's gonna be solvingthe next problem more
efficiently.
Or I guess maybe in my head itseems like the next we need, we
do really well when we have adragon display.
(29:03):
I mean, it seems like we cometogether when that that's the
case, right?
Like, I
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Don't know.
No, that's, that's, I thinkthat's, I think that's accurate.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Later on the season of the podcast, we're gonna
explore ways to better integratescience with other subjects like
literacy and math.
Were you able to study at allany more integrated approaches
to science instruction?
Uh, does any of your researchsupport that approach?
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Not on the, not on the national survey.
We didn't study that.
And it's something that we'vetalked about before because it's
difficult to get teachers to, wewere talking about instructional
time.
It's, it's hard for teachers toput a number on it when they're
integrating because it, youknow, it's not like I have my
science block from three tothree 30 anymore.
Now it's kind of scatteredabout, but it's something that
has been in the ether.
(29:47):
We've been looking at it in acouple of projects.
Um, so there, there's someevidence that it can be, um,
effective.
Um, especially forgetting more,you know, the, the ideas you can
get more time for science if youare integrating with other
subjects.
But one thing to kind of cautionis like, students need to have
opportunities to learn eachdiscipline when they're, when
(30:07):
they're doing integrated, um,instruction.
So you don't wanna just havelike math in your science.
They already know that kidsalready know to just like
support it.
Then it's hard to take time frommath to put it into science when
they're not actually learninganything new.
That's the easy thing to doright though, is say, oh, my
kids already know how tomeasure.
(30:28):
Um, we did that in a previousunit, so now we'll we'll do it
as part of our scienceinstruction.
Um, so it's a lot of work tomake it so they're learning
something new, mathematics andscience at the same time.
And it's not really somethingthat we think that teachers
should be having to do on theirown with all the other things
that teachers have to do.
The last thing they need to dois be creating their own, you
(30:49):
know, curriculum.
Something that's already thatit's, you know, it's not
straightforward.
So we've been talking about it,we think it's really something
that instructional materialsmaybe need to be focusing on
instead of teachers having to dothat on their own,
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Teachers would implement it, but Right.
Asking them to create it is awhole different, is a whole
different thing and it's a hugeask.
Yes.
Yeah.
And, and did I hear you right?
Do, were you, so the idealsituation would've been the
students learning a newer maybemath concept, but embedded in a
science kind of context, or wasthat the better way versus, I'm
(31:22):
gonna take a math concept theyalready know and then just put
it into the science setting?
Well,
Speaker 1 (31:27):
If the idea is that you can get more science time if
you're, you know, integratingthings, so you can maybe take
time away from a specific mathblock by putting it with science
or whatever.
Then if the, if the math issomething that the kids already
know, now you're just takingaway, you know, I think that
that has to be new in bothcases.
Mm-hmm.
in order tojustify having more time.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Right.
Eric, Eric in the secondarylevel, any thoughts on that, on
integrating these, thesedisciplines together?
Speaker 3 (31:56):
I think, you know, just like at the elementary
level, it can be challenging todo it well, um, when I taught,
I, I taught my last couple yearsin a, um, kind of school within
a school kind of situation whereour goal was to try to integrate
science, mathematics, andlanguage arts.
Um, and it's hard to do that ina meaningful way.
(32:18):
And we did not have curriculummaterials, um, given to us to
help us do this.
We were trying to figure out howto do this on our own while we
were teaching 200 kids a day inour subjects.
Right.
And five preparations.
And, and you know, it's, it's abig ask of any teacher, you
know, and there are teacherswho, who thrive on this and, and
(32:40):
are great at this.
And, and you know, that's onething I wanna, you know, make
clear, you know, our data isabout the system and, you know,
we are former teachers.
Almost everyone who works atHorizon is a former teacher.
We have the greatest respect forteachers and what they do.
Right.
And what our data is showing isare kind of like areas where the
(33:01):
system isn't providing teachersand their students the
opportunities to do greatthings.
Right?
I think at the high schoollevel, there has been this idea
of project-based learning wherestudents are bringing together
different skills, differentideas from across disciplines.
And I think there's again, a lotof potential in doing that.
(33:22):
But, you know, trying to, todevelop those experiences so
that they are doing service tothe different subjects.
So students are learning whatthey're supposed to learn in
English language arts, thatthey're, they're learning, you
know, important mathematics andthat this is in a science
context where they are gettingto do and understand what
(33:45):
science is and how science, um,as a discipline, um, operates.
That's just a really hard thingto develop.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
So what I'm hearing, and I really appreciate the
nuance in this because it's nota simple Yes.
Integrated is better.
It's, I'm hearing Yes.
Quality control.
Mm-hmm.
, yes.
It needs to be written not byteachers, they're the
practitioners.
It's Yes.
And um, not just simply binary,which it's so easy to wanna
chunk things and say yes or no,uh, you, you know, on things.
(34:15):
But this one seems a much morenuanced approach.
And in a future episode you want, you mentioned project based
learning, we're gonna try andtalk to people who have thoughts
on this.
And I really appreciate that youtalked about project-based
learning because I also, how doyou evaluate that?
How do you evaluate whether ornot it is high quality?
Is this is something I see, youknow, high quality standards,
(34:35):
highest quality science,teaching, high quality, you
know, highly qualify teachers.
It's something that I see often.
Now, based on all your research,this is kind of the 30,000 foot
view.
What, what advice might you havefor people who are thinking
about changing the way scienceis taught in this country, which
hasn't changed since 1977, atleast since we've been measuring
it.
Any advice for people who dowant to act?
(34:58):
Another way to ask, it might beif you were given a magic wand,
, you have bene you haveall power, what might you do if
you can control the entirevertical system?
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Yeah, so I, I I clarification, I do think
science instruction, you know,has changed.
It has evolved.
I think there's a lot of reallygood things going on in
different pockets of thecountry.
One of the challenges isbringing those good ideas and
good practices to scale.
(35:28):
Right?
There are approximately 1.2million teachers of science K12
in this country.
That's a lot of people.
And about 80% of those are, areelementary teachers who are
responsible for teaching othersubjects as well.
So my thinking is often abouthow do we take what we know and
(35:52):
that we've learned throughdecades of research is effective
and impact a large number ofteachers, and therefore a large
number of students.
Right.
And you know, Courtney I thinkis hinted at this already, and
you've mentioned it too, Eric,is, is that teaching is a
profession, right?
And it's a craft, but in noother profession, do
(36:16):
practitioners, um, have theexpectation that they're
developing their own tools and,and methods for their work?
You know, I know when I was inmy teacher preparation program,
and it's still extremely common,one of the assignments
perspective teachers are givenis to develop a unit and develop
a lesson, right?
You don't have doctors beingasked to develop new treatments
(36:40):
and new tests to use their jobis to get to know their patient,
assess what's going on, and thenusing research based methods
develop a a plan of action,right?
And, and I think that analogyworks really well in education
and is a way that we could havea scalable approach for kind of
(37:03):
raising the floor across thecountry for the quality of
science education, givingteachers research based
materials, high qualityinstructional materials that
they can then use and adapt tomeet the needs of their
students, would allow them tofocus on getting to know their
students, seeing what theirstrengths are, seeing where they
(37:23):
have room for growth, and usingthe materials they're given to
help those students progress.
And I think that is definitely away where we could have a big
impact at a large scale.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Courtney, same question.
Magic wand, all power.
You can change systems from theelementary perspective.
What would you do to, I'm assuI'm assuming part of it's gonna
be changing that 18 to 20 minutetime, but even for that to
happen, what would you do?
What would you change?
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Well, I don't know, like for it to change, I, you
know, I don't know the answer tothat, but yes, increasing the
time would be great.
And like Eric was saying, givingteachers, cuz again, I'm coming
in not enough probablybackground in science.
And then, you know, when I was,when I was teaching, we had one
set of textbooks for the entiregrade six classes, right?
(38:17):
Like share them, but thirdgraders aren't gonna read
textbooks anyway, right?
So that wasn't the, so insteadI'm going to the teacher store,
I'm like pulling things off theshelf and like, okay, yeah,
sure, I'll use this.
And nowadays teachers are goingto teachers pay teachers or
whatever because I didn't haveanything good to use.
So like Erica is saying, if Ihad instructional materials that
were good instructionalmaterials that were gonna teach
(38:39):
my kids that they were gonna beengaged, that they weren't
sitting and listening toscience, but they were doing
science, you know, and I hadprofessional development to
actually help me do it.
I mean that's, that's what Ithink we need to have.
And I mean, I know there aresome people out there that are
working on that, but it's not alot.
It's not, I mean, if you look ated reports, they rate, you know,
(39:00):
how well aligned sciencecurriculum are to like
standards.
And there are two right now thathave ed reports, green lights,
there's amplified and there'sopen sci ed.
You know, so there's not muchout there for teachers to use.
And, um, so it's hard, it's hardwhere, where am I gonna go and
get this stuff if it doesn'texist?
And so I'm making it up bymyself, which we already said is
(39:22):
not the best use of teacher'stime when they've got so many
other demands on their time.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Eric and Courtney, listening to your, both, both of
your responses, I, it created avisual in my mind and Eric, I
loved your analogy of, I startedthinking of a chef, a welder,
and a farmer, and I thoughtabout the chef saying like,
you're a great chef now, can yougo farm and make your own food
so that you can cook it?
Or the welder who has to makehis own welding tools and go in
smelting, you know, making the,the different rods.
(39:47):
I'm not a welder, but you know,all those different parts or
the, the farmer who has to buildhis own tractor and innovate all
that stuff, you're, you'reabsolutely right.
The way you articulated that.
And then Courtney, you, youessentially said, give them the
tools and then teach them how touse it so they can go and
actually be effective with itbecause you're in front of kids
doing so many different things.
There's only so much time in theday and teachers want to do
(40:09):
these things, they want to, butyou end up having to triage when
you're asked to.
Going back to Eric's analogy, ifyou are, if you're in the er,
but you're also creating thevaccines and you're also doing
the research on which types ofvaccines are gonna be the most
effective.
That's, that's a lot to ask.
And so, um, I appreciate bothyour responses on that.
Now, last question, what are youboth working on now?
(40:30):
This report came out in 2018.
What's, what's next on thehorizon?
Uh, actually literally that's nopun intended.
what's next?
what's next for, uh, foryou both?
What are you working on?
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Well, you know, we would love to do another
national survey, um, in a fewyears we have to get funding to
do it.
Um, and you know, that's always,you know, um, something that
takes effort and isn't aguarantee.
Um, we've ridden grants to dothese studies in the past and
there's also kind of the, thedealing with the reality of the
(41:04):
situation.
I think a lot of schools, um,still coming off the tail end
of, of dealing with covid areoverwhelmed.
Right.
And, you know, we've had a hardtime, I mentioned before,
recruiting schools and it getsharder every time just cuz they
have so much on their plate.
And I couldn't see going to aschool now and saying, Hey, one
(41:25):
more thing.
Do you mind?
Right?
So I think we have to, we haveto kind of wait a little bit for
, uh, things to settle downbefore we can do another one of
these studies.
It just doesn't seem feasibleright now.
But we'd love to, you know, inthe not too distant future.
Um, other than that, Courtneyand I actually are, we work on
some projects together in someprojects, um, not together.
(41:47):
One of the things that we'reworking on together is a, um,
study of a fifth grade sciencecurriculum that was developed by
Okie Lee at NYU and, and hercolleagues that is both aligned
with the NGSS and purposelydesigned to support multilingual
learners in developing boththeir science knowledge and
(42:09):
skills as well as their languageskills.
And we've been working with thecrew at NYU to study this
curriculum and, and try tofigure out, um, how well it's
working and under whatcircumstances.
So that's been a reallyinteresting project that's going
on right now.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
I recently worked on a report with the Carnegie
Corporation in New York thatactually I think, uh, it
compliments what we've beentalking about a lot.
It's about the status of K-12education in the US or science
education in the US.
Um, and so as part of thatreport we interviewed like 50,
(42:47):
um, science education expertsacross the country.
We surveyed teachers, people inthe university, settings,
researchers and everything tokind of get a, a little bit more
update of the state of scienceeducation right now.
And so unfortunately, I mean, alot of the things we've been
talking about, we still weretalking about with the people in
this report four years later.
So work in progress,
Speaker 2 (43:09):
work, and
again, going back to 1977, based
on what, what Eric was sayingearlier, we're looking at these
large systems, these systemicchanges are don't happen
overnight.
They're That's right.
It's a very slow moving.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
That's right.
Um, I I would say there isprogress.
I think we've learned a lot.
We, we are getting better.
Are we there yet?
No, we're not happy with wherewe are, but I think, you know, I
I think it's important to behopeful about the direction
things are going in.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Well said.
I agree.
Courtney.
Eric, thank you so much forunpacking that report that
speaks to what's invalidateswhat so many teachers across the
country are experiencing.
And thank you for your advocacyfor high quality science
education, for equity, for, uh,and your passion for supporting
(43:58):
teachers and, and being thatvoice from a data-driven
perspective of what teachersexperience in advocating for
these solutions for them.
It's, it's super encouraging forme and I know it's gonna be
really encouraging for a lot ofour listeners.
So thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Yeah.
Thank you Eric.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Eric Bauer, vice Presidentof Horizon Research and Courtney
Plumley, senior researcher atHorizon Research.
For much more, check out theshow notes for a link to the
2018 National Survey of Scienceand Mathematics Education.
And please remember to subscribeto Science Connections wherever
you get podcasts so that you'renot missing any of the upcoming
(44:36):
episodes in season three.
Next time on the show, we'regonna start laying out the
roadmap for using science moreeffectively.
And we'll start by looking atthe how and the why of
integrating literacyinstruction.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
When we look at Science First and build language
development around it, theexperience tends to be more
authentic and organic.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
That's next time on Science Connections to the
podcast.
Thanks so much for listening.
We asked teachers, you know, how much science,
professional development they'vehad in the last three years, and
nearly half of elementaryteachers said none.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Welcome to Science Connections.
I'm your host Eric Cross.
I am super excited to be kickingoff the third season with the
show.
This entire season will beexploring the theme of science
as the underdog, and we're gonnamake the case for science by
showing how and why it can beused more effectively.
In the coming episodes, we'regonna talk about how science can
(00:30):
be better integrated into othercontent areas like literacy and
math, and explore some of thebenefits that you might not be
thinking about good scienceinstruction.
But first, science as theunderdog.
I bet some of you out there feellike science is the underdog in
your community at school.
I know I have at times.
To kick off this season, I'mgonna talk to two people who
(00:52):
really studied this question bylooking at the state of science
instruction across the us.
Eric Bauer is Vice President ofVerizon Research and Courtney
Plumley is senior researcher atHorizon Research.
Eric was the principalinvestigator and Courtney an
author of the latest in a seriesof studies called The National
Survey of Science andMathematics Education.
(01:13):
We're gonna dive into thefindings of their most recent
report to see what the data'sshowing us.
Please enjoy my discussion withEric Bauer and Courtney Plumley.
Courtney, hello.
And thank you so much forjoining us.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Hi Eric.
It's nice to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
And Eric, welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
We're thrilled to be here, so thank you for having
us.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I was reading through the report I 400, a very
thorough report, 400 like 71pages, I think as as I got it.
And
Speaker 3 (01:37):
That's only one of the many reports from that
study.
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (01:40):
You all have done your work, so I'm really excited
to to talk to you about this.
And on this season of the show,we're exploring the theme of
science as the underdog.
And I think a lot of ourlisteners, like we feel like
science is an underdog either intheir school or in their
district.
But you've actually done someresearch on this in a 2018
study, the National Survey ofScience and Mathematics
(02:01):
Education.
So I wanna talk about thisreport, but first I was hoping
you can kind of set the stage.
How did you come to work on thisreport and then big picture,
what were you hoping to findout?
Speaker 3 (02:10):
So the 2018 study that, that you just mentioned
was actually the sixth interiteration of a series of studies
dating back to 1977.
And we collect data, um, everydecade or so, you know, plus or
minus a few years.
And really what we're trying todo is get a snapshot of what the
(02:31):
science and math educationsystem looks like in in the
nation.
So my role grew, I I startedworking at Horizon in about 1998
after teaching, uh, high schoolfor five years in California.
And then I'm going to graduateschool.
And right about that time, thecompany was doing the 2000
iteration of the, of the survey.
(02:54):
And I, uh, worked on it with,with the team here at Horizon.
And then we did it again in2012.
And I had a, a much moreprominent role in that study and
, um, became the kind of leaderof the study.
And in 2018, the most recentversion, we, um, just did it
again.
Um, so the goal of this studyis, is really to kind of examine
(03:16):
key aspects of the K-12 STEMeducation system.
And the main audience of thework has traditionally been
policy makers, researchers and,and practitioners who work at
the federal, state and kind ofdistrict level.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So this, this study took kind of a sample size, but
it's reflective of what we tendtrends that we tend to see
across the nation as a whole.
Would that be fair to say?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yes, definitely it is.
It is a, um, a random sample ofschools in the country.
So, um, we start with a list ofall the public and private
schools in the nation and thendo a random sample of those
schools and then work really,really hard to recruit schools
to agree to be in the study.
And that has gotten harder everytime we've done this study for,
(04:00):
for many understandable reasons.
Um, and then once we haveschools on board, we sample
teachers within schools.
So we don't even survey everyteacher in a school.
It's really a sub-sample so thatwe can make inferences about,
about the nation as a whole.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Makes sense.
And so Courtney, what did youfind out about the, the time
spent on science instruction inUS schools?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So, um, I'm gonna talk about elementary teachers
to begin with
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Because you, you, that was your past life, right?
Speaker 1 (04:28):
I am a former elementary teacher.
Yeah.
So that's kind of where my headis and that's, uh, relatable for
me.
Right?
So we asked teachers like howmany days of the week or we, uh,
weeks of the year that theyteach elementary school and
fewer than 20% teach scienceevery day of the school year.
They kind of do one or twothings for the most part.
(04:48):
They teach a couple days a weekor they teach every day of the
week, but only for like maybesix weeks.
And then they swap with socialstudies and they kind of do that
across the school year, which isreally different from like math,
right?
We also asked elements,teachers, how often do they
teach math and it's every day ofthe year.
Then we also asked them how manyminutes they teach when they're
(05:09):
teaching and we kind of like didthe math to figure out, all
right, if they taught scienceevery day of the school year,
how many minutes would it be ina single day so that we could
make a more comparablecomparison with math and ela.
If you were to work it out, howmany minutes of science an
elementary teacher teachesacross the year and break it
(05:30):
down to per day, it's like 18minutes for the lower elementary
grades, 27 for the upperelementary grades, which is
like, not a lot and then, butit's pretty much an hour a day
in math and 80 plus minutes inin ela.
So a lot less.
And then, you know, when I wasteaching, the first thing to go
(05:50):
was always science, right?
If there was an assembly, ifthere was, uh, early release or
whatever that was, was the firstthing to go.
So those numbers might even behigher and you know, just
because they aren't factoringthat kind of thing in too.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So what now I'm curious.
That is something that I, I've,I've seen it just anecdotally
and science being the firstthing to go.
I feel like I've seen thatalmost.
It's almost become a meme thatI've, I've heard that so often.
Just in, in your experience, whydo you think that is that that
huge disparity between the two?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Well, I mean, when I was teaching, I was teaching
third grade.
I had an undergrade test in mathand ELA for my kids.
I didn't have one in science.
So the, you know, administrationsaid, Hey, if you're gonna drop
something, drop something that'snot tested.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Simple as that.
And Eric, you past life physicsteacher high school, what did
you see in, in, cuz our, ourlisteners run the gamut from
elementary all the way up tohigh school.
What did you see as far asrelative science instruction in
the kind of secondary level?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Sure.
Um, you know, it's secondary,um, is just a whole different
situation than elementary,right?
Because you havedepartmentalization, right?
I taught science, I didn't haveto teach other subjects and
students had periods and knowthey still do, sorry, they still
have periods even though it'sbeen a long time since I taught.
And you know, they rotate fromone class to another.
(07:22):
So all the classes wereessentially the same length.
Right?
So, you know, when I wasteaching it was about 50 minute
periods.
Um, so in terms of minutes of aclass or minutes on a subject,
it's not really different.
But what is different is whatstudents are required to take in
order to graduate high school.
(07:42):
Right?
Um, one of the things we askedschools about in this study was
how many years of, of a subjectdo students have to take in
order to graduate?
And what we saw was inmathematics, over half the
schools in the nation requirestudents to take four years of
mathematics to graduate.
Okay.
And the vast majority of therest about about 44% require
(08:04):
three years in science.
Most schools require threeyears, very few require four
years.
And, and many, uh, or are fairnumbers still only require two
years to graduate.
So the expectation of whatstudents are taking is lower in
science than it is inmathematics.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So you're, you were seeing the same trend in
secondary essentially.
Yes.
The, the, the amount of timethat ins of devoted to the
instruction of science, we're,we're kind of seeing it mirror
just across K-12 across the
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Board.
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And so, and that's across the country cuz the
sample size represents Yes.
Teachers from Alaska, Hawaii,the south.
Yep.
SoCal everywhere.
So what's been, what's been thereaction to that number?
Like 18 to 20 minutes is, Imean, it's, it's half of my
lunch at our school.
What's, what's been the, thereaction to that number since
(08:56):
this data has been published?
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Um, I don't know, Courtney, if you want to, it's
the same take
Speaker 1 (09:00):
That's, it's a lot of what you just did.
Like what, like how is itpossible to teach, you know, all
the things you need to teach insuch a little amount of time?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
What's really kind of , um, surprising to me though,
um, though now that I've workedon three iterations of the
study, it no longer surprisesme, but it did at first is that
these numbers really aren'tchanging since we've started
doing this study.
You know, people thought maybewith no child left behind and
they increased inaccountability, time on science
(09:29):
might actually go down becausethere were more testing in, in
math, in, in English languagearts.
It didn't happen.
It was pretty much constant thatthis has been kind of the state
of science education for a longtime.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So Eric, I'm hearing you right.
The the past studies we're notseeing an increase or a decline.
This has been, it's been thisway for how many years, roughly,
would you say?
Since it's been studied?
Speaker 3 (09:54):
You know, I, I'd have to go back to the 1977 report to
get, you know, kind of thenumbers, but I'm gonna say since
then, it has not changed much,if at all.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
So this has kind of been entrenched, like this is
the, has been the norm foralmost for, for the career of a
teacher.
Almost generationally we'relooking at anyone who's been the
highest levels of leadership tosomeone just entry in the
classroom.
This has been the way it'salways been.
This is kind of for many peoplewhat they've only known.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Kind of become the norm.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
We didn't even have science when I was in elementary
school.
We had a science on a cart thatcame by, you know, every other
week.
So
Speaker 2 (10:28):
This is like, was was that like a, like the, like a,
like a food truck, but like thescience version of it and shows
up and, and does quick scienceand takes off?
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Hey, haircut was, I mean, we always watched Voyage
of the Mimi.
I don't know if you ever watchedthat, but that's what we watched
every single time the science onthe cart came.
So it's a, like a marine biologyshow.
It was Ben Affleck was on itwhen he was a kid.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Really?
Yeah.
For, for me it was, uh, Mr.
Wizard or some of my students,even now, bill ny, you know, the
Bill NY show or something would,would come on.
Uh, so what happens when youlook at less wealthy districts?
Is there a relationship betweencommunity resources and science
instruction, or is it prettymuch equal no matter what the
district resources are, theschool's resources are?
(11:10):
Did you see any data there?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Um, yes.
We actually did a lot of, um,disaggregating the data by
community type, uh, studentdemographics in the schools to
look to see whether there wereareas of inequities across the
country.
And, you know, one of the, thefactors we looked at was kind of
a, a measure of socioeconomicstatus, you know, wealth in the
(11:33):
community by looking at likepercentage of students eligible
for free reduced price lunch.
And interestingly, in terms oftime on science instruction,
there is actually not arelationship between income
level and how much time is spentat the elementary level on, um,
science, which actuallysurprised us
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Because you might have expected it to be other way
now.
And granted it's 18 to 20minutes, there isn't much more
to shave off off of that.
But were there otherdifferences, like when you
compared those communities,maybe it wasn't the amount of
science instruction, but wasthere anything else like teacher
preparedness resources, werethere anything else that, that
you did see discrepancies in?
Or was it equal across theboard?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
No, unfortunately there, there have been, and
still are a number of areaswhere community resources are
related to, um, prettysubstantial differences in
educational opportunities thatstudents have.
So, you know, we're talkingabout the high school science,
uh, requirements.
One of the things that we sawwas that, um, high schools in,
(12:37):
um, less wealthy communitiestend to offer less rigorous
science courses than highschools in, in better off
financially communities.
So they may not be AP courses orsecond year advanced courses to
the same extent that there arein the wealthier communities.
Um, that, that's one bigdifference that we saw.
(12:58):
Another one was, was what youwere just saying about, um, sort
of the teachers who teach inthese communities.
You know, I think that for manyyears people have had a feeling
that the best teachers go to thebetter off schools because it's
easier to teach there.
Well, we see that the schoolswith the most poverty, they tend
to have the newer teachers, um,who are just starting their
(13:21):
career.
They tend to have, um, teacherswho are less well prepared to
teach, um, their subject.
And the, there's a host of otherdifferences we found.
And you know, you mentioned the,the pa the report being 400
pages.
This other report that looks atthese differences is also quite
long and, and, you know,identified a number of areas
where there are thesedisparities in the system.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Well, I appre we, we appreciate you synthesizing this
for us because this is superimportant and, and you've
fleshed out a lot of things.
And the fact that it's, it'sdriven by data.
We as science teachers, we asscientists being objective,
really, really value thatbecause this is actually
validating a lot of the thingsthat our listeners and myself we
experience anecdotally.
But you don't have a lot ofthings to network you.
And it kind of, sometimes whenyou see this, you wonder if it's
(14:06):
just you or is are other peopleexperiencing this?
And so is you start talkingabout this data realizing, oh
wow, this is not, this is notsomething in isolation, this is
systemic, this is somethingthat's impacted.
And then Eric, what you saidabout schools that were lower
income, were under-resourced anddidn't offer those advanced
classes.
What are some of the impacts ofthat maybe downstream of, of
(14:27):
doing that, not having those APclasses?
I just kind of wanted to putthat out there and ask you,
Speaker 3 (14:31):
You know, that's, this is a really, um, you know,
and this is a current debateright now about, um, what the
goals of, of schooling K-12should be.
You know, are all kids meant togo to college?
Should there be alternativepaths?
And you know, I know when I wasteaching, I would have students
say, why do I need to know this?
I'm not, not gonna go intoscience.
(14:52):
I'm not gonna study physics.
Why do I need to take this?
And, you know, the answer I usedto give them was, you know, you
never know where your life isgonna end up and what, what
opportunities you'll have.
And by having these educationalexperiences, you have more
opportunities available to you.
Whether or not you choose to godown those paths, you have
(15:14):
opportunities.
And when you don't take thiskind of coursework, you know,
even if you don't want to go tocollege, you limit your, your
potential careers.
Because so many careers nowadaysrequire some technical
knowledge, some knowledge ofscience, even if it's not
explicitly a science job.
It is embedded in our societynow.
We are a technological andscience-based society.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It reminds me of something that I've told my
students that even if you becomea scientist, that's awesome.
I love that.
But if you don't and you want todo you want to be a dancer or an
actor or a lawyer or anythingthat may not be directly related
to stem, I want you to choose itbecause it was a choice and not
a lack of options.
Mm-hmm.
(15:57):
So you could always, as long asyou're choosing not to go in
STEM and you don't make thatdecision because you can't or
because you weren't given theopportunity.
So that's how I've always hadthis mindset as a teacher and
I've explained it to mystudents.
So if you say cross, you knowwhat I want to do, uh, I wanna
be an awesome chef, which, youknow, low key this science,
right?
(16:18):
But like, you be the best chef,but as long as you're being a
chef because you choose that andyou don't, you're like, I love
science, but I don't wanna gothat direction.
We're good.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Right?
And if you think about, um, alot of, um, kind of social
justice issues with pollutionand climate change, and you look
at which communities are moreaffected by some of these larger
environmental problems andchallenges, it tends to be the
lower socioeconomic communities,the more poverty stricken
(16:48):
communities have worse water,have worse air quality.
And so if, if people from thesecommunities are going to make
informed decisions about whothey're gonna vote for, about
what policies they're gonnasupport, right?
Those are science topics thatyou have to have some
understanding in order to makeinformed decisions in your life.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Courtney, you were one of the Swiss army knife
teachers.
This is how I perceive it forelementary.
You had to teach everything andshout out to all of my
elementary school teachers thathave to be mathematicians and
grammar whizzes and scientistsand PE instructors and social
emotion, all of those differentthings.
Um, you also looked at teacherpreparedness, right?
(17:32):
How did teachers feel aboutteaching science compared to
other subjects like languagearts and math?
What did, what Did you seeanything there?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
We did, we did.
Um, and I'm glad you said, howdid they feel about it?
Because one thing that, um, youknow, in a survey you can't
really do is capture how someoneactually, you know, how good
someone actually, or quality ofsomeone's instruction, but you
can ask them how prepared theyfeel and you can even ask them
like stats, like, what did youmajor in in college?
(18:00):
You know, but really are goingon based on what they, what they
say.
So we ask them how prepared theyfeel to teach all the core
subjects.
And two thirds of elementaryteachers felt very well prepared
to teach reading.
They felt very well prepared toteach math.
But when it comes to science,it's less than a third.
(18:21):
Felt very well prepared.
And you know, like you said,when you're teaching elementary
school, you're teaching all thesubjects, but also in science
there's usually four, you know,main instructional units in a
school year.
And they're all from differentscience disciplines.
So not only are you going on,like maybe I in college took a
lot of bio classes, but I didn'ttake any physics classes and now
(18:41):
I have to teach physics to mykids and I have no experience
there.
So, you know, we also ask themhow well prepared they felt in
these different disciplines.
And the numbers are even, areeven smaller, you know, fewer
than a quarter felt very wellprepared in life science.
And like 13% felt very wellprepared in physical science.
So there's definitely a bigdifference between how much
(19:05):
teachers feel prepared for ELAand math versus science
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And just from a human perspective, when we don't feel
prepared for something, we'renot really gonna probably lean
into it as much as we are intoour strengths.
Like, it just, that's just kindof how we are across the board.
Yeah, I I'm even like that withmy own chores in the house or
when I have things, when I havethings I need to get done.
And I, I, I might not be as goodat doing those things.
It's gonna be a heavy cognitiveload.
I'm gonna have to do somebackground research.
(19:29):
I tend to find other areas tolike excel in like, I'm gonna be
productive in this other area.
I'm gonna really crush it here,but this other thing gets put to
the back burner.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Totally.
And the same reason I might skipscience today,
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Scary.
Yeah, exactly.
And, but I love this book
let's really, really dive deepinto it.
Yeah.
Now you als did you also look atprofessional development and
instructional resources that arebeing provided?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
We did.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And on the whole, how was the amount, and I kind of,
I'm seeing a trend here, so I'm,I'm I I'm kind of feeling like I
know where this might go, but Iwanted to ask it, did the amount
of professional development andresources for science, was there
much of a difference betweenthat and other subjects?
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Um, well I'll start on this and Courtney, feel free
to jump in.
You know, one of the things thatwe asked was how much kind of
discretionary funding do schoolsdevote to science and how much
to mathematics?
Right?
So for consumables or equipmentand supplies or computer
software for teachers to, to usein the classroom.
(20:31):
And it's hard to compare I thinkacross subjects because the
demands for this kind of, um,supplies et cetera is very
different I think in sciencethan it is in mathematics.
Right?
We have a lot of, you know,equipment for doing
investigations, consumablesupplies in science.
And, and those things need to bereplenished on a regular basis.
(20:52):
It turns out, when we look atthe data for, for school
discretionary spending on thiskind of, um, stuff, the median
school spends less than$2 perstudent at the elementary level
on science compared to over$6for mathematics at the high
school level.
It's, it's kind of reverseschools spend more money on high
(21:14):
school science than they do inhigh school math.
Um, but even still at, at thehigh school, it's less than$7
per student.
Um, which is not a lot of moneybeing devoted to thinking about
all the materials, supplies,chemicals, et cetera, that you
need to teach science.
Well at the high school level,more disturbing is the fact that
, um, you know, we were talkingabout inequities before, schools
(21:37):
that serve less well offcommunities spend less than
schools that, that servewealthier communities by quite a
big amount.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
So essentially the the per student thing just kind
of popped out to me.
So like an expensive Starbucksdrink is what we're spending on
science per student
Speaker 3 (21:57):
At the high school level.
Yes,
Speaker 2 (21:58):
At the high school level.
And I, I get those av those uh,catalogs in the mail from all of
those big science companies.
You can't get much for sevenbucks.
Nope.
You, you At least nothing highlevel.
I mean, right.
And I know I do a lot of 99cents store science.
I go down the street, go to the99 cents store.
Thankfully we could do a lot ofawesome science with just, you
know, cheap things.
But a lot of the higher levelexperiences, they're pricey, but
(22:23):
the experiences are so rich and$7, the high school level is
nothing.
It's not much at all.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah.
It, it is definitely, um, youknow, kind of shocking to, to
think about what we're investingin our children's future.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Now, just to put you both in the spot, cuz I feel
like that we've identified some,we're we're seeing a trend here,
we're seeing a pattern, we'retalking about, you know, being
science teachers.
There's a pattern going on here.
Do you think it's fair tocharacterize science as the
underdog?
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I think in elementary school it, it is a fair
statement because like we saidbefore, I mean they're gonna
preference math and ELA almostall the time.
I mean, the other thing you'dasked a little bit ago was about
professional development too.
And we, we do have some data onthat and we ask teachers, you
know, how much scienceprofessional development they've
(23:14):
had in the last three years.
And nearly half of elementaryteachers said none.
And I know I didn't have anyscience professional
development.
If I was gonna pick from amongthe catalog, I was picking one
that I needed more like math andmath and LA I keep making that
statement, but it just over andover it's the truth.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
And going back to what you said earlier, because
that's where the accountabilitywas, right?
And that kind of came top downYes.
And influenced everything else.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah.
Now really interesting thingthat we did, um, a year or so
ago, cuz someone asked us, youknow, Hey, could you look at
this is we compared elementaryscience instructional time among
states where science countedtowards accountability versus
states where science doesn'tcount towards accountability.
(24:00):
And at the upper elementarygrades, more time was spent on
science in schools in stateswhere they had science
accountability.
Now I'm not arguing for addingscience to accountability
systems, but that's a prettytelling piece of data
Speaker 2 (24:19):
What gets measured gets done.
Yeah.
Or what gets what was gettingevaluated was getting done.
And that Yeah, that raises, thatopens up a myriad of other
questions about testing and, andwhat that reveals and all of
those different things.
But at the end of the day, whatyou're, you're finding is that
the things that we're gettingtested were the things that were
getting the
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Priority.
That's right.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
How did we get to this point?
And Eric, you said it goes backat least to 77, but we, we look
at society and we're, I wannasay we're post pandemic, but
we're like, we're not, but we'retrying to, we're trying to get
past that.
But we're looking at, we hadinnovations in biology, we have
innovations right now in greenenergy and electric cars and all
(24:58):
of these things that areSTEM-based.
We know that these are thingsthat have moved humanity forward
and we look at the pipeline ofpeople who are in stem and we,
we see the disparities andthings like that.
Why was science given less of apriority?
Um, I'm just curious, maybeCourtney, we could start with
you if you have any ideas orEric, either, either one.
(25:19):
But how did we get here?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
one.
I'm older so I've seen more
So, um, you know, I have thegray hair.
She doesn't, um, I think, Ithink it's complicated.
And, and I know this soundscliche, but but schools are a
reflection of society, right?
And, and so science education,you know, if you think back when
(25:47):
Sputnik was launched, therebecame this great demand in
America to improve and, andproduce more scientists and
engineers in response to thisCold War threat.
Right?
And then in the eighties therewas rising, oh, the, the
gathering storm was an economicargument that we needed to
increase science and, and math,um, you know, education and
(26:09):
people going into those fieldsin order to compete economically
against the global competitors.
And I think that America hasalways produced a, a fair
number, a large number of highquality scientists and
engineers, you know, and westill lead the world in many
(26:29):
ways, but where we've identifiedas a problem is who has those
opportunities to go into thosefields.
You know, it used to be a veryselect, a very, you know, male
dominated, white male dominatedfield.
Right.
And other people didn't have theopportunity, or they were, they
(26:52):
were shown the way out prettyearly.
Right.
And we, I think come to realizeas a country that, you know,
the, the greater the diversityof thought that we can get into
these discussions, the moreinnovative we can be and you
know, the more productive as asociety we can be.
(27:13):
And so I think we've had thisshift in the country to, instead
of thinking about just thequality for the select few, but
to be thinking about the qualityfor everyone.
And, and so that makes it seemlike some of these challenges
are, are greater than they usedto be.
And, and I think they'redifferent challenges, right?
(27:35):
We've, we've evolved as asociety and I think schools have
evolved.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
There is a conversation I was in with a, on
a plane with a person who was amaterial manager for a company
that made the adhesive forsandpaper.
And we were flying, I was flyingto Denmark and he was flying to
some other, uh, Scandinaviancountry and we were just talking
about it.
And he came from anotherindustry and I, we were, somehow
the conversation led to science.
(28:00):
I don't know how that happened,but somehow I just started
talking about science and Iasked him about Eric, kind of
what you said about the US kindof leading the way in science
innovation versus the rest ofthe world.
And I asked him why.
And he said one of the reasonswhy is because the heterogeneous
thought the, the, the differentgroups of people that are coming
(28:21):
to a to, to a problem actuallycreate more innovative and novel
solutions versus when it's morehomogeneous and everyone's kind
of, either, either culturally orjust for whatever reason, kind
of thinks a certain way.
While they might have a moreefficient way, the variety of
solutions are not as varied inand not as novel.
(28:42):
I was reminded of that storybased on what you just said.
So it's, it's reallyinteresting.
Right.
Um, so it seems to be that itbenefits if we have more
heterogeneous groups, more folkswho are contributing to stem
because that's gonna be solvingthe next problem more
efficiently.
Or I guess maybe in my head itseems like the next we need, we
do really well when we have adragon display.
(29:03):
I mean, it seems like we cometogether when that that's the
case, right?
Like, I
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Don't know.
No, that's, that's, I thinkthat's, I think that's accurate.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Later on the season of the podcast, we're gonna
explore ways to better integratescience with other subjects like
literacy and math.
Were you able to study at allany more integrated approaches
to science instruction?
Uh, does any of your researchsupport that approach?
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Not on the, not on the national survey.
We didn't study that.
And it's something that we'vetalked about before because it's
difficult to get teachers to, wewere talking about instructional
time.
It's, it's hard for teachers toput a number on it when they're
integrating because it, youknow, it's not like I have my
science block from three tothree 30 anymore.
Now it's kind of scatteredabout, but it's something that
has been in the ether.
(29:47):
We've been looking at it in acouple of projects.
Um, so there, there's someevidence that it can be, um,
effective.
Um, especially forgetting more,you know, the, the ideas you can
get more time for science if youare integrating with other
subjects.
But one thing to kind of cautionis like, students need to have
opportunities to learn eachdiscipline when they're, when
(30:07):
they're doing integrated, um,instruction.
So you don't wanna just havelike math in your science.
They already know that kidsalready know to just like
support it.
Then it's hard to take time frommath to put it into science when
they're not actually learninganything new.
That's the easy thing to doright though, is say, oh, my
kids already know how tomeasure.
(30:28):
Um, we did that in a previousunit, so now we'll we'll do it
as part of our scienceinstruction.
Um, so it's a lot of work tomake it so they're learning
something new, mathematics andscience at the same time.
And it's not really somethingthat we think that teachers
should be having to do on theirown with all the other things
that teachers have to do.
The last thing they need to dois be creating their own, you
(30:49):
know, curriculum.
Something that's already thatit's, you know, it's not
straightforward.
So we've been talking about it,we think it's really something
that instructional materialsmaybe need to be focusing on
instead of teachers having to dothat on their own,
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Teachers would implement it, but Right.
Asking them to create it is awhole different, is a whole
different thing and it's a hugeask.
Yes.
Yeah.
And, and did I hear you right?
Do, were you, so the idealsituation would've been the
students learning a newer maybemath concept, but embedded in a
science kind of context, or wasthat the better way versus, I'm
(31:22):
gonna take a math concept theyalready know and then just put
it into the science setting?
Well,
Speaker 1 (31:27):
If the idea is that you can get more science time if
you're, you know, integratingthings, so you can maybe take
time away from a specific mathblock by putting it with science
or whatever.
Then if the, if the math issomething that the kids already
know, now you're just takingaway, you know, I think that
that has to be new in bothcases.
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Right.
Eric, Eric in the secondarylevel, any thoughts on that, on
integrating these, thesedisciplines together?
Speaker 3 (31:56):
I think, you know, just like at the elementary
level, it can be challenging todo it well, um, when I taught,
I, I taught my last couple yearsin a, um, kind of school within
a school kind of situation whereour goal was to try to integrate
science, mathematics, andlanguage arts.
Um, and it's hard to do that ina meaningful way.
(32:18):
And we did not have curriculummaterials, um, given to us to
help us do this.
We were trying to figure out howto do this on our own while we
were teaching 200 kids a day inour subjects.
Right.
And five preparations.
And, and you know, it's, it's abig ask of any teacher, you
know, and there are teacherswho, who thrive on this and, and
(32:40):
are great at this.
And, and you know, that's onething I wanna, you know, make
clear, you know, our data isabout the system and, you know,
we are former teachers.
Almost everyone who works atHorizon is a former teacher.
We have the greatest respect forteachers and what they do.
Right.
And what our data is showing isare kind of like areas where the
(33:01):
system isn't providing teachersand their students the
opportunities to do greatthings.
Right?
I think at the high schoollevel, there has been this idea
of project-based learning wherestudents are bringing together
different skills, differentideas from across disciplines.
And I think there's again, a lotof potential in doing that.
(33:22):
But, you know, trying to, todevelop those experiences so
that they are doing service tothe different subjects.
So students are learning whatthey're supposed to learn in
English language arts, thatthey're, they're learning, you
know, important mathematics andthat this is in a science
context where they are gettingto do and understand what
(33:45):
science is and how science, um,as a discipline, um, operates.
That's just a really hard thingto develop.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
So what I'm hearing, and I really appreciate the
nuance in this because it's nota simple Yes.
Integrated is better.
It's, I'm hearing Yes.
Quality control.
Mm-hmm.
It needs to be written not byteachers, they're the
practitioners.
It's Yes.
And um, not just simply binary,which it's so easy to wanna
chunk things and say yes or no,uh, you, you know, on things.
(34:15):
But this one seems a much morenuanced approach.
And in a future episode you want, you mentioned project based
learning, we're gonna try andtalk to people who have thoughts
on this.
And I really appreciate that youtalked about project-based
learning because I also, how doyou evaluate that?
How do you evaluate whether ornot it is high quality?
Is this is something I see, youknow, high quality standards,
(34:35):
highest quality science,teaching, high quality, you
know, highly qualify teachers.
It's something that I see often.
Now, based on all your research,this is kind of the 30,000 foot
view.
What, what advice might you havefor people who are thinking
about changing the way scienceis taught in this country, which
hasn't changed since 1977, atleast since we've been measuring
it.
Any advice for people who dowant to act?
(34:58):
Another way to ask, it might beif you were given a magic wand,
you can control the entirevertical system?
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Yeah, so I, I I clarification, I do think
science instruction, you know,has changed.
It has evolved.
I think there's a lot of reallygood things going on in
different pockets of thecountry.
One of the challenges isbringing those good ideas and
good practices to scale.
(35:28):
Right?
There are approximately 1.2million teachers of science K12
in this country.
That's a lot of people.
And about 80% of those are, areelementary teachers who are
responsible for teaching othersubjects as well.
So my thinking is often abouthow do we take what we know and
(35:52):
that we've learned throughdecades of research is effective
and impact a large number ofteachers, and therefore a large
number of students.
Right.
And you know, Courtney I thinkis hinted at this already, and
you've mentioned it too, Eric,is, is that teaching is a
profession, right?
And it's a craft, but in noother profession, do
(36:16):
practitioners, um, have theexpectation that they're
developing their own tools and,and methods for their work?
You know, I know when I was inmy teacher preparation program,
and it's still extremely common,one of the assignments
perspective teachers are givenis to develop a unit and develop
a lesson, right?
You don't have doctors beingasked to develop new treatments
(36:40):
and new tests to use their jobis to get to know their patient,
assess what's going on, and thenusing research based methods
develop a a plan of action,right?
And, and I think that analogyworks really well in education
and is a way that we could havea scalable approach for kind of
(37:03):
raising the floor across thecountry for the quality of
science education, givingteachers research based
materials, high qualityinstructional materials that
they can then use and adapt tomeet the needs of their
students, would allow them tofocus on getting to know their
students, seeing what theirstrengths are, seeing where they
(37:23):
have room for growth, and usingthe materials they're given to
help those students progress.
And I think that is definitely away where we could have a big
impact at a large scale.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Courtney, same question.
Magic wand, all power.
You can change systems from theelementary perspective.
What would you do to, I'm assuI'm assuming part of it's gonna
be changing that 18 to 20 minutetime, but even for that to
happen, what would you do?
What would you change?
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Well, I don't know, like for it to change, I, you
know, I don't know the answer tothat, but yes, increasing the
time would be great.
And like Eric was saying, givingteachers, cuz again, I'm coming
in not enough probablybackground in science.
And then, you know, when I was,when I was teaching, we had one
set of textbooks for the entiregrade six classes, right?
(38:17):
Like share them, but thirdgraders aren't gonna read
textbooks anyway, right?
So that wasn't the, so insteadI'm going to the teacher store,
I'm like pulling things off theshelf and like, okay, yeah,
sure, I'll use this.
And nowadays teachers are goingto teachers pay teachers or
whatever because I didn't haveanything good to use.
So like Erica is saying, if Ihad instructional materials that
were good instructionalmaterials that were gonna teach
(38:39):
my kids that they were gonna beengaged, that they weren't
sitting and listening toscience, but they were doing
science, you know, and I hadprofessional development to
actually help me do it.
I mean that's, that's what Ithink we need to have.
And I mean, I know there aresome people out there that are
working on that, but it's not alot.
It's not, I mean, if you look ated reports, they rate, you know,
(39:00):
how well aligned sciencecurriculum are to like
standards.
And there are two right now thathave ed reports, green lights,
there's amplified and there'sopen sci ed.
You know, so there's not muchout there for teachers to use.
And, um, so it's hard, it's hardwhere, where am I gonna go and
get this stuff if it doesn'texist?
And so I'm making it up bymyself, which we already said is
(39:22):
not the best use of teacher'stime when they've got so many
other demands on their time.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Eric and Courtney, listening to your, both, both of
your responses, I, it created avisual in my mind and Eric, I
loved your analogy of, I startedthinking of a chef, a welder,
and a farmer, and I thoughtabout the chef saying like,
you're a great chef now, can yougo farm and make your own food
so that you can cook it?
Or the welder who has to makehis own welding tools and go in
smelting, you know, making the,the different rods.
(39:47):
I'm not a welder, but you know,all those different parts or
the, the farmer who has to buildhis own tractor and innovate all
that stuff, you're, you'reabsolutely right.
The way you articulated that.
And then Courtney, you, youessentially said, give them the
tools and then teach them how touse it so they can go and
actually be effective with itbecause you're in front of kids
doing so many different things.
There's only so much time in theday and teachers want to do
(40:09):
these things, they want to, butyou end up having to triage when
you're asked to.
Going back to Eric's analogy, ifyou are, if you're in the er,
but you're also creating thevaccines and you're also doing
the research on which types ofvaccines are gonna be the most
effective.
That's, that's a lot to ask.
And so, um, I appreciate bothyour responses on that.
Now, last question, what are youboth working on now?
(40:30):
This report came out in 2018.
What's, what's next on thehorizon?
Uh, actually literally that's nopun intended.
What are you working on?
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Well, you know, we would love to do another
national survey, um, in a fewyears we have to get funding to
do it.
Um, and you know, that's always,you know, um, something that
takes effort and isn't aguarantee.
Um, we've ridden grants to dothese studies in the past and
there's also kind of the, thedealing with the reality of the
(41:04):
situation.
I think a lot of schools, um,still coming off the tail end
of, of dealing with covid areoverwhelmed.
Right.
And, you know, we've had a hardtime, I mentioned before,
recruiting schools and it getsharder every time just cuz they
have so much on their plate.
And I couldn't see going to aschool now and saying, Hey, one
(41:25):
more thing.
Do you mind?
Right?
So I think we have to, we haveto kind of wait a little bit for
, uh, things to settle downbefore we can do another one of
these studies.
It just doesn't seem feasibleright now.
But we'd love to, you know, inthe not too distant future.
Um, other than that, Courtneyand I actually are, we work on
some projects together in someprojects, um, not together.
(41:47):
One of the things that we'reworking on together is a, um,
study of a fifth grade sciencecurriculum that was developed by
Okie Lee at NYU and, and hercolleagues that is both aligned
with the NGSS and purposelydesigned to support multilingual
learners in developing boththeir science knowledge and
(42:09):
skills as well as their languageskills.
And we've been working with thecrew at NYU to study this
curriculum and, and try tofigure out, um, how well it's
working and under whatcircumstances.
So that's been a reallyinteresting project that's going
on right now.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
I recently worked on a report with the Carnegie
Corporation in New York thatactually I think, uh, it
compliments what we've beentalking about a lot.
It's about the status of K-12education in the US or science
education in the US
Um, and so as part of thatreport we interviewed like 50,
(42:47):
um, science education expertsacross the country.
We surveyed teachers, people inthe university, settings,
researchers and everything tokind of get a, a little bit more
update of the state of scienceeducation right now.
And so unfortunately, I mean, alot of the things we've been
talking about, we still weretalking about with the people in
this report four years later.
So work in progress,
Speaker 2 (43:09):
on what, what Eric was sayingearlier, we're looking at these
large systems, these systemicchanges are don't happen
overnight.
They're That's right.
It's a very slow moving.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
That's right.
Um, I I would say there isprogress.
I think we've learned a lot.
We, we are getting better.
Are we there yet?
No, we're not happy with wherewe are, but I think, you know, I
I think it's important to behopeful about the direction
things are going in.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Well said.
I agree.
Courtney.
Eric, thank you so much forunpacking that report that
speaks to what's invalidateswhat so many teachers across the
country are experiencing.
And thank you for your advocacyfor high quality science
education, for equity, for, uh,and your passion for supporting
(43:58):
teachers and, and being thatvoice from a data-driven
perspective of what teachersexperience in advocating for
these solutions for them.
It's, it's super encouraging forme and I know it's gonna be
really encouraging for a lot ofour listeners.
So thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Yeah.
Thank you Eric.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Eric Bauer, vice Presidentof Horizon Research and Courtney
Plumley, senior researcher atHorizon Research.
For much more, check out theshow notes for a link to the
2018 National Survey of Scienceand Mathematics Education.
And please remember to subscribeto Science Connections wherever
you get podcasts so that you'renot missing any of the upcoming
(44:36):
episodes in season three.
Next time on the show, we'regonna start laying out the
roadmap for using science moreeffectively.
And we'll start by looking atthe how and the why of
integrating literacyinstruction.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
When we look at Science First and build language
development around it, theexperience tends to be more
authentic and organic.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
That's next time on Science Connections to the
podcast.
Thanks so much for listening.
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