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In addition to the question about what will be counted as "good science
education", two equally important and related questions to me are 1) what
counts as important science to learn, and 2) what counts as a good way to
assess students' understanding of science? While there might be many
individual teachers who provide the kind of science education we all might
want for our kids, that vision is not reflected by the local standards with
which I am familiar, and really only given lipservice at the state level.

I'm sure there are many on this list who are very personally involved with
helping teachers and districts to implement a vision of what Bronwyn
referred to as "successful" science learning (and teaching). However, I
wonder how many of us have seriously considered the question of assessment
of students' understanding of science? My experience has been that members
of the informal science community tend to resist discussions of assessment
because of the negative connotations currently surrounding the word and our
own aversions to potentially being viewed as one more "resource" that can
bring up a standardized test score. I don't think anybody wants that. On the
other hand, the days may be gone (or at least numbered) when we can get away
with simply saying that there are no hard and fast learning outcomes, per
se, from experience in an informal science learning environment and that
what we do is motivate, inspire, and other generally unmeasurable things.

I recently had the opportunity to review a colleague's summary of Rob
Semper's closing remarks from the Bay Area Institute at the Exploratorium
last summer. If I understood the comments correctly, they included the idea
that informal science institutions need to move beyond evaluation to
accountability in terms of the students and teachers with whom they work,
which I found to be particularly cogent. Also, if I understood the comments
correctly, I believe Rob went on to suggest that perhaps the danger of
accountability comes about when it's imposed by a force outside the system
rather than internally conceived, designed, and implemented, with the
implication being that we need to be proactive in developing accountability
expectations for ourselves.

So the assessment issue for me is at least two-fold: First, we need, as a
field, an honest assessment of how we might hold ourselves accountable as
partners with schools and school systems. Second, as partners, we need to
seriously consider not only how we might (continue to)  work with schools to
move toward science education that is consistent with our vision, but also
how we might work with schools to move toward science assessment that
provides meaningful data about what students actually know and can do,
relative to what we believe they should know and be able to do. We might
find that it's hard to separate the two: The closer we examine how we know
what people know in informal contexts, the closer we might come to providing
some guidance on how we could know what people know in school contexts that
share our vision of science education.

Thanks for getting this conversation started, Bronwyn. I'm interested in
being a part of continuing it, whether here or in a side discussion
somewhere else.

Bill

Bill Watson
Research Assistant, SCALE-uP
The George Washington University
Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Department of Teacher Preparation and Special Education
2134 G St. NW
Washington, DC  20052
Phone: (202) 994-1171
Fax: (202) 994-0692
[log in to unmask]
www.gwu.edu/~scale-up


-----Original Message-----
From: Informal Science Education Network
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Bronwyn Bevan
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 10:05 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FW: Parents' Involvement Not Key to Student Progress


ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
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*

Thanks for this article Dennis.

Under NCLB successful schools are equated with rising test scores,
despite the fact that we know that rising test scores often mean that
kids have been subjected to drill-and-kill test preparation as well
as scripted classroom curriculum.  The test prep emphasis of NCLB is
also linked to the growing dismay and deprofessionalization of
teachers -- and it discourages many creative and innovative people
from entering such a rigidly controlled system.

At the ASTC meeting we had a lot of people turn out for two different
sessions on NCLB.  I organized one of these sessions, and what was
really illuminating for me was to see how the administration has
co-opted the rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement to advance NCLB
goals of making the 3Rs as high as we dare to reach.

This country continues to seriously fail to provide equitable access
to good education.  But as long as standardized tests are the sole
measure of what counts as good, the inequities will (in my opinion)
deepen.  What can we do here, vis a vis science?

NCLB-mandated state science testing begins in the 2007 school year.
Science tests will not be counted toward AYP, but their results will
be made public, and parents and others will start to know whether or
not their kids are "getting" science at school.  What will be counted
as "good science education"?   My bet is that it won't reflect the
kind of science education I want my own kids to have.

I wonder if some of us might want to start a side discussion to think
about how science centers might promote a vision of what "successful"
school science learning would look like, and also to think about ways
we can help teachers/districts implement this vision.  I know we all
do this in various and local ways, and that some of us work
nationally, even working on standards and test development.  But as a
field, we are not engaged in this conversation.  How can we change
this?  What could we do?

Bronwyn Bevan
Director, CILS
Exploratorium

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