Editorial - Apr 2007 - Volume 107 (4)

Research as a Place to Stand in Implementing Reform and Change

Gerald Kulm, Texas A&M University

“Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth.”
--Archimedes

As researchers and teacher educators, one of our primary goals is to produce new models, knowledge, and practice that can lead to improvements in students' learning, attitudes, and achievement in science and mathematics. However, it doesn't take much time observing or talking with classroom teachers to be struck with how few degrees of freedom seem to be available in affecting meaningful changes. School organization into class periods, student ability tracks, and teaching assignments are set by tradition and practical factors. Standards and textbooks are in place for many years at a time. Instructional strategies seem resistant to change, except for a relatively small percentage of risk-taking teachers or schools. High-stakes tests put in place by state policies and legislation continue to drive most of the decisions about staff development and resource allocation. In the face of these barriers, what should motivate us to continue efforts to build a knowledge base that rarely seems to be utilized as a resource for improvement and change? One response to this question is that research can be the “place to stand” in order to move the seemingly intractable system of mathematics and science education in today's schools.

There have been several major efforts in the past 100 years to make systemic change in American education, including the expansion of public education in the early part of the 20th century, the modernization of curriculum in the 1960s, and the standards movement of the 1990s, extending to the current focus on accountability. The latter two examples were heavily funded by the federal government, primarily in order to regain or maintain global competitiveness. To what extent has research provided a knowledge-base or “place to stand” in these reforms? It is interesting that the reform of the 1960s took place before research in mathematics and science education had accumulated any substantial knowledge base. Although there are disagreements about its quality, there is a significantly more extensive corpus of research findings in mathematics science learning, teaching, and assessment as a resource for the current reform efforts. What can be learned from this important difference?

The reforms of the 1960s were mainly about curriculum. The idea was that introducing advanced content into earlier grades and making its foundations more rigorous could leverage understanding, allow faster progress, and make it possible by 12th grade to reach topics and courses such as calculus and quantum physics. Theories by researchers such as Ausubel, Bruner, and Gagne were sometimes cited, but few mathematics or science curriculum development projects made explicit efforts to incorporate these researchers' findings into the textbooks and materials. Ideas and theories about inquiry teaching or discovery learning were sometimes attempted as a strategy for short-cutting the time needed to develop students' understanding. The complexity and subtleties of inquiry teaching were not yet known, so professional development institutes for teachers focused on the newly introduced math or science content they were to present. Instead of quick progress, many students and teachers were bogged down by the theorems and properties of mathematics, and the terminology of science. Piaget's work had not yet been translated, so the attempts by many curriculum projects to introduce abstract ideas at early grade levels were doomed to failure.

Fast forward to the 1990s reforms. The National Science Foundation introduced the notion of “systemic” initiatives for change and reform in science and mathematics education, funding and expanding the development and implementation of curriculum and teaching standards in many states. The concept was supported through multi-million dollar grants to states, primarily through state agencies and working in partnership with universities and schools. The central idea was that these grants, which would impact state educational policies, could leverage significant changes in important areas including standards, curriculum materials, professional development, and assessment With the support of the systemic projects, most states adopted curriculum standards in science and mathematics, usually based on national standards, which in turn drew from research findings on teaching and learning. Several of these initiatives also included the encouragement to implement new mathematics or science curriculum materials, also supported by funding from the Foundation. Many of these materials integrated research-based ideas about student cognitive development and effective instructional strategies into student texts and teaching guides.

More recently, the Department of Education has placed pressure on the mathematics and science education community to improve the quality of its research methods. Requests for proposals have focused on projects intended to build on proven research-based approaches. Ironically, the federal policymakers have chosen to use high-stakes assessments as the sole leverage point for reform. Nearly all available funding is expended on efforts to improve test scores, rather than to build linkages between research and practice and provide incentives to use research-based instructional materials and instructional strategies. Instead, the emphasis on accountability has acted as a disincentive for many teachers and schools to seek out new approaches. The resulting reliance on traditional methods has further exacerbated the failure to close the achievement gap for students for minority and at-risk students who would most benefit from current research findings and from additional research into specific strategies to solve this critical problem.

The breadth and depth of research findings in mathematics and science education is growing. For those of us in the research community, it seems clear that there is enough of a foundation for curriculum developers, teacher educators, and policymakers to rely upon. To be sure, stronger methodologies are needed and specific contexts and populations should be carefully explored. However, research in mathematics and science education has not yet achieved recognition or status as a place to stand for reform. We have a responsibility to continue to develop and improve the research base so that future policymakers will rely on us and our work for solutions and directions.