Editorial - January 2007 - Volume 107 (1)

Learning from the History of Mathematics and Science Education

Gerald Kulm, Texas A&M University

From the New Math and “Alphabet” Science of the 1960s to the Standards-based Math and Science for All of the current day reforms, controversy and public opinion have raged about school math and science in America. The pledge to make 21st century U. S. students first in the world in mathematics by the first President Bush is still far from being accomplished by the current President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative. More money, higher standards, and constant high-stakes testing have had some effect, but American students' math and science achievement remains far below that of most countries. The gap in achievement between white students and students of color, while narrowing slightly over the past two decades, remains an unsolved problem. The reasons for America's slow progress in improving school mathematics and science are complex. Ours is a unique system in which more than 15,000 independent school districts have direct responsibility for day-to-day instruction. Policy decisions on math and science curriculum, teaching, and testing at the national, state, and local level are often driven by a mix of myths and opinions. Research findings on teaching and learning mathematics and science are often criticized and seldom implemented. In looking forward to the coming year and beyond, what can we draw from nearly 50 years of experience in teaching, research, and policy-making in mathematics and science education that can point directions for the future?

One of the long-term outcomes of the initiatives of the 1960s was to build human capacity. Although it may not have been the direct intent of those programs, many of the current senior leaders in mathematics and science education received their early training through them. The recruitment and development of human capital continues to be critical today. Programs funded by NSF and other agencies have begun to have this primary objective. Some important current issues in this arena include attention to diversity both in the people involved and in the research paradigms in which they are trained. A balance is needed in qualitative, theory development methods and quantitative, hypothesis testing designs.

The government-funded curriculum development efforts over the years have provided test beds for determining what is possible for students to learn in mathematics and science. Without them and at the mercy of the marketplace of commercial publishers, the curriculum and textbooks have devolved at various times during the past into Back to Basics math and vocabulary-laden science materials. Thanks to these projects, today's mathematics curriculum includes topics such as data analysis, graphic representation, coordinate geometry, and functions. In science, students learn inquiry strategies, atomic structures, and environmental science. The importance of standards and aligning curriculum, instruction, and assessment is a notable accomplishment of the last two decades. On the other hand, the mathematics and science curriculum has become overburdened with too many topics being addressed without appropriate depth. Careful study and analysis is needed to decide the right balance of depth and coverage across the grades.

Perhaps the most notable advance in our knowledge during the past 50 years has been how students learn mathematics and science. While still in its infancy, this area of research has expanded exponentially. Many of the early curriculum projects attempted to compress the mathematics curriculum so that student studied advanced topics in early grades, with the intent of completing calculus and beyond by the end of high school. Our current knowledge of cognitive development helps to make more rational decisions about curriculum scope and sequence. On the other hand, current public expectations about what students can learn in math and science sometimes seem to be based on perceptions of ability and social-economic circumstance, rather than on research evidence.

Finally, the emergence of testing is a landmark of recent math and science education. Both inside and outside the classroom, Americans have come to rely on testing as the primary tool for making instructional and policy decisions. Formative evaluation for “mastery learning” has evolved to nearly daily test-taking practice in classrooms throughout the country. Early forays into “minimal competency” testing by one or two states have developed into a situation in which high-stakes tests are used in nearly every state to make schools and teachers accountable to mandated standards. Math testing has been the first and most abused subject area but science testing is being implemented in several states. The amount of available instructional time devoted to testing continues to increase. While it may be too early to appraise the overall impact of this obsession with accountability testing, mathematics and science educators should take responsibility to provide objective study and research on its effects.