Science Leaches Out of Science Class: Teachers tepid in defense of evolution

[marmar]

from Miller-McCune:



Science Leaches Out of Science Class
Political scientists studying U.S. public school biology instructors find a majority of teachers — a “cautious” three out of five — are at best tepid in defense of evolution.

By Emily Badger


In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama urged Americans to “win the future” through a new dedication to the science and technology education that could help the United States “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.”

He conjured an America where today’s fifth-graders could become the globe’s go-to experts in solar engineering, high-speed rail design and supercomputer construction. But in a sign of the distance between that universe and the one Americans really live in, it turns out many public school students aren’t even properly exposed to one of the most fundamental principles of science — evolution.

Penn State University political scientists Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer began thinking about the topic years ago when Berkman’s son first entered elementary school.

“One of children asked the teacher, ‘Wasn’t it true that the continents at one time were connected, many years ago?’” Plutzer recalled. “The teacher said, ‘I can’t answer that question, it’s not appropriate for your grade level.’ This got us thinking about a whole host of issues.” .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.miller-mccune.com/blogs/the-idea-lobby/science-leaches-out-of-science-class-27962/

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Jesus Christ on a brontosaurus. When I was in grade school back in the '50s

evolution was taught as a matter of established fact. We learned about dinosaurs and fossils and how humans evolved from apelike animals millions of years ago. And nobody raised an eyebrow. And no religious nuts objected.

Can evolution go backwards? Seems to me that we are de-evolving into a society of ignorant rubes.

[marmar]

2. What? Are you suggesting this didn't happen?:

:P

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Yes. I think that's a diplodocus.

[KatyMan]

4. why would jeebus ride sidesaddle? nt

nt..

[Fumesucker]

20. Because He *can* of course..

Everyone knows that..

:hi:

[yellowcanine]

27. This reminds me of a Garrison Keillor quote. "You have to remember that these are the same people

who think that Noah and his family rode to church on a dinosaur."

[chemenger]

28. I perfer the picture of Jesus cradling the velociraptor

I can just picture Him singing:

"Jesus loves you, yes, you know ..."

[mainer]

35. That was my memory too. But it was also post-Sputnik

I was in grade school in the 50's, in California, and I can't remember any controversy whatsoever about being taught evolution. What I do remember was the feverish effort to get American kids up to snuff on science so we could compete with the Russians.

[xchrom]

5. recommend

[HereSince1628]

6. How many Americans could explain the connection of cont. drift and evolution?

Biogeography is a grand theater of evolution, indeed. But these concepts only get briefly touched upon in introductory biology courses, and the modern biology curriculum for pre-service teachers must include concepts from molecular biology, cellular biology, anatomy, physiology, genetics and ecology (with significant twists of content toward biological applications in health and environmental science). That background provides no where near the depth coverage for an issue like vicariance compared to that provided for the structure and function of nucleic acids and proteins. Although evolution is a unifying principle in biology, most course imply that unity, rather than explicitly stating it at all hierarchical levels of biological organization.

It's likely that the teacher example in the OP, focused on other concepts in his mandated curriculum and no longer recognized/remembered the relationship between continental drift and biotic diversity. It's possibly, if not probably true that his students would be lost in a discussion of vicariance...the notion uniting continental drift and evolution.

Think about DU with its many avid supporters of evolutionary theory. DU has roughly 167,000 users on DU, it is probable that only about 1600-5000 (~1 to 3 percent) could explain the significance of vicariance to macroevolution and be able to discuss that in the language of the principles from ecology and population genetics that such a discussion would require.

Although hundreds of DUer's can recognize the divisions microevolution and macroevolution, it's my own experience that a majority of DUers can't without the aid of a search engine and at least refamiliarization with the topics.

I don't really expect elementary and secondary teachers to have a chance explaining such things considering the emphases of their university preparation and the limitations placed upon them by the state requirements for curricula at every level of primary and secondary ed.

[yellowcanine]

8. Elementary school teachers should know enough about continental drift to answer that question.

But our schools are failing to educate teachers properly in this area. Besides, a good teacher will find a way to address a question such as this even if it doesn't fit into the lesson plan for the day. For example this would have been an excellent opportunity have the students do some independent research to find the answer to this question. A good teacher would know how to teach students how to find answers for these types of questions.

[HereSince1628]

9. Having served on univ. department committees trying to address state mandates

for teacher prep, I can tell you that much of traditional (non practical=not health/medicine oriented) stuff gets cursory coverage in only freshman year biology.

Good teachers not withstanding, by the time a pre-service teacher becomes an elementary or secondary teacher, much of what they were exposed to back in their freshman biology and haven't considered since that time, has become very distant and prone to be riddled with err.

Sad but true.

[yellowcanine]

21. And the mandates are weeding out the many of the truly creative teachers.

Either by stifling their creativity so that they learn to "get along" in order to survive or by driving them out of teaching altogether.

[HereSince1628]

31. I can't speak to creativity, but re evolution the political/education industry

has seen evolution as a topic that need not get more than 2-3 chapters worth of coverage in a year long intro biology sequence.

Our national interest in biology has become very pragmatic. Textbooks are rather short on issues such as mass extinction and evolutionary rebound from it. No one really seems to care about things other than health and medicine.

I find myself constantly challenged by DUers notion that medicine and biology are the same thing.

I live in a country where our children are protected from learning about the natural world that surrounds them by drop-down television monitors and dvrs in their parents' vans.

Most children can't name plants beyond categories such as 'grass', 'flower', 'bush' or 'tree' and the biology curriculum for pre-service biology/science teachers is poorly equipped to help teachers address that.

Sad.

But then, I've given up. I just can't fight the industrialization of biology anymore.

[proud2BlibKansan]

24. That would interfere with the time mandated to prepare kids for the TESTS!

Seriously, our days are planned and our lessons are scripted. So even a good teacher (if h/she wants to keep his/her job) doesn't assign independent research on a topic not covered in the curriculum.

[yellowcanine]

26. Exactly. The mandates tend to stifle creative teaching. Hate to say it, but teachers need to be

screaming about this and enlisting support from parents, principals, etc, That is the only way this is going to change.

[proud2BlibKansan]

33. We have been

But sadly, even here on DU, we don't get the support we need.

[HereSince1628]

38. What defines a good teacher is the supervisor's review

and if a teacher spends significant time away from mandated curricula, that review isn't going to be favorable.

That part of being an employee is no different in a school than it is in Walmart. We can't expect more courage to 'buck the system' from teachers than we expect from anyone else.

[proud2BlibKansan]

39. Teachers can't afford to lose their jobs anymore than anyone else

And contrary to popular belief, it's not hard to fire a teacher.

[HereSince1628]

40. Very true.

[donquijoterocket]

11. forget

continental drift.How about genetic drift?I suspect many teachers are wary of the subject because they know the mention of it is going to bring the fundies screaming out of the woodwork.

[xocet]

17. Well...

Didn't continental drift occur because Jesus' steed, the faithful brontosaurus, would jump across a river? Enough jumps and the continents were bound to separate!



















(sarcasm)

[hunter]

19. If I was teaching I'd answer "YES."

What kind of teacher thinks ANY question that's not meant to disrupt the class is inappropriate???

"Yes, the continents move around. Earthquakes happen when the continents are crunching together or splitting apart. Continents don't move very far in a year, maybe this much... (waves hands.)

Sometimes, over millions of years, the continents are spread out into many islands. Sometimes they'll be all bunched up in one place."

Our education system is broken because teachers, ANY teacher from kindergarten to high school, can't answer simple questions like this or show kids how to find the answer. A teacher who doesn't know the answer ought to be able to say, "I don't know, that's an interesting question, let's look that up!" But there you have it, the basic threat to all authoritarian social structures: One Must not Question Authority.

[proud2BlibKansan]

25. See my answer above

We aren't allowed the time to go off on tangents like this.

[hunter]

29. That's part of the program to destroy education in the USA...

When I was teaching I had kids in my classes who couldn't read, who didn't care about grades, and were not going to graduate from high school. The End. Some of them ended up in the cycle of drugs, gangs and prisons, or as teenage moms on welfare.

Education in the USA would be much improved if half the time in the classroom was spent chasing tangents. Instead we drain the natural curiosity and joy of learning from our kids by adhering to a rigid curriculum that will not serve the vast majority of children after they have graduated or dropped out of school.

Teach kids how to read, how to handle money and numbers, how to work, how to avoid risky sex, how to think critically... and the rest will follow.

Test scores are not the reason for public schools. We have public schools to prepare our children for "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as adults.

[vim876]

23. Most DUers....

...aren't trying to teach science. I know enough to know that there's a lot I don't know, and I suspect that's true for many here. There is a difference between someone who teaches science as a career not being able to explain micro- and macro-evolution and someone who is a plumber or a welfare policy analyst not being able to explain it.

[HereSince1628]

32. Biology curricula only include what the nation demands and industry has won

the place of first priority in making demands known.

It's JOBS, JOBS, JOBS! not KNOWING, KNOWING, KNOWING!

Americans who expect teachers to fight for things parents and society aren't willing to fight for are silly cowards. Silly because they expect someone else to take a risk that they won't and and cowards for the very same reason.

[vim876]

42. Really?

Are you seriously calling me a coward because I don't know the difference between micro- and macro-evolution? I think science teachers should be required to know that sh*t. I am not a science teacher. I support fully up-to-date, scientific curricula in public schools. (While I personally think that evolution and most other scientific stuff is an expression of the Creator, I don't think any public school should be getting into any of that. Just the facts. If you want your kids to get religious education, send them to Sunday School.)

[HereSince1628]

44. I'd say that is a notion of your own making

by selectively piecing together bits of several of my replies in this thread and creating a hyperbolic misrepresentation of what I wrote.


I wrote several main points...that I'll summarize

1) Contemporary biology education for pre-service teachers is largely dictated by state standards. Within the scope of those standards, evolution doesn't get a lot of direct coverage...as a consequence, the preparation of a biology teacher in evolution may include only few chapters during freshman biology.

2) The words microevolution and macroevolution are introduced in those freshman chapters, but between freshman biology and entry into a teaching job, much of that information is forgotten, because it isn't repeated or used in other courses. NO ONE was called a coward by me for not remembering much of what was introduced briefly four years previous to college graduation.

3) Those ideas aren't repeated very much because they are not directly relevant to the content of biological phenomena below the organizational level of populations topics (molecular biology, cellular biology, anatomy, physiology etc).

The delineation of what is deemed essential to biology teacher preparation follows state mandated standards. Consequently, population genetics (itself requiring a working ability in algebra) which is an essential underpinning to understanding evolution and the discussion of topics such as vicariance (the connection between speciation/evolution and plate tectonics/continental drift frequently doesn't occur among a biology teachers preparation.

4) The needs and expectations of society act as determinants of curriculum content. In the US the definitions of biology content are largely determined by regulators and legislatures who respond mostly to the needs of business, suggestions of state-level education bureaucrats and the acquiescence of the population (the general population largely ignores the process of standards building, think about who you know that attends or otherwise influences public hearings on biology curriculum standards. It's not a happy thought). In the US this curriculum mandating process has led to the illusion that biology and medicine/health are the same topic. Thus the biology curriculum emphasizes phenomena that occur below population level organization where health and medical issues are most frequently considered (remember that, horizontal gene transfer not withstanding, it is, by scientific definition, populations that evolve, not individuals).

5) Biology teaching is a job. And people need jobs. A biology teacher must perform job tasks as her/his employer designs them. And supervisors watch that and note when a teacher's classes can't demonstrate at-grade-level performance in mandated topics. It's not fair to expect biology teachers to risk their jobs by going off curriculum for the significantly long periods of time that would be needed to cover geological and population genetics topics required for students to gain a meaningful understanding of vicariance.


Still, none of the above should preclude a knowledgeable teacher from briefly answering a question from a curious student. But it does help explain why a teacher might not feel capable or secure in answering a question, as well as why teachers are very mindful of the content objectives mandated for their teaching activities.

[yellowcanine]

7. ‘I can’t answer that question, it’s not appropriate for your grade level.’

That teacher should be counseled about effective teaching and let go if she/he doesn't get a clue. A good teacher welcomes questions that go beyond "grade-level" instructions as an opportunity to stretch the intellect of students and make learning interesting and exciting.

Part of the problem is that outside of teachers trained specifically as science teachers, teachers are getting a lousy science education. And the teachers turned out by right wing Christian schools such as Liberty University are weak on science in general and evolutionary biology in particular.

[KittyWampus]

10. No- the continents were never connected. If you connected all the pieces of the puzzle

you'd get one giant piece of earth clustered on one side of the Earth- which is ridiculous.

Rather, the ocean currents and the deep trenches and volcanos under the water created symmetry between the edges of land as they were created.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. Wrong. There once was a "giant piece of earth clustered on once side"

of the earth. It was called Pangaea. The tectonic plates that comprised Pangaea slowly moved apart as the result of geothermic forces -- the upper surfaces called the lithosphere were able to move because they were lighter and less dense than the lower part of the earth's crust. This isn't a mere speculative theory any more; it's an accepted fact, like evolution.

[KittyWampus]

14. Sorry, a Pangaea clustered on one side of the earth totally unbalanced isn't the only possible answe

I understand fully continental drift. I also understand there are other ways that continents and land move and form.

And Pangaea is a theory. It's not a fact. It's a theory that ignores the fact that ocean currents and volcanic activity etc under the oceans also play a part in creating the symmetry. Go look at the sides of a river bank and see how they mirror each other, for instance.


By the way, I am somewhat playing the role of devil's advocate here.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. Well, you can go play devil's advocate with geologists and paleontologists.

The existence of Pangaea is verified by geological formations, orientation of magnetic ores relative to the earth's magnetic field, the continuity of mountain ranges, and the fossil record.

Also, Pangaea was made of lithosphere materials, which are relatively lighter and less dense than underlying layers. The earth wouldn't have been out of balance because a single huge continent was on only one side; water is actually very heavy. And if that notion were true it would still be out of balance because the existing land masses are not evenly balanced between the hemispheres.

[KittyWampus]

18. A smaller Earth w/uniform crust that expanded over millions of years thus breaking apart

a totally different kind of "Pangaea" would also answer the points you bring up about magnetic fields etc.

If anyone comes across the explanation of the actual mechanics of how land mass arose in only one spot I would be very grateful!

[Fumesucker]

30. Eh, I guess I can get rid of my bumper sticker then..

[HereSince1628]

41. A theory is a conprehensive explanation of evidence.

The idea of Pangea (and its decomposition into Laurasia and Gondwanaland, and then current contents) is supported by geologic evidence.

A theory isn't a wild ass guess. Although people who think the equivalence of a guess and a hypothesis and a hypothesis and theory might think so.

Because continental drift is a theory, and geologic evidence supports the idea of the existance of a Pangea like land mass, it is possible to make predictions that can be made about where further evidence will be found. Those predictions can be cast as hypotheses that can be tested by looking for evidence in the places the theory suggests to look. And when that's done...damn! the predictions turn out to be good, maybe not perfect, but very very damned good.

Find me a prediction by Design that works that well...or just give he F*** up because Design theory doesn't make such good predictions.

[hunter]

13. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

-- Theodosius Dobzhansky

The very first chapters of any introductory biology text ought to be built upon the framework of evolution, just as life itself is.

"In the beginning..." Evolution is how life happens.

[HereSince1628]

34. But nothing in American life makes sense without a JOB

and the biology curriculum is so adjusted.

[hunter]

36. Modern economies are not productive, they are destructive.

Look at any coal mine or war zone.

We've succumbed to the worst sort of doublespeak, that working is "productive." The sorry truth is that most jobs further destroy our natural environment and dull the human spirit.

If we had any sense we would reduce the common work week to thirty hours or less, the retirement age to 52 years or less, and we would be in general much happier and form stronger more nurturing communities while "economic productivity" as it is now measured plummeted and all aspects of our health improved.

[HereSince1628]

37. I suppose...

but my point is you'd be really hard pressed to find 10 out of 100 people who really knew what a population ecologist or taxonomist would say is 'jack-shit' about evolution.

If the nation as a whole cared about evolution it would be different. But the nation doesn't care. And so it is a poor standard by which to measure science education.

The question isn't addressing a significant area for American scientific prowess. A good question would be about the ability to conduct RFLP analysis on DNA to identify same sourced cases of a food borne disease.
Because of the content of modern biology, High school kids have a chance at answering that.

[BrklynLiberal]

15. ..as the US education system goes down the universal toilet....

[montanto]

22. The most telling part of this is the

13% of biologists who are creationists and approach the subject from that angle. 28% of teachers "consistently" dealing with evolution is meaningless to me. That's a student's interpretation of the teacher's underlying pedagogy and I don't buy it as data. Continental drift is not evolution, therefore the anecdotal evidence proves what? Further, for me, there is a certain amount of context missing from the anecdote. Many people, rightly so,fundamentally, say that the teacher should have answered that question, but it isn't always possible, necessary, topical, feasible, or even a good idea to answer every legitimate question in a class. One student's curiosity is not 35 other students' necessity. There are times, for example, when if I were to answer every legitimate question, every real question asked out of genuine curiosity, that I wouldn't get to the material that I was supposed to cover in that class. Hell, we don't even know from this blurb, we have to assume, that the teacher in question was a science or biology teacher and that the question was somehow on topic. When a student in an English composition class asks me "does gravity bend light" am I supposed to explain that it does, and how it does, and provide proof when the topic is "man's inhumanity to man in Lord of the Flies?"

That we need to teach biology and geology from a scientific perspective is beyond question. I'm not willing to buy that teachers have failed even in light of this spurious evidence that 72% of science teachers DO consistently deal with evolution as a reality.

[DaveinJapan]

43. "And Pangaea is a theory. It's not a fact"

Am I the only one who cringes when people say this sort of thing?