New Book from AAAS's Project 2061 Offers a Way Out of Science Curriculum "Superficiality"
May 24, 2001
Washington, D.C.—Decades of overloading curriculum, textbooks, and tests
with far more topics than can be taught effectively has turned education into
an industry of superficiality, asserts Designs for Science Literacy,
a new book by Project 2061, the education reform initiative of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Released May 24 at a gathering of education leaders, Designs for Science
Literacy offers a way out of that superficiality, including guidance for
educators on how to "unburden the curriculum" so that teachers have time to
teach the most important ideas well. The authors devote an entire chapter
to showing educators how to relieve the interminable accumulation of topics,
superficial detail, and technical language that far exceeds most students'
understanding.
This new book, published by Oxford University Press, also addresses one of
the most difficult education reform questions: how to design K–12
curricula in a way that reflects local needs and interests and, at the same
time, enables all students to reach national goals of literacy in science,
mathematics, and technology.
Designs for Science Literacy offers general principles of design, their
application to curriculum, and guidelines for getting started on the design
task. The book employs perspectives and design-rich language from the fields
of engineering and architecture and also proposes applying the powerful tools
of computer-aided design to curriculum design. With this approach, Project
2061 Director George Nelson believes, "Designs can help launch effective
curriculum-reform efforts, promoting consistency of learning goals across
the nation and at the same time encouraging more local diversity in curriculum."
In the future, Designs envisions curriculum building by selection and
coordination of high-quality instructional blocks from a large pool of such
blocks.
"We know that the common practice of simply tinkering with individual courses
and subjects is not getting at the problem," comments Andrew Ahlgren, Project
2061 Associate Director and one of the principal scholars behind the book.
"This new resource for educators proposes specific steps for reconfiguring
the entire K–12 curriculum. It offers suggestions for optimizing student
learning by coordinating the interrelated parts of the curriculum more purposefully."
A companion CD-ROM, Designs on Disk, is included with the 300-page
book. This CD-ROM features a collection of databases, background readings,
and utilities to help educators take on many of the curriculum design tasks
recommended in the book.
"Most teachers know or suspect how little their students are learning, but
they don't see how they can change the system," stated Nelson. Yet change
is possible and Designs helps provoke fresh thinking by looking at
three imaginary schools districts in the future — urban, suburban, and
rural — and suggesting how curriculum reform could proceed using the
ideas laid out in the book's earlier chapters.
Designs for Science Literacy is available from Oxford University Press
by calling 1-800-451-7556. For more information about publications from Project
2061, visit the resource section of our web site.
AAAS began Project 2061 in 1985 to help improve K–12 science, mathematics,
and technology education for all students nationwide. The project's array
of print and electronic tools and professional development services are helping
to strengthen teaching and learning, and its evaluations of science and mathematics
textbooks are having a major impact on states and school districts.
AAAS was founded in 1848. It is the world's largest federation of scientific
and engineering societies, with nearly 300 affiliate organizations and more
than 143,000 individual members. The association's goals are to further the
work of scientists, facilitate cooperation among them, foster scientific freedom
and responsibility, improve the effectiveness of science in the promotion
of human welfare, advance education in science, and increase public understanding
and appreciation of the importance and promise of the methods of science in
human progress.
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