Transforming Textbooks: AAAS and Partners Target K-12 Science Materials
for Improvement
Tuesday, 22 October 2002
OCT. 22, 2002—Transforming K-12 science textbooks—which so often
cause student anxiety, parental criticism, and teacher migraines—will
be the focus of a new Center for Curriculum Materials in Science, announced
today by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and
its education reform initiative, Project 2061.
Through the AAAS-led Center—funded by a $9.9 million, five-year grant
from the National Science Foundation—Project 2061 is now well-positioned
to have its recommendations guide science curriculum development and teaching
and, as a result, to help all students gain essential science knowledge and
skills. The work will be carried out in collaboration with the University
of Michigan, Northwestern University, and Michigan State University, along
with Detroit Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, and the Lansing School
District.
The Center will draw on the materials development and teacher education expertise
of the universities to address some of the serious problems AAAS previously
identified in its series of critical evaluations of middle- and high-school
science textbooks. The Center's goal is to improve science curriculum materials,
making sure they reflect sound research on student learning and take advantage
of the most effective teaching strategies and technologies. Yet another goal
is to ensure that science curriculum materials support credible standards
for what students should know, such as those in AAAS's landmark report Benchmarks
for Science Literacy and in the National Research Council's National
Science Education Standards.
Not confined to ivory towers, the Center collaborators will work closely with
their local school-district partners to connect university research and teacher
training with the realities of the classroom.
A critical national role for the new Center is the development of a cadre of
experts in science curriculum materials R&D. To accomplish this, each
of the partner universities will expand its graduate and postdoctoral programs
in science education to include coursework and research opportunities in the
analysis, design, and use of science curriculum materials. Recruitment of
candidates for the new programs is already underway, and interested applicants
are encouraged to contact the universities directly or to visit the Center
web site at http://ScienceMaterialsCenter.org.
"AAAS has been a leader in identifying shortcomings of science textbooks
and working with researchers, educators, and book publishers to improve them,"
said AAAS Chief Executive Officer Dr. Alan I. Leshner. "Research clearly
shows that textbooks and other classroom materials are a linchpin of effective
student learning, yet we know from our evaluations of textbooks that most
materials available today aren't serving the needs of students or teachers."
In a series of standards-based evaluations, AAAS's Project 2061 put educators
and parents on notice that textbooks were fatally flawed. Project 2061 rated
all popular middle-school science books as "unsatisfactory," and
criticized them as "full of disconnected facts that neither educate nor
motivate" students. Not one of the 10 widely used high-school biology
texts was deemed worthy of a high rating in the rigorous evaluation.
Project 2061 broke new ground in 2001 by bringing together publishers, curriculum
developers, and educators for the first in a series of three conferences to
improve the quality of science textbooks.
The new Center will help jumpstart the textbook transformation process, according
to Dr. Jo Ellen Roseman, director of Project 2061. The Center will "foster
essential research and development aimed at helping all students learn what
they need to know to thrive in our science-based world," said Roseman.
Roseman will serve as director of the Center for
Curriculum Materials in Science and will chair a Center Leadership Team. Other
members of the team are Dr. George DeBoer at AAAS, Dr. James Gallagher of
Michigan State University, Dr. Brian J. Reiser of Northwestern University,
and Dr. Joseph Krajcik of the University of Michigan.
* * *
Founded in 1848, the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has worked to advance science for human
well-being through its projects, programs, and publications in the areas of
science policy, science education, and international scientific cooperation.
With over 134,000 members from 130 countries and 272 affiliated societies
comprising more than 10 million individual members, AAAS is the world's largest
federation of scientists. The association also publishes Science,
an editorially independent, multidisciplinary, weekly peer-reviewed journal
that ranks as one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. AAAS
administers EurekAlert! (http://www.eurekalert.org), the online news service,
featuring the latest discoveries in science and technology.
Since 1985, AAAS's Project 2061 has worked
to reform K-12 education so that all high-school graduates are science literate—that
is, prepared to live interesting, responsible, and productive lives in a world
increasingly shaped by science and technology. The project is creating a
coordinated set of tools and services—books, CD-ROMs, online resources,
and professional development workshops—that educators, parents and families,
and community leaders can use to make meaningful and lasting improvements
in teaching and learning for all students.
# # #
Center for Curriculum Materials in Science
About the Partners
AAAS Project 2061 has been a leader in articulating
science standards and developing criteria to analyze the content
basis and pedagogical sensibility of science curricula. AAAS
as a whole offers rich
scientific, technical, and education resources for the Center
through its interdisciplinary programs, its worldwide membership,
and its expertise working
in a variety of formal and informal settings with educators and
students who
are diverse in ethnicity, culture, language, and gender. Contact: Dr.
Jo Ellen Roseman, the Center's Director, 202-326-6643; Dr.
George DeBoer, the Center's
Associate Director, 202-326-6624.
Michigan State University's elementary and secondary
teacher education program has been at the top of the rankings in the U.S.
News and World Report survey for eight consecutive years, and its curriculum
and instruction program is highly ranked as well. The university has a long
history of collaboration with local schools, including a requirement that
all prospective teachers complete a full-year teaching internship. In the
Lansing School District alone, there are more than 100 interns and 340 seniors
working in the classrooms. Faculty and graduate students have also worked
with local schools on a number of research projects relevant to the Center's
work, including research on teachers' use of curriculum materials in planning
and classroom teaching, the impact of curriculum materials on student learning,
and the role of materials and professional development on formative assessment.
Contact: Dr. James Gallagher, Science and Mathematics Training Center, 517-432-4871,
gallaghr@msu.edu.
Northwestern University has been a leader in the
field of cognitive science, creating the nation's first graduate program in
Learning Sciences. A model for programs at other institutions, this program
provides interdisciplinary training in curricular, technological, and social
policy innovations aimed at improving education. Education faculty have worked
with teachers and administrators in the Chicago public schools to investigate
the process of collaborative design and problem-solving. Northwestern University's
School of Education and Social Policy has been ranked among the top schools
in the nation for research in the 2002 U.S. News and World Report Graduate School
Rankings. Contact: Dr. Brian Reiser, School of Education and Social Policy,
847-467-2205, reiser@northwestern.edu. The University of Michigan, one of the
nation's leading teaching and research universities, is a pioneer in technological
development for instruction. Its School of Education has been ranked as one
of the top 10 schools in the nation for the past 10 years in the U.S. News
and World Report Graduate School Rankings. Faculty members have developed strong
ties with local school districts and have been instrumental in helping to
bring about systemic reform in science education in the Detroit Public School
System. Currently, University of Michigan School of Education researchers, along
with Northwestern University, are engaged in a partnership to create science
curriculum materials for middle school students that are based on Project 2061's
benchmarks and its instructional criteria. Contact: Dr. Joseph Krajcik, School of Education,
734-647-0597, krajcik@umich.edu.
Contact Information:
Mary Koppal
(202) 326-6643
Monica Amarelo
(202) 326-6431
mamarelo@aaas.org
