In an article in the The Palm Beach News, science teachers discovered that when they threw out the recommended science inquiry and hands on activities, their students improved their scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT).
I am not writing this as a protest against these science teachers. They know their students better than you and I, but I want to use this case as a way to talk about the Collateral Damage (as described by Sharon Nichols & David Berliner in their book) caused by high-stakes testing.
The teachers explained that they believed that using technology (Powerpoint presentations), and demonstrations, they could teach the content better than if the students spent time doing hands on activities, that they claimed were viewed by the students as “play time.” That may be so in their case.
But, this is a good example of the collateral impact (damage) that is caused by using high-stakes tests as the measure of learning in the science classroom. As Sharon Nichols and David Berliner report in their research, high-stakes testing threatens the purposes and ideals of American education. In science education, one of those ideals is the way science teachers have embraced science inquiry as an important aspect of science teaching.
How do we convey to our students the sense of wonder that comes from indulging in science activities and discoveries? How do we encourage students to be inventors, to think differently about the world, if we spoon feed them the content that a group of educators decided that every kid should learn?
This is another example of how the corporate take-over of education and in this case science education is leading to disturbing impacts in the way science is taught, and over importance of testing.
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