During the period 1950 - 1977 science education witnessed a massive curriculum movement (the Course Content Curriculum Project Movement) that no other period has witnessed. It was a period of Federal intervention in education, and the expenditure of huge sums of money on curriculum development and teacher training. It was, as many coined it, the golden age of science eduation. Why did this happen? What were the forces influencing this movement?
Paul DeHart Hurd made an interesting point when he said that "at some point an awareness emerges: the present curriculum is no longer serving the needs of either student or society." And something needs to be done. The desire was to reform not revise the nation's science and mathematics curriculum.
After Wold War II, the advances in science and technology increased at an enormous rate. These advances were described in a series of stages---the first, the atomic age, then the age of automation, then the space age, and the computer age. These changes occurred at a very rapid pace and there was a growing concern that America was not producing enough scientists and engineers to meet this need.
The early 50s has been characterized as one in which American anxiety often bordered on hysteria. America was in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Block nations. The McCarthy hearings were in full swing and there was a "massive retaliation" against communist aggression abroad. England points out that many Americans of "normally placid temperament became convinced that Moscow was directing a conspiracy, reaching around the globe, to bury Western democracy, and their fears were intensified by the speed of the Russian development of nuclear weapons. Belief in a substantial margin of American superiority began to crumble."
The National Science Foundation (NSF), which had been created in 1950, took the leadership in addressing the problem of manpower shortages in science and engineering, and the concern that high school science courses were inadequate in light of the rapid changes in science and technology, that many science teachers needed more training in science and improved methods of teaching, and that the textbooks being used were outmoded, and needed to be changed.
Even with the growing concern for science education in the schools, the NSF showed reluctance in the beginning to support high school science. Support would be directed at colleges and universities. Partly due to limited funds, NSF didn't think it could make a dent in the nation's schools. However, in 1953, the first two "NSF Summer Institutes" were held at the University of Colorado for college mathematics, and at the University of Minnesota for college physics and a companion group of high school physics teachers. Deeming the institute a success, NSF moved into the Institute business and sponsored 11 in 1954, and 27 in 1955 (two of these were year long institutes for high school mathematics and science teachers).
In 1956 NSF funded a group of physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the direction of Professor Jerrold R. Zacharias. Known as the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC), they outlined in 1956-57 the ideas for a new high school physics course, and in the summer of 1957 assembled 60 physicists, teachers, apparatus designers, writers, artists and other specialists to produce a pilot version of the PSSC Physics course (text, teacher's guide, lab manual, equipment, and later films and books written by scientists)
Oddly enough as late as in the Fall of 1957, the NSF was thinking of reducing its institutes for science teachers. The NSF sponsored teacher institutes had come under attack. Some people were concerned that the Academic Year Institutes were aggravating the shortage of teachers by taking science and mathematics teachers (often the best) out of the classroom. It was also known that many high school teachers showed little interest in applying for refresher courses in science (even with tuition paid and a stipend).
Then on October 17, 1957 everything changed.
The Sputnik Watershed
The Soviet launch of Sputnik into an orbit about the Earth was a shot that had reverberating effects on American science and mathematics education like no other event in this century. According to England, "the launching of Sputnik changed the outlook dramatically. It brought another big boost in the institute budget and a chance to try out a variety of other projects, some of them reaching down into the elementary school."
Sputnik "created an intellectual climate" that fostered the adoption of new courses of study by the nation's schools, spurred Congress to insure funding for course improvement projects, summer institutes to train teachers in the new courses of study in science and mathematics.
The Golden Age of Science Education came about as a response to the apparent superiority of Soviet science and technology, yet its roots lie prior to Sputnik with the perceived crisis in the quality of secondary science teachers, courses, textbooks and teaching materials.
Reform Projects
More than $117 million was spend on over 53 separate course improvement projects during the years 1954-1975. There was literally an explosion of course content improvement projects as shown in the chart below.
The curriculum project developed during the Golden Age of Science Education were characterized as follows.
1. The reformers were typically scientists, specialists in physics, chemistry, biology, or earth science. Their views of what elementary and secondary science should be was colored by their research interests and the nature of science. The reformers criticized contemporary science programs by stating that although "biology, chemistry and physics is taught, there is very evidence of the science of these subjects presented."2. The criteria for the selection of content came from the discipline (as opposed to earlier criteria such as meeting the needs of the child). Thus the "content of science, with its concepts, theories, laws and modes of inquiry is given." The new science curricula were also based on the assumption that science was a way of knowing. The learning activities in the new curricula were designed to help students experience science as a way of knowing and therefore were engaged in "experimenting, observing, comparing, inferring, inventing, evaluating, and many other ways of knowing."
3. According to the developers of the projects, students would be motivated instrinsically. The interesting nature of the science activities would themselves motivate students. This idea was fully developed by Bruner in his book, The Process of Education. The book was a report of a conference among scientists and educators at Woods Hole in 1959 (See Bruner, Chapter 2).
4. The goals of science teaching as they developed with these reform projects was very different from science teaching goals in the past, and were in stark contrast to what science educators are advocating for the 1990s and beyond. Hurd describes the goals of the curriculum reform projects in this way:
What is expressed is more a point of view or rationale for the teaching of science. This point of view lacks the societal orientation usually found in statements of educational goals. The 'new' goals of science teaching are drawn entirely from the disciplines of science. Social problems, individual needs, life problems and other means used in the past are not differentiated for local schools or for individuals. If the discipline of science is to be the source of educational goals, then differences are not possible without violating the structure of science. To do otherwise would be teaching un-science, a major criticism of the traditional curriculum. Thus we find the reformers define educational goals within the framework of science as they are reflected in the separate disciplines. Their logic is simple and straightforward: this is what we know with some degree of reliability; this is how we find out about what we know; and this is how it all fits into the big picture---conceputal schemes. (Italics, mine) Now then, whatever personal or social problems involving science are to be solved must begin with authentic concepts and with fruitful processes of inquiry.Selected Science Content Improvement Projects of the Golden Era in Science Education
Course
Content Improvement Project Charter
Year Grades Content
Focus High
School Projects PSSC
Physics Project
Physics Chemical Bond
Approach Chemistry (CBA) CHEM
Study Biological Sciences
Curriculum Study (BSC) Engineering Concepts
Curriculum Project (ECCP_ Individualized
Science Instructional System (ISIS) 1956 1962 1957 1959 1958 1965 1972 12 12 11 11 9, 10 11,12 9-12 Physics Physics Chemistry Chemistry The Man Made
World (Title of ECCP book) focuses on logic, computers,
models, and energy. Over 30 minicourses
in applied physics, chemistry, biology, health, and
earth-space science Junior
High/Middle Projects Introductory
Physical Science (IPS) Earth Science
Curriculum Project (ESCP) Intermediate Science
Curriculum Study (ISCS) 1965 1962 1965 8,9 8,9 7,8,9 Matter and
Energy Interdisciplinary
approach to geology, astronomy, meteorology and
oceanography. Individualized
science. Grades 7 and 8 focus on physical science, grade
consists of 8 books, each focusing on earth-space, biology
or environmental science. Elementary
Science Projects Science Curriculum
Improvement Study (SCIS) Science - A Process
Approach (SAPA) Elementary Science
Study (ESS) 1961 1963 1963 K - 6 K - 8 K - 8 Physical and Life
Science Processes of
science, e.g. observing, measuring, classifying, inferring,
controlling variables. Self-contained units
on a wide range of science topics