Like Expecting Water to Be Turned Into Wine: Exposing the Next Generation Science Standards' Frustrating and Pervasive Contradictions

• In Event: 52.030 - Using Next Generation Science Standards to Inform and Provide Equitable Instruction, Learning, and Assessments to Diverse Students

Abstract

Objective: To expose some of the most pervasive and frustrating contradictions of education reform in the USA using the NGSS as an example.

Framework: The NGSS and the on-going contradictions between reform policies and teaching in increasing culturally diverse contexts have recently been critiqued (Author, 2015). For instance, the Common Core Standards and the NGSS (NGSS Lead States, 2013) require more than ever that teachers be prepared to effectively integrate STEM education across all subject areas while addressing students’ cultural diversity. These expectations necessitate more innovative approaches for teacher education; yet, this aspect is taken for granted, and education faculty are expected to become experts in engineering practices, multiculturalism, and curriculum integration.

We conducted a pilot study with a focus on transdisciplinary and cross-cultural STEM integration with all of the core education methods faculty. Transdisciplinary and cross-cultural STEM integration is a sociotransformative approach to teaching at least two of the core curriculum areas with the integration of either engineering and/or technology. This approach is informed by sociotransformative constructivism (Author, 1998); therefore, knowledge is conceptualized as socially constructed and manifested through language forms in active interactions where power dynamics and sociocultural contexts are critically considered.

Data/Methods: All the core methods faculty (social studies, language literacy, mathematics and science) participated in PD workshops and developed and taught three transdisciplinary and cross-cultural STEM integrated modules in their methods courses. Quantitative (pre-post surveys, module evaluations) and qualitative (focus group interviews, videotaped observations) were conducted with two cohorts of students (n=38). Interviews, videotapes, and artifacts were analyzed using an iterative approach to identify common themes (Spradley, 1979) and survey data were analyzed using paired t-tests and effect size.

Findings: Results indicated a significant and positive impact on students’ conceptions of transdisciplinary and cross-cultural STEM education. We found a 34% increase in confidence for teaching integrated STEM overall (effect size = .67), but smaller increase in confidence for cross-cultural teaching. We also found that students’ understanding of cross-cultural education to be superficial and still focusing on mainly ethnic differences in spite of our efforts to highlight power dynamics, social class, language, and other issues in the modules. This points to the need to provide more specific and integrated activities to all students throughout the program. The most disturbing finding was that 93% of students in the focus groupbindicated that they had not seen science being taught or had any opportunity to teach science during school visits.

Significance: Even if methods professors become more proficient at using a cross-cultural and integrated STEM approach, and even if these efforts had a positive impact on students, how is this helpful if students are not seeing or allowed to teach science during school visits? These findings highlight the challenge of enacting well-intended policies in actual educational contexts that are unyielding. This makes reform nearly impossible unless policies are more comprehensively and realistically developed to move from good intentions to transformative action.

Author

• Alberto J. Rodriguez, Purdue University