Observations … by Larry

By Larry Malone, FOSS Co-director

As we continue to labor through and over the process of reinventing and redesigning the Full Option Science System, one issue that has come up is identifying the over-arching goals of the next generation of the FOSS Program. We forged the original goals 25 years ago when we wrote the original FOSS proposal to the National Science Foundation. Those NSF Triad Program guidelines required proposal writers to describe a plan for developing a science curriculum that would serve American science education into the 21st century. After a recent bout of rumination and soul-searching, we concluded that the original goals set forth in 1986 are still viable and currently speak to the mission and direction we envision for the next generation of FOSS. The goals still serve as we march with purpose through the 21st century.

The FOSS Program goals continue to be

The goals largely remain solid, but the small print describing what each means and how each has been redefined requires fine-tuning in order to bring them into a contemporary context.

Scientific literacy goal

To prepare a generation of students with a) knowledge of scientific and environmental concepts and principles and b) functional understanding of how that knowledge prepares them to pursue advanced study and productive careers in the scientific, technical, and engineering communities.

To prepare students to participate in the scientific discourse that promotes productive, data-driven decision-making and community action.

Instructional efficiency goal

To design, produce, disseminate, and implement high-quality instructional materials that provide every teacher with the means for orchestrating exemplary science learning in all communities across the country.

To design high-quality instructional materials incorporating acclaimed, current information available from research in the areas of science, science education, language arts, mathematics, cognitive science, instructional design, professional development, and best classroom practice.

Systemic reform goal

In the 1990s, systemic reform meant enacting major structural changes in the mega-structures of science education. This was enacted in three waves of implementation, with each wave focused on a specific level of educational organization:

a. state education bureaucracies,

b. major urban education structures, and

c. large geographic collaborations of rural educational agencies.

FOSS (the instructional materials and the project staff) played a role in all levels of systemic reform with a number of successes that produced important but minimally effective reform efforts. The potential for FOSS to initiate a significant reform in the science educational experience of all children in a mega-system by itself is unrealistic.

In rethinking systemic reform, we have redefined the system that we think we can expect to reform. FOSS has readjusted our focus much closer to the scene of the action, the school. Going forward, the goals will be to

• encourage the development of science-centered schools. The locus of reform will be the school and the community it serves.
• create a new paradigm for science performance and academic success that will pervade and redefine the culture of the school.

The redefined goal of systemic reform maintains a prominent position in our field of vision as we design and craft the next generation of the FOSS Program. We envision new communities of learners in which science is the academic core of the curriculum, and learning is oriented around natural phenomena that have immediate, historical, and cultural significance for students, educators, families, and community leaders associated with the school. FOSS will enhance and promote the educational priorities and aspirations of the community that represents the school.

Sound unrealistic? FOSS is being redesigned to accomplish its three goals. Goal 3, systemic reform, is the most challenging. We can’t accomplish that one by just designing a world-class curriculum. Systemic reform can occur only when educators understand and value the potential of the program to reform education.

Reform is change. We know from experience that change doesn’t happen in institutions, it happens in people. Institutions change as a result of changes in the people who define and operate the institutions. Reform means “form again.” To do so requires dismantling the system and disentangling the interacting elements, followed by a thoughtful and careful reassembly of the parts to create new structure from the existing elements. The new structure may require previously ineffective components to assume new functions with new expectations. Perhaps previously dominant elements or players will have to relinquish power and authority to fashion functions more compatible with the revised vision.

Make no mistake, the instigator in the process of reform is invariably a top administrator, perhaps a site principal, a district STEM coordinator, or a district superintendent. Someone with authority has to say “our efforts have not been getting the job done. Let’s take a different tack.” It takes an immense amount of courage on the part of an administrator to confront the wave of accountability in literacy and math. Even when it is clear that the creative juice is draining out of the teaching staff, and the students are indifferent and spiritless as a result of the monotony of skills-based curriculum, it is difficult for an administrator to implement a more humane and stimulating instructional practice for young learners. The background discussion of concerned parents agitating for better opportunities for their children and the chorus of wailing from the community when the school fails to deliver satisfactory spikes in standardized test scores is hard to ignore.

Those educators who choose the path less traveled into science-centered learning will be rewarded by the immediate quickening of the pace exhibited by students and the exclamations of teachers scrambling to keep up with students as they rush forward along all the new paths open to them. Teachers at schools where they have adopted a science-centered curriculum are pleasantly surprised to see the enhanced excellence of their students’ writing. Students write more and do so with vigor, creativity, and imagination.

After the decade of systemic reform programs, a report issued by NSF distilled a number of dos and don’ts. Some of them are compatible with the systemic reform goal of FOSS. The report recommends the following.

The table of NSF recommendations resonates well with core issues in American educational policy. To succeed in our efforts to produce a generation of scientifically literate citizens, we will have to establish new fundamental priorities that honor teachers, respect and cherish learners, and encourage institutional reform. In the punitive environment created by No Child Left Behind, there are few winners. The prospects for change seem remote, but even so, Diane Ravitch finds glimmers of hope on the horizon. In a recent Education Week blog, Reasons for Hope, she provides an insightful essay on her perceptions of the state of educational policy, http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2011/06/reasons_for_hope.html.

The momentum of educational reform is further supported by the powerful message presented by Michael Fullan, in a recent paper, Choosing the Wrong Drivers for Whole System Reform (www.michaelfullan.ca/home_articles/SeminarPaper204.pdf). This paper, commissioned and published by the Center for Strategic Education (CSE), is assigned reading for all FOSS educators. Among other things, Fullan says in the introduction,

Whole system reform is the name of the game and ‘drivers’ are those policy and strategy levers that have the least and best chance of driving successful reform. A ‘wrong driver’ then is a deliberate policy force that has little chance of achieving the desired result, while a ‘right driver’ is one that ends up achieving better measurable results for students. Whole system reform is just that, 100 per cent of the system, a whole state, province, region or entire country. This paper examines those drivers typically chosen by leaders to accomplish reform, critiques their inadequacy, and offers an alternative set of drivers that have been proven to be more effective at accomplishing the desired goal, which I express as:

The moral imperative of raising the bar (for all students) and closing the gap (for lower performing groups) relative to higher order skills and competencies required to be successful world citizens.

As an advance organizer I suggest four criteria, all of which must be met in concert, which should be used for judging the likely effectiveness of a driver or set of drivers. Specifically, do the drivers, sooner than later,

1. foster intrinsic motivation of teachers and students;

2. engage educators and students in continuous improvement of instruction and learning;

3. inspire collective or team work; and

4. affect all teachers and students—100 per cent?

And, of course, the same drivers apply at the more intimate school system level as well. If Ravitch and Fullan are right, and I’m sure they are, FOSS will be ready and able to help administrators muster the courage to create the new wave of next generation schools that will establish the vanguard of a new age of science, mathematics, and engineering education reform.