“Natural philosophy” as a foundation for science education in an age of high-stakes...

Natural Philosophy 1

A version of this paper was published as:

Buxton, C. & Provenzo, E. (2011). “Natural philosophy” as a foundation for science education in

an age of high-stakes accountability. School Science and Mathematics, 111(2), 49-56.

Running head: NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

“Natural Philosophy” as a Foundation for Science Education in an Age of High-Stakes

Accountability


Abstract

Science curriculum and instruction in K-12 settings in the United States is currently

dominated by an emphasis on the science standards movement of the 1990s and the

resulting standards-based high-stakes assessment and accountability movement of the

2000s. We argue that this focus has moved the field away from important philosophical

understandings of science teaching and learning that have their roots in the history of

both learning theory and scientific discovery. We offer a philosophical argument, as well

as a model for implementation, grounded in the 19th century notion of “natural

philosophy,” as well as Dewean progressivism and Piaget’s notion of reconstruction

through rediscovery, for the important place of the history of science in modern science

education. We provide curricular examples of this model, as well as a discussion of how

it might be implemented as part of teacher education. We focus our discussion on the

elementary and middle school grades, because teachers at these levels tend to have more

limited science content knowledge than their secondary school peers, making them more

dependent upon curricular materials and thus more heavily influenced by curricular

reforms.


“Natural Philosophy” as a Foundation for Science Education in an Age of High-Stakes

Accountability

Modern K-12 science educators in the United States pay relatively little attention

to the philosophy of science, and even less attention to the history of science, in either

their curricular or instructional practices. The same can largely be said for the university

preparation of elementary and middle school teachers of science. This omission is

strikingly clear in today’s sociopolitical climate as both new and veteran teachers struggle

with the curricular and pedagogical pressures of high stakes testing and accountability.

Increasingly, the focus of preparation for teachers in undergraduate pre-service programs,

school-sponsored in-service programs, and even in graduate programs for professional

teachers, centers on the standards-based reforms of the past 15 years. In science

education, this initially meant adherence to the documents developed by the American

Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 1994; Rutherford & Alghren,

1991), National Science Teachers Association (NSTA, 1996) and the National Research

Council (1996, 2000), but more recently has led to a growing reliance on state science

standards and benchmarks for the state in which the preparation program is situated.

Among other implications of this trend in science education, perhaps the most troubling

is the resulting teacher-as-technician model for how to engage elementary and middle

grade children in science learning, a model that takes preparation for standards-based

state assessments as the goal of science education.

While we do not object to science standards, per se, we believe that the current

focus provides an impoverished view of what makes science such a robust epistemology.


The current standards-based approach to science education, as implemented in schools

and districts around the country, can best be conceptualized as an attempt to promote

knowledge of discrete science benchmarks loosely clustered into strands, plus the ability

to perform some iteration of a “scientific method.” While these are both necessary

components of science education, they fall short of representing the characteristics of

science that are responsible for much of what we experience in modern society. Instead,

we advocate the development of a systematic understanding of the philosophy of science

and the historical development of science through a rediscovery-based curriculum model.

We believe such a model is valuable both for science teacher education and for students’

science learning. This approach draws on major historical experiments that are the

foundation of the respective fields of physics, chemistry, biology and Earth science.

Natural Philosophy and the Rise of Kitchen Science

While inquiry into the natural world can be traced to mankind’s earliest writings,

and while we acknowledge the contributions of many cultures to our current, cumulative

scientific understanding, the modern roots of what we today call natural science are often

traced to the Natural Philosophy movement beginning in the late Seventeenth and early

Eighteenth Century. Natural philosophy was the study of nature with special attention

given to the structure, function and interactions between natural objects. Both Francis

Bacon and Isaac Newton couched their work in terms of natural philosophy, with Newton

titling his most famous book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (The

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) (1687). Thus, natural philosophy can be

seen as influencing the development of modern mathematics as well as the modern

sciences. A central feature of these early writings in natural philosophy was the equal


emphasis placed on the properties of natural objects being explored and the processes and

tools being used to make those observations. Thus, a similar argument can be made for

the inclusion of more history and philosophy of mathematics in the modern math

curriculum as a way of promoting mathematical problem solving.

It is notable that these initial forays into outlining natural philosophy viewed

content and process as inseparable and equally important and contained none of the

modern debate over the relative emphasis that should be placed on these two aspects of

science teaching. Bacon’s The proficience and advancement of learning, divine and

humane (1605), for example, argued for the need to adopt and codify new methodologies

grounded in experiment and observation. Such proposals were in stark contrast to

Aristotelian philosophical reflection, which described the world rather than demonstrated

how it actually functioned. Until the rise of the natural philosophy movement,

philosophical argument was considered the highest form of explanation of natural

phenomena and did not require experimental proofs.

On a more popular level, during the Early Modern period, the term natural

philosophy came to be understood as “the workings of nature,” and emphasized the idea

that common experience could be understood and interpreted through basic observation

and experimentation. Still, even among lay natural philosophers, the dual goals of

understanding the workings of nature and understanding the proper use of scientific tools

and processes for making such observations were maintained.

Science education for children grounded in the tenets of natural philosophy is by

no means a new approach. As early as 1761, the English publisher John Newbury (1713-

1867), who is considered the founder of modern children’s literature, published The


Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and

Ladies (1761) under the pseudonym, Tom Telescope. Newbury’s book “explained by

familiar objects, in an entertaining manner” the basic principals of Newtonian physics.

The book is important both as the first published attempt to use concrete examples in the

teaching of science to children, and, more broadly, as a significant contribution to the

establishment of writing for children as a genre separate from adult books. 1

By the beginning of the Nineteenth century a substantial collection of writings in

natural philosophy for children had emerged. In books such as Sir David Brewster’s

Treatise on the Kaleidoscope (1819), Jeremiah Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues (1829), John

Ayrton Paris’s Philosophy in Sport (1827), and Michael Faraday’s A Chemical History of

the Candle (1860), newly discovered principles of natural science were introduced to

children. At the time, this writing was not viewed as part of the curriculum of formal

education, but rather, was the beginning of the tradition that later became known as

“kitchen science”— a hands-on approach to demonstrating scientific principles in

informal contexts, done with the simplest possible materials, often, supplies found in the

kitchen or around the house.

The Nineteenth century tradition of natural philosophy was not just a set of

activities, but also a way of viewing the world. In this context, natural philosophy was

believed by authors such as Brewster, Joyce, Paris and Faraday to reveal the mechanisms

upon which physics, chemistry and the natural world functioned. Their approach focused

on uncovering and demonstrating the relationships between the different natural

phenomena that were being explored. As such, it was actually quite different from much

of the later “kitchen science” that became popular in the mid-Twentieth century with


figures such as the television star Mr. Wizard (Don Herbert) and more recently Bill Nye

the Science Guy. For example, Michael Faraday, in his book The Chemical History of a

Candle, which was originally given as a series of children’s Christmas lectures at the

Royal Institution of London beginning in 1860, explained in Lecture I:

There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which

does not come into play, and is touched upon in these phenomena. There

is no better, there is no more open door by which you can enter into the

study of natural philosophy, than by considering the physical phenomena

of a candle. (p.5)

It is clear that Faraday believed that simple models such as those provided by a

burning candle could provide the best means of introducing learners to the fundamentals

of science, as well as to how those fundamentals were interconnected, and how such

discoveries were made. Although simple on the surface, such models provided

affordances for profound understanding of complex ideas and relationships. Though he

experimented with other more complicated models, Faraday returned throughout his

career to the simplicity of basic models such as a burning candle, claiming that the more

complicated models “could not be better, were they even so good” (p. iv).

In France, natural philosophy as pedagogy was codified in the early 1890s with

the publication of Albert Good’s three-volume collection of hands–on science

experiments for children know as La Science Amusante.2 Hugely popular, these books

were eventually translated into English and published both in England and the United

States. At about the same time, the French scientist Gaston Tissandier produced a one-


volume encyclopedia of science and scientific experiments titled Popular Scientific

Recreations (1890).

During the first half of the Twentieth century, the Progressive education

movement in the United States continued to promote the core ideas of natural philosophy

-- the study of natural objects and phenomena, with special attention given to their

structure, functions, interactions and relationships, as well as to the processes used in

making these discoveries – while shifting the location of instruction from the informal to

the formal school setting. At John Dewey’s University of Chicago Laboratory School, his

curriculum modeled the integration of all subject areas, with science playing a central

role. Dewey introduced science at the elementary level through shopwork (mechanics)

and cooking (chemistry and measurement). He believed that “handwork” was a key to

students obtaining the skills they needed to learn science. As he explained:

Science is largely of an experimental nature. It is a fact that may not have

come to your attention that a large part of the best and most advanced

scientific work involves a great deal of manual skill, the training of the

hand and eye. It is impossible for one to be a first-class worker in science

without this training in manipulation, and in handling apparatus and

materials. (Dewey, 1907, p. 120)

To this end, Dewey’s approach to science education took the philosophy that

Good, Faraday and others had practiced in the “parlor,” and demonstrated how it could be

applied in the context of formal schooling. It is instructive to listen to Dewey describe his

lab school’s science curriculum one hundred years after the fact, and to compare this to


what many modern progressive science educators continue to advocate (and rarely

achieve).

Last year a good deal of work was done in electricity (and will be

repeated this year), based on the telegraph and telephone -- taking

up the things that can easily be grasped. In mechanics they have

studied locks and clocks with reference to the adaptation of the

various parts of the machinery. All this work makes a most

excellent basis for more formal physics later on. Cooking gives

opportunity for getting a great many ideas of heat and water, and

of their effects. The scientific work taken up in the school differs

mainly from that of other schools in having the experimental part -

- physics and chemistry -- emphasized, and is not confined simply

to nature study -- the study of plants and animals. Not that the

latter is less valuable, but that we find it possible to introduce the

physical aspects from the first. (Dewey, 1907, pp. 124-125)

Despite the work of Dewey and other Progressive educators, science education

grounded in natural philosophy had fallen out of favor in the U.S. by the 1920’s. As

classical liberal curriculum theory focusing on the promotion of models of efficiency

began to take hold in the schools (Beyer & Liston, 1996) science curriculum became

more factually oriented and less investigative.

Kitchen science reemerged in the mid-Twentieth century, due in large part to

the work of Don Herbert, who, starting in the 1950s, produced the children’s science

television program, Mr. Wizard. Herbert drew largely upon materials that had been


published in the late 19th Century in magazines such as the Scientific American and the

French scientific journal Le Nature. These journals had, at that time, regularly produced

columns that provided a basic introduction to scientific phenomenon for children.

Herbert adopted these activities using more updated, but still very basic

materials. While in some ways Mr. Wizard’s approach to discovery learning of core

science principles harkened back to Faraday’s Christmas lectures, in other ways the

approach failed to capture key elements of the natural philosophy pedagogy. Most

notably, an emphasis on understanding the connected nature of diffuse scientific

phenomena, couched in a broader philosophy of science, was largely absent from Mr.

Wizard’s presentations. Instead the emphasis was on isolated phenomena, preferably of

the kind resulting in a surprising fizz, bang or pop.

From Sputnik to State Standards

A fundamental shift in the philosophy that guided science education in the United

States occurred with the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, on

October 4, 1957, marking the start of the “space race” between the U.S. and the Soviet

Union. At the heart of this shift was a move away from both Deweyan Progressivism

with its focus on applications of knowledge in “real-world” contexts, and classical

liberalism with its focus on educational efficiency. Instead, there was a turn toward

curriculum reform that emphasized the “structure” of each scientific discipline. Driven by

research scientists familiar with university science instruction, emergent curricula

attempted to restructure K-12 science education to align it with science as taught in the

universities. When viewed in its sociopolitical context, it is understandable why these

post-Sputnik era curricula de-emphasized the place of the history and philosophy of


science in science education. These educational reforms were part of a broader national

agenda to move beyond the past, and create a future in which the United States would be

the dominant global force due to its superior knowledge of science and technology, as

well as its democratic values.3

Notably, at about the time that the post-Sputnik education reforms were taking

place, the work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget was beginning to be widely

disseminated. Piaget argued that learners construct knowledge and meaning for

themselves in unique and individual ways, framing intellectual development as a

combination of hereditary and environmental factors. For Piaget, knowledge was

invented and reinvented as children interacted with the world around them. In his book

To Understand is to Invent (1973), Piaget argued that “to understand is to discover, or

reconstruct by rediscovery (p. 20).”

On a practical level Piaget’s theory implies that for children to learn and truly

understand concepts about a topic such as electricity, they would be best served by semi-

structured tasks that ask them to reinvent and discover the concepts for themselves, much

as early scientists had done when making their original discoveries. While this approach

has practical limits as children grow older and study increasingly complex and theoretical

science topics, at the elementary and middle grades, such an approach is quite feasible.

Thus, Piagetian constructivism, while providing additional theoretical support for the

activities of the earlier natural philosophers, as well as for Deweyan progressive

educators, was largely at odds with the post-Sputnik structural emphasis in science

curricular reform.


Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s the National Science Foundation funded the

development of a number of new curricula from the “structures of science” paradigm4.

The structural emphasis approach overlapped with and then gradually gave way to the

rise of the national standards movement in the 1980’s and 1990’s (National Research

Council, 1996; Rutherford & Alghren, 1991). Science curriculum began to place an

increased emphasis on models of open inquiry (Steffe & Gale, 1995). In this approach,

students were asked to discover or construct essential science concepts for themselves

and to learn science more or less as scientists do science (Jonassen, 1991). This approach

gained favor among many science educators despite concerns that were raised about

expert-novice differences between trained scientists and science students and the

cognitive load of such an approach (Klahr & Nigam, 2004).

More recently, as the current wave of state standards gained prominence in the

2000’s, these documents tended to deemphasize and simplify inquiry into a narrow

notion of practicing the scientific method, along with an emphasis on teaching discrete

science benchmarks loosely clustered into strands. Thus, we have arrived at the point of a

tension in science curriculum studies between open inquiry, as supported by many

science educators and minimal inquiry as practiced by most elementary and middle

school science teachers as they follow state standards and pacing guides. In the following

section, we describe a curricular model that is more closely aligned with the natural

philosophy approach and Piaget’s notion of knowledge reconstruction through

rediscovery. We perceive this approach as a potentially fruitful middle ground between

the extremes of open and minimal inquiry.

Teaching Science through Natural Philosophy and Reconstruction through Rediscovery


While the structural emphasis was most common in science curricular reform

through the 1970’s and 1980’s, publications such as Rediscovering Astronomy (Provenzo

& Baker Provenzo, 1980) and Rediscovering Photography (Provenzo & Baker Provenzo,

1979) provided supplemental curriculum materials for middle school students that were

grounded in natural philosophy and historical science content. The goal of these materials

was to help teachers implement an integrated model of teaching history and science

through experiments, historical content, and major discoveries in the fields of astronomy

and photography.

As an example, Rediscovering Astronomy outlined the historical development of

the field of astronomy while engaging the student in a series of observational experiments

that were part of the historical foundation for discovery in the field. Beginning with the

creation of an Egyptian sundial, the students moved on to construct and use early

navigational tools, including a medieval quadrant or astrolabe, followed by a sextant. The

remainder of the curriculum focused on magnification techniques that were foundational

to the development of modern astronomy. Students constructed and explored magnifying

lenses, and then used these lenses to build a simple refracting telescope. Finally students

built and made observations with a functional Newtonian reflecting telescope.

Each experiment included historical background and period illustrations and

could be done with easily obtained and inexpensive materials, following Faraday’s notion

of teaching complex ideas through simple models. Dewey’s notion of the importance of

“handwork” was also prominently featured, such as when students practiced methods of

constructing precision “telescoping” paper tubes. Explicit attention was given to the

interrelated and cumulative nature of the experiments, both conceptually and


methodologically, as well as how these developments were part of a larger historical

scientific process.

One potential shortcoming of the rediscovery approach is that in the “redoing” of

earlier experiments, a known answer will result. This may reinforce the idea, held by

many students, that science is the study of things that are already known rather than the

exploration of questions that are yet unknown. If restricted to rediscovery, students will

be limited in terms of discovering things for themselves and asking unique and original

scientific questions. We believe, however, that a rediscovery model is foundational in

nature and provides students with basic tools and models for further exploration of the

natural world. Beginning with rediscovery does not impose a limit on the freedom of

students to explore and discover on their own. Following from Piaget, it can be argued

that beginning with rediscovery of fundamental science principles actually strengthens

the child’s ability to advance to more complex problem solving. Furthermore, the

rediscovery approach can encourage students to move beyond experiments to test

variations and extensions as part of a process of personal exploration and discovery.

More recently, we have attempted to refine this curricular model to maintain an

emphasis on the natural philosophy approach and reconstruction through rediscovery

while also considering how topics for rediscovery can be aligned with national and state

science standards (Buxton & Provenzo, 2007). The model is based on presenting triplets

of activities for each major science concept, as well as background material including

both historical and modern perspectives. It is still conceptualized as a supplementary

rather than a replacement curriculum. We do not believe that a curriculum based on

natural philosophy and historical examples of reconstruction through rediscovery is


viable as the complete science curriculum given the range of topics covered in most state

science standards. Instead, it is meant to provide teachers with a way to engage their

students in selected topics in a way that highlights the value of considering the history

and philosophy of science.

Our model subdivides the four main science disciplines of physics, chemistry,

biology and Earth/space science into between seven and nine key concepts each. For

example, the chemistry module is divided into the topics of: measurement in chemistry,

atoms & molecules, matter, bonding, temperature, pressure, and fuels. Each topic

contains a triad of activities. Each triad consists of a general discussion of the central

concept, with connections between current understandings of the concept and the key

historical work that led to the construction of this understanding. To use the example of

the topic of pressure from the chemistry module, the triad begins with examples of where

students encounter gas pressure in their daily lives.

Historical connections are then made through the activities as students reconstruct

through rediscovery Otto Von Guericke’s 17th century experiments with creating

vacuums (the “Magdeberg Sphere”), a burning candle experiment similar to Jacques

Charles’ experiments studying the gas law relationships, and Alexander the Great’s 4th

Century BC experiments using a diving bell modeled using a Cartesian diver..

Concluding questions for each triad push the learner toward making connections across

the three activities and to modern day applications of the key concepts. For example, on

the topic of color and vision, students construct a thaumatrope (“wonder-turner” in

Greek), a devise first designed by the early Nineteenth century scientist, John Ayrton

Paris, as part of his study of the physiology of the eye. He invented the thaumatrope to


demonstrate his theory that the retina literally took “snapshots” of images and transferred

them to the brain. The thaumatrope became more than a research instrument to study the

persistence of vision, however, as refinements and elaborations of this devise – the

phantascope followed by the zoetrope – led to the invention of the first motion picture

machines.

Thus, our model attempts to highlight what we find most compelling about the

work of early scientist/educators like Brewster, Joyce, Paris and Faraday – the idea that

natural philosophy is not just a set of activities, but also a way of viewing the world.

While this revised model of reconstruction through rediscovery may still be more limiting

than full open inquiry when it comes to students’ personal exploration and creativity, we

believe that gaining this historical basis actually provides a strong foundation for

students’ further creative pursuits with science inquiry. Indeed, many of the activities in

our model conclude with open-ended questions that direct students to create their own

scientific investigations on related and new topics.

Using the natural philosophy model of science education for teacher education

Explicit in the curricular model we have outlined above, is the belief that the

fundamental principles of science, as well as an understanding of their connected nature,

are readily accessible to both children and beginning teachers. Experiments that would

have required specially crafted tools in previous centuries can today be carried out with

the resources found in most hardware or grocery stores. By conducting rediscovery

experiments such as the ones described above, elementary or middle school children and

their teachers can come to see science in both its historical and modern context, while

building an understanding of the structures, functions, interactions and relationships of


natural objects and phenomena. The model of natural philosophy and reconstruction

through rediscovery pushes learners to see science as more than a loose collection of

standards and benchmarks, but rather as a set of interconnected principles with historical

roots for explaining phenomena observed and experienced in the natural world. In doing

so students are provided with the foundational knowledge that will allow them to become

more creative and engaged scientific inquirers and learners.

We have been using this model with our preservice elementary teachers during

their science methods course for the past two years, and have been collecting

observational data in our own classroom and in the preservice teachers’ field experience

classrooms, as well as through the teachers’ science reflection journals. While a more

systematic study of these preservice teachers’ evolving beliefs and practices regarding

science teaching will be forthcoming, preliminary and anecdotal results seem to indicate

that pre-service teachers in the course gain an increased understanding of science as a

process of discovery with historical roots and that they enjoy teaching the historical

experiments to the students in their field experience classes. One quote from a science

journal that led us to think that at least some preservice teachers were finding value in

this model was the following:

I used to think that science was just lasers and rockets and high-tech stuff.

I knew I didn’t understand it because I knew I didn’t know how any of

those things work. The science is all hidden in microchips and electronics.

But I learned that science can also be as simple as a burning candle. A lot

of what scientists know now comes from those historical experiments that

anyone can understand. When I made the wonder turner with the kids in


my field experience, they had a great time, they learned science and they

learned history. Ms. A [The classroom teacher] was very happy with the

lesson and so was I. (preservice teacher science journal 11/4/07)

While the curricular and pedagogical implications of Deweyan progressivism, and

Piagetian constructivism are not new to science education, this would seem to be a timely

historical moment to consider their collective potential to enhance both science teacher

education and science teaching in our elementary and middle school classrooms. We see

our argument as an important counterpoint to the growing influence of the standards and

accountability movement on curricular and instructional decision-making.

The influence of the standards movement and high stakes accountability

Our argument for a more historically rooted science education raises important

questions about the limitations of the current standards based curricular models being

promoted and implemented in the United States. While we are not opposed to standards

being set in the curriculum, nor to those standards being assessed in a systematic way, we

question the extent to which a rich epistemology of science, including both its cognitive

and cultural components, can be meaningfully assessed within the current curricular

paradigm.

We find particularly troubling the translation that typically results when the

national standards migrate to state and district-level implementation. So, for example,

while the national science education standards (NRC, 1996) dedicate five of eight

categories of content standards to topics other than traditional disciplinary content areas

(e.g., unifying concepts and processes in science, science as inquiry, science and

technology, science in personal and social perspectives, and history and nature of


science), at the state and local level, this focus is typically turned squarely back to

traditional disciplinary content knowledge, with all remaining topics lumped into a

handful of standards and benchmarks about “inquiry” and/or the “nature of science.”5

Mention of the history of science is typically absent. That these state standards then serve

as the frameworks for state assessments means that the foundational model of science

learning that we advocate has little likelihood – or means – of being adequately assessed

within the current implementation of the science standards in most U.S. schools. We

consider the case of several specific state science assessments.

In the case of Florida, for example, the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test

(FCAT) assesses students on eight different strands of science. Three of these focus on

the physical sciences, two on the life sciences, two on the earth and space sciences, and

one on the nature of science. However, the nature of science strand assesses only a

narrow set of ideas about inquiry, the control of scientific variables and basic

experimental design. The history of science, philosophical issues about the nature of

science and broader epistemological issues are absent.

Similar situations can be seen in states such as Texas and California, which along

with Florida and several other of the more populated states are well known to heavily

influence both the design and the adoption of textbooks for others states throughout the

country. In the case of Texas, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS)

assesses students on five science objectives: the nature of science; organization of living

systems; interdependence of organisms and the environment; structures and properties of

matter; and motion, force and energy. Similar to the case of Florida, the Texas

assessment of the nature of science objective is largely limited to formulating testable


hypotheses, making precise measurements, and organizing and evaluating data. Again,

the more foundational aspects of the history and nature of science are omitted from the

TAKS assessment. As curricula are revised to improve alignment with the assessment

measures, the spaces for even supplemental curricula that highlight natural philosophy

and reconstruction through rediscovery become increasingly constrained.

Indeed, assessments of the kind that have gained prominence in recent years are

hard-pressed to evaluate the types of learning that we feel are most important for gaining

scientific literacy. Lessons in science that focus on the structure, functions, interactions

and relationships of natural objects and phenomena, the cornerstone of what we believe

good science teaching should promote, may not transfer well to paper and pencil mass

scored assessments. They do not lend themselves to isolated assessment items, be they

multiple choice or constructed response. Rather, we believe that these instructional goals

are much better evaluated through performance assessments involving the application and

use of scientific tools and processes. Yet the costs, logistics and psychometric issues

involved in large-scale assessment conspire to make it extremely difficult to implement

such assessments on a large scale.

We note, however, that performance assessments are not unprecedented at the

state level. Colorado, for instance, implemented a statewide 4th grade performance

assessment on variables influencing the heights of bouncing balls for several years in the

late 1990’s. Similarly, Louisiana included performance components on its 5th and 8th

grade science assessments in the early 2000’s. These tasks included the assessment of

accurate use of various measurement tools, exploring and documenting the shapes of

magnetic field lines, and testing the capability of various circuits to light a bulb. While


none of these tasks, as they were designed and implemented, would be considered rich in

nature, history or philosophy of science, they do serve as proof of concept that it is

possible to include performance assessments as part of state-wide accountability testing.

The fact that both of these attempts were phased out after a few years, however, speaks to

the sizable challenges as well.

The assessment challenge to the model of teaching we propose is further

exacerbated by the growing instructional response to high-stakes accountability plans that

most states now have in place. As the policy consequences of students’ state-level

standardized test performance continue to mount for students (potential grade retention),

teachers (merit pay and/or public censure), schools (school grades), and districts

(modifications to state funding), the pressure on teachers and school-level administrators

continues to increase. Thus, it is no wonder that elementary and middle grade science

teachers, many of whom have weaknesses in their own science content knowledge (Abd-

El-Khalick, Bell, & Lederman,1998) may become more conservative in their science

instruction, spending more and more time on explicit test preparation and less and less

time on robust scientific discovery. For teachers in urban school settings with “at risk”

student populations, this tendency is likely to be even more pronounced (Lee, Maerten-

Rivera, Buxton, Penfield, & Secada, 2009).

As state-level high-stakes testing seems unlikely to lessen in importance in the

near future, we see teacher education (as well as the education of school-level

administrators) as the best way to promote more philosophically grounded science

teaching. Teachers must become convinced (to such a degree that they are willing to

place a “high stakes bet”) that a fundamentally different approach to science instruction,


such as the natural philosophy and reconstruction through rediscovery model that we

advocate, will provide their students with an understanding of science that will prepare

them at least as well for the state assessments as an instructional approach dominated by

explicit test preparation.

We recognize that it is one thing for us, as university educators, to advocate

historically based experiments and performance assessments (i.e., being able to recreate

and explain what happens in a vacuum patterned after Von Guericke’s 17th century

Magdeberg Sphere), and quite another thing to expect teachers to buck current

convention and teach scientific discovery using an interconnected series of explorations

grounded in a two hundred year old model of science. Still, for those of us who believe

that curricular and instructional models reflective of the natural philosophy of Bacon and

Newton, and the educational theories of Dewey and Piaget are more theoretically and

conceptually sound than the currently popular approaches, we have a certain ethical

responsibility as teacher educators. We must help elementary and middle grade science

teachers gain the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to resist theoretically

tenuous curricular trends and strive to implement science curricula rich in the foundations

of science.


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1 John Newbery is credited with inventing the field of children’s literature. While educational texts such as chapbooks and primers were widespread in Europe by the middle of the Eighteenth century, Newbery was the first to develop books that were specifically written for the education and entertainment of children. His 1744 title A Little Pretty Pocket Book is widely considered the first modern piece of children’s literature.

2 La Science Amusante - 100 Nouvelles Experiences by Tom Tit (Arthur Good) with illustrations by Poyet was first published in the French magazine L'Illustration and later released in 3 separate volumes between 1890 and 1893. 3 For a complete discussion of the curricular reforms of the post-Sputnik era, see Rudolph, J. L. (2002). Scientists in the classroom: The cold war reconstruction of American science education. New York: Palgave. 4 New curricula in science included work done by the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC Physics), the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS biology), and the Earth Sciences Curriculum Project (ESCP earth science) among others. New programs in mathematics included the University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics (UICSM), the School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG), and the University of Maryland Mathematics Project (UMMP). 5 See the state science standards for Florida (http://www.firn.edu/doe/curric/prek12/pdf/scigle3.pdf), Texas (http://www.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter112/ch112a.html#112.7), and Virginia (http://www.pen.k12.va.us/VDOE/Superintendent/Sols/science5.pdf) for typical examples.

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