Ted Schultz
About the Author. The author
received a Bachelor of Engineering Physics from
Cornell University and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics
from M.I.T. In his career as a scientist, he worked
as a theoretical condensed-matter physicist at the
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center and was elected
a Fellow of the American Physical Society. During
this period, he also taught at New York University
and the University of Munich. His more recent career
in science education started at the National Science
Resources Center in Washington, DC and has continued
in projects concerned with the involvement of
scientists with science education at both the
National Research Council and the American Physical
Society.
Introduction. As a theoretical physicist who
now devotes full time to trying to involve scientists in
science education, especially in the elementary grades, I
have found that the world of education is very different
from the world of physics, and probably from the world of
science or engineering. The environment and challenges in
the two worlds are entirely different. So are the
vocabulary and even the sociology. But, surprisingly,
there are also a few ideas in elementary education reform
that are more natural for physicists than for educators.
Any scientist (or engineer) working in both worlds or
wishing to make a transition from one to the other, will
have to learn about the differences. From the
"constructivist" point of view, of which
science educators are so fond, the scientist making this
transition must construct his or her own understanding of
these differences. These observations presented here are
offered to help that process along.
Any educator who is involved in a partnership or
collaboration with scientists may also find these
observations useful. Coming to understand some of these
differences, if done the hard way, could otherwise be a
slower and more painful process.
1. Complexity. The educational system is far more
complex than are physical systems. This is true for a
number of reasons:
The educational system has many organizational levels
(classroom, school, school district, state, nation) and
each has its own administrative structure (teacher;
principal; science specialist or curriculum coordinator,
superintendent, and school board; state department of
education; and U.S. Department of Education).
Furthermore, the parts of the system at different levels
interact so strongly that it is difficult if not
impossible to ignore those interactions. Physical systems
may also have several organizational levels (elementary
particles; nuclei; atoms and/or electrons; molecules;
gases/plasmas/liquids/solids; macroscopic objects;
electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields; Earth, the
solar system, stars, and systems of stars; etc.), but it
is usually possible to focus on one or two of these
levels and ignore the rest in any single investigation.
The educational system also has numerous side branches
that play important roles (e.g. teacher training
institutions and departments; science departments at
colleges and universities; educational research
organizations; educational testing organizations;
educational materials developers and publishers;
educational advocacy organizations devoted to a wide and
often conflicting range of issues; and funding
organizations). Physical systems also have side branches
(e.g. the measuring apparatus, stray electric and
magnetic fields, the environment as a source of heat,
etc.), but they are much fewer and their effects are
easier to determine and control in precise ways. [This is
not to say that physicists don't have to involve
themselves with public concerns, political personalities
and organizations, and funding organizations, but for
most purposes, this is an ancillary activity, not
"doing physics".]
The "elementary particles" of the
educational system are highly varied, often
uncharacterizable, and usually unpredictable: people. By
comparison, the elementary particles in physics, although
mathematically difficult to describe, are by comparison
far simpler and in a certain sense, completely
predictable.
Participating subsystems in education work at more
than one logical level. Teachers, for example, not only
teach children, are taught by science educators, and are
managed by school administrators, but they also join
professional societies and unions, form advocacy groups,
serve on assessment panels, etc. Electrons, by contrast,
respond to a field in a definite way and don't, at the
same time, stand back, observe, and fold into that
response how they think the field wants them to respond
and what they want the field to get out of the
interaction.
In the educational system, there are many different
kinds of school districts. For example, there are
big-city districts, suburban districts, and rural
districts; there are rich and poor districts; there are
districts coinciding with all kinds of political
subdivisions like a state (Hawaii), counties, cities, and
townships, and there are school districts that are
coterminous with no other political entity; and there are
districts with a wide range of degrees of local autonomy
from centrally administered districts to those with
"site-based management."
The educational system also has many conflicting
stakeholders: pupils, parents, teachers, school
administrators, school boards, state departments of
education, national administrators, advocates and
lobbyists, higher-level educational institutions,
teachers of education, educational researchers, and
politicians at all levels. Physical systems don't have
stakeholders (until electrons develop a will of their
own). The world of physics has stakeholders, but their
variety is much less, and so is the contention among
them.
In education, there are no sharp reliable rules, much
less laws, that characterize the behavior of any of these
subsystems or their interactions. In physical systems
most of the rules are known and the systems are, in
principle if not in practice, predictable.
The educational system is very large, and because of
its great inhomogeneity, seems much larger still. It has
51 "state" jurisdictions, 16,000 school
districts, 100,000 elementary schools, 1,400,000
elementary school teachers (most of whom have had little
education in science, almost none of which was the kind
we would hope they'd imitate in their own teaching), and
about 24,000,000 elementary school pupils. Typical
physical systems have of the order of 1023 particles,
which is far larger than any for the educational system,
but the number of different kinds of particles is small
(e.g. electrons and nuclei) and particles of like kind
obey identical laws.
2. Measurability and Predictability. In education,
nothing approaches being as measurable or as predictable
as in science. This has enormous consequences.
In physics, the relevant quantities, like energy,
mass, length, time, and charge, are all measurable, some
with great precision. In science education, the most
interesting quantities like the knowledge of science,
ability to do science, outcomes of education, ability of
teachers to teach science, etc. can be
"assessed" (the jargon word) only very crudely.
In physics, the effects of the interactions among
particles or among more complex systems are often
predictable, sometimes with surprising precision. This
breeds confidence that sometimes borders on arrogance. In
science education, by contrast, the results of teaching
in a certain way, or using certain instructional
material, or instituting a certain educational program,
are predictable only crudely, if at all. The inability in
education to say with confidence that this is better than
that, and certainly to say by how much, leads, I think,
to insecurity, defensiveness, proofs by handwaving, and
political maneuvering on a scale that is totally foreign
to physicists.
Physicists are constantly disagreeing and questioning;
tell a physicist you've discovered something and he
(there are very few she's) immediately tries to
find the counterexample. The arguments get rather hot,
but the end result is usually a defensible conclusion, or
at least an agreed strategy to test different proposals.
Among educators, because defending conclusions is much
more difficult, disagreement and questioning are seen as
more personal and threatening, so educators avoid
confrontation and are usually both friendly and caring.
Differences, if resolved at all, are often resolved by
appeals to authority.
While there are fashions in physics, they are usually
fashions of what is considered interesting, not of what
is believed to be true. Our understanding of the physical
world progresses in one direction; rarely do we revert to
a position held and abandoned long before. In education,
where what is "true" is much harder to agree on
and even harder to measure, fashions are much more
common, and old views do return.
3. Immediate Answers vs. Many-year Waits. In
physics, the interesting results of an experiment usually
occur within days, sometimes within microseconds; in
education, the ultimate effects may not occur for many
years. This difference makes meaningful experiments
in education far more difficult. One wants to know not
only the effect of instruction on the student's
understanding of science and his/her development of
scientific skills and habits of thinking each day, by the
end of the module, and how this exposure affects the
student's choices and behaviors in middle school, high
school, college, and beyond. These are all important
effects, and all essentially unmeasurable.
4. Inanimates vs. Humans. Physicists deal with
particles and fields; science educators deal with human
beings. As a result of this difference, feelings play
little if any role in what physicists do and a very
important role in what science educators do (and don't
do). When I first entered the world of science education,
I was astounded at the number of greeting cards, gifts,
and celebrations of personal events (not to mention baby
showers!). In the world of physicists, only weddings,
deaths, the commemoration of major work anniversaries,
and the winning of major prizes receive that kind of
attention. Not only what is celebrated but what is said
and what underlies entire attitudes reflect this
difference. Physicists "tell", and the feelings
of the person being told are usually ignored. Educators
"share", and the feelings of the person with
whom one is sharing are in the forefront.
5. Substance vs. Mode. For physicists, what they
communicate is far more important than how they
communicate it; for science educators, it is almost the
reverse. The differences are seen in the way they
communicate and the extent to which they evaluate their
communication processes.
For physicists, their discoveries are almost all that
matters. Papers are often badly written; talks at
meetings are often compressions from what should take 3
hours into 10 minutes; and the pervasive attitude in oral
presentations is "here it is, come and get it".
Some real care may be taken by some physicists, some of
the time (e.g. in writing review papers and books), but
little is expended on how research results are first
communicated.
For science educators, how they communicate (which is
really a form of education) is extremely important. At a
conference, reading a paper, with its carefully crafted
prose and many well-turned phrases, is common, whereas
physicists almost never read from a prepared text. Also,
educators' concern about communication extends well
beyond the preparation of presentations. At almost every
kind of event, evaluation sheets may be distributed,
something that occasions no surprise and that even seems
expected. If a physicist were to hand out evaluation
sheets after a seminar, colloquium, workshop, or
conference, it would shock the other physicists beyond
belief.
6. Children's Brains are Different. The brains of
children, with which educators have to deal, are
significantly different from those of adults, with which
physicists are used to dealing.
The education of children must be "age
appropriate." There are certain things that a
developing brain simply can not do (for example, at a
certain age, little children have little notion of either
space or time). What is age appropriate at each age level
is something a teacher needs to know, but it's a notion
that physicists implicitly ignore. In fact, physicists
think if they explain something slowly and clearly
enough, it can be understood by anyone. Educators know
better.
The education of children should be more concrete,
less abstract. Educators know that children are not only
more comfortable dealing with the concrete, but are even
unable to deal with the abstract, especially below
roughly the age of eight. Adults are quite different, so
for many physicists, the more abstract the better!
7. Questions and Answers. For physicists, asking
the right question is most important; for
elementary-school teachers, having the right answer often
is.
This statement is of course an oversimplification, but
there's more truth than might first appear. For the
research physicist, good questions are the crux of the
enterprise. Research is a continual quest. The answers,
when found, are certainly interesting, especially when
they allow the quest to go on, and they are what gets
published. But it is the unknown, not the known, that is
most intriguing. For many science teachers, questions are
threatening, especially if from students. It is answers
that make them most comfortable and that they are used to
dispensing. This is not to say that physicists, when
asked a question by almost anyone, don't just dump a lot
of facts; they usually do. Or that undergraduate science
education is inquiry-centered; it usually isn't. But it's
changing, because many physicists know that they do their
best teaching when they are working together with their
graduate students, near the frontier where they
themselves don't know the answers.
This difference has important implications for the
nature of experiments and the nature of inquiry-centered
teaching. Experiments should provide answers to
unanswered questions, not simply confirmation of known
results. Physicists know this, although they often ignore
it in educating undergraduates. For traditional teachers,
for whom experiments, when they occur, are often just
demonstrations and are rarely to answer questions, this
principle is novel, and was almost certainly not followed
in their own science education. Thus, for physicists,
inquiry is natural, at least when they are in their
research mode. For teachers, inquiry is unnatural. Given
how hard it probably was for the physicist to learn to be
a true inquirer, it is not surprising how difficult it is
for the teacher who is trying to learn to teach children
in an inquiry-centered way.
8. Collaboration vs. Solos Performances. For
physicists, research is usually collaborative; for
teachers, teaching is usually a solo performance.
For physicists, research is most often collaborative
if only because it is synergistic; an obstacle that is
impenetrable for one member of a team, is easily hurdled
by another. The give and take among a few theorists
gathered around a blackboard for several days, arguing,
suggesting, trying, rejecting, conjecturing ... that's
the way much if not most theoretical science is done. And
the apportionment of responsibilities by expertise is
standard in many branches of experimental science. In a
recent issue of a preeminent physics journal The
Physical Review B, 95% of the papers have more than
one author, and the joint authors are usually close
collaborators at a single research institution. Also, the
collaboration among physicists is not just within the
same discipline and at the same institution.
Interdisciplinary teams are becoming more numerous, and
inter-institutional interactions, even collaborations,
among physicists, who were among the earliest users of
the Internet, have led to both the automated electronic
exchange of preprints and more recently to the invention
of the World Wide Web.
For teachers, the time, flexibility, and
administrative support needed to make real collaboration
the norm are all scarce. Their schedules are tight and
non-meshing; they often have neither Internet access nor
even a telephone; and financial support for attending
meetings or even observing other colleagues is usually
not there. There is an increasing recognition of the need
of teachers to collaborate but, to a large extent,
teachers are isolated; what they give are solo
performances. To me as a physicist, this was one of my
biggest shocks when I first became exposed to the
education world.
9. Collaboration among Students -- also to be
encouraged.
Physicists know from much experience that effective
collaboration while efficient is not easy to learn. To
us, the idea of encouraging it among children is obvious
and natural: the sooner we encourage it rather than
inhibit it, the better. In the traditional education of
children, where it has been thought important to be able
to evaluate each pupil individually, collaboration among
children has been discouraged, and sometimes even
punished, although that, too, is changing.
10. World Stage vs. Single Classroom. Physicists
and educators perform on different-sized stages.
Not unrelated to their very different opportunities to
collaborate is the very different stages on which
physicists and educators "perform". Physicists
who are able to publish the results of their research
perform on a world stage. What they publish in an
American journal (or even more, the preprint they
circulate electronically from a server in Los Alamos or
Trieste) is read by other physicists in Moscow, Madras,
Madrid, and Minneapolis (not to mention Marseilles,
Manchester, Munich, and Montevideo). It will be discussed
at national conferences in a few months, and perhaps at
international conferences not long after. Real
collaborations will start among people who have never
even met one another.
For the school teacher, a discovery may never go
beyond her/his own classroom, certainly not beyond
his/her school. If there are 10,000 teachers attending
the annual meeting of the National Science Teachers
Association, there are at least 1.4 million teachers who
are not there, most of whom are not even members of the
NSTA and will never be at such a meeting.
This incredible difference between the stages on which
physicists and teachers perform and a host of different
attitudes it fosters should not be ignored.
11. Teamwork vs. Hierarchy. The leader as coach, or
even colleague, rather than as a didact, is as natural to
physicists as it is foreign to many teachers.
For scientists or engineers, the leader of a research
group or team is often like a playing coach. It is in
this position that he/she gets the best feel for what the
research program is doing and the best opportunity to
make his/her own scientific contribution. This
cooperation is also a great leveler, strongly opposing
any tendencies toward a hierarchical structure.
For teachers, to lead is to be out in front, set the
agenda, determine what is taught and how, provide the
necessary information and even materials. In this sense,
some teachers do lead, but more often they are led, these
decisions are made for them. The result is a hierarchical
structure that pervades much of education and that can be
very inhibiting to teachers' initiative and creativity.
12. Reinventing Wheels -- physicists avoid trying
to; teachers often don't.
Physicists, perhaps because they are practitioners of
the most fundamental of the sciences, are notorious for
trying to reinvent wheels -- new and more interesting
wheels, perhaps, but wheels just the same. But even they
know that their science is part of a mammoth structure,
and that there is too much to do in the future to be
reinventing or rederiving what was done in the past. They
pay a great deal of attention to much of what has been
done.
Some educators know this, too. But many others spend
summers "developing curriculum" and many
subsequent years faithfully using the results of their
efforts. It becomes a sign of "ownership,"
"individuality," "self-empowerment."
Yet there are instructional modules that have involved
many of the best minds, drawn on the latest cognitive
research, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,
whose existence is often ignored in favor of the home
grown, almost as a matter of principle.
13. Teachers' Professional Development. Physicists,
teachers, and the National Science Education Standards
have three quite different views.
The physicists' view of what elementary-school
teachers are is usually based on a few images from their
own youth or from their children's teachers of previous
years. These images, snapshots in time, give no sense of
how teachers grow over the years. In this view, teachers
just are, they don't become.
The teacher's view is that his or her growth comes
from experience, inservice courses, summer institutes,
advanced credits, and trying harder to get better
... until burnout. A teacher picks up many things from
many places, but how they are used is strictly pragmatic:
try them, and if they work, use them, somehow. In this
view, research journals, whether on cognitive
development, how children learn, or the effects of
different instructional strategies, are for another
community, the research community, not for the practicing
day-to-day teacher. This is reminiscent of how medical
doctors functioned at the turn of the century, when the
science of medicine was still primitive, but it certainly
troubles the physicist, who wants to see the latest
discoveries and understandings always being applied.
Deep in the Professional Development chapter of the National
Science Education Standards is Professional
Development Standard C (p. 68), which articulates the
view that teachers should be lifelong learners who use
many of the processes of science in improving their own
teaching, both individually and collaboratively. These
processes include observation, reflection and analysis,
using new tools and techniques, and paying close
attention to research. For maximum growth, the Standard
asks that teachers should learn to think scientifically,
and use this ability to think about (and improve) their
own teaching; the teacher should become a scientist about
science education. To physicists, needless to say, this
is a very appealing notion.
In Conclusion. Physicists (and other
scientists, engineers, and other technical professionals)
can make important contributions to science education in
many ways. But to do so, they must enter a very different
culture. To make their involvement useful in any real
sense, they must understand the underlying features of
that culture and not assume that those features are
similar to those of their own. Educators will say that
physicists will understand this only when they have
constructed the understanding for themselves. These
observations are offered as a set of pointers to aid this
constructivist process.
