Experience and degrees are not as important in the classroom as mastery and understanding of science and mathematics and as good old common sense
In a renovated warehouse in a tired-looking area of Troy, New York, 25-year-old Cathy Bellucci captivates 27 fifth-graders. They sing, stomp their feet, clap their hands and wave their hands. The enthusiasm is much greater than expected in a calculus class that deals with ratios and fractions. The students try to solve a word problem together that deals with a fictional basketball team whose win-loss ratio is 3:9. What is the relative share of the losses out of all the games played by the team? Bellucci involves each and every student as she lays out the solution process in front of the class ("What needs to be done first?"). When the class comes to this fraction: wins plus losses divided by losses, that is (9 + 3) / 3, she prompts the students to reduce it. "Good, who knows what MGBV is?" she asks and means the greatest common divisor. She rotates among the students and extracts from them the parts of the solution. The students do not take their eyes off her; They know she will ask them for answers even if they don't vote. "I see so many lights go on and so much diligence," she says. If the answer comes easily, she will go one step further with that student and ask about the how and why behind his answer. The bell rings, and when the children leave the classroom in a line for lunch, each of them presents Baluchi with an "exit certificate": solutions to two problems that demonstrate the main things learned in the lesson. Bellucci will look over these confirmations carefully to know if the class has learned well what they were supposed to learn today.
The unique public school (charter school) where Bellucci teaches is one of the best schools in New York state, even though most of its students come from low-income families. In 2011, the school's second year, 74% of fifth graders met the proficiency requirements on the New York State math test, compared to a national average of 66% among all fifth graders. And it's impressive: after two years at school, 100% of the XNUMXth graders meet them. What is the secret of the school's success? Doug LaMove, chairman of the Uncommon Schools chain, to which the school in Troy belongs, answers without hesitation: excellent teachers who have received good training, like Catherine Bellucci.
In recent years, studies have been piling up that show that a good teacher is the most important factor, indisputably, for improving the achievements of students in all subjects of study. A good teacher is more important than socio-economic background, the size of the class, the curriculum and the level of education of the student's parents. Eric Hanushek of Stanford University showed in his research that students of highly effective teachers achieve three times better academic achievements than students of less competent teachers, regardless of the students' demographic background. This is exactly the problem with math and science studies: there are not enough teachers like Bellucci. The dropout rate of teachers is high, and the education system rewards the teachers who do belong to it according to wrong criteria.
In the US this crisis is not being ignored. Not since 1957, when the Russians launched the Sputnik satellite into space, have American policy makers, educators and business people been as focused on improving math and science education as they are today. The depression in the United States economy spurred them to act, as well as the growing competition from China, whose students reach the highest achievements in international tests. Top decision-makers, including President Obama himself, see the decline in American student achievement in science and math as a serious threat to its future competitiveness. According to the results of two national tests published in 2012, only 32% of 35th grade students in the US reach a proficiency level in science, and 2010% in math. In 100,000, Shanghai students were ranked first in mathematics and science in the international PISA test to assess student achievement, while the American students were ranked exactly in the middle. To help narrow this gap, President Obama has proposed injecting the American education system with a fresh dose of talent. The prescription he proposed was to prioritize the training of 2020 effective math and science teachers by 50 and to raise the standard of education in all 2011 states of the United States. "Maintaining that the U.S. continues to lead in research and technological development is essential to America's success," the president said in his XNUMX address to the nation, "but if we want to win the future, if we want innovation to lead to the creation of jobs in the U.S. and not overseas, then we must To win also in the race for children's education."
Indeed, at the initiative of the White House, it seems that the USA is launching a national experiment to encourage more effective teaching of mathematics and science. The studies repeatedly show that many of the things we thought we knew about the training of teachers and their compensation are not true. According to popular opinion, for example, Bellucci is not supposed to be even half as effective as it actually is. She arrived at the school where she teaches with no experience teaching in front of a class and she does not have a master's degree in education. But what she does have, and the research shows that this is the more important thing, is a good command of the subject she teaches: she has a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics, and she did calculations at the engineering company where she worked before she converted to teaching.
However, in most districts of public education, salary increases and retirement benefits depend on experience and advanced degrees in education. To be sure, the cumulative number of hours taught by a teacher is not the effective measure for predicting the achievements of his students as many experts assumed. A new teacher's skills usually develop over a few years after starting, but then they remain more or less at a constant level. There is no noticeable difference between the achievements of students to very senior teachers and the achievements of students to teachers with three years of experience, such as Bellucci. Also, there is no correlation between advanced degrees and the quality of teaching. The data analysts speculate that the reason for this is that 90% of the advanced degrees of the teachers are qualified degrees in general education, and not advanced degrees in the subjects of study themselves. In contrast, some studies show that student teachers with advanced degrees in mathematics achieve better results in this subject.
"Completely confused system"
Enacting the changes was not easy. Since 2001, with the implementation of the reform initiated by the previous president, George W. Bush, with the slogan "leave no child behind", the American government has been encouraging the states to employ teachers with academic degrees in the subjects they teach. However, even in 2008, only 25% of math and science teachers held a bachelor's degree or higher from a scientific or mathematical department of a higher education institution. One of the reasons for this is the high dropout rate of teachers. Every year about 25,000 out of 477,000 math and science teachers leave the profession, and about two-thirds of them state that the reason for this is dissatisfaction with the work. To fill the gap, each country developed its own regulations and rules for the "alternative" or "urgent" employment of teachers, some of whom undergo excellent training and some of whom do not. Kate Walsh, president of the "American National Council for Teacher Quality", says: "It's a completely confused system. The best way to sum up the teacher training programs in the USA is 'anything goes'".
In general, the threshold requirements for obtaining a teaching certificate differ greatly from country to country. In ambitious states, such as Massachusetts for example, those who want to become an elementary school teacher are required to take rigorous math classes and achieve good grades in difficult exams that test in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. In other states, such as Arkansas and Nevada, the future teachers are only required to repeat the things they learned in high school or take a course whose main purpose is to ease their anxiety about math and not to improve their mastery of it, according to the "National Council for Teacher Quality".
This training is dwarfed by the training provided in countries whose achievements are better than the USA. A 2007 study examining applicants for elementary and middle school math in 16 different countries found that future American teachers knew less than their counterparts in those countries. Almost all future middle school teachers in Singapore, Germany, Taiwan and Korea took courses in linear algebra and basic differential and integral calculus, while only about half of the future teachers in America took these basic courses. When the teachers' knowledge of algebra was tested, the Americans ranked last. One of the reasons for this is that there is no agreement on the question of what a good teacher training program for calculus or any other subject should include. "Some of the [American teachers' colleges] are not among the best in the world," says William Schmitt of the University of Michigan, who conducted the American part of the survey. "But some of them are more like the colleges in Botswana. Our range is so wide."
Equally troubling was the finding that the teacher education programs whose trainees received the lowest scores on the math knowledge tests were usually the programs of large public universities, that is, the programs that train the largest number of teachers. "The bottom quartile of the grade distribution, which includes the colleges whose graduates are weak in math, trained more than half of the future math teachers in middle schools," says Schmitt. "Every country should close these institutions that do a really bad job."
The road to reform
But there is room for optimism. There are countries that put ambitious reforms on the agenda, and these are aided by respectable training programs that are gradually increasing their scope through funds flowing to them from commercial companies and non-profits. In recent years, the best calculus teachers in Louisiana, a state that is in the midst of a thorough overhaul of teacher training, all came from a very high-quality national program called Teach for America. The program recruits the best graduates of the best colleges in the USA. As part of the program, they undertake to teach for two years in schools where it is difficult to attract teachers. The teachers recruited by the program scored better in math on college entrance exams than most other teachers, and there is data showing a correlation between good grades and teacher effectiveness, says Jean Burns, who is in charge of teacher training initiatives at the Louisiana State Department of Education. Program data show improvement in student science achievement in schools in Tennessee and North Carolina, similar to Louisiana. Until now, only about a third of the program's participants have specialized in science and mathematics, but this is about to change. In February 2012, the organization pledged to recruit 11,000 new math and science teachers by 2015, to teach in the 31 countries the organization serves. The problem is that many of the recruits of the program retire from teaching after only a few years.
An example and model for successful teacher training is UTeach, an innovative training program created at the University of Texas at Austin in the late 90s. Its goal is to train more science and math teachers with in-depth knowledge of teaching topics. The method used by the program is to offer first-year students in the appropriate classes two full semester teaching workshops for free, full of instructors and tutors. About 82% of the program's graduates are still teaching five years after graduating. The leaders of the program attribute this high rate to the fact that the trainees spend many hours in real classrooms from the first moment, "so they can decide whether they like teaching or not," explains Marie Ann Rankin, former dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, who helped launch the plan. "There are those who are tempted by it after having a really enjoyable experience and seeing how much satisfaction can be found in it." At the end of four years, the trainees of the program receive a bachelor's degree in one of the fields of science or mathematics with all the necessary courses to obtain a teaching certificate.
The UTeach program was recognized by the US National Research Council (NRC) and many other bodies, and attracted enough funding from non-profits and commercial companies, which allowed it to be expanded. In the last three years, the number of higher education institutions that offer the program has tripled, and today it is conducted in 30 institutions spread across 14 countries. (Most institutions coin their own version of the sophisticated name of the program: at the University of Kansas, for example, it is called UKan-Teach [the sound of the program's name is similar to the words "you are able to teach", and the initials UKan are also the initials of the university - the editors.]) Meanwhile Rankin, who was appointed last year as president and CEO of the "National Initiative for the Advancement of Mathematics and Science", pledged to add and expand the scope of the program. It aims for the program to train 4,000 science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) teachers by 2015.
Other training programs have been successful because they recruited experienced science and math professionals later in their professional lives. The "New Teacher Project" (TNTP) focuses on people in their 20s and 30s who "made a mistake in choosing their career at the beginning" and the price of giving up other opportunities that involves converting to teaching is still low for them, says Tim Daly, the president of the project. The program, an alternative training institution founded by Michelle Rhee while she was in charge of schools in the city of Washington, D.C., offers free training to its members, who also pursue a subsidized master's degree in education while working as a teacher. All the math and science teachers trained by the program have a strong background in their subjects, like Bellucci.
"We used to think there were a lot of people willing to quit their jobs and go back to school to teach. And we even thought they would take out a loan to pay for their graduate studies and become teachers, all so they could earn pennies at the end of the day. It almost never happens," says Daly. "In our opinion, the ideal age for recruiting teachers is between 25 and 35. They started their careers only a few years ago, and they have qualifications in science and mathematics and a desire to engage in teaching as a lifelong occupation rather than as an experience for a limited period of time. These are people who are talented in these fields and have a high motivation, a task-oriented approach, and a desire to teach in schools that desperately need them."
Programs such as TNTP and Teach for America are criticized by advocates for teacher training in dedicated colleges, due to the concentrated nature of the training these programs provide. Even so, alternative training programs that recruit people with in-depth knowledge of the content of the subjects they teach are a necessary component in the solution to the teaching of science, technology and mathematics subjects, says Dailey. "If we don't offer an alternative certification, will anyone volunteer for it?" he asks. "I claim that the answer is negative. No one will take on financial difficulties in the middle of their career, with the mortgage and family support on their heads, in order to return to the classroom to become a teacher. The number of people who would want to do such a thing is zero."
Learn from teaching stars
While the educators and researchers are looking into the best ways to attract people to teaching and train them, they are also formulating the right format to keep them in the profession. Matthew J. Springer, a senior lecturer in public policy and education at Vanderbilt University, says pay is probably less of a motivator than you might think. According to him, "there are only a handful of systematic studies dealing with programs that increase pay according to the teacher's skills, and the number of ways in which such a program can be outlined is enormous. We only tested a few models.” But, a survey conducted by the US Department of Education found that it is twice as difficult to find a good math or science teacher as it is to find a good general teacher for an elementary school. In his opinion, "one can conclude that this is due to the fact that there is no competitive economic reward for this." What is becoming increasingly clear is that there is a good match between excellent training and job satisfaction. Julia Toews, director in Tucson, Arizona of a public school in the BASIS network where 700 students study and it is ranked in one of the first places in the USA in terms of student achievement in math and science. The school combines competitive pay, continuous professional development and regular feedback to keep its employees motivated. The teachers at the school usually come from academia: master's or third degree students and postdoctoral students who have decided that they enjoy teaching more than researching.
Toews is quick to point out that an advanced degree in one of the fields of science or mathematics does not guarantee a position at a school. "Every teacher [candidate] has to give an example lesson, and I get one out of five," she says. After a candidate has been hired, the school provides him with ongoing opportunities for professional development and regular feedback on his performance, and pays him a higher salary than the teachers in the public and private schools in the area. And the results are good, "the teachers get extensive authority and freedom of action and creativity," Toews says. "We make people want to stay."
Doug LaMove of the Uncommon Schools chain agrees that inadequate training may be the reason for the early retirement of many teachers. "Who doesn't know many people who were teachers and are now real estate agents?" He says. "Without proper training, they are not successful. When a person decides to teach, he knows he won't get paid well, but he thinks he will make an impact. If he retires, it's because he couldn't make an impact. The truth is that it is one of the most difficult occupations there is. We must equip those involved in it with better tools."
What are those tools? That is, what are the techniques that "prepare" the students and "inspire them", to use the words of the White House? There are not many studies that have reached definitive conclusions, especially regarding the teaching of science, write the authors of a report that dealt with teacher training issued by the NRC in 2010. Experts agree that students need a mixture of factual knowledge, opportunities to experience scientific research, and an understanding of the "essence of science," that is, how scientists gather new information and interpret it. There is more data about learning mathematics. Students should also memorize facts such as the multiplication table and think deeply about things before they can access higher mathematics. Also, there is "some evidence" that supports joint learning in small groups combined with individual assessment of each student to build a personal teaching system. But the agreement regarding the material to be taught is wider than the agreement regarding the manner in which it should be taught.
Attempts are already being made to change the face of things. Deborah L. Ball, dean of the University of Michigan's School of Education, has devoted more than a decade to identifying the exact skills a new teacher needs before he or she first steps into the classroom. The program she participated in establishing, "Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching", seeks to teach beginning teachers how to correctly identify the reasons for confusion in a student, maintain attention in the classroom and put together a work set that includes, for example, a variety of methods for teaching fractions. Her direct experience in teaching and years of research, Ball says, have convinced her that it is a "big mistake" to assume that good teaching is "intuitive".
The chances of a teacher who received a good grade in the "mathematical knowledge for teaching" program to bring success to his students are higher than the chances of a teacher who received a good grade in a regular math test, says Paul Cobb of Vanderbilt University, who teaches teaching students and experienced teachers who wish to specialize in the program's teaching strategies. Cobb and his colleague Cara Jackson of McGill University noticed a sharp improvement in the quality of learning in students of veteran teachers after they learned to use these techniques. But he admits that the classes were small, 12 to 15 students, and the process took more than a year. The challenge now is to understand how to expand the scope of training. "We know there are excellent schools," Cobb says. "We want to create excellent districts".
LaMove also identified 49 techniques that he says "distinguish a great teacher from a good teacher." He watched "teaching stars" for years and reduced what he saw to concrete, imitable qualities that made them so good. Initially, LaMove and his team concentrated on ways to optimize the teaching of reading, and how they could be applied to the teaching of arithmetic and science and to train teachers such as Catherine Bellucci. Among the principles the team has identified so far: not giving up on the students (returning to the student who initially gave an incorrect answer and making sure he understands the correct answer) and "normalizing" the mistake (showing the students that getting a wrong result before arriving at the correct answer is normal).
Aspire to the top
As the debate continues over the best ways to upgrade math and science teacher training nationwide, the Obama administration and the US Treasury Department have pledged to add and advance science, technology and math education. The administration's "Race to the Top" program (a series of national competitions that add billions of dollars in federal aid to states that offer the most ambitious education reforms) that urges states in the US to fundamentally change their teacher evaluation procedures and facilitated the opening of unique schools such as schools in the BASIS networks and Uncommon Schools and the employment of teachers trained in alternative training (such as Teach for America and TNTP). These competitions encourage the countries to recruit more science, technology and mathematics teachers with a good fundamental command of the subjects of study and to link student achievement with educational reforms in schools. Funds from the program to stimulate the American economy are even given to schools that modernize their science laboratories, and the federal government also finances scholarship programs to train outstanding graduates in mathematics and science to teach at universities. And yet the administration knows it has to do a lot more.
This is one of the reasons that government officials are working jointly with the "Carnegie Corporation" association from New York State on the 100Kin10 project. In 2011, they managed to harness more than 100 government institutions, businesses and non-profits and raised 24 million dollars in the first round of fundraising from entities such as "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation", "Google", and "Michel and Susan Dell Foundation". They assure donors that the funds will be invested exclusively in teacher training programs that have been tested and approved by researchers from the University of Chicago and their effectiveness has been proven. (In the meantime, UTeach and Teach for America are among the several dozen programs that have received the "green light" to receive the support, such as programs from California State University, Arizona State University, Michigan State University, Boston College and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellows Foundation.)
There is no doubt that this goal is resonating, and those striving for it are confident that this time we will see real progress. "We know that this is necessary and possible, and we also know that it is still not enough and that it does not reach enough children," says Talia Milgrom-Alcott, who directs the initiatives for training science, technology and mathematics teachers at the Carnegie Association. "We can do this if we activate enough people across the US and get them to decide to join us and bring their resources, their knowledge and their local expertise. We can work together to achieve the goal."
Although there is still a lot of work to be done, there is no disputing the importance of the move.
on the notebook
Pat Wingert is a veteran Newsweek education reporter. She recently completed a year as a Spencer Fellow in Education Journalism at Columbia University, where she researched reforms in calculus and science education. She lives in Washington.
in brief
The economic crisis in the USA and the strengthening of China's competitiveness are renewing the interest in the USA in mathematics and science education and in ways to improve the training programs for the teachers of these subjects in schools.
Studies show that student teachers with degrees in math and science achieve better grades in these subjects, but in the US there are few math and science teachers who hold a degree in the subject they teach.
Teachers with degrees in math or science are really expensive, but experimental programs and unique schools are trying to improve the recruitment of talented teachers and keep them in the profession.
The educators are also beginning to understand which techniques are the most effective, in practice, such as lessons that include student experiments, presenting questions to the student in an unexpected way and reducing the fear of mistakes.
The future teachers are not so ready to inspire
Americans completing their training in middle school mathematics know much less geometry, algebra and number theory (a field that includes fractions and decimal fractions) than their counterparts in Taiwan and Singapore. Their pedagogical education is also less: they know less about how students learn arithmetic and what are the best ways to teach mathematics.
New ideas - why you should bring science into the home / John D. Miller
True, schooling is important, but parents who encourage their children to do math and science are five times more likely to raise the next Mark Zuckerberg or Mae Jemison.
Parents are the essential basis of scientific literacy. The importance parents attach to science is reflected in the toys and books they choose, in visits to zoos and museums, and in their own curiosity about the world around us. And parents' knowledge and interests have a profound effect on their children. Data from the most recent survey that examined the American youth, in which my colleagues and I followed 4,000 subjects of the X generation since 1987, show that 40% of the children whose parents actively encouraged them to engage in mathematics and science, did intend to study science, technology , engineering, mathematics or medicine at university, compared to only 8% of the children who did not receive such encouragement.
From another angle, it can be said that children of parents who are not interested in science are at a distinct disadvantage. The leaders of the educational institutions and the state must find ways to help all parents, both parents who studied music in high school and those who did not go to college, to interest their children in science and technology issues (see opposite page).
They can start by supporting and promoting community programs that are already doing this. Museums and community groups across America have adopted the "Mathematics for the Family" program, which originates from the Lawrence Hall Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley, as an effective means of opening a gateway to the process of learning arithmetic in elementary school and middle school for parents and their children. More and more schools offer such programs, which group the family to solve problems through direct experience and have the added value of involving parents and teachers in the same process.
Ideally, parents, students and teachers should engage after school hours, in the evening, on weekends and during the holidays, in activities to encourage math and science, and these activity programs should also continue throughout the high school years and not just for a few days or a few weeks. Now that financial difficulties are weighing on public school systems throughout the US, it is imperative that community and civic groups, churches and unions support the initiation and funding of programs of this kind.
In the 20th century, the United States made several moves that resulted in strong scientific literacy in the general adult population. In international tests, I found that the American adults stand up well in the competition in the subjects of general scientific literacy: the USA is second only to Sweden out of the 34 leading industrialized countries. The US's secret weapon in the 20th century was its commitment to expanding access to higher education and its adherence to a set of educational requirements, including a full year of science studies for most undergraduate students.
The American public can be proud of this policy and its achievements, but one of the unfortunate results of our success has been to blur the dismal performance of our elementary and middle schools in science and math instruction. This is a deficiency that parents can only partially correct. Schools, families, industry, and policy makers need to work together to improve education. There is no reason why every high school graduate in the US should not be literate in science matters.
About the author: John D. Miller is the director of the International Center for the Advancement of Science Literacy at the University of Michigan.
Poll: What the scientists say
Scientific American and Adam Maltese, a researcher from Indiana University who deals with science education, jointly conducted a survey designed to better understand the experiences and motivations of science, mathematics and engineering students and those who engage in these fields after school. Based on data obtained from a random sample of universities and subjects who volunteered to fill out the survey questionnaire online, it appears that men and women studying for a degree in a scientific or technological subject usually became interested in science back in elementary school. When asked who were the people and what were the experiences that ignited that interest, more women than men answered that it was a teacher, lessons at school, solving math problems, and spending time outdoors. The men, on the other hand, were more influenced by repair, disassembly, construction and assembly, and reading. When they started their degree studies, their passion for the field surpassed any other reason for their persistence.
More on the subject
Breaking the Cycle: An International Comparison of US Mathematics Teacher Preparation. Michigan State University Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education, 2010. http://hub.mspnet.org/index.cfm/20671
Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy. National Research Council. National Academies Press, 2010.
Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College. Doug Lemov. Jossey-Bass, 2010.
