Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Shirley M. Malcom, Ph.D.

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Challenges

• The needs of a knowledge-based economy

• The shifting demographics

• Explosion of science/knowledge

• Next generation standards in science (three dimensions)

• Incorporation of engineering into the standards

• Common core (English –language arts and mathematics)

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Challenges

• Emergence of technology in education

• Informal education (since there are not enough hours in the school day and year)

• Learning sciences

• Political “interest”

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

What Does it Mean to Be Literate? Different Times, Different Answers

Bessie Estell Funderburg (1886-1980)

Born: Talladega County, AL

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Changing Notions of Literacy—A 21st Century Viewpoint

• Critical thinking skills

• Comfort with technology

• Being able to learn for a lifetime

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Then and Now

• Grandmother: Take science and math if you’re going to college vs. STEM for all

• Where you pursue a “women’s field vs. expanding opportunity, reducing stereotyping and occupational segregation”

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Population shifts: The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be -- Yogi Berra

On July 1, 2011 over half of the population under the age of 1 was minority.

Pho

to C

redi

t: M

el Y

ates

/Get

ty Im

ages

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

The Knowledge Explosion and The Knowledge Divide

• Too much to know

• The “tentative” nature of what we know and what we teach

• Distinguishing between facts and opinion

• Providing tools for discernment

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Yogi’s Wisdom

If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up some place else.

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Next Generation Science Standards: A Symphony in Three Movements

• Disciplinary knowledge, science practices, cross-cutting themes

• Engineering

• Relationship to the Common Core

• Learning beyond the school

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

The Reality of Implementation

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

-- Yogi Berra

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

The Challenges of Implementation

MATHEMATICS

• Who’s In? – 45 states, District of Columbia and 5 territories

• Who’s Not? – Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, Virginia, Minnesota*, Puerto Rico

SCIENCE

• 26 partner states

• To date, only Rhode Island has adopted

*Minnesota: in for ELA, out for mathematics

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

The Challenges of Implementation

• Teacher education

• Teacher professional development

• Principal training

• Public buy-in

• Managing the politics

• ASSESSMENT !!!

• Curriculum

• Textbooks

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

A Note of Caution

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Yogi’s Wisdom

It’s like deja-vu, all over again.

What’s different THIS time?

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

New Tools, New Knowledge and Learning from History

• Understanding what didn’t work last time

• More understanding of how children (and teachers) learn

• Greater “capacity” in the system

• Powerful new technologies that are more accessible and provide learning options

• Support of business community

• “Incentivizing” transformation

• Helping parents understand the consequences of inaction

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

From Digital Divide to Digital Bridge

• Who has what technology?

• Extending learning beyond the school

• Creating links between school and informal

• Supporting “science practices”

• Supporting common core

• Enhancing student interest and motivation

• Increasing teacher options

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Technology in Teaching and Learning Science and Mathematics

• “The wild, wild web”

• “Finding the best; leaving the rest”

• Building community

• Another classroom for teachers and students

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Active Explorer: Bridging the Opportunities to Learn

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Active Explorer: Bridging the Opportunities to Learn

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Learning from the Learning Sciences

• From “no pain no gain” to making learning fun

• A role for “rote”

• The foreign language called “science”

• Context and the next generation of learners

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

The “Politics” of Education

• STEM cells, evolution, climate change—when content becomes “political”

• Theory and “just a theory”

• The pressure to conform

• Next generation assessment: The Sword of Damocles

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

The Age of Transition

• You can observe a lot by just watching…Yogi Berra—Relating to experienced colleagues

• Students as teachers

• Parents as partners (We often fear that which we do no understand)

• A role for scientists and engineers in schools

Not Your Grandmother’s Class: STEM Education in an Age of Transition

Yogi’s Wisdom—John Gardner’s Optimism

When you come to a fork in the road, take it. Yogi Berra

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities– brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. John W. Gardner