March 2, 2004

State Board of Education
1430 N Street, Room 5111
Sacramento, CA 95814

RE: Criteria for Evaluating K-8 Science Instructional Materials.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The American Association of Physics Teachers is the national professional organization of those who teach physics in high schools and universities. Our 10,000 members are committed to providing high quality science education for all students in our schools. Improving K-12 education in science is one of our highest priorities and many of our members are engaged in doing just that.

Because we are physicists, the approach of our members is to support curricular materials that are proven to be effective. We also realize that diverse approaches are necessary to be effective for particular students, teachers, and situations. For this reason, we are concerned by some parts of the criteria for science instructional materials submitted for your approval; we fear these parts will limit the access by students and teachers to some of the most effective curricular materials in existence.

Our concern can be summarized in the following way: Empirical studies demonstrate the importance of engagement in direct experience with phenomena for effective learning in science. This view expresses the traditional manner in which science is understood; it is a view shared by The National Science Board and the American Association for the Advancement of Science among others. We emphasize that experience with reality is the cornerstone of science.

There are three items in the current draft of the California “Criteria for Evaluating K-8 Science Instructional Materials” that appear to limit such engagement with phenomena and suggest that such activities can be replaced by substituting something called “direct instruction.” A very large body of research demonstrates that, if the goal is science understanding for all students, there is no more effective instructional experience than one that gives students direct access to a phenomenon while they are mentally engaged in an attempt to understand that phenomenon.

There are three places in the California document that appear to be inconsistent with this evidence.

1. Lines 102-109: The Category 1 criterion limiting “hands-on” activity time to 25% or less of instructional time restricts the student’s access to direct experience with phenomena. This restriction is not supported by research findings. Further, this is an inappropriate restriction to place directly on curriculum developers and indirectly on teachers, who have the direct responsibility for deciding how best to teach their students. Guidelines are useful, but this one appears to be a counter-productive restriction.
2. Lines 156-157: The option of “pre-teaching of the science content embedded in any hands-on activities” is confusing and we hope will be clarified. The statement suggests that science content can be understood independently of the observation of and the experimentation with phenomena. This is sometimes true but most often is not. Even our understanding of the most abstract occurrences in nature is based on our direct experience with other phenomena.
3. Lines 299-300: This suggests that it is possible to substitute direct instruction for direct engagement with the phenomena. Direct instruction fails to result in understanding for many students. This motivated the search for instruction that does result in understanding of the phenomena by all students. Robust research shows that hands-on science activities and direct access to the phenomena while mentally engaging in developing understanding with one’s peers is more effective than other known instructional strategies. These criteria can be met in a variety of approaches, but an approach without these elements results in inferior learning for all students.

Thank you for your attention in this matter. We share your desire to aid all California students in learning science and wish you success in your efforts on behalf of the students of California. We hope our observations will be helpful to you in adopting workable and effective guidelines. We are glad to respond to any questions, comments, or requests concerning this matter. Please feel free to contact us.

Sincerely,
Bernard V. Khoury, Executive Officer