Rudolph urges America to rethink why we teach science — and why we should
The reasons we teach science in America are largely myths, according to a new book from a UW–Madison School of Education professor.
In “Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should),” professor John Rudolph argues decades of misconceptions have fueled the idea that science education spurs economic growth and builds crucial everyday reasoning and problem-solving skills. After debunking these myths, he contends the American science curriculum needs to shift away from its current focus on content memorization toward a new aim of building students’ understanding of what science is, how it works, and why it’s smart to trust scientific experts.
“Right now, what we think of as an ideal science education isn’t accomplishing very much at all,” says Rudolph, the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Science Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the UW–Madison School of Education. “The public feels disconnected and alienated from science — we need to help the public understand what science is.”
In the book, Rudolph dispels the popular notion that science education needs to direct students toward jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
In fact, colleges historically produce between 40 to 100% more STEM graduates than are hired into STEM occupations each year, he writes. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Bureau of Labor Statistics have affirmed this dynamic for years.
Rudolph also notes only 7% of incoming high school ninth-graders in the U.S. end up earning an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in a science-related field and working in a corresponding career, which means that science education focused on a career pipeline or skills training is misguided.
“If our primary goal is to train people to be scientists, you’re not serving 93% of the students,” he says.
The book also outlines how the prevalent idea that science education instills skills for everyday decision making and critical thinking is incorrect. Rudolph points out a wealth of research has shown people do not typically apply information or skills learned in science class to daily decisions.
“Everyone believes science is the epitome of rational thought — it’s logical, it’s based on evidence, it’s the height of the ability to reason,” he says. “They think if you just do science, you somehow magically acquire those skills. There’s just not much evidence for that.”
Instead, studies have shown people are likely to use intuitive theories (theories that aren’t based on accepted science, but instead on self-generated ideas about how the world works) and personal ethics and values or economic considerations to guide their choices — even choices related to science-related social issues.
Rudolph says science education should free itself of the confines of these long-held misconceptions about STEM careers and problem solving or critical thinking skills and refocus on providing students what he calls a more “expansive” science education. That education would focus less on memorizing content such as the parts of an atom, for example, and instead on learning how scientists came to know and agree on that structure.
“The goal we really need is for students to understand what science is, how science works, not just learn the facts of science or how to do science,” he says. “We should teach how scientists know something, and why we should trust them.”
Rudolph says research shows teaching students episodes from the history of science has been an effective way to accomplish this goal — a lesson on gravity expanded from a focus on memorizing the formula for acceleration due to gravity to understanding how Galileo first approached the question and developed an answer.
He says bringing case studies where science and society intersect is also helpful, and urges a focus on explaining how institutions such as the National Institutes of Health and others like it are set up, funded, and function in the public interest.
Rudolph acknowledges this major shift in science education wouldn’t be an easy lift, but says taking a chance on a new approach could reap major rewards for social engagement with and understanding of science.
“If America is going to ensure a future with a productive, mutually supportive relationship between science and the public, this is the type of change we need,” he says.
In 2019, Rudolph published a similar book, “How We Teach Science: What’s Changed, and Why It Matters,” examining the history of how science has been taught in schools since the mid-19th century.
He says he sees the two books working together, with the first tracing where schools have been with respect to science education and the second providing a vision of where science education needs to go in the future.
“It all comes down to what the social purpose of science education should be,” he says. “That purpose has to be to help the public understand that science and scientific expertise are key to a sustainable and just future.”
Rudolph recently joined Madison’s NBC15 to explain the findings of “Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should).” That interview is available to watch here.
More information about the book, which was released April 19 by Oxford University Press, is available here. A review of the book in Science is available here.
Ruppar is co-author of guide for teachers and parents of kids with complex support needs
UW–Madison’s Andrea Ruppar is the lead author of a new book released this spring that is titled, “Equitable and Inclusive IEPs for Students with Complex Support Needs.”
Ruppar’s work provides a “step-by-step guide” for creating student-centered IEPs — or individualized education programs — for students who receive special education services in schools.
“The book describes a set of effective practices that administrators and special educators can use as a guide,” says Ruppar, an associate professor of special education with the School of Education’s Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education. “The book centers on the most current and evidence-based practices in the field of special education that also align with what we know is ethical and effective.”
According to Ruppar, kids with complex support needs — whose disability labels are usually some combination of intellectual disability, physical disability, health impairments, or autism — are often excluded from general education. This is due to the need for specially designed instruction and supplementary aids and services throughout the day.
However, research demonstrates that separate environments are not necessary to support student learning. In fact, such efforts unnecessarily separate students with complex needs from their peers without disabilities. The steps, resources, and ideas this book provides will allow teachers and parents to best support their students and create an accessible educational experience for them in the least restrictive environment.
The book highlights a range of helpful strategies and practices, including efforts related to: assembling an effective IEP team; deciding how to make data-based educational decisions; collaborating with families during IEP development; and more. The book provides reflection activities, resources, references, downloads, amongst others.
“Parts of the book serve as a reference guide,” Ruppar says. “It’s a summary of research translated into a series of actionable steps a team can take.”
The book is co-authored by Jennifer Kurth, an associate professor of special education at the University of Kansas.
Ruppar explains that she became interested in this subject earlier in her career when she was working with autistic children as a music teacher. Then, after she became a special education teacher, she discovered the difficulty of creating IEPs “because of competing interests of the legal aspects, individual and collective interpretations of policies and best practices, and the reality of what might be best for a child.”
Ruppar says that the book is written for educators and school administrators, those who are studying to become teachers, and families of children with complex support needs. Children with complex support needs only represent about 1 percent of students with disabilities. Because of this, many educators don’t have experience working with these children.
“For any educator working with a student who has complex support needs, the first place to start is with the family,” says Ruppar. “If the family and school are not working together, it’s going to be quite difficult for the student to make meaningful progress toward important goals.”
She adds: “What we hope is that educational teams could pick this up, and start to craft an equitable and really meaningful educational program for their students.”
To develop the text, Ruppar and Kurth studied IEPs and identified common errors that led to inequitable access opportunities. They discovered that it was clear when an educator was using a “systems-centered” rather than “student-centered” approach. Ruppar reveals that there were “documents where students are essentially blamed for the problems that they have in school — rather than using the IEP as a tool to ensure that schools are designed for kids to learn.”
Ruppar and Kurth wrote the book to help teams understand how to create student-centered IEPs, which prioritize important goals, build on students’ strengths, and offer students the chance to learn in the least restrictive educational environment.
Ruppar also played a leading role in publishing another recent book, “High Level Practices and Students with Extensive Support Needs.” Ruppar co-edited this work, which was released earlier in 2023, with: Robert Pennnington of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte; Melinda Jones Ault of the University of Kentucky; Ginevra Courtade of the University of Louisville; and J. Matt Jameson of the University of Utah. This work examines similar themes and “detailed supports for implementing (high-leverage practices) to ensure every student has access to all aspects of their school community.”
Ruppar adds, “I think conversations around equity right now are really pushing the field forward in thinking about how many students are marginalized in schools, and ways we can create more equitable and inclusive systems for all students.”
Wright is author of new book, ‘Emotionally Responsive Teaching’
UW–Madison’s Travis Wright is the author of a new book released in April that is titled, “Emotionally Responsive Teaching: Expanding Trauma-Informed Practice with Young Children.”
Wright, an associate professor in the School of Education’s Department of Counseling Psychology, is a nationally recognized expert on resilience and emotionally responsive teaching, especially for children developing in the midst of adversity. He is also the faculty director of UW–Madison’s Morgridge Center for Public Service, and the founder and director of the BASES Project, a school and community-based intervention for homeless preschool students, their families, and teachers.
Wright’s book offers “real hope, inspiration, and practical advice,” according to a forward written by Indiana University Professor Mary Benson McMullen. Benson McMullen adds that Wright teaches his audience “to navigate the challenging terrain of connecting with a child who is deeply afraid, angry, and/or sad.”
Teachers College Press, which published “Emotionally Responsive Teaching,” identifies the features of the book as follows:
- Provides models that guide teachers through the nuanced and sometimes overwhelming interactions they may have with children experiencing trauma.
- Shares the author’s own challenges and triumphs through case studies of pre-K–3rd grade classrooms to illustrate the process of emotionally responsive teaching.
- Builds on research from the fields of education, psychology, and counseling.
- Integrates current work on trauma-informed practice with the paradigm of culturally responsive pedagogy by framing trauma as often rooted in systems of inequity and oppression.
Learn more and purchase “Emotionally Responsive Teaching.”
Book co-edited by Kelly helps actors forge deeper connection with poetic text
UW–Madison’s Baron Kelly is the co-editor of a new book, titled “Building Embodiment: Integrating Acting, Voice, and Movement to Illuminate Poetic Text,” that was recently published by Routledge.
Kelly, a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the School of Education’s Department of Theatre and Drama, edited the book with Karen Kopryanski, an assistant professor and the head of speech at Virginia Commonwealth University.
The book features essays from celebrated teachers across the disciplines of acting, voice, and movement that offer insights and are designed to help actors and instructors find deeper vocal and physical connections to poetic text — including a range of heightened text styles such as Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, and Restoration/comedy of manners.
“The book will help the actor with theatrical expression and develop the technical and narrative skills needed in their creative process,” says Kelly, who in addition to his role within in the Department of Theatre and Drama also holds a concurrent appointment with the Odyssey Project in the Division of Continuing Studies.
Learn more about the book at routledge.com.
WCER’s Good co-authors book, ‘Teachers as Policy Advocates’
UW–Madison’s Annalee Good has written a book titled “Teachers as Policy Advocates,” with co-author and Framingham State University Associate Professor May Hara.
Good is an evaluator and researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the School of Education and has experience teaching middle school social studies. Her co-author, Hara, also has teaching experience in the New York City public school system.
The book argues that teachers’ active participation in policy advocacy is crucial to creating a K−12 educational system that honors the needs of students, families, and communities. The book is envisioned as a resource for teachers, teacher educators, researchers, and administrators for purposes of reflection, discussion, and action, with the goal of creating more effective and responsive educational policy.
The book’s publisher, Teachers College Press, says that it “offers recommendations for how to engage and empower teachers based on original research conducted with student teachers and practicing teachers in two states; explores how policy affects teachers and students in areas such as school safety, standardized assessments, the COVID-19 crisis, and using digital tools in schools; and helps school administrators identify supports and challenges for incoming teachers.”
‘Playful testing’: Berland co-authors book on how to build great games for classroom assessment
A new book co-authored by a UW–Madison School of Education faculty member sheds more light on how to build and use games to effectively measure students’ learning.
Matthew Berland, an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and founder and director of the Complex Play Lab and the UW Game Design Program, co-authored “Playful Testing: Designing a Formative Assessment Game for Data Science” with several colleagues from UW–Madison and other institutions.
The book shares insights from three years of interdisciplinary research directed at designing, developing, implementing, and reflecting on the efficacy of a game intended to test middle school students’ computer science and data science skills. The game, Beats Empire, allows students to step into the shoes of a music producer who needs to advise and shape the work of the bands on their roster to respond to song trends in an imaginary city. The skills used in the game align to a national computer science learning framework, with topics including data collection, visualization, and interpretation.
Berland says the book presents an exciting way to think about how assessment can be reimagined — and used in imaginative ways as well.
“It presents a novel new take on how we might think about what assessment is for in classrooms where assessment isn’t dictated,” he says. “It shows how you can use games and play and fun and creativity to enable students to see what they know, and for teachers to figure out what they know.”
Berland says the book provides a useful model for teachers to assess classroom-wide learning about specific subjects. He says such a model can be helpful to teachers as they evaluate what material is widely understood by a class, and what needs to be revisited.
After students play the game, teachers receive a report about how individual students interacted with the game — what skills they successfully deployed, what areas they engaged with, and on what they may need more support figuring out.
“This game doesn’t really evaluate individual students, it shows what the class broadly ‘gets,’” he explains. “That can be helpful for teachers. It puts the power in the hands of the teachers.”
Berland says the model is not intended to be a substitute for more traditional forms of assessment, but that it can be a powerful supplemental tool to help educators shape their curriculum.
Berland’s co-authors include UW–Madison alumnus Vishesh Kumar, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University, and Beth Pinzur, a research project manager at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER). His other co-authors are Nathan Holbert of Columbia University, Daisy Rutstein of SRI International, Betsy DiSalvo of Georgia Tech, Jeremy Roschelle of the nonprofit Digital Promise, Satabdi Basu of SRI International, and Reina Fujii of Menlo Education Research.
“Playful Testing: Designing a Formative Assessment Game for Data Science” was released earlier this year by Carnegie Mellon University’s ETC Press. It is available for purchase and free download.
Baldacchino publishes new book exploring ‘paradox of belonging’
UW–Madison’s John Baldacchino is the author of a new book titled, “Lessons of Belonging: Art, Place, and the Sea.”
Baldacchino is a professor of art education in the School of Education’s Art Department and specializes in art, philosophy, and education. This new book is the second in a series for which Baldacchino is editor, “Doing Arts Thinking: Arts Practice, Research, and Education,” which looks at the relationship between the arts and education.
The “paradox of belonging” prompted Baldacchino to write “Lessons of Belonging,” according to a description of the book on the Brill Publishing website.
“What pushes the author to write are art’s questions,” the description continues. “Rather than take the route of writing, artists in academia could opt for the studio, teaching students, and occasionally indulge in conferences and symposia. However, beyond such rituals, writing art’s questions remains akin to art’s acts of belonging.”
In a review, University of Porto’s Catarina Martins states, “This book is a journey in the process of finding what it means to belong. Not to belong somewhere, but rather to a nowhere that is called art, as everydayness.”
Sandro Barros, from Michigan State University, adds: “The book is full of beautiful images, which Baldacchino weaves together with erudition and clarity, introducing his readers to nostalgia as a heuristic for art-making processes challenging us to live more presently with and in the world.”
Learn more about “Lessons of Belonging.”