goals of basic education

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What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

20 U.S. Code § 5812 - National Education Goals

The Many Purposes of Education

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Each individual teacher has an opinion about what the core purpose of education should be, not only in their own classroom but also in school in general. Many issues occur when differing opinions about the purpose of education collide. It is important to recognize that other people, including many of your coworkers, administrators, and your students' parents might have a different point of view concerning what education should be all about.

Knowledge to Get By

Imbuing students with the knowledge to get by is an old-school belief. It's the idea that schools need to provide students with the knowledge they need to be functional adults in their day-to-day lives. They need to know how to read, write , and do arithmetic. These are the  core topics that form the foundation of a student's education.

Knowledge of Subject Matter Being Taught

The purpose of education to some teachers is to impart knowledge about the subject matter they are teaching without much thought to other classes. While it's important for students to have a firm grasp of each subject, this can sometimes be problematic. When taken to the extreme, these teachers focus on their own subject matter as being more important than what students are learning in other classes. For example, teachers who are unwilling to compromise their own subject matter for the good of the students can cause problems for the school by not being open to cross-curricular activities.

Creating Thoughtful Citizens

The desire to create thoughtful adults might be considered another old-school belief. However, this is held by many individuals, especially within the larger community. Students will someday be a part of a community and need the skills to exist within that society as thoughtful citizens. For example, they will need to be able to vote in presidential elections .

Self Esteem and Confidence

While the self-esteem movement often gets ridiculed, we do want our students to feel confident about their learning abilities. This way, they not only have a firm grasp on each subject but also the confidence to apply that knowledge in everyday life. It's important to nurture a strong balance between encouraging good self-esteem and assuaging unrealistic goals. 

Learn How to Learn

Learning how to learn is one of the key elements of education. Schools need to teach students how to find the information they will need once they leave school. Therefore it is important for future success that the students understand how to find answers to any questions and problems that might arise.

Lifelong Habits for Work

Many of the lessons that schools teach are necessary for success in their students' future lives. As adults, they will need to be able to get to work on time, dress and behave appropriately, and get their work done in a timely manner. These lessons are reinforced on a daily basis in schools around the nation.

Teach Students How to Live

Finally, some individuals look at school in a more holistic manner. Not only do students learn information from their individual subjects, but they also learn life lessons in and out of class. Proper work etiquette should be reinforced in the classroom, students need to learn how to deal with others in a cooperative manner, and they must learn how to acquire the information they might need in the future.

One of the things that many business leaders cite as being necessary for future workers is the ability to work as part of a team and problem solve.

• Methods for Presenting Subject Matter
• Curriculum Design: Definition, Purpose and Types
• Improving Self Esteem
• Essential Qualities of a Good Teacher
• Why Students Cheat and How to Stop It
• Prior Knowledge Improves Reading Comprehension
• What You Will Find in the Ideal Classroom
• Impact of the Common Core Standards
• 10 Ways to Promote Self-Directed Classroom
• School Testing Assesses Knowledge Gains and Gaps
• Guide to the IB Primary Years Program
• Meaningful Life Lessons We Learn From Teachers at School
• Help Students Achieve Their Dreams With Goal Setting Exercises
• Setting a Purpose for Motivated Reading
• Choice Motivates Students When Rewards and Punishment Don't Work
• What Is Cooperative Learning?

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International Perspectives on the Goals of Universal Basic and Secondary Education

Although universal schooling has been adopted as a goal by international organizations, bilateral aid agencies, national governments, and non-profit organizations, little sustained international attention has been devoted to the purposes or goals of universal education. What is universal primary and secondary education intended to accomplish? This book offers views from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and South America on the purposes of universal education while considering diverse cultures, religions, and professions. It is the first book in which renowned authors from around the world have proposed, considered, and debated goals of basic and secondary education, engaging in a constructive dialogue on one of the most pressing issues facing education today.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1. Goals of Universal and Basic Secondary Education Joel E. Cohen .

Educational Goals for Tomorrow's Society 2. Education for All, But for What? Kai-ming Cheng 3. Goals of Universal Primary and Secondary Education in the 21st Century: Reviving the Spirit of Socrates. Kishore Mahbubani 4. What Will Be the Near-Future Goals of Education? William K. Cummings .

Educational Priorities in Poor Countries 5. Quality Education: The Work of Optimists Beryl Levinger 6. Achieving Education of High Quality in Islamiyya Schools of Nigeria Mallam Bala Ahmed 7. Nurturing Learning Ability: The Goals of Universal Primary and Secondary Education Camer Vellani 8. Quality, the Heart of Equity Vimala Ramachandran .

Empowering Children through Art and Science 9. The dia Program: The Development of Intelligence through Art Claudia Madrazo 10. Educational Goals: Art, Science, Love, and the Importance of Binocular Vision Joel E. Cohen .

The Special Role of Skepticism as Universal Educational Goal 11. What Does "Universal" Education Mean? James Carroll 12. Teaching Tolerance and Open-Minded Approaches to Understanding Sacred Texts Mohamed Charfi and Hamadi Redissi 13. Educating All the People for Democratic Governance: A U.S. Perspective Deborah Meier .

Educating Global Citizens 14. Educating for Global Competency Fernando Reimers 15. Education and the Globalization Paradigm Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco .

Perspectives on Assessment and Educational Goals 16. Evaluating Basic and Secondary Education Ana Carolina Letichevsky 17. For What Should Schools Be Held Accountable? Richard Rothstein and Rebecca Jacobsen

Defining Educational Quality as a Basis for Educational Policy 18. Quality Education: A UNESCO Perspective Mary Joy Pigozzi 19. Quality Education - What Is It and Who Decides? Briefing Paper for a Policy Maker George M. Ingram . 20. The Challenge of Defining a Quality Universal Education: Mapping a Common Core Laura Hersh Salganik and Stephen J. Provasnik

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Joel E. Cohen is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations at the Rockefeller University, New York. He heads the Laboratory of Populations at the Rockefeller and Columbia Universities. At Columbia University, New York, he is Professor of Populations in the Earth Institute, with appointments in the Departments of International and Public Affairs; Earth and Environmental Sciences; and Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology.

Martin B. Malin is the Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. He is a former Program Director at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Universal Basic and Secondary Education

This study investigated the rationale, the means, and the consequences of providing high-quality primary and secondary education to all the world's children.

Educating All Children: A Global Agenda

As leaders pursue universal education, experts ask: what are the goals, cultivating minds: academy’s ubase project featured.

Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 (2007)

Chapter: 2 goals for science education, 2 goals for science education.

Science is built up of facts as a house is of stones, but a collection of facts is no more a science than a pile of stones is a house.

Henri Poincare, La Science et l’Hypothese (1908)

Before one can discuss the teaching and learning of science, consensus is needed about what science is and why it should occupy a place in the K-8 curriculum. One must ask: “What is science”? and “Why teach it”? A consensus answer to these fundamental questions is not easily attained, because science is characterized in different ways not only by different categories of people interested in it—practitioners, philosophers, historians, educators—but also by people within each of these broad categories. In this chapter, we describe some different characterizations of science and consider implications for what is taught in science classrooms. Although the characterizations share many common features, they vary in the emphasis and priority they place on different aspects of scientific activity, with potential consequences for what is emphasized in science classrooms. We then describe the goals of science education associated with each perspective.

WHAT IS SCIENCE?

Science is both a body of knowledge that represents current understanding of natural systems and the process whereby that body of knowledge has been established and is being continually extended, refined, and revised. Both elements are essential: one cannot make progress in science without an understanding of both. Likewise, in learning science one must come to understand both the body of knowledge and the process by which this knowledge is established, extended, refined, and revised. The various perspectives on science—alluded to above and described below—differ mainly with respect to the process of science, rather than its product. The body of knowledge includes specific facts integrated and articulated into

highly developed and well-tested theories. These theories, in turn, can explain bodies of data and predict outcomes of experiments. They are also tools for further development of the subject. An important component of science is the knowledge of the limitations of current theories, that is, an understanding of those aspects of a theory that are well tested and hence are well established, and of those aspects that are not well tested and hence are provisional and likely to be modified as new empirical evidence is acquired.

The process by which scientific theories are developed and the form that those theories take differ from one domain of science to another, but all sciences share certain common features at the core of their problem-solving and inquiry approaches. Chief among these is the attitude that data and evidence hold a primary position in deciding any issue. Thus, when well-established data, from experiment or observation, conflict with a theory or hypothesis, then that idea must be modified or abandoned and other explanations must be sought that can incorporate or take account of the new evidence. This also means that models, theories, and hypotheses are valued to the extent that they make testable (or in principle testable) precise predictions for as yet unmeasured or unobserved effects; provide a coherent conceptual framework that is consistent with a body of facts that are currently known; and offer suggestions of new paths for further study.

A process of argumentation and analysis that relates data and theory is another essential feature of science. This includes evaluation of data quality, modeling, and development of new testable questions from the theory, as well as modifying theories as data dictates the need. Finally, scientists need to be able to examine, review, and evaluate their own knowledge. Holding some parts of a conceptual framework as more or less established and being aware of the ways in which that knowledge may be incomplete are critical scientific practices.

The classic scientific method as taught for many years provides only a very general approximation of the actual working of scientists. The process of theory development and testing is iterative, uses both deductive and inductive logic, and incorporates many tools besides direct experiment. Modeling (both mechanical models and computer simulations) and scenario building (including thought experiments) play an important role in the development of scientific knowledge. The ability to examine one’s own knowledge and conceptual frameworks, to evaluate them in relation to new information or competing alternative frameworks, and to alter them by a deliberate and conscious effort are key scientific practices.

Different Perspectives on the Process of Science

Those who study the nature of science and the learning of science have a variety of perspectives not only on key elements of scientific practice and skills (Stanovich, 2003; Grandy and Duschl, 2005), but also on

different ways to study the nature of science (Klahr and Simon, 1999; Proctor and Capaldi, 2005; Giere, 1999). The committee recognizes that these different perspectives are not mutually exclusive and that, in considering how best to teach science, each can identify certain elements that need to be given their due attention. We summarize the key elements of a number of these viewpoints. 1

Science as a Process of Logical Reasoning About Evidence

One view of science, favored by many psychologists who study scientific reasoning, emphasizes the role of domain-general forms of scientific reasoning about evidence, including formal logic, heuristics, and problem-solving strategies. Among psychologists, this view was pioneered by the work of Inhelder and Piaget (1958) on formal operations, by the studies of Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin (1956) on concept development, and by investigations by Wason (1960, 1968) of the type of evidence that people seek when testing their hypotheses. The image of scientist-as-reasoner continues to be influential in contemporary research (Case and Griffin, 1990). In this view, learning to think scientifically is a matter of acquiring problem-solving strategies for coordinating theory and evidence (Klahr, 2000; Kuhn, 1989), mastering counterfactual reasoning (Leslie, 1987), distinguishing patterns of evidence that do and do not support a definitive conclusion (Amsel and Brock, 1996; Beck and Robinson, 2001; Fay and Klahr, 1996; Vellom and Anderson, 1999), and understanding the logic of experimental design (Tschirgi, 1980; Chen and Klahr, 1999). These heuristics and skills are considered important targets for research and for education because they are assumed to be widely applicable and to reflect at least some degree of domain generality and transferability (Kuhn et al., 1995; Ruffman et al., 1993).

Science as a Process of Theory Change

This view places emphasis on the parallel between historical and philosophical aspects of science (Kuhn, 1962) and the domains of cognitive development (Carey, 1985; Koslowski, 1996) in which domain-specific knowledge evolves via the gradual elaboration of existing theories through the accretion of new facts and knowledge (normal science, according to Kuhn), punctuated, occasionally, by the replacement of one theoretical framework by another. The science-as-theory perspective places its emphasis less on the mastery of domain-general logic, heuristics, or strategies and more on

processes of conceptual or theory change. In this view, at critical junctures, as evidence anomalies build up against the established theory, there can occur wholesale restructurings of the theoretical landscape—a paradigm shift, according to Kuhn (1962). For example, in both Kuhn’s account of scientific revolutions and Chi’s (1992) and Carey’s (1988, 1991) accounts of critical points of conceptual restructuring in cognitive development, not only do new concepts enter a domain, but also existing concepts change their meaning in fundamental ways because the theoretical structure within which they are situated radically changes (e.g., changes in concepts like force, weight, matter, combustion, heat, or life). Nersessian (1989) provides a good example of the semantic changes that occur when motion and force are examined across Aristotelian, Galilean, and Newtonian frameworks.

Science as a Process of Participation in the Culture of Scientific Practices

The view of science as practice is emphasized by anthropologists, ethnographers, social psychologists, and the cognitive and developmental psychologists who study “situated cognition” (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Latour, 1990, 1999; Rogoff and Lave, 1984). This view focuses on the nature of scientific activity, both in the short term (e.g., studies of activity in a particular laboratory or a program of study) and historically (e.g., studies of laboratory notebooks, published texts, eyewitness accounts). Science as practice suggests that theory development and reasoning are components of a larger ensemble of activity that includes networks of participants and institutions (Latour, 1999; Longino, 2002); specialized ways of talking and writing (Bazerman, 1988); modeling, using either mechanical and mathematical models or computer-based simulations (Nersessian, 2005); and development of representations that render phenomena accessible, visualizable, and transportable (Gooding, 1989; Latour, 1990; Lehrer and Schauble, 2006).

This perspective serves as a useful foil to the tendency of “pure” cognitive approaches to science to minimize the fact that individual scientists or groups of scientists are always part of a wider social environment, inside and outside science, with which they are in constant communication and which has strongly shaped their knowledge, skills, resources, motives, and attitudes. This interaction between social and cognitive factors is well illustrated in Thagard’s (1998a, 1998b) account of the pioneering research by Barry Marshall and Robin Warren. They received the Nobel prize in medicine in 2005 for their discovery of the bacterial origins of stomach ulcers. Until 1983, the prevailing view was that gastric ulcers were caused by lifestyle and stress. When Marshall and Warren suggested that ulcers were caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, their claim was viewed as preposterous

by the medical research establishment, but the weight of empirical evidence soon overwhelmed deeply entrenched and widely accepted scientific beliefs. The reasons for both the initial and final positions in the field clearly involve important social mechanisms that go beyond simple evidence-based reasoning processes. However, to acknowledge the influence of situated, social, and noncognitive factors in the process of scientific discovery is not to deny the existence of an external physical reality that science attempts to discover and explain (see, e.g., Pickering, 1995).

Language of Science

In science, words often are given very specific meanings that are different from and often more restrictive than their everyday usage. A few such cases are important to discuss before we proceed further in this report. It is also important for teachers to be aware of the confusion that can arise from these multiple usages of familiar words, clarifying the specific scientific usage when needed.

Theory and Hypothesis

A scientific theory (particularly one that is referred to as “the theory of ___,” as in the theory of electromagnetism or the theory of thermodynamics or the theory of Newtonian mechanics) is an explanation that has undergone significant testing. Through those tests and the resulting refinement, it takes a form that is a well-established description of, and predictor for, phenomena in a particular domain. A theory is so well established that it is unlikely that new data within that domain will totally discredit it; instead, the theory may be modified and revised to take into account new evidence. There may be domains in which the theory can be applied but has yet to be tested; in those domains the theory is called a working hypothesis. Indeed the term “hypothesis” is used by scientists for an idea that may contribute important explanations to the development of a scientific theory. Scientists use and test hypotheses in the development and refinement of models and scenarios that collectively serve as tools in the development of a theory.

“Theory” has at least two other meanings, and these other meanings differ in important ways from the above use of the term. One alternative use of the term comes from psychological research. Researchers in cognitive development have investigated the way in which children come to understand the world around them and have attributed to them a wide variety of immature and inadequate—albeit pervasive—“theories” about the world. Psychologists use the term “theory” here as a shorthand for the set of ideas and beliefs that forms the child’s conceptual framework for explaining phenomena and mechanisms. This usage is closer to the everyday usage of the

word “theory” as an idea or conjecture rather than as a complex explanation supported by evidence. It does not imply that a child’s theory is a scientific theory in the sense defined above. However, a conceptual framework takes the place of a scientific theory in the way that the child uses it to process information and to view and interact with external events; hence the interplay between instruction and a child’s conception of the world is an important issue for the teaching of science.

The second alternative meaning comes from everyday language, in which “theory” is often indistinguishable in its use from “guess,” “conjecture,” “speculation,” “prediction,” or even “belief” (e.g., “My theory is that indoor polo will become very popular” or “My theory is that it will rain tomorrow”). Such “theories” are typically very particular and have no broader conceptual scope. Popular usage also confuses the ideas of scientific fact and a scientific theory, which we distinguish by example in the discussion below.

Data and Evidence

A datum is an observation or measurement recorded for subsequent analysis. The observation or measurement may be of a natural system or of a designed and constructed experimental situation. Observation here includes indirect observation, which uses inference from well-understood science, as well as direct sensory observations. Thus the assertion that a particular skeleton comes from an animal that lived during a particular geological period is based on acceptance of the body of knowledge that led to the widely accepted techniques used to date the bones, techniques that are themselves the products of prior scientific study. “Observations” in the research laboratory, particularly observations of events and phenomena whose duration or size is inaccessible to the unaided human perceptual system, often include a substantial chain of such inferences. In the elementary and middle school classroom, observation usually involves fewer inferences. For example, students may begin by conducting unaided observations of natural phenomena and then progress to using simple measurement tools or instruments such as microscopes.

Some use the term “scientific claim” for a well-established property, correlation, or occurrence, directly based on well-validated observation or measurement. When a scientific claim is demonstrated to occur forever and always in any context, scientists will refer to the claim as a fact (e.g., the sun rises in the east). Facts are best seen as evidence and claims of phenomena that come together to develop and refine or to challenge explanations. For example, the fact that earthquakes occur has been long known, but the explanation for the fact that earthquakes occur takes on a different meaning if one adopts plate tectonics as a theoretical framework. The fact that there are different types of earthquakes (shallow and deep

focus) helps to deepen and expand the explanatory power of the theory of plate tectonics.

A century ago the atomic substructure of matter was a theory, which became better established as new evidence and inferences based on this evidence deepened the complexity and explanatory power of the theory. Today, atoms are an established component of matter due to the modern capability of imaging individual atoms in matter with such tools as scanning-tunneling microscopes. This kind of progression from theoretical construct to observed property leads to some confusion in the minds of many people about the nature of theory and the distinctions among theory, evidence, claims, and facts. The history of science further reveals that theories progress from hypotheses or tentative ideas to core explanations.

Thus, another source of confusion for the public understanding of science is the use of the term “theory” to represent promising ideas as well as core explanatory theories. Core explanatory theories are those that are firmly established through accumulation of a substantial body of supporting evidence and have no competitors (e.g., cell theory, periodic law, theory of evolution, theory of plate tectonics). For much of science, theories are broad conceptual frameworks that can be invalidated by contradictions with data but can never be wholly validated.

To give a specific example: it is an observed property that things fall down when dropped near the surface of the earth. Repeated observations give the rate of acceleration in this event, both its global average and local variations from that average. Newton’s law of universal gravitation and Einstein’s general theory of relativity are two successive theories that incorporate this observation and give quantitative predictions for the size of the gravitational effects in any situation, not just on earth. These theories describe but do not actually explain gravitation in the conventional sense of that word; they invoke no underlying mechanism due to substructure and subsystems. The general theory of relativity includes Newton’s law of gravitation as a special limited case (an approximation or idealization, valid to high accuracy under certain conditions), but it is a more general theory that makes predictions for cases not covered by Newton’s law (e.g., the bending of light paths by the sun or other stars).

In this example, drawn from physics, the theories are expressed in mathematical form and their predictions are thus both precise and specific. They lend themselves readily to computer modeling and simulation. In other areas of science, theories can take more linguistic forms and involve other types of models. What is general is that scientific theories are valued when they (a) incorporate a significant body of evidence in a single conceptual framework and (b) offer predictive suggestions about future directions for study that are specific enough that one can test the theory’s validity and

domain of applicability. A theory may or may not include a mechanism for the effects it describes and predicts.

Another important feature of the example is that it challenges a common perception of scientific revolutions. Einstein’s general theory of relativity was a true scientific revolution, in that it challenged and redefined conceptions of the nature of space and time. However, it did not invalidate all that had gone before; instead, it showed clearly both the limitations of the previous theory and the domain in which the previous theory is valid as an excellent (close) approximation, useful because it is much simpler (both conceptually and mathematically) than the full general theory of relativity.

This is a key understanding: science is subject to development and change, yet well-tested and established theories remain true in their tested domain even when dramatic new ideas or knowledge changes the way one views that domain. Such theories are tentative in domains in which they have not yet been tested, or in which only limited data are available, so that the tests are not yet conclusive but are far from tentative in the domains in which they have repeatedly been tested through their use in new scientific inquiries.

In everyday usage, an argument is an unpleasant situation in which two or more people have differing opinions and become heated in their discussion of this difference. A somewhat different view of the term “argument” comes from the tradition of formal debate, in which contestants are scored on arguments that favor a particular position or point of view or disfavor the opposing one. Argumentation in science has a different and less combative or competitive role than either of these forms (Kuhn, 1991). It is a mode of logical discourse whose goal is to tease out the relationship between ideas and the evidence—for example, to decide what a theory or hypothesis predicts for a given circumstance, or whether a proposed explanation is consistent or not with some new observation. The goal of those engaged in scientific argumentation is a common one: to tease out as much information and understanding from the situation under discussion as possible. Alternative points of view are valued as long as they contribute to this process within the accepted norms of science and logic, but not when they offer alternatives that are viewed as outside those norms. Because the role, mode, and acceptance of argument, in its everyday sense, are cultural variables, it is important to teach skills and acceptable modes of scientific argumentation, and for both teachers and students to learn by experience the difference between this form of discourse and their preconceived notions of what “wins” an argument.

SCIENCE EDUCATION

Why teach science.

In the modern world, some knowledge of science is essential for everyone. It is the opinion of this committee that science should be as nonnegotiable a part of basic education as are language arts and mathematics. It is important to teach science because of the following:

Science is a significant part of human culture and represents one of the pinnacles of human thinking capacity.

It provides a laboratory of common experience for development of language, logic, and problem-solving skills in the classroom.

A democracy demands that its citizens make personal and community decisions about issues in which scientific information plays a fundamental role, and they hence need a knowledge of science as well as an understanding of scientific methodology.

For some students, it will become a lifelong vocation or avocation.

The nation is dependent on the technical and scientific abilities of its citizens for its economic competitiveness and national needs.

What Should Be the Goals of Elementary and Middle School Science?

To quote Albert Einstein, the goal of education is “to produce independently thinking and acting individuals.” The eventual goal of science education is to produce individuals capable of understanding and evaluating information that is, or purports to be, scientific in nature and of making decisions that incorporate that information appropriately, and, furthermore, to produce a sufficient number and diversity of skilled and motivated future scientists, engineers, and other science-based professionals.

The science curriculum in the elementary grades, like that for other subject areas, should be designed for all students to develop critical basic knowledge and basic skills, interests, and habits of mind that will lead to productive efforts to learn and understand the subject more deeply in later grades. If this is done well, then all five of the reasons to teach science will be well served. It is not necessary in these grades to distinguish between those who will eventually become scientists and those who will chiefly use their knowledge of science in making personal and societal choices. A good elementary science program will provide the basis for either path in later life.

The specific content of elementary school science has been outlined in multiple documents, including the National Science Education Standards,

the Benchmarks for Science Literacy, and multiple state standards documents. Teachers are held accountable to particular state and local requirements. It is not the role of this report to specify a list of content to be taught. However, it is important to note that what this report says about science learning always assumes that there is a strong basis of factual knowledge and conceptual development in the science curriculum, and that the goal of any methodology for teaching is to facilitate student learning and understanding of this content, as well as developing their skills in, and understanding of, the methods of scientific observation, experimentation, modeling, and analysis.

It is often said that children are natural scientists. Experts in child development have debated this issue, not on the basis of the basic facts of children’s behavior, but rather on the relation between that behavior and the essential aspects of scientific thinking (Giere, 1996; Gopnik, 1996; Gopnik and Wellman, 1992; Harris, 1994; Kuhn, 1989; Metz, 1995, 1997; Vosniadou and Brewer, 1992, 1994). Rather than attempting to resolve this debate, we simply acknowledge the fact that children bring to science class a natural curiosity and a set of ideas and conceptual frameworks that incorporate their experiences of the natural world and other information that they have learned. Since these experiences vary, children at a given age have a wide range in their skills, knowledge, and conceptual development. A teacher therefore needs to be able to evaluate each child’s knowledge and conceptual and skill development, as well as the child’s level of metacognition about his or her own knowledge, skills, and concepts, in order to provide a learning environment that moves each child’s development in all these areas. A key question for instruction is thus how to adapt the instructional goals to the existing knowledge and skills of the learners, as well as how to choose instructional techniques that will be most effective.

Each of the views of science articulated above highlights particular modes of thought that are essential to that view. These views are not mutually exclusive descriptions of science, but rather each stresses particular aspects. Since students need to progress in all aspects, it is useful for teachers to have a clear understanding of each of these components of scientific development, just as they need a clear understanding of the subject matter, the specific science content, that they are teaching. It is also useful at times to focus instruction on development of specific skills, in balance with a focus on the learning of specific facts or the understanding of a particular conceptual framework.

Thus, if one looks from the perspective of science as a process of reasoning about evidence, one sees that logical argumentation and problem-solving skills are important. Certain aspects of metacognition are also highlighted, such as the ability to be aware when one’s previously held convictions are in conflict with an observation. If one looks at science as a process of theory change, one sees that teachers must recognize the role of students’

prior conceptions about a subject and facilitate the necessary processes of conceptual change and development. Finally, when one looks at science as a process of participation in the culture of scientific practice, attention is drawn to the ways in which children’s individual cultural and social backgrounds can, on one hand, create barriers to science participation and learning due to possible conflicts of cultural norms or practices with those of science, and, on the other hand, provide opportunities for contributions, particularly from students from nonmainstream cultures, that enrich the discourse in the science classroom. One also sees a range of practices, such as model building and data representation, that each in itself is a specific skill and thus needs to be incorporated and taught in science classrooms.

It is thus clear that multiple strategies are needed, some focused primarily on key skills or specific knowledge, others on particular conceptual understanding, and yet others on metacognition. The issues of what children bring to school and of how teaching can build on it to foster robust science learning with this rich multiplicity of aspects are the core topics of this report.

Strands of Scientific Proficiency

Understanding science is multifaceted. Research has often treated aspects of scientific proficiency as discrete. However, current research indicates that proficiency in one aspect of science is closely related to proficiency in others (e.g., analytic reasoning skills are greater when one is reasoning about familiar domains). Like strands of a rope, the strands of scientific proficiency are intertwined. However, for purposes of being clear about learning and learning outcomes, the committee discusses these four strands separately (see Box 2-1 for a summary).

The strands of scientific proficiency lay out broad learning goals for students. They address the knowledge and reasoning skills that students must eventually acquire to be considered fully proficient in science. They are also a means to that end: they are practices that students need to participate in and become fluent with in order to develop proficiency.

Students who are proficient in science:

know, use, and interpret scientific explanations of the natural world;

generate and evaluate scientific evidence and explanations;

understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge; and

participate productively in scientific practices and discourse.

The strands are not independent or separable in the practice of science, nor in the teaching and learning of science. Rather, the strands of scientific proficiency are interwoven and, taken together, are viewed as science as

practice (see Lehrer and Schauble, 2006). The science-as-practice perspective invokes the notion that learning science involves learning a system of interconnected ways of thinking in a social context to accomplish the goal of working with and understanding scientific ideas. This perspective stresses how conceptual understanding of natural systems is linked to the ability to develop explanations of phenomena and to carry out empirical investigations in order to develop or evaluate knowledge claims.

The strands framework emerged through the committee’s syntheses of disparate research literatures on learning and teaching science, which define science outcomes differently and frequently do not inform one another. The framework offers a new perspective on what is learned when students learn science. First, the strands emphasize the idea of knowledge in use. That is, students’ knowledge is not static, and proficiency involves deploying knowledge and skills across all four strands in order to engage successfully in scientific practices. The content of each strand described below is drawn from research and differs from many typical presentations of goals for science learning. For example, we include an emphasis on theory building and modeling, which is often missing in existing standards and curricular frameworks. And, the fourth strand is often completely overlooked, but research indicates it is a critical component of science learning, particularly for students from populations that are typically underrepresented in science.

These strands illustrate the importance of moving beyond a simple dichotomy of instruction in terms of science as content or science as process. That is, teaching content alone is not likely to lead to proficiency in science, nor is engaging in inquiry experiences devoid of meaningful science content. Rather, students across grades K-8 are more likely to advance in their understanding of science when classrooms provide learning opportunities that attend to all four strands.

Know, Use, and Interpret Scientific Explanations of the Natural World

Knowing, using, and interpreting scientific explanations encompasses learning the facts, concepts, principles, laws, theories, and models of science. As the National Science Education Standards state (National Research Council, 1996, p. 23):

Understanding science requires that an individual integrate a complex structure of many types of knowledge, including the ideas of science, relationships between ideas, reasons for these relationships, ways to use the ideas to explain and predict other natural phenomena, and ways to apply them to many events.

Understanding natural systems requires knowledge of conceptually central ideas and facts integrated in well-structured knowledge systems, that is, facts

integrated and articulated into highly developed and well-established theories. In the science-as-practice framework, we emphasize that these theories or models—the “big ideas” or powerful explanatory models of science—are what enable learners to construct explanations about natural phenomena, including novel cases not exactly like those previously experienced. This strand stresses acquiring facts, building organized and meaningful conceptual structures that incorporate these facts, and employing these conceptual structures during the interpretation, construction, and refinement of explanations, arguments, or models.

Generate and Evaluate Scientific Evidence and Explanations

Generating and evaluating scientific evidence and explanations encompasses the knowledge and skills used for building and refining models and explanations (conceptual, computational, mechanistic), designing and analyzing empirical investigations and observations, and constructing and defending arguments with empirical evidence. This strand also incorporates the social practices (e.g., critiquing an argument) and tools (conceptual, mathematical, physical, and computational) fundamental to constructing and evaluating knowledge claims. Hence, it includes a wide range of practices involved in designing and carrying out a scientific investigation, including asking questions, deciding what to measure, developing measures, collecting data from the measures, structuring the data, interpreting and evaluating the data, and using the empirical results to develop and refine arguments, models, and theories.

Understand the Nature and Development of Scientific Knowledge

This strand focuses attention on students’ understanding of science as a way of knowing: the nature of scientific knowledge, the nature of theory and evidence in science, and the sources for, justification of, and certainty of scientific knowledge. It also includes students’ reflection on the status of their own knowledge.

This strand includes developing a conception of “doing science” that extends beyond experiment to include modeling, systematic observation, and historical reconstruction. It also includes an awareness that science entails the search for core explanatory constructs and connections between them. More specifically, students must recognize that there may be multiple interpretations of the same phenomena. They must understand that explanations are increasingly valuable as they account for the available evidence more completely, and as they generate new, productive research questions. Students should be able to step back from evidence or an explanation and consider whether another interpretation of a particular finding is plausible with respect to existing scientific evidence and other knowledge that they

hold with confidence. This entails embracing a point of view as possible and worthy of further investigation, but subject to careful scrutiny and consideration of alternative perspectives (which may be deemed more valuable in the end).

Participate Productively in Scientific Practices and Discourse

To understand science, one must use science and do so in a manner that reflects the values of scientific practice. Participation is premised on a view that science and scientific knowledge are valuable and interesting, seeing oneself as an effective learner and participant in science, and the belief that steady effort in understanding science pays off. These attitudes toward science and science learning develop as a consequence of students’ experience of educational, social, and cultural environments. The educational environment in particular is an important influence on how students view themselves as science learners and whether they feel supported to participate fully in the scientific community of the classroom.

Viewing the science classroom as a scientific community akin to communities in professional science is advantageous (although K-8 students are clearly not engaged in professional science). Science advances in large part through interactions among members of research communities as they test new ideas, solicit and provide feedback, articulate and evaluate emerging explanations, develop shared representations and models, and reach consensus. Likewise, participation in scientific practices in the classroom helps students advance their understanding of scientific argumentation and explanations; engage in the construction of scientific evidence, representations, and models; and reflect on how scientific knowledge is constructed.

To participate fully in the scientific practices in the classroom, students need to develop a shared understanding of the norms of participation in science. This includes social norms for constructing and presenting a scientific argument and engaging in scientific debates. It also includes habits of mind, such as adopting a critical stance, a willingness to ask questions and seek help, and developing a sense of appropriate trust and skepticism.

Interconnections Among the Strands

Interconnections among the strands in the process of learning are supported by research, although the strength of the research evidence varies across the strands. The cognitive research literatures support the value of teaching content in the context of the practices of science. For example, the knowledge factor, that is, the depth of one’s knowledge of the domain, has repeatedly been identified as a primary factor in the power or limitations of one’s scientific reasoning (Brewer and Samarapungavan, 1991; Brown, 1990;

Carey, 1985; Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, 1981; Goswami and Brown, 1989; see also the discussion in Chapter 5 ). Not surprisingly, both children’s and adults’ scientific reasoning tends to be strongest in domains in which their knowledge is strongest. Therefore, if the goal is to advance the leading edge of children’s scientific reasoning, their instruction needs to be grounded in contexts that also build on their relatively robust understanding of content. There is also mounting evidence that knowledge of scientific explanations of the natural world is advanced through generating and evaluating scientific evidence. For example, instruction designed to engage students in model-based reasoning advances their conceptual understanding of natural phenomena (see, for example, Brown and Clement, 1989; Lehrer et al., 2001; Stewart, Cartier, and Passmore, 2005; White, 1993; Wiser and Amin, 2001; see also the discussions in Chapter 4 and Chapter 9 ).

Evidence for links between Strands 3 and 4 and the other two strands is less robust, but emerging findings are compelling. Motivation, which is an element of Strand 4, clearly plays an important role in learning (see Chapter 7 ). Furthermore, instruction that makes the norms for participating in science explicit supports students’ ability to critique evidence and coordinate theory and evidence (Herrenkohl and Guerra, 1998; for further discussion, see Chapters 7 and 9 ).

Although we have teased apart aspects of understanding and learning to do science as four interrelated strands, we do not separate these as separate learning objectives in our treatment of the pedagogical literature. Indeed, there is evidence that while the strands can be assessed separately, students use them in concert when engaging in scientific tasks (Gotwals and Songer, 2006). Therefore, we contend that to help children develop conceptual understanding of natural systems in any deep way requires engaging them in scientific practices that incorporate all four strands to help them to build and apply conceptual models, as well as to understand science as a disciplinary way of knowing.

DEVELOPMENT, LEARNING, AND INSTRUCTION

An important theme throughout this report is the complex interplay among development, learning and instruction, and the implications for science education. The evidence base for this report draws from several, mostly independent bodies of research, each emerging from different research traditions that operate within different theoretical frameworks. These frameworks differ in the relative emphasis placed on development versus learning and instruction. As a result, the different bodies of research often provide differing and somewhat conflicting pictures of children’s competence. Reconciling these visions of competence and understanding their implications for how to support science learning require careful consider-

ation of the assumptions underlying both research and current practices in science education.

In science education, there has been a frequent assumption that development is a kind of inevitable unfolding and that one must simply wait until a child is cognitively “ready” for more abstract or theory-based forms of content. In other words, through maturation with age, children will achieve certain cognitive milestones naturally, with little direct intervention from adults. Many science educators and policy makers have assumed that the power and limitations of children’s scientific reasoning at different grade levels could be derived from the stages delineated in the cognitive developmental literature. In this view, “developmentally appropriate” education would thus require keeping instruction within these bounds.

There are significant problems with this assumption. First, it assumes that the power and limitations of children’s scientific thinking within an age band can be described and predicted by stage-defining criteria, with limited variability or change therein. As we show in the chapters in Part II , the cognitive developmental literature simply does not support this assumption. In the words of John Flavell, a seminal cognitive developmentalist (1994), “Virtually all contemporary developmentalists agree that cognitive development is not as general stage-like or grand stage-like as Piaget and most of the rest of the field once thought” (p. 574). The foundation of research undermining a broad stage-like conception of cognitive development goes back at least three decades (e.g., Wollman, 1997a, 1997b).

In fact, variability in scientific reasoning within any age group is large, sometimes broader than the differences that separate contiguous age bands. In self-directed experimentation tasks, there are always some adults whose performance looks no better than that of the average child (Klahr, Fay, and Dunbar, 1993; Kuhn, Schauble, and Garcia-Mila, 1992; Kuhn et al., 1995; Schauble, 1996; see also the discussion in Chapter 5 ). Indeed, many adults never seem to master the heuristics for generating and interpreting evidence. Moreover, education, context, and domain expertise seem to play a strong role in whether and when these heuristics are appropriately used (Kuhn, 1991).

Stage-like conceptualizations of development also ignore the critical role of support and guidance by knowledgeable adults and peers. As noted in the National Research Council report How People Learn (1999), children need assistance to learn; building on their early capacities requires catalysts and mediation. Adults play a central role in “promoting children’s curiosity and persistence by directing their attention, structuring their experiences, supporting their learning attempts, and regulating the complexity and difficulty of levels of information for them” (p. 223). In the case of the science classroom, both teachers and peers can and must fill these critical roles. The power of schooling is its potential to make available other people, including

adults and peers, to learn with; thought-provoking tasks; tools that both boost and shape thinking; and activity structures that encapsulate learning-supportive norms and processes.

Indeed, observational and historical studies of working scientists reaf-firm the promise of looking closely at the ways in which environments support learning. These studies demonstrate that theory development and reasoning in science are components of an ensemble of activity that includes networks of participants and institutions (Latour, 1999); specialized ways of talking and writing (Bazerman, 1988); development of representations that render phenomena accessible, visualizable, and transportable (Gooding, 1989; Latour, 1990); and efforts to manage material contingency by making instruments, machines, and other contexts of observation (such as experimental apparatus). The alignment of instruments, measures, and theories is never entirely principled (e.g., Pickering, 1995), and, whether the scientists are professionals or school students, they wrestle with the relationships between these tools and the phenomena they are intended to capture.

A second major problem with assuming children’s learning will unfold without support is that what children are capable of doing without instruction may lag considerably behind what they are capable of doing with effective instruction. Further clouding the picture is that research on cognitive development may not be helpful in illuminating how instruction can advance children’s knowledge and skill. Often, studies in developmental psychology do not have an instructional component and therefore may be more informative about starting points than about children’s potential for developing scientific proficiency under effective instructional conditions.

For example, the idea that prior to middle school children are incapable of designing controlled experiments has been a ubiquitous assumption in the elementary school science community. This claim can be traced to Inhelder and Piaget’s (1958) influential study, The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence. Indeed the Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993) included design of controlled experiments in their list of limitations of the scientific reasoning of third to fifth graders:

Research studies suggest that there are some limits on what to expect at this level of student intellectual development. One limit is that the design of carefully controlled experiments is still beyond most students in middle grades.

Consider the Benchmarks’ crucial—and unusual—caveat (p. 11):

However, the studies say more about what students at this level do not learn in today’s schools than about what they might possibly learn if instruction were more effective.

Indeed, instructional studies have documented success at teaching controlled experimental design to children in this grade span (see Klahr and Nigam, 2004; Toth, Klahr, and Chen, 2000).

As another example, consider the issue of reasoning about theory and evidence. In their delineation of the limitations on third to fifth graders’ scientific reasoning, the Benchmarks also claim that third to fifth graders “confuse theory (explanation) with evidence for it.” In accordance with this deficiency stance, most science curricula for young children avoid consideration of theory and evidence.

The developmental literature related to this fundamental aspect of scientific reasoning is more complex, with some studies in support of the Benchmarks stance and some studies suggesting greater competence. For example, Kuhn, Amsel, and O’Loughlin (1988) conclude that, in the preadolescent, theory and evidence “meld into a single representation as ‘the way things are’” (p. 221), whereas the research of Sodian, Zaitchek, and Carey (1991) indicates that, in some form and under some conditions, even preschoolers can make this distinction and reason accordingly.

Once again, the instructional literature indicates that children’s capabilities in this regard are to some degree amenable to instruction. The instructional design research literature provides an existence proof that elementary schoolchildren’s reasoning about theory and evidence in the context of doing science can be advanced under particular instructional conditions (see Smith et al., 2000). In Chapter 5 we discuss evidence related to both of these examples.

The problem with reducing the power and limitations of children’s scientific reasoning to developmental stages is further undermined by the enduring challenges that many of these issues have posed to much older students and even to practicing scientists. For example, although one can read Inhelder and Piaget’s work (1958) as contending that an understanding of experimental control emerges with formal operational thought, we continue to train students well beyond adolescence in the logic of experimental design. Continuing with the examples used above, the differentiation of theory and evidence poses even more challenges. Indeed, the philosopher of science Stephen Toulmin (1972) has argued that observation and theory are at some level inevitably entangled; in his words, “the semantic and empirical elements are not so much wantonly confused as unavoidably fused” (p. 189). Delaying instruction until such a capability emerges through “development” cannot constitute a strategic tactic, as development alone cannot adequately elaborate the competence. Furthermore, there is mounting evidence that instruction can advance these capabilities as well as many others.

In short, young children have a broad repertoire of cognitive capacities directly related to many aspects of scientific practice, and it is problematic to view these as simply a product of cognitive development. Current research

indicates that students do not go through general stages of cognitive development, and there are no “critical periods” for learning particular aspects of science. Rather, cognitive capacities directly related to scientific practice usually do not fully develop in and of themselves apart from instruction, even in older children or adults. These capacities need to be nurtured, sustained, and elaborated in supportive learning environments that provide effective scaffolding and targeted as important through assessment practices.

Although there is much that is not understood about the relationships between development and learning, the evidence is clear that a student’s instructional history plays a critical role in her scientific knowledge, scientific reasoning, and readiness to do and learn more science. Components of the cognitive system (e.g., processing speed and capacity, strategies and heuristics, metacognition) certainly are factors that contribute to a student’s learning history, but so do other mechanisms that are manipulable by educators and constitute the “design tools” that a teacher can deploy to most directly affect science learning.

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Stewart, J., Cartier, J.L., and Passmore, C.M. (2005). Developing understanding through model-based inquiry. In National Research Council, Committee on How People Learn, M.S. Donovan and J.D. Bransford (Eds.), How students learn: Science in the classroom (pp. 515-565). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Thagard, P. (1998a). Ulcers and bacteria I: Discovery and acceptance. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, 29, 107-136. Also available: http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Ulcers.one.html [accessed August 2007].

Thagard, P. (1998b). Ulcers and bacteria II: Instruments, experiments, and social interactions. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, 29 (2), 317-342. Also available: http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Ulcers.two.html [accessed August 2007].

Toth, E.E., Klahr, D., and Chen, Z. (2000). Bridging research and practice: A cognitively-based classroom intervention for teaching experimentation skills to elementary school children. Cognition and Instruction, 18 (4), 423-459.

Toulmin, S.E. (1972). Human understanding, vol. I . Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.

Tschirgi, J.E. (1980). Sensible reasoning: A hypothesis about hypotheses. Child Development, 51, 1-10.

Vellom, R.P., and Anderson, C.W. (1999). Reasoning about data in middle school science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36, 179-199.

Vosniadou, S., and Brewer, W.F. (1992). Mental models of the earth: A study of conceptual change in childhood. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 535-585.

Vosniadou, S., and Brewer, W.F. (1994). Mental models of the day/night cycle. Cognitive Science, 18, 123-183.

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White, B. (1993). ThinkerTools: Causal models, conceptual change, and science education. Cognition and Instruction , 10 (1), 1-100.

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Wollman, W. (1997a). Controlling variables: Assessing levels of understanding. Science Education , 61 (3), 371-383.

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What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning. Taking Science to School answers such questions as:

• When do children begin to learn about science? Are there critical stages in a child's development of such scientific concepts as mass or animate objects?
• What role does nonschool learning play in children's knowledge of science?
• How can science education capitalize on children's natural curiosity?
• What are the best tasks for books, lectures, and hands-on learning?
• How can teachers be taught to teach science?

The book also provides a detailed examination of how we know what we know about children's learning of science—about the role of research and evidence. This book will be an essential resource for everyone involved in K-8 science education—teachers, principals, boards of education, teacher education providers and accreditors, education researchers, federal education agencies, and state and federal policy makers. It will also be a useful guide for parents and others interested in how children learn.

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Commentary | Education

The Goals of Education

Commentary • By Rebecca Jacobsen and Richard Rothstein • December 4, 2006

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 [THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN  THE PHI DELTA KAPPAN 88 (4), DECEMBER 2006.]

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) holds all elementary schools, regardless of student characteristics, accountable for achieving proficient student scores in reading and math. By demanding that schools report achievement for racial, ethnic, and economic subgroups, the accountability system aims to shine a light on schools that “leave children behind.”

At first glance, this approach seems reasonable. But few who debate the details of implementation have considered how this accountability system has begun to shift how we think about what schools should do. By basing sanctions solely on math and reading scores, the law creates incentives to limit — or in some cases to eliminate entirely — time spent on other important curricular objectives. This reorientation of instruction disproportionately affects low-income and minority children, so achievement gaps may actually widen in areas for which schools are not now being held accountable.

The shift in curricular coverage is also at odds with the consensus about the goals of public education to which Americans historically have subscribed. More surprisingly, it is also starkly at odds with the apparent intentions of school board members and state legislators, who are responsible for implementing the policy, and with the intentions of the public whom these leaders represent. We will discuss the evidence with regard to these intentions later in this article. For now, let us begin by documenting the goal displacement stimulated by NCLB.

The federal government’s periodic national survey of teachers demonstrates the curricular shifts. In 1991, teachers in grades 1 to 4 spent an average of 33% of their classroom instructional time on reading. By 2004, reading was consuming 36% of instructional time. For math, average weekly time went from 15% to 17%. Meanwhile, time for social studies and science decreased. Since 1991, instructional time spent on social studies went from 9% to 8%, and time spent on science went from 8% to 7%. 1

These seemingly small average changes mask a disproportionate impact on the most disadvantaged students. The Council for Basic Education surveyed school principals in several states in the fall of 2003 and found that principals in schools with high proportions of minorities were more likely to have reduced time for history, civics, geography, the arts, and foreign languages so that they could devote more time to math and reading. In New York, for example, twice as many principals in high-minority schools reported such curricular shifts as did principals in mostly white schools. In high-minority elementary schools, 38% of principals reported decreasing the time devoted to social studies (usually meaning history), but in low-minority schools only 17% reported decreasing such time.2

A 2005 survey by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) found that 97% of high-poverty districts had new minimum-time requirements for reading, while only 55% of low-poverty districts had them. 3 The CEP had previously found that, where districts had adopted such minimum-time policies, about half had reduced social studies, 43% had reduced art and music, and 27% had reduced physical education. 4

Thus, although NCLB aims to narrow the achievement gap in math and reading, its unintended consequence is to widen the gap in other curricular areas. This is how one former teacher describes her changed classroom activities:

From my experience of being an elementary school teacher at a low-performing urban school in Los Angeles, I can say that the pressure became so intense that we had to show how every single lesson we taught connected to a standard that was going to be tested. This meant that art, music, and even science and social studies were not a priority and were hardly ever taught. We were forced to spend ninety percent of the instructional time on reading and math. This made teaching boring for me and was a huge part of why I decided to leave the profession. 5

These distortions did not begin with NCLB. They developed gradually in the 1990s as states implemented similar accountability policies. A 2001 analysis by researchers at the University of Colorado found positive effects of higher math and reading standards, but these gains were offset by losses in other areas, especially in activities that developed citizenship, social responsibility, and cooperative behavior. One Colorado teacher reported:

Our district has told us to focus on reading, writing, and mathematics. . . . In the past I had hatched out baby chicks in the classroom as part of a science unit. I don’t have time to do that. I have dissected body parts, and I don’t have time to do that. . . . We don’t take as many field trips. We don’t do community outreach like we used to, like visiting the nursing home or cleaning up the park because we had adopted a park and that was our job to keep it clean. Well, we don’t have time for that anymore.6

Some from outside the world of education have expressed concern about these developments. In testimony before a U.S. Senate committee, the historian David McCullough observed, “Because of No Child Left Behind, sadly, history is being put on the back burner or taken off the stove altogether in many or most schools, in favor of math or reading.”7 Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day

O’Connor now co-chairs a “Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools,” which laments that, under NCLB, “as civic learning has been pushed aside, society has neglected a fundamental purpose of American education, putting the health of our democracy at risk.”8 And U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) has reacted to the insufficient attention civics receives in public schools by successfully sponsoring legislation requiring that every educational institution in the nation teach about the federal Constitution each September 17. It can hardly be considered a reasonable solution to have Congress mandate specific days of instruction for each of the many education goals now being deemphasized under the testing pressure of NCLB.

The growing national diabetes epidemic also shows how accountability for math and reading alone can exacerbate inequity in other important aspects of schooling. On average, blacks are 60% more likely to have diabetes than whites of similar age. (The incidence of the disease is even higher for Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans. 9 One cause of this epidemic, though not the only one, is the decline in physical activity among young people, particularly minority youths. This, in turn, results partly from the substitution of greater test preparation in math and reading for gym classes. Black elementary school children are 50% more likely to be overweight than their white peers, while white children are twice as likely as black children to take part in organized daily physical activity.

In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control noted that 20% of black children in elementary schools were overweight, compared to 14% of white elementary-schoolers. 10 Not surprisingly, 47% of whites in fourth to eighth grades (the years of NCLB testing) participate in organized daily physical activity, while just 24% of blacks do so. 11 Meanwhile, 18% of black high school students and 12% of white high school students are overweight. 12 From 2001 to 2003, as academic standards were raised and high school exit exams developed, the proportion of white high school students participating in daily physical education was essentially unchanged, but the proportion of blacks participating in daily physical education declined substantially.13

It is clear that black students, whose academic performance, on average, is lower and who have been enrolled, on average, in fewer academic courses, are more likely to be affected by increased academic requirements. But because black students are less likely to have opportunities to participate in out-of-school sports, they also are more dependent on adequate physical education programs in school to protect their health. Overall, considering both in- and out-of-school exercise, the CDC found that, in 2003, 65% of white high school students participated in a sufficient amount of strenuous physical activity (such as playing basketball or soccer, running, swimming laps, bicycling fast, dancing fast, or engaging in similar aerobic activities) for good health, while only 55% of black high school students did so.14

NCLB’s role in distorting the curriculum is not unrecognized by those who promoted and continue to support the law. Consequently, some may be having second thoughts. Robert Schwartz, for example, was the founding president of Achieve, Inc., the joint business/governors’ group that was largely responsible for the testing and accountability demands that culminated in NCLB. He now writes:

The goal of equipping all students with a solid foundation of academic knowledge and skills is leading to an undue narrowing of curricular choices and a reduction in the kinds of learning opportunities for academically at-risk students that are most likely to engage and motivate them to take school seriously. This is a painful acknowledgment from someone who considers himself a charter member of the standards movement.15

But other NCLB supporters take pride in how the curriculum has been reshaped by testing, notwithstanding the loss of attention to important, but nontested, subjects. Responding to a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation showing how NCLB’s focus on math and reading has led schools to diminish the time devoted to science instruction, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings boasted, “I’m a what-gets-measured-gets-done kind of gal,” and claimed that the solution was to test science as well. 16 Yet, while science tests are to be added to NCLB in 2007-08, schools will not be held accountable for the results. Even in the unlikely event that tests created for informational purposes only would serve as incentives to redirect teaching time back to science, the Spellings approach says nothing about the many other areas of knowledge and behavioral traits that are being dropped from curricula by schools held accountable only for math and reading.

A Historical Perspective

The current overemphasis on basic academic skills is a historical aberration. Throughout American history, we have held a more expansive set of goals for our public schools.

When the Founders endorsed the need for public education, their motives were mostly political. Learning to read was less important than, and only a means toward, helping citizens make wise political decisions. History instruction was thought to teach students good judgment, enabling them to learn from prior generations’ mistakes and successes and inspiring them to develop such character traits as honesty, integrity, and compassion. The Founders had no doubt that schools could produce students who exhibited these traits, and it would never have occurred to them that instruction in reading and arithmetic alone would guarantee good citizenship.

In 1749 Benjamin Franklin proposed that Pennsylvania establish a public school that should, he said, place as much emphasis on physical as on intellectual fitness because “exercise invigorates the soul as well as the body.” As for academics, Franklin thought history particularly important, because “questions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, will naturally arise” as students debate historical issues “in conversation and in writing.” Students, Franklin insisted, should also read newspapers and discuss current controversies, thereby developing their logic and reasoning.

George Washington’s goals for public schools were also political and moral. In his first message to Congress, he advocated public schools that would teach students “to value their own rights” and “to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority.” His farewell address warned that, because public opinion influences policy in a democracy, “it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened” by schools that teach virtue and morality. He wanted to go even further, but his speechwriter (Alexander Hamilton) cut from the farewell address a plea for a national public university that would encourage tolerance of diversity, bringing together students of different backgrounds to show them there is no basis for their “jealousies and prejudices.”17

Thomas Jefferson, the Founder most often linked with education in the public mind, thought universal public education needed primarily to prepare voters to exercise wise judgment. He wanted not what we now call “civics education” — learning how government works, how bills are passed, how long a President’s term is, and so on. Rather, Jefferson thought schools could prepare voters to think critically about candidates and their positions and then choose wisely. Toward the end of his life, he proposed a public education system for the state of Virginia:

To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing; to improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains, to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment; and in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.18

As the 19th century progressed, the earliest labor unions insisted that public schools promote social reform. Anticipating by nearly two centuries our contemporary accountability policies, union leaders of the time feared that public schools for the poor would include only basic reading and arithmetic and not the more important intellectual development that could empower the working class.

In 1830, a workingmen’s committee examined Pennsylvania’s urban public schools, which mostly served the poor while rich children attended private schools. The committee denounced the urban schools for instruction that “extends [no] further than a tolerable proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic.” The committee added: “There can be no real liberty without a wide diffusion of real intelligence. . . . Education, instead of being limited as in our public poor schools, to a simple acquaintance with words and cyphers, should tend, as far as possible, to the production of a just disposition, virtuous habits, and a rational self governing character.” Equality, the committee concluded, is but “an empty shadow” if poor children don’t get an “equal education  . . . in the habits, in the manners, and in the feelings of the community.”19

In 1837, Horace Mann was elected secretary of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education and thereafter wrote 12 annual reports to encourage support for public schools. One report stressed the importance of teaching vocal music. Another, following Mann’s visit to Europe, concluded that universal basic education in reading and arithmetic did not alone ensure democratic values. Prussian students were literate, after all, but supported autocracy. Mann concluded that schools in a democracy could not be held accountable for academics alone but must inculcate democratic moral and political values so that literacy would not be misused. In his last report, Mann articulated a list of goals for education that included health and physical education, intellectual (academic) education, political education, moral education, and religious education (by which he meant teaching the ethical principles on which all religions agreed).

As schooling expanded in the early 1900s, the federal Bureau of Education commissioned a 1918 report, the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. Although some contemporary academic historians have popularized the notion that the Cardinal Principles turned American education away from academic skills, this is an exaggeration. In fact, the commission that produced the document asserted that “much of the energy of the elementary school is properly devoted to teaching certain fundamental processes, such as reading, writing, arithmetical computations, and the elements of oral and written expression” and that the secondary school should be devoted to the application of these processes. 20 But the document argued that academic skills were not enough; it continued in the tradition of the Founders and educators like Horace Mann by urging a balanced approach to the goals of education.

As its first goal, the commission listed physical activity for students, instruction in personal hygiene, and instruction in public health. Its second goal was academic skills. Third was preparation for the traditional household division of labor between men and women. Fourth was vocational education, including the selection of jobs appropriate to each student’s abilities and interests, as well as maintenance of good relationships with fellow workers.

Like the Founders, the commission emphasized in its fifth goal the need for civic education: preparation to participate in the neighborhood, town or city, state, and nation. The Cardinal Principles report devoted more space to civic education than to any other goal, stressing that schools should teach “good judgment” in political matters and that students can learn democratic habits only if classrooms and schools are run by democratic methods. Even the study of literature should “kindle social ideals.”

The sixth goal was “worthy use of leisure,” or student appreciation of literature, art, and music. And last, the seventh goal, ethical character, was described as paramount in a democratic society. It included developing a sense of personal responsibility, initiative, and the “spirit of service.”21

Two decades later, the National Education Association (NEA), then a quasi-governmental group that included not only teachers but all professionals and policy makers in education, was considering how public schools should respond to the Great Depression. Its 1938 report, written by a federal education official, set forth what it called the “social-economic goals” of American education.

Echoing Horace Mann’s reflections following his visit to Prussia, the NEA report proclaimed: “The safety of democracy will not be assured merely by making education universal”; in other words, simply by making all Americans literate. “The task is not so easy as that. The dictatorships [Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union] have universal schooling and use this very means to prevent the spread of democratic doctrines and institutions.”22 Teaching democratic values and habits had to be an explicit focus of schools and could not be assumed to flow automatically from proficiency in reading and math. The essential ability to distinguish between demagogues and statesmen “demands the ability to read accurately, to organize facts, to weigh evidence, and to separate truth from falsehood.” Schools, it went on, should also develop students’ morality: justice and fair dealing, honesty, truthfulness, maintenance of group understandings, proper respect for authority, tolerance and respect for others, habits of cooperation, and work habits such as industry and self-control, along with endurance and physical strength.

The report argued that school time for social studies should be increased and should include room for a broad background in social and economic history, as well as ongoing discussion of current affairs. “Good teaching demands that pupils be habituated in weighing the evidence on all sides of a question,” it said. Schools should also develop a commitment to promote social welfare and ideals of racial equality. School-sponsored extracurricular and community activities might be the most effective ways of reaching these goals, the report said.

Prefiguring our contemporary dilemmas, the 1938 report went on to warn:

Most of the standardized testing instruments [and written examinations] used in schools today deal largely with information. . . . There should be a much greater concern with the development of attitudes, interests, ideals, and habits. To focus tests exclusively on the acquisition and retention of information may recognize objectives of education which are relatively unimportant. Measuring the results of education must be increasingly concerned with such questions as these: Are the children growing in their ability to work together for a common end? Do they show greater skill in collecting and weighing evidence? Are they learning to be fair and tolerant in situations where conflicts arise? Are they sympathetic in the presence of suffering and indignant in the presence of injustice? Do they show greater concern about questions of civic, social, and economic importance? Are they using their spending money wisely? Are they becoming more skillful in doing some useful type of work? Are they more honest, more reliable, more temperate, more humane? Are they finding happiness in their present family life? Are they living in accordance with the rules of health? Are they acquiring skills in using all of the fundamental tools of learning? Are they curious about the natural world around them? Do they appreciate, each to the fullest degree possible, their rich inheritance in art, literature, and music? Do they balk at being led around by their prejudices?23

This broad consensus that schools should be accountable for more than just the basic skills was also supported by the conservative economist Milton Friedman, who in 1955 first called for vouchers to permit any student to attend any public or private school. But unlike today’s privatization advocates (who claim him as their intellectual father), Friedman specified that schools participating in his plan must meet minimum goals established by the public. He distinguished between outcomes that exclusively benefit students themselves (in higher earnings) and outcomes that benefit the community, for which all schools should be accountable. Friedman wrote, “A stable and democratic society is impossible without widespread acceptance of some common set of values and without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens.” In elementary school, “the three R’s cover most of the ground,” but secondary schools must show that they train students “for citizenship and community leadership” as a condition of receiving public funds.24

Shortly after Friedman’s call, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund convened leaders from many fields to make public policy recommendations. Nelson Rockefeller (subsequently New York’s governor and Gerald Ford’s vice president) chaired the overall project, with Henry Kissinger (who later served as secretary of state) as its staff director. The Rockefeller Report, as it was known, asked, How “may we best prepare our young people to keep their individuality, initiative, creativity in a highly organized, intricately meshed society? . . . Our conception of excellence must embrace many kinds of achievement. . . . There is excellence in abstract intellectual activity, in art, in music, in managerial activities, in craftsmanship, in human relations, in technical work.”25

The Rockefeller Report recognized that testing would gain importance for sorting future scientists and leaders. But, the panel warned, “Decisions based on test scores must be made with the awareness of the . . . qualities of character that are a necessary ingredient of great performance[:] . . . aspiration or purpose . . . courage, vitality or determination.”26

For the last 20 years, lawsuits have argued that states have an obligation to finance an “adequate” education, and state courts have had to define what this means. True to American traditions, the courts have proposed definitions that extend far beyond adequacy as measured by test scores alone.

The earliest decision in this line of cases was issued in 1976 by the New Jersey Supreme Court, which found a constitutional requirement for the state to provide a “thorough and efficient education” that enables graduates to become “citizens and competitors in the labor market.” The court later elaborated:

Thorough and efficient means more than teaching

. . . skills needed to compete in the labor market. . . . It means being able to fulfill one’s role as a citizen, a role that encompasses far more than merely registering to vote. It means the ability to participate fully in society, in the life of one’s community, the ability to appreciate music, art, and literature, and the ability to share all of that with friends.27

These are goals sought by wealthy districts, the court said, and must be pursued in low-income urban areas as well.

Three years later, in 1979, the West Virginia Supreme Court issued a decision that became a model for other states. It defined a “thorough and efficient” education as one that develops “the minds, bodies, and social morality of its charges to prepare them for useful and happy occupations, recreation, and citizenship.” Then, following closely Thomas Jefferson’s language of nearly 200 years before, the court required its legislature to fund a school system that would develop “in every child” the capacities of

(1) literacy; (2) ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers; (3) knowledge of government to the extent that the child will be equipped as a citizen to make informed choices among persons and issues that affect his or her own governance; (4) self-knowledge and knowledge of his or her total environment to allow the child to intelligently choose life work — to know his or her options; (5) work-training and advanced academic training as the child may intelligently choose; (6) recreational pursuits; (7) interests in all creative arts, such as music, theater, literature, and the visual arts; (8) social ethics, both behavioral and abstract, to facilitate compatibility with others in this society.28

The Kentucky Supreme Court followed with a similar ruling, one subsequently cited by many other state courts.

Balanced Accountability

We should not conclude from this review that the exclusive emphasis of NCLB on basic academic outcomes is entirely new. There have been previous efforts to assert the primacy of academic training. Yet most Americans have wanted both the academic focus and the social and political outcomes. Holding schools accountable only for math and reading is an extreme position, which rarely has enjoyed significant support.

Last year, we attempted to synthesize these goals for public education that had been established over 250 years of American history. We defined eight broad goal areas that seemed to be prominent in each era, although certainly emphases changed from generation to generation. We then presented these goals to representative samples of all American adults, of school board members, of state legislators, and of school superintendents, and we asked the respondents to assign a relative importance to each of the goal areas. 29 Average responses of all adults, board members, legislators, and superintendents were very similar. Table 1 shows how the surveyed groups of Americans would structure an accountability system if its aim was to hold schools responsible for achieving a balanced set of outcomes.

TABLE 1. Selected Americans’ Views on Relative Importance of Public School Goals

   *Respondents were asked to rate the relative importance of each goal area by assigning percentages to each. If a respondent’s choices summed to more or less than 100%, the software program rejected this error and asked for a revised set of choices so that the sum would equal 100%. The percentages shown are simple averages of the average responses for each of the four surveyed groups — U.S. adults, school board members, state legislators, and school superintendents.

What is most curious about these survey findings is that they take account of the goals of state representatives and school board members, two groups of public officials who have been aggressive in the past two decades about establishing school accountability systems that expect performance only in basic skills. This gap between the preferences that respondents expressed in our surveys and the educational standards established through political processes reflects a widespread policy incoherence.

American schools should be held accountable for results. But an accountability system consisting almost exclusively of standardized tests is a travesty and a betrayal of our historic commitments. What would an accountability system look like if it created incentives for schools to pursue a balanced set of goals ?

Such a system would certainly include standardized tests of basic academic skills, but it would also include some standardized measures in other areas. For example, tests of physical fitness (measuring things like upper body strength) and simple measures of body weight should be added to shed light on the efficacy of schools’ physical education programs. Under a balanced accountability system, schools that sacrifice essential physical education for excessive drill in math and reading would lose their incentives to undertake such distorted practices.

A balanced accountability system would also make use of measures that are more difficult to standardize but equally valid. Student writing and analysis of contemporary issues, as well as student performances in the arts, in scientific experimentation, and in debates, would also be included. School accountability does not require such assessments of every student every year. A random sample of students, drawn periodically, would suffice.

Accountability also requires less immediately assessable measures that nonetheless are reflections of school adequacy. Shouldn’t we judge a school’s civics program by whether young graduates register and vote, participate as volunteers in their communities, or contribute to charity? Shouldn’t we judge the adequacy of students’ literacy instruction as much by whether, as young adults, they read for pleasure and to stay well informed as by whether, as young children, they scored well on tests of decoding? Shouldn’t we judge the adequacy of students’ physical education by whether, as young adults, they exercise regularly?

A balanced accountability system also requires school inspections that cannot be organized from Washington, D.C. Teams that visit schools for accountability purposes should differ from today’s accreditation teams by including, in addition to professional educators, political appointees, members of the business community, and representatives of labor and community groups. These teams should judge not only the quality of school facilities, but also the quality of instruction. They should examine whether students are engaged in the kind of group activities likely to develop the teamwork so valued by employers. They should observe classroom discussions to determine if these are likely to develop the kind of critical thinking that leads to intelligent voters.

Today, we are a long way from establishing an accountability system that is true to American traditions and to our contemporary goals for public schools. We could move toward such a system, but NCLB is taking us in the opposite direction.

1. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Schools and Staffing Teacher Data File; 1990-91 Public School Teacher Data File; 1993-94 Public School Teacher Data File; 1999-2000 Public School Teacher Data File; 1999-2000 Public Charter School Teacher Data File; and 2003-04 Public School Teacher Data File.

2. Claus von Zastrow, with Helen Janc, Academic Atrophy: The Condition of the Liberal Arts in America’s Public Schools (Washington, D.C.: Council for Basic Education, 2004); and additional data provided through personal correspondence with von Zastrow.

3. From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, 2006), Figure 4-A, p. 97.

4. From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 3 of the No Child Left Behind Act (Washington, D.C.: Center on Education Policy, 2005), Table 1-1, p. 22.

5. Jacquelyn Duran, “An Adequate Teacher: What Would the System Look Like?,” term paper, Teachers College, Columbia University, Course ITSF 4151, December 2005.

6. Grace Taylor et al., A Survey of Teachers’ Perspectives on High-Stakes Testing in Colorado: What Gets Taught, What Gets Lost (Los Angeles: National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, University of California, September 2001), p. 30.

7. Sam Dillon, “From Yale to Cosmetology School, Americans Brush Up on History and Government,” New York Times, 16 September 2005, p. A-14.

8. “Call to Action,” Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, 17 April 2006, www.civicmissionofschools.org .

9. “National Diabetes Fact Sheet,” National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 31 January 2005, www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/estimates.htm .

10. Allison A. Hedley et al., “Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity Among U.S. Children, Adolescents, and Adults, 1999-2002,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 16 June 2004, pp. 2847-50.

11. “Physical Activity Levels Among Children Aged 9-13 Years — United States, 2002,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 August 2003, Table 1, www.cdc.gov/mmwr .

12. “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance — United States, 2003,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 May 2004, Table 58, www.cdc.gov/mmwr .

13. “Participation in High School Physical Education — United States, 1991-2003,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 September 2004, pp. 844-47, www.cdc.gov/mmwr .

14. “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance — United States, 2003,” Table 50.

15. Robert B. Schwartz, “Multiple Pathways — And How to Get There,” in Richard Kazis, Joel Vargas, and Nancy Hoffman, eds., Double the Numbers: Increasing Postsecondary Credentials for Underrepresented Youth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press, 2004), p. 26.

16. Michael Janofsky, “Report Says States Aim Low in Science Classes,” New York Times, 8 December 2005.

17. Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Knopf, 2001), p. 154.

18. Thomas Jefferson et al., “Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Fix the Site of the University of Virginia, etc., ” in Roy J. Honeywell, ed., The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), Appendix J, pp. 248-60.

19. John Mitchell (Chairman, Joint Committee of the City and County of Philadelphia), “Public Education,” The Working Man’s Advocate, 6 March 1830, cited in Lawrence A. Cremin, The American Common School: An Historic Conception (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1951), pp. 34-35.

20. Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Education, Department of the Interior, Bulletin No. 35, 1918), pp. 11-12.

21. Ibid., pp. 11-16.

22. Educational Policies Commission, The Purposes of Education in American Democracy (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association of the United States and the American Association of School Administrators, 1938), p. 16.

23. Ibid., pp. 153-54.

24. Milton Friedman, “The Role of Government in Education,” in Robert Solo, ed., Economics and the Public Interest (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955), pp. 123-44.

25. The Pursuit of Excellence: Education and the Future of America — The “Rockefeller Report” on Education (New York: Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Special Studies Project Report V, 1958), pp. 14, 16.

26. Ibid., p. 29.

27. Abbott v. Burke II, 119 N.J. 287; A.2d 359 (1990), Supreme Court of New Jersey, decided June 5, as corrected June 14.

28. Pauley v. Kelly, 162 W.Va. 672; 255 S.E.2d 859 (1979), 705-6, 877.

29. Because giving weights to eight categories is too cognitively complex a task for a telephone interview, respondents worked over a secure website or, if they were not computer literate, over a device provided to them that could be attached to their television sets. A full description of the survey methodology and detailed results will appear in a forthcoming publication by the authors.

Richard Rothstein  is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute, Washington, D.C.  Rebecca Jacobsen  is a doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.

  [THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN  THE PHI DELTA KAPPAN 88 (4), DECEMBER 2006.]

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• Progress towards quality education was already slower than required before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has had devastating impacts on education, causing learning losses in four out of five of the 104 countries studied.

Without additional measures, an estimated 84 million children and young people will stay out of school by 2030 and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.

In addition to free primary and secondary schooling for all boys and girls by 2030, the aim is to provide equal access to affordable vocational training, eliminate gender and wealth disparities, and achieve universal access to quality higher education.

Education is the key that will allow many other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved. When people are able to get quality education they can break from the cycle of poverty.

Education helps to reduce inequalities and to reach gender equality. It also empowers people everywhere to live more healthy and sustainable lives. Education is also crucial to fostering tolerance between people and contributes to more peaceful societies.

• To deliver on Goal 4, education financing must become a national investment priority. Furthermore, measures such as making education free and compulsory, increasing the number of teachers, improving basic school infrastructure and embracing digital transformation are essential.

What progress have we made so far?

While progress has been made towards the 2030 education targets set by the United Nations, continued efforts are required to address persistent challenges and ensure that quality education is accessible to all, leaving no one behind.

Between 2015 and 2021, there was an increase in worldwide primary school completion, lower secondary completion, and upper secondary completion. Nevertheless, the progress made during this period was notably slower compared to the 15 years prior.

What challenges remain?

According to national education targets, the percentage of students attaining basic reading skills by the end of primary school is projected to rise from 51 per cent in 2015 to 67 per cent by 2030. However, an estimated 300 million children and young people will still lack basic numeracy and literacy skills by 2030.

Economic constraints, coupled with issues of learning outcomes and dropout rates, persist in marginalized areas, underscoring the need for continued global commitment to ensuring inclusive and equitable education for all. Low levels of information and communications technology (ICT) skills are also a major barrier to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity.

Where are people struggling the most to have access to education?

Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest challenges in providing schools with basic resources. The situation is extreme at the primary and lower secondary levels, where less than one-half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have access to drinking water, electricity, computers and the Internet.

Inequalities will also worsen unless the digital divide – the gap between under-connected and highly digitalized countries – is not addressed .

Are there groups that have more difficult access to education?

Yes, women and girls are one of these groups. About 40 per cent of countries have not achieved gender parity in primary education. These disadvantages in education also translate into lack of access to skills and limited opportunities in the labour market for young women.

What can we do?  

Ask our governments to place education as a priority in both policy and practice. Lobby our governments to make firm commitments to provide free primary school education to all, including vulnerable or marginalized groups.

Facts and figures

Goal 4 targets.

• Without additional measures, only one in six countries will achieve the universal secondary school completion target by 2030, an estimated 84 million children and young people will still be out of school, and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.
• To achieve national Goal 4 benchmarks, which are reduced in ambition compared with the original Goal 4 targets, 79 low- and lower-middle- income countries still face an average annual financing gap of $97 billion.

Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023

4.1  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes

4.2  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and preprimary education so that they are ready for primary education

4.3  By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.4  By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

4.5  By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

4.6  By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

4.7  By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4.A  Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all

4.B  By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

4.C  By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing states

UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UN Children’s Fund

UN Development Programme

Global Education First Initiative

UN Population Fund: Comprehensive sexuality education

UN Office of the Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth

Fast Facts: Quality Education

Infographic: Quality Education

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DepEd to launch Basic Education Development Plan 2030 as strategic roadmap for basic education

June 2, 2022 — The Department of Education (DepEd) is set to launch the Basic Education Development Plan 2030 (BEDP 2030) on June 3 to provide a strategic roadmap to improve the delivery and quality of basic education.

BEDP 2030 is the first long-term plan of the Department for basic education, covering formal education from 5 to 18 years old and non-formal education for youth and adults.

The plan aims to continue the goals of the Department for all Filipinos to realize their full potential and contribute meaningfully to a cohesive nation through the protection and promotion of the right to education. BEDP 2030 is also designed to address the immediate impacts of the pandemic on learning, participation, and education delivery, address the remaining access gaps, improve education quality and build resilience.

“BEDP is part of the administration’s efforts to ensure that the call for improving the access and quality of basic education will continue as these are the challenges that were identified by various researches. BEDP 2030 was anchored on the Sulong Edukalidad framework to harmonize the strategies within DepEd,” Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones noted.

The launch will be attended by key DepEd officials, Education Forum for Quality Education (Educ Forum) representatives, and partners, including the Philippine Business for Education (PBEd), UNICEF, and SEAMEO INNOTECH.

“In this launch, we will discuss the Department’s blueprint for the next decade in formulating, implementing, coordinating, monitoring, evaluating, and supervising policies, plans, programs, and projects to further improve the basic education and the experience of learners in the learning environment,” Undersecretary and Chief of Staff Nepomuceno Malaluan said. He also emphasized that the BEDP 2030 will be a living document subject to continuing review and refinement by the incoming administration.

The official launching will be live-streamed via the DepEd Philippines Facebook page from 1:30 pm to 4:30 pm on Friday.

For reference and guidance on the adoption of BEDP 2030 (DepEd Order 024, s.2022), please visit https://www.deped.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DO_s2022_024.pdf .

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Empowering Teachers as the Experts

What are the 7 Goals of Education?

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I was flipping channels on television the other evening when I came across an interviewer discussing education with two women. I stopped to listen. Two things struck me. The first was that the women she was interviewing were not educators at least not in the sense that they had ever taught in a classroom. One was a professor of education studies and the other was a reporter specializing in education. This is pretty much par for the course in the current climate. Heaven forbid an actually experienced teacher or even an administrator be interviewed.

What really got my mind reeling, however, was a comment made by the interviewer. She said that the purpose of education was to teach future workers. This startled me as I fear this is becoming the message being given by the education “reformers.” I was even more unsettled when neither expert corrected nor challenged her on the point.

In thirteen years as a second-grade teacher, I never once thought of myself as educating future “workers.” In second grade, most of them were overwhelmed by the age-old question of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” There is a story John Lennon told that when he was a young boy he was asked that question when he started school. He replied “Happy.” He was told he didn’t understand the question.

What I have discovered is there is no easy answer to the purpose of education. It depends on your philosophy, who is paying the bill, and –gasp – politics. Anyone who has been in the education game for a while can tell you that everything is cyclical. Right now, the powers-that-be seem to believe that the purpose of education is to produce cogs in the wheel for future jobs, not citizens, ingenious problem solvers, or creative thinkers. The money used to fund education programs is often from large donors who are looking toward building an “educated” workforce. By educated, I mean, being able to complete the tasks needed to do a skilled job in their business.

The philosophies of education to correspond with that are behaviorism, where a learner is basically passive, or cognitivism, where the learner is seen as an information processor. Teaching in these philosophies is practiced through rote learning, drills, and testing. The outcome is directly correlated to what the teacher feeds the brain. The problem with these philosophies is that children are neither Pavlov’s dogs nor computers but living beings with many influences other than the input given by teachers. (To learn more about these philosophies and others you can go to http://www.learning-theories.com/ )

I would expect most classroom teachers do not feel this is the best way children learn. I certainly don’t. Education is so much more. My goals for education are the following.

1. To have the basic skills needed to build upon to accomplish whatever task or job is assigned in the future. This is the part where we train workers for the future. Our children need the math and language arts skills needed to be successful.

2. To be a critical thinker. Children need to learn to analyze the information given to them so as adults they can decide what is true. This is something needed everywhere from the workplace to avoiding purchasing every product advertised on infomercials.

3. To be able to troubleshoot or strategize. I suppose my grandfather would have called this horse sense. The ability to logically attack a problem to come up with a viable solution is natural to some but not all. In fact, it is a skill that is taught when we teach test-taking — a popular subject these days. In real life, we use this skill at home when the dryer isn’t working or the computer is dead. In the bigger world, it helps us come up with ways to see solutions troubling the community.

4. To be a moral person. Being a moral person is knowing what society accepts as correct behavior. While some see this as a family or religion’s responsibility, in fact, schools have taught this for decades. In fact, a classroom is a perfect practice community to learn how we interact appropriately.

5. To be a good citizen. There are many levels to this. Learning the way our government works is imperative in making our government remain a democracy. It also is important to understand laws, public works, and civil disobedience to understand how our actions influence the communities where we live.

6. To have enough interests to be able to have not only a job but outside passions as well. I know of very few people who are so consumed in their jobs that they have no other interests. What makes us well-rounded individuals is the broad range of things to inspire us. It is what makes us whole and healthy people.

7. To be happy. This seems like a crazy purpose but more than anything else, it is what I wished for my students. None of us is happy every minute of the day but learning to find satisfaction and delight in life is a trick from which we all benefit. Students mastering the ability to calm down, to find their center, to delight in their accomplishments were goals I tried hard to impart. I do agree with John Lennon. Being happy is a perfectly wonderful thing to be when you grow up.

Education is much more than educating children to be future workers. The purpose of education is to help each person reach their human potential.

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CID Faculty Spotlight: Emiliana Vegas on What It Takes to Change Education

By Diana King

Enrollment is rising all over the world, yet learning levels remain stagnant. The 2023 UN Sustainable Development Goals Report predicts that 300 million students globally will lack basic reading and math skills by 2030 – unless something changes.

In the early 1980s, Venezuela was at the tail-end of a golden age: it was a stable, center-left democracy, and one of only four Latin American countries considered upper-middle-income by the World Bank. Throughout the previous three decades, like many of its neighbors, it had rapidly expanded access to education, opening new schools and hiring new teachers. By the mid 80s and 90s, a series of economic and political shocks reversed the country’s upward trajectory.

Emiliana Vegas , professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and CID faculty affiliate, came of age in Caracas as her country veered from growth toward decline, bearing witness to the power of education, and its link to uneven development. Determined to help Latin America and other developing regions thrive, she has tackled some of the most intractable problems in education, starting with the question of why, despite the political will and investment to make schooling accessible for all, much of Latin America failed to see significant improvement in educational outcomes.

The middle child of a stay-at-home-mom and a businessman who, as head of a volunteer organization, oversaw school construction in rural areas of Venezuela, Vegas often joined her father on site visits, where she saw firsthand the change a school (often a village’s first) could bring to a community. Although neither of her parents had finished college, they prioritized “getting [their kids] the best possible education,” and that included learning English, she recalls.

Vegas attended a bilingual primary school, and at 13, enrolled at an all-girls boarding school in Connecticut, where she received a rigorous secondary education. When she returned to Caracas and entered one of the country’s most selective university programs, she found herself at an advantage.

“I was studying with the best and brightest,” she says. “But the [curriculum] was not up to par. I didn’t have to study as hard as my peers who were equally smart. That’s when I realized, maybe this is why my country is underdeveloped – we need better schools.”

The work corroborated her conviction that “the only way to improve people’s life chances and a country’s development chances [is] a good education for everyone.” To effect change, she told the Harvard EdCast , “educators need to understand the world of incentives and how the flow of resources affects what people do and how they do it.”

Over a 20-year career in think tanks and development banks, Vegas has mobilized immense resources to improve education systems in developing countries with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. As a lead economist at the World Bank, chief of the education division of the Inter-American Development Bank, and co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, Vegas has overseen multi-billion dollar budgets, shepherded numerous loans and grants, including financing for SUMMA , the first laboratory for education research and innovation in Latin America, and led research on wide-ranging projects, including teacher effectiveness , school finance , and early childhood development , and the impact of Covid on learning outcomes worldwide .

She has visited some of the most remote and under-resourced regions in the world to address disparities in education. In isolated areas of Amazonas state in Brazil, for example, children travel by boat for hours, in some cases days, to reach the nearest schoolhouse. Once there, there is often only one teacher for several grades, and none trained to teach the specialized math, science, and social studies curricula mandated by the federal government. Brazil’s distance learning solution (broadcast lessons recorded in Manaus, the state’s capital, to classrooms in remote areas) required massive funding and rigorous evaluation. Vegas’ task, as head of education at IDB, was to assess the value of the program, and convince the IDB board to fund it. Six months after seeing the pilot program in action, she secured $151 million to build 12 new schools, renovate 20 existing ones, and provide 500 more schools with satellite technology.

Such innovation represents a kind of “leapfrogging,” or rapid advance to address learning inequality. “One of the biggest challenges facing education systems worldwide, especially those with lower levels of resources and capacity, is how to leverage technology and innovation to meet students where they are,” says Vegas. While technology should be a complement, not a substitute for in-class teaching, she adds, it has the potential to bring personalized learning at a lower cost to more people.

In recent years, Vegas has shifted her focus from improving teacher effectiveness and accelerating learning outcomes to looking at “the nuts and bolts of school finance – how the transfer of funds to schools can improve quality and equity, or recreate inequalities and old problems.” The funding mechanisms in Latin America for instance have not changed much over time, she notes. They continue to be based on the number of students in a school – just as they did when mass education first began – rather than on learning outcomes.

Today, enrollment is rising all over the world, yet learning levels are stagnant. The 2023 UN Sustainable Development Goals Report predicts that 300 million students globally will lack basic reading and math skills by 2030 – unless something changes. To address the challenge, Vegas co-founded the Global Education and Research: Unleashing Potential (GEAR:UP) initiative with Harvard Center for International Development (CID) Director Asim I. Khwaja and Harvard Kennedy School Professor and CID faculty affiliate Michela Carlana . GEAR:UP will support research and programs working towards a “quality education” for all – one that goes beyond basic skills, and empowers everyone, wherever their country may be on the development spectrum, to grow their potential and flourish in a life of their own design.

The ambitious task requires many change agents. Before returning to Harvard as a professor, Vegas had a conversation with one young changemaker who suggested she write a book. The result, a guide to doing meaningful work in international development organizations, is slated to launch in September 2024. Its main title is both a summary of her career and a summons: Let’s Change the World .

Drought, Conflict, and the Circulation of Climate Knowledge in Somalia

By Dr. Harry Verhoeven

What you need to know about education for sustainable development

What is education for sustainable development  .

Education for sustainable development (ESD) gives learners of all ages the knowledge, skills, values and agency to address interconnected global challenges including climate change, loss of biodiversity, unsustainable use of resources, and inequality. It empowers learners of all ages to make informed decisions and take individual and collective action to change society and care for the planet. ESD is a lifelong learning process and an integral part of quality education. It enhances the cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioural dimensions of learning and encompasses learning content and outcomes, pedagogy and the learning environment itself. 

How does UNESCO work on this theme?  

UNESCO is the United Nations leading agency for ESD and is responsible for the implementation of ESD for 2030 , the current global framework for ESD which takes up and continues the work of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and the Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD (2015-2019). 

UNESCO’s work on ESD focuses on five main areas: 

• Advancing policy
• Transforming learning environments
• Building capacities of educators
• Empowering and mobilizing youth
• Accelerating local level action

UNESCO supports countries to develop and expand educational activities that focus on sustainability issues such as climate change, biodiversity, disaster risk reduction, water, the oceans, sustainable urbanisation and sustainable lifestyles through ESD. UNESCO leads and advocates globally on ESD and provides guidance and standards. It also provides data on the status of ESD and monitors progress on SDG Indicator 4.7.1, on the extent to which global citizenship education and ESD are mainstreamed in national education policies, curricula, teacher education and student assessment.  

How does UNESCO mobilize education to address climate change?   

Climate change education is the main thematic focus of ESD as it helps people understand and address the impacts of the climate crisis, empowering them with the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes needed to act as agents of change. The importance of education and training to address climate change is recognized in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change , the Paris Agreement and the associated Action for Climate Empowerment agenda which all call on governments to educate, empower and engage all stakeholders and major groups on policies and actions relating to climate change. Through its ESD programme, UNESCO works to make education a more central and visible part of the international response to climate change. It produces and shares knowledge, provides policy guidance and technical support to countries, and implements projects on the ground. 

UNESCO encourages Member States to develop and implement their  country initiative  to mainstream education for sustainable development. 

What is the Greening Education Partnership?

To coordinate actions and efforts in the field of climate change education the  Greening Education Partnership  was launched in 2022 during the UN Secretary General's Summit on Transforming Education. This partnership, coordinated by a UNESCO Secretariat, is driving a global movement to get every learner climate-ready. The Partnership addresses four key areas of transformative education: greening schools, curricula, teachers training and education system's capacities, and communities.

How can I get involved?   

Every single person can take action in many different ways every day to protect the planet. To complement the ESD for 2030 roadmap , UNESCO has developed the ESD for 2030 toolbox to provide an evolving set of selected resources to support Member States, regional and global stakeholders to develop activities in the five priority action areas and activities in support of the six key areas of implementation. 

UNESCO also launched the Trash Hack campaign in response to the 2 billion tons of waste that the world produces every year, waste which clog up the oceans, fill the streets and litter huge areas. Trash Hacks are small changes everyone can make every day to reduce waste in their lives, their communities and the world.   

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