Points of View: Effective Partnerships Between K-12 and Higher Education

One would be hard-pressed to find a college or university in the United States without at least one outreach program designed to support science education in local K-12 schools. Over the last three decades, scores of thriving science education outreach programs have had significant and extraordinarily positive effects on K-12 science education. Driven by funding initiatives from federal, state, and private agencies and the pioneering efforts of many university scientists and K-12 educators, these programs have resulted in increased communication between institutions, innovative K-12 science curricula, greater presence of scientists in K-12 schools, and an increased interest in collaborations among K-12 teachers and students and university scientists and students. Many outreach programs, including our own, have made successful initial forays into K-12 science education reform. Yet, they have been largely unidirectional in their goals and activities, focusing primarily on the challenges and shortcomings of K-12 science education. In looking forward, we propose that the role of institutions of higher education must change, moving from initial efforts in outreach, a stance characterized by offering expertise and supporting external reform, to a more enduring approach of partnership, which demands that both partners examine their own science teaching and learning and promote both external and internal reform. Many wonderful outreach programs that have not been bi-directional in their goals and activities are poised to blossom into partnerships in which K-12 teachers and university scientists collaborate to create a coherent and articulated science education experience for students across the K-20+ science education system (Tanner et al., 2003).

In this Point of View we argue that crafting effective science education partnerships requires moving beyond K-12 science education reform and toward examination of the connections and disconnections between K-12 and university science pedagogy. In particular, we believe that three major shifts must occur: 1) the adoption of a mutual learning model of partnership, 2) the integration of partnership into the training of scientists, and 3) the development of sustained infrastructures for partnership. Such shifts, we believe, are the stuff of Kuhnian revolutions and could catapult us toward what we all desire: a coherent, articulated, and inquiry-based approach to science education from kindergarten through graduate school.

A MUTUAL LEARNING MODEL OF PARTNERSHIP

Few would question that legions of university scientists and K-12 educators share a common interest in improving science education for our nation's young people. In our opinion, however, an effective reform effort must be grounded in a genuine commitment to mutual learning. In many instances, relationships between the K-12 and university systems have adopted a“ provider-recipient” approach in which scientists are placed in the role of content providers and K-12 educators as recipients of this scientific expertise. We believe that this approach overlooks a rich opportunity for deep reflection about science teaching and learning. The old adage that “we teach the way we are taught” places university scientists in a position of great influence in the pedagogical training of future science teachers. In addition, college and university faculty have both the opportunity and responsibility to engage their students in deep science learning and to guide them in becoming scientifically literate citizens. Consider the words of senior scientist and long-time science education reform leader, James Bower:

Partnerships are outstanding venues through which scientists grapple with their knowledge about teaching and to learn from professional educators. As a scientist, what have you struggled with in your own teaching experiences? What is your philosophy and how does it influence your approach to assessing what students know, addressing students' misconceptions, using appropriate vocabulary, involving all students, engaging multiple learning styles, and managing classroom behaviors? What teaching strategies and skills could you learn from your teacher partners? In addition to scientists adopting a learning stance, K-12 teachers must also be willing and given license to share their expertise about teaching science to young people. With partners taking on these additional roles, collaborations can shift from a provider-recipient model to a mutual learning model. While some individual programs have gravitated toward mutual learning, the National Science Foundation's recent Math Science Partnership (MSP) initiative has been pioneering in its requirement that proposed programs identify and pursue reform strategies in both the K-12 and collegiate settings. Yet, with the anticipated conclusion of the federal MSP initiative, this driving force for a mutual learning model of partnership may wane just as it is beginning.

INTEGRATION OF PARTNERSHIP INTO THE TRAINING OF SCIENTISTS

Because many of the scientist partners engaged in collaborative work with the K-12 system are graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and other scientific trainees, science education partnerships provide a wonderful opportunity to integrate teaching and learning into the routine training of scientists. There is emerging evidence from many efforts that scientists, unsurprisingly, benefit from their involvement in partnerships with K-12 educators with respect to their communication and pedagogy skills (Tanner, 2000). In addition, the majority of these trainees will go on to teach undergraduates. Yet most join partnerships and pursue careers as university faculty without even a crash course in the teaching and learning of science. How can partnerships explicitly engage trainees in reflection and scholarly learning about their emerging teaching practice? How can course work in pedagogical methods be integrated into the training of future scientists? What roles can K-12 educators play as teaching mentors for scientific trainees? Although a few outreach programs have offered formal training in science pedagogy for scientific trainees, the NSF has once again led the way with the GK-12 Fellowship Program. More than 100 institutions around the country now engage science, math, and engineering graduate students in intensive partnerships with K-12 teachers and students, supplemented by course work on the theory and practice of science education. Still, we are decades away from the systematic inclusion of training on science pedagogy in the preparation of future scientists.

DEVELOPMENT OF SUSTAINED INFRASTRUCTURES FOR PARTNERSHIP

What efforts and infrastructure are necessary to foster largescale K-20+ partnerships? Although each partnership has unique needs, sustained infrastructure is necessary to support long-term programming and innovation, rather than efforts developed and supported on a grant-by-grant basis. The mundane but crucial infrastructural needs of partnerships include money and space, but these alone are insufficient for strategic development of programs by numerous stakeholders from multiple participating institutions. Universities and K-12 institutions have limited resources to develop and sustain partnerships without grant funding. How can decision-makers at both types of institutions be convinced to use scant resources to foster partnerships? Coordinated efforts across departments and colleges would begin to build a sustainable infrastructure in which partnerships could endure and expand. Yet, only through a shift from the mindset that partnership is an admirable but dispensable community service to an acknowledgment that partnerships generate internally valuable knowledge, will the commitment of resources be justified and infrastructure established. Such a shift requires changes in scientists' perception of the boundaries of science and in the reward structures within colleges and universities, as well as cross-institutional planning and commitments. In looking toward the future, the development of sustained infrastructure is furthest from reach, with no clear driving force for reform in this direction.

THE CODA: MOVING FROM OUTREACH TO PARTNERSHIP

We believe that effective science education improvement lies in moving from initial outreach to sustained partnership, considering K-20+ science education reform as a discipline within the realm of responsibility and expertise of the sciences. Such a movement will require changing emphases in university and K-12 relationships, as highlighted in Table 1. Although there are seeds of change in institutions all around the country, we present this as a vision for the future, because no effort we are aware of, including our own, has conquered all of these challenges or achieved all of these goals. Much as the National Science Education Standards put forward Changing Emphases tables as roadmaps to a vision for K-12 science education (National Research Council, 1996), the table represents ideas to ponder in moving from outreach to partnership, not goals already achieved nor easily reached.

AN EMERGING DISCIPLINE OF K-20+ SCIENCE EDUCATION PARTNERSHIP

Finally, we believe that a movement from outreach to partnership can serve as the groundwork for a new discipline of science education partnership. As efforts in this arena are increasingly studied, theorized, and assessed, one can sense a scholarly field operating at the intersection of teaching, learning, cognitive theory, assessment, and inquiry, developing its own theoretical underpinnings, standards of evidence, and professional specialization. Consider the field of neuroscience, in which we were both trained. This discipline developed at the intersection of psychology, biology, cognitive science, and chemistry. Thirty years ago, there was no distinct field of neuroscience, no Society for Neuroscience (now 30,000 members strong), no Journal of Neuroscience, no doctoral degrees awarded in neuroscience, nothing but a strong vision for a new field of inquiry that could address driving questions about brain and behavior that were unstudied and under-theorized. What are the implications for the field of science education partnership, currently understudied, under-theorized, and lacking in field-based studies of specific models? Science education partnership may not ever enjoy the expansive growth and lucrative funding that neuroscience has. Yet, increasing study of partnerships that are achieving the shifts described above will produce an evidence-based literature that can guide the development of theoretical frameworks for successful partnerships and make this vision for the future a reality.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS