STEM Report Calls for Refocus in Education

Please take a minute to read a new report in T.H.E. Journal that cites some alarming statistics and calls for change. Pleased, I am, to be working on the formation of a new "Vanderbilt Institute for STEM Education," hosted out of my "other work" at the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach. More information on that Institute will be available here as it unveils itself. From Dave Nagel at T.H.E. Journal:

A new report issued this week by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) is calling for sweeping changes to bolster STEM education in the United States. Citing an impending shortfall in scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in this country, the report highlights the need to expose children to STEM early and to integrate these subjects throughout the curriculum, beginning as early as kindergarten.

The report, STEM Education: Achievement and Innovation, noted that while the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. job market require science and math skills, only 8 percent of the total number of degrees awarded in 2001 were in engineering, mathematics, or the physical sciences and that there's been a drop of 50 percent in undergraduate enrollments in computer sciences in the last five years. By 2010, should current trends continue, 90 percent of the world's scientists will be in Asia.

Nagel, Dave. "STEM Report Calls for Refocus in Education." T.H.E. Journal. Sept. 2008. 1105 Media, Inc. 1 Oct. 2008

PLEASE read more...

Snacks4theBrain! is up!

Wow, I spent much of the last two days, when not relaxing with my family, painting doors for our house, or watching DVDs with my wife, putting together Snacks4theBrain! episode number 69, a nifty little number with music from friend Ross Falzone and Rocky Alvey and a very fascinating interview with the Vanderbilt Center for Science Outreach's Dr. Jennifer Ufnar. Go listen.

A Great Read on Teaching, Learning, and Brain Development

Via the Global Citizenship in a Virtual World blog:

"EDUCATION: Education, like the culture it subsumes, is a conservative phenomenon. Science and technology move rapidly, but education doesn't. So if schools often resemble the schools of 50 years ago, that should not be surprising. Parents remember their school experiences, and since they survived them, they are typically leery about educators experimenting with their children. This explains in part why schools have not incorporated many of the recent developments in neuroscience and cognitive psychology."

Alvaro Fernandez interviews Robert Sylvester on brain development and its relationship to what we teachers are teaching and our learners are learning...

Read it all.

Check out The Adolescent Brain: Reaching for Autonomy, by Robert Sylvester

U.S. Students Below Average in Science and Math

From THE Journal*, a favorite source for current trends, a report that I'll add to my resource bank for an upcoming presentation in San Antonio about university outreach to K12 schools. Go read the article, and what's up with Canadian science education that places it in the top 5? Mind you, results are based on one of my favorite whipping-boys, standardized testing. But still...

And in math...

See the line at 500? That's the international median line. Clearly, something's wrong with the long-running argument that the poor performance of our students in science and math is "urban myth."

We clearly need some work here. My sense is that there are a passle of well-meaning educators out there working as hard as they can with out-dated tools and restrictions to teach kids content and skills, but if they were to be set free to innovate and energize the imaginations of their students, engage them, draw them into the larger context, "performance" would follow. What we need is teachers who are knowledgeable in both the current collaborative learning technologies and in ways to make sure that new ones don't fly under their professional radars. Wheels turning again...

*Nagel, Dave. "U.S. Students Below Average in Science and Math." THE Journal December 200712 December 2007 1,2. 12 December 2007 .