REPOWER High School STEM: 21st-Century STEM Education Problems Cannot Be Solved With a 19th-Century Academic Structure

REPOWER High School STEM

REPOWER High School STEM

21st-Century STEM Education Problems Cannot Be Solved With a 19th-Century Academic Structure

Kenneth M. Chapman

Cardinal Workforce Developers, LLC

Copyright © 2022 by Kenneth Chapman, the author, and his assigns.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.  However, educators are invited to reproduce parts of this publication when the whole contextual meaning is provided for promoting communication about restructuring STEM education. Attribution should be provided.

First Printing, 2022

Ruther Glen, Virginia, USA

Cover: Agricultural power sketches by Karen Nolan

EDUCATION/ Educational Policy & Reform / General © 2022, Book Industry Study Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Why Consider Change?

In an era when:

A friend using a donor’s heart continues to contribute to the community by operating a hardware store that manages to provide off-the-shelf plumbing repair supplies not available at the expansive big box stores of national chains.

Millions of people routinely travel to destinations thousands of miles distant in a few hours.

I can make pies with fresh strawberries when there are no leaves on deciduous trees.

Anyone can watch the tragedy of wildfires in Australia in real-time.

A soldier (safeguards require several soldiers) pushing buttons can kill millions of humans within minutes.

A research center involving thousands of scientists and engineers from across the world with communications delivered in microseconds can operate a complex device several miles in diameter to identify the existence of a particle of subatomic dimensions.

We continue to use a STEM education structure developed for an era when:

The first organ transplant was nearly four decades in the future. (https://www.google.com/search?q=organ+transplant+history&oq=organ+transplant+history&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l7.6259j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

Many students rode horses to schools not within walking distance.

Most families subsisted in winter on food harvested from their gardens and preserved.

Commercial radio broadcasts would become available several years in the future.

Using recently developed technology, a soldier could kill a few hundred attackers in a day.

Most scientists either worked alone with only local resources, or as members of teams working while widely separated with communications delivered in months.

Artifacts and procedures continue to be added to an archaic science education arrangement straining to survive, while potential applications of new technology and organizations are ignored. Perhaps publication of this Model STEM System (MSS) will stimulate some quantum changes in STEM education.

Limited by Structure

The Limits of Operating Structures

Like many cats, Ace takes great interest in the laser pointer, and wants desperately to capture the red dot. However, despite his inherent intelligence and his extensive skills in running, stopping, turning, pouncing, and ambushing, he consistently fails in his attempts. Why? One reason is that his physical form — in other words, his operating structure — is incompatible with his objective.

Similarly, the current structure of traditional high school STEM gives us a no-possible-win situation. The 19th-century high school structure imposed on STEM education fails to facilitate the efforts of many dedicated teachers trying to prepare their students for 21st-century conditions that require creativity, critical thinking, creative problem-solving, and collaboration skills.

A Model STEM System

Principal Components of the Model STEM System

One 3- or 4-year STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Course: Replaces the traditional biology, chemistry, and physics sequence. See Chapter 3.

STEM Database Center (SDC): Repository of STEM education standards; CSS connections; project materials; and assessment items (diagnostic, formative, and summative). At teacher direction, it may include school curricula, test construction and analysis; as well as recommendations for instructing individual students based on assessments and student history. National, probably with satellites. See Chapter 8.

Catalyst STEM Specialist (CSS): Post-secondary school STEM specialists, ranging from college students to professionals in trades and scientists and engineers in industry and research organizations. See Chapter 6.

STEM Service Center (SSC): A regional unit serving many schools with Catalyst STEM Teachers (CSTs), professional development, and support materials. See Chapter 7.

Teacher Teams: A school’s STEM teaching staffs that have direct contact with students, manage teaching elements, design curricula, provide lead teachers for discrete projects, implement mini-courses, and provide subject experts as needed. Ideally, the teacher team is a four-member unit consisting of one specialist each for biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering. The teacher team may be supplemented with STEM Catalyst Teachers (SCTs) as needed. See Chapter 6.

Projects and Mini-courses:  The principal components of the STEM course.  See Chapters 4 and 5.

Contents

Why Consider Change?

Limited by Structure

A Model STEM System

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

1 Problems and Assumptions

2 Brief Overview of the Model STEM System (MSS)

3 One STEM Course

4 Student Projects

5 Mini-Courses

6 The Teaching and Learning Corps

7 STEM Service Centers

8 STEM Database Center (SDC)

9 Assessing Student Status and Progress

10 Architecture and Safety

11 Next Steps

Appendices

Appendix A - Building and Managing Student Teams

Appendix B - The Planning Process

Appendix C - Developing the Model STEM System (MSS)

Appendix D - Brief Perspectives from a Long Career

About The Author

Acknowledgments

First, I wish to thank my wife, Ginny, and our family for supporting my ideas for STEM education and converting the ideas into book form. While the work took place in and near my home, the work hours were numerous and often led to very early morning hours of writing with naps during the day.

Throughout my career, many students, educators, technicians, scientists, and engineers gave me opportunities to observe attempts to improve secondary and post-secondary education. Edward Fleckenstein, an electrical engineer, enabled me to administer programs and teach chemistry and chemical engineering in two colleges. Dr. Moses Passer hired me twice to work at the American Chemical Society. He imposed few constraints, which allowed me to remain immersed in science education at a national level and, starting in 1967, to observe efforts to improve high school science education and attract underrepresented minorities to chemistry. Janice Carneal, Harold Stills, Brent Miller, and Carolyn Williamson gave me incredible support while I taught high school science classes.

I had the privilege from 1970-72 to work with Dr. Robert Pecsok and a team of 23 chemists and two chemical engineers, representing both academe and industry, to write a textbook series for the chemistry core of chemical technology programs in the Chemical Technician Curriculum Project or ChemTeC. The team members were stars in their own work arenas. However, during a 10-week period in the summer of 1970, they merged in an ideal way, with excellent support staff, to create nearly 800 pages of edited text, with two high-quality volumes of more than 100 pages each returned from the printer for classroom use and the remainder prepared for printing. The team achieved this production without the use of computers and with copiers of limited capability. The ChemTeC team was a model for an ideal team.

Eric Stewart, through his copyediting and science writing experience, contributed vast improvements to the original manuscript. However, he is exempted from all errors caused by my additions and changes.

Preface

A Challenge to the Reader

You, Dear Reader, are challenged to answer the question:

"What would I design for high school STEM education

if I could start with a clean slate?"

Your answer may differ significantly from the one presented in this book. Your unique experiences will flavor your answer strongly. However, suppose your answer looked much like the traditional science program most U.S. high school students are experiencing in the early twenty-first century. In that case, I would be disappointed – and so should you.

The traditional structure for education in a few STEM subjects, developed between 1892 and 1919 during a period of astounding industrialization in the United States, was created for students either living in rural areas or having intimate knowledge of rural life. High school-age students brought into their classrooms problem-solving experiences; many had direct knowledge of the physical and mental skills needed for building things, growing biological products, and animal husbandry. Such daily experiences enabled many of these students to observe and speculate about natural phenomena. Teachers of science could give answers and assess the information absorbed. Most of today’s students, in contrast, bring radically different sets of skills and backgrounds to the high school classroom.

Even in the early 20th century, high school students expected to encounter a very different world in which to survive than did their parents. The career advisors of teenage students in 1920 could not predict opportunities in computer systems, high-speed worldwide communication devices fitting easily into a pocket, humans walking on the moon, or meat grown in a laboratory. Neither can today’s advisors predict the changes for which their advisees must prepare. What skills and knowledge are worth teaching in high school STEM classes? Those who have created national and state STEM education standards have struggled with the question and provided their best answers for the present, and perhaps a few years into the future. As an instance of how radically things change, note that since the Next Generation Science Standards were published (2013), the definition of the kilogram has changed!

Introduction

A Personal Perspective: I believe high school STEM education needs to change by a significant quantum jump instead of relying solely on evolutionary changes, as it has since the late 19th century. Drop-outs as well as graduates should leave high school well-qualified for further education or work in STEM occupations; even students who believe they have no talent for STEM still must be readied for life as citizens in a technological world. Many policy makers seeking to lead the nation through the Covid-19 epidemic have demonstrated an inadequate understanding of STEM philosophy and knowledge, leaving many citizens confused and distrustful of experts. STEM education also provides excellent opportunities for students to develop non-technical skills valuable for life and work in non-STEM fields.

Learning for STEM now often starts in kindergarten and continues throughout life. A severe chokepoint for the STEM workforce occurs when students pass through their high school years. The same choke point often adversely affects many rising citizens. The inadequacy of much high school STEM education compromises national survival, the work-life balance of many individuals, and choices made daily by every citizen. During my professional life in STEM workforce development, I formed these perspectives and observations of my fellow citizens, both directly and in the public discourse.

All the stakeholders of STEM should have roles in high school education. Most education committees in government agencies and STEM membership organizations have industry representatives. However, these industry stakeholders are usually few in number, and their perspectives seldom receive much attention. Their representation should be increased, and their voices need to be heard and respected.

Many STEM specialists with rich career experiences in industry and research could be prepared to support high school teachers and catalyze classroom activities in ways that conserve their time and maximize their impact. Connecting high school STEM teachers and STEM specialists is difficult, even in industrialized locales. Fortunately, modern communications and database structures offer great potential for facilitating connectivity between these critical groups.

Most educators continue to use the term science when they actually mean to refer to the broader scope of STEM. Meanwhile, in traditional high school classrooms, the same term is usually used in a narrow context of seeking only the correct answer. This restriction fails to address the nuance of how applied science is used in many situations, where several alternative answers may satisfy a single question. As in engineering design, the best solution depends upon many variables and may change as conditions shift. Educators should consider the science in STEM to include applied science, thus giving teachers and