Big Biology Books Fail to Convey
Big Ideas, Reports AAAS's Project 2061
June 27, 2000,
9:30 a.m.
Washington, D.C.
— Today's high-school biology textbooks fail to make
important biology ideas comprehensible and meaningful to
students, according to the latest study of Project 2061,
the long-term science and math education reform initiative
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS). While the high-school textbooks scored slightly
higher than the middle-grades science texts evaluated by
the project last year, evidence from the current study points
to serious shortcomings both in content coverage and instructional
design.
"In today's
society, one cannot read a newspaper without recognizing
the central importance of the discipline of biology to the
life of every American," commented Dr. Bruce Alberts,
a cell biologist who currently serves as president of the
National Academy of Sciences. "Whether it is understanding
new developments in health care or contributing to local
environmental decisions, every citizen needs a basic understanding
of the major concepts of biology, as well as an appreciation
for science as a special way of knowing about our world,"
he said. "Sadly, it appears that our textbooks continue
to be distorted by a commercial textbook market that requires
that they cover the entire range of facts about biology,
thereby sacrificing the opportunity to treat the central
concepts in enough depth to give our students a chance to
truly understand them."
"Surprisingly,
although the textbooks are filled with pages of vocabulary
and unnecessary detail, they provide only fragmentary treatment
of some fundamentally important concepts," announced
Dr. George Nelson, Director of Project 2061. "Providing
bits of information about transmissions, carburetors, fuel
injectors, universal joints, and cooling systems doesn't
convey a sense of a car as a mode of transportation."
In this evaluation
of ten widely used and newly developed biology textbooks,
none was given high ratings. This is the latest in a series
of Project 2061 evaluations of science and mathematics textbooks
funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
"The AAAS
reviews highlight some significant flaws in the math and
science textbooks available to our students," said
Andrea Bowden, chief of the Office for Science and Math
Programs for Baltimore City Public Schools. "I'm frustrated
that 15 years after the call for reform, we still don't
have acceptable materials."
Bowden stated
that "the AAAS evaluations have had a major influence
on our selection of math and science textbooks for Baltimore's
students. The evaluations produce a profile of each textbook's
strengths and weaknesses across two dozen criteria. Sometimes
we have been able to select textbooks with mostly high ratings,
and in other cases, we have used the evaluation profiles
to make more informed decisions about how to supplement
the available texts."
"At their
best, the textbooks are a collection of missed opportunities,"
according to Dr. Jo Ellen Roseman, director of the study. "While
most contain the relevant content on heredity and natural
selection, for example, they don't help students to learn
it or help teachers to teach it. On topics such as cells
and matter and energy transformations, information is presented
piecemeal. In addition, the textbooks fail to convey the
coherence among key ideas in biology or their connections
to ideas in physical science, mathematics, and technology."
"There are
some excellent teachers who compensate for the poor textbooks,"
Dr. Roseman said. "But this takes time and resources,
often more than they have." She cited some examples
of problems:
- Research shows that essentially all students--even the
best and the brightest--have predictable difficulties
grasping many ideas that are covered in the textbooks.
Yet the textbooks fail to take these obstacles into account
in designing activities and questions.
- For many biology concepts, the textbooks ignore or obscure
the most important ideas by focusing instead on technical
terms and trivial details (which are easy to test).
- While most of the books are lavishly illustrated, these
representations are rarely helpful, because they are too
abstract, needlessly complicated, or inadequately explained.
- Even though several activities are included in every
chapter, students are given little guidance in interpreting
the results in terms of the scientific concepts to be
learned.
"Nevertheless,
the evaluation did identify several materials with promising
activities that could serve as starting points for future
textbook development," Dr. Roseman stated. "At
least half of the textbooks have some elements that are
worth looking at, and these will be pointed out in the evaluation
reports."
"The Project
2061 evaluation produces a great deal of detailed information
that can help teachers to address the weaknesses of their
textbooks," Dr. Nelson emphasized. "This information
can also help materials developers and publishers who are
interested in thoughtfully revising their textbooks or developing
new ones." He urged educators to:
- Use some of the excellent trade books that have been
published on science topics to enhance their own understanding
and help them to compensate for the textbooks' lack of
content coherence. Project 2061's evaluation reports,
available on the project's web site later this year, will
include some recommended titles.
- Study the research on student learning cited in the
evaluation reports to revise classroom activities and
develop new ones.
- Take advantage of professional development experiences
that focus not only on increasing teachers' knowledge
of key biology ideas, but also on strategies for teaching
those ideas more effectively.
- Encourage the National Science Foundation to support
a new round of curriculum development focused on creating
a coherent picture of key ideas for specific biology topics,
using a research-based development and testing process
to ensure that the instructional strategies promote learning
the key ideas.
Project 2061
to Host Conference on Improving Textbooks
"We have
been gratified to hear from school officials around the
country who report that our previous evaluations are providing
valuable information for textbook adoption decisions,"
said Dr. Nelson. "We're continuing to work with educators
to create a demand for effective textbooks that will, in
turn, encourage developers and publishers to respond."
Later this year,
Project 2061 will convene curriculum developers, publishers,
scientists and mathematicians, and educators to plan a strategy
for improving textbooks over the next five years. The project
is also seeking funds to analyze elementary school materials
and to update its database of evaluations on middle- and
high-school topics.
About the Evaluation
Two independent
teams of biology teachers, science curriculum specialists,
and professors of science education evaluated each biology
text, along with its teacher guide. The evaluation examines
how well the texts are likely to help students learn the
important ideas and skills in the widely accepted Benchmarks
for Science Literacy (developed earlier by Project
2061) and in the National Science Education Standards.
This approach to evaluation was conceived and developed
with funding from the National Science Foundation. The evaluation
reports will be published on the Project 2061 web site at
www.project2061.org.
The
evaluation included the following biology textbooks (in
alphabetical order):
Biology
(Miller · Levine). Prentice Hall, 1998
Biology: A Community Context. South-Western
Educational Publishing, 1998
Biology: Principles & Explorations. Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1998
Biology: The Dynamics of Life. Glencoe, McGraw-Hill,
2000
Biology: Visualizing Life. Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1998
BSCS Biology: A Human Approach. Kendall Hunt,
1997
BSCS Biology: An Ecological Approach. Kendall
Hunt, 1998
Heath Biology. D.C. Heath and Company, 1991
Insights in Biology. Kendall Hunt, 1998
Modern Biology. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1999
Beginning in 1985,
Project 2061 has worked to reform science education in grades
K-12 so that all high-school graduates become science literate—that
is, prepared to live interesting, responsible, and productive
lives in a world increasingly shaped by science and technology.
The initiative has developed a variety of tools and training
for educators to support efforts to translate the established
learning goals into classroom activities. Previous evaluations
and information for educators and parents can be found at
the project's web site at www.project2061.org.
###
Read High
School Biology Textbooks: A Benchmarks-Based Evaluation,
which includes detailed reports on each of the textbooks
evaluated.
Contact
Information:
Mary
Koppal
(202) 326-6643
