An electronic newsletter for the science education community
January/February 2008
Chinese Educators, U.S. Publishers Look
to Project 2061
Deputy Director George DeBoer shares science
standards expertise
In its 20 years of promoting science literacy, AAAS Project 2061 has shared
its vision of standards-based curriculum, assessment, and instruction with educators
across the U.S., including those who design and publish science textbooks. Project 2061
has also collaborated with and advised educators around the world—in Asia, Africa,
Europe, and South America.
This past fall, Deputy Director George DeBoer continued Project 2061's
work with both U.S. publishers and international educators through two invited talks.
He traveled to Shanghai, China, for a forum on science literacy, and he participated
here at home in a summit sponsored by the Association of American Publishers. At both
events, DeBoer discussed Project 2061’s current efforts to develop the assessments and
instructional resources needed to help students achieve the knowledge and skills specified
in K–12 science content standards.
Sharing Expertise in Shanghai
At the invitation of the Shanghai Association for
Science and Technology (SAST), Project 2061's George DeBoer participated in the 2007
Shanghai International Forum on Science Literacy of Precollege Students last October.
Teachers and experts from scientific associations, primarily from China, attended the
event and learned from a variety of presentations and workshops about innovations and
practices in promoting science literacy among precollege students. Also participating
were officials from La main à la pâte (LAMAP),
a program of the French Academy of Sciences that promotes primary science education.
Joining SAST as organizers of the 2007 Shanghai International Forum were
the Children and Youth Science Centre of the China Association for Science and Technology
(CAST), the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission,
and the Luwan District Government of Shanghai. The annual Forum is part of a national
plan in China to improve science literacy, the objectives for which are summarized in
a document called the “Outline of the National Action Program for Scientific Literacy
of All Chinese Citizens (2006-2010-2020).”
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From left to right: Yves Quere, vice president of the French Academy of Sciences;
Wei Yu, vice president of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST);
Xie Lijuan, vice chairman of the CPPCC Shanghai Committee and director of the Shanghai
Municipal Education Development Foundation; George DeBoer, deputy director of AAAS
Project 2061; and Wan Yanhu, deputy director of the Youth Centre of Science and Technology
Education at CAST.
In addition to Project 2061, other groups at AAAS have worked with Chinese
educators. All of these collaborations with China got a boost last year when a delegation
led by AAAS Chief Executive Officer Alan I. Leshner signed agreements with Chinese science
and technology organizations to collaborate on a range of publishing and education projects.
Among those projects was an agreement between AAAS and CAST to translate and post on
the CAST Web site resources developed by Project 2061 (see AAAS
News coverage). Working with China's Popular Science Press, CAST has already played
a role in publishing Chinese translations of Science
for All Americans, Benchmarks for Science Literacy, Atlas
of Science Literacy, and other Project 2061 books.
Even though China and the U.S. share a strong interest in science literacy,
DeBoer notes that specific aspects of science literacy in China are dependent on its
own cultural traditions.
“Looking at the Chinese concept of science literacy and their national
program to achieve it, their approach differs somewhat from what we in the U.S. think
of as science literacy. Although there are similarities, there are also differences.
In China, there is more of a focus on practical issues, such as public health and sanitation,
and also a greater focus on the kind of society that the educational system is supposed
to create,” says DeBoer. China's “Action Program” document, for example,
emphasizes that raising the scientific literacy of citizens is important not only for “strengthening
their capability to acquire and apply scientific and technological knowledge,” but
also for “improving their life quality” and for “building a socialist
harmonious society.”
“You see these differences in other newly industrialized or developing
countries as well,” DeBoer adds. “In India, for example, there is more of an
effort to accommodate traditional beliefs with modern science, and a greater focus on
the objects and phenomena that are important in the everyday lives of people.”
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George DeBoer at the Yuyuan Garden and Bazaar,
a classic water garden in Shanghai.
Despite their different cultural context, DeBoer’s Chinese colleagues
have taken a keen interest in Project 2061's focus on defining a coherent set of content
standards and using them to guide science instruction. In his presentation at the Shanghai
forum, “Promoting Standards-Based Assessment and Instruction,” DeBoer brought
the Chinese audience up to date on Project 2061's ongoing work to provide teachers, researchers,
and curriculum developers with high-quality assessments and instructional resources that
are aligned to content standards.
To read more about DeBoer's collaborations with international educators,
see “Science
Literacy in a Global Context.”
Providing Guidance to School Publishers
Project 2061’s development of standards-based science
resources also framed DeBoer's presentation to U.S. school publishers. He was among the
experts who met in Northern Virginia last October at the “Summit
on Math and Science Education: From Policy to Product to Practice” organized
by the School Division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP).
The summit brought together leaders from government, the private sector,
and academia to share the latest and best thinking in math and science education in order
to help publishers create better instructional materials and standardized tests. About
180 attendees heard discussions of panels addressing topics such as National Perspectives
on Math and Science Education; Changing Math and Science Standards in the States; Assessment;
and Math and Science for All.
The Assessment panel, on which DeBoer participated, discussed the role
and design of math and science assessments, covering key policy requirements from the
U.S. Department of Education; the different roles that the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) and formative assessments can play as measures of students' proficiency
in math and science; and the challenges of developing assessments that meet requirements
in the states. The other panelists were Sue Rigney, an assessment specialist in the Office
of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and Sharon
Robinson, President and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
Larry Snowhite, Vice President for Government Relations at Houghton Mifflin, moderated
the panel.
DeBoer discussed Project 2061’s development of tools and resources to
support effective standards-based assessment and instruction. He explained how, because
the standards tend to be under-specified for purposes of guiding assessment development,
Project 2061 researchers begin their item development process by writing clarification
statements to state with much greater precision what students should know and be able
to do.
He then described in detail Project 2061’s effort to create a bank of
middle school science assessment items that are precisely aligned with national content
standards. The bank of items can be used by both classroom teachers and educational researchers
or as a model of close alignment by test developers. Each assessment item is the result
of a two-year development cycle. DeBoer and his team clarify the learning goals, review
the research literature on student learning, and design items that are content-aligned
and that use misconceptions as distractors. Researchers then pilot test each item, organize
formal evaluations by teams of external reviewers, and field test each item using a national
sample, revising items at each stage along the way. Finally, DeBoer shared what the assessment
results are revealing concerning what middle school students know about the ideas in
the national science standards. (View DeBoer's
slide presentation.)
At the end of the presentation, DeBoer asked attendees to think about
how researchers and implementers could work more closely together. Project 2061, for
example, is a research and development group that currently does not have an implementation
arm, and many publishing companies do not have a research arm. Closer collaborations
between such groups could be beneficial to both and to the larger science education community.
Learn more about AAP, the principal
trade association of the book publishing industry. AAP’s School
Division members publish most of the instructional materials and assessment tools
commercially available in America’s schools from preschool through 12th grade.
# # #
For more information, please contact:
Deputy Director: Dr.
George DeBoer, (202) 326-6624
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