Is Curriculum Reform Enough? Proclamations of the crises in science education are "a dime a dozen'' now. Large numbers of curriculum reformers jostle for public recognition to tell essentially the same story: excellence is attained through tougher standards, which in turn are achieved by expanding core requirements, more mathematics and science, more English, etc. Most of these reforms appear to express a single-minded emphasis on what is taught, as if ignorance can he overcome by mandate. A growingnumher of commentators who think more deeply on such problems are beginning to recognize that most of the current reforms ignore student incentives, undeniably important factors in determining how much real learning occurs in any educational environment that can be created. Education consists of two components: student learning and a system of teaching, that is, the curriculum, teachers, processes involved in teaching the subject in question, and even, perhaps, the technological aids used to clarify difficult concepts. Common sense tells us that no matter what is taught or how i t is taught, educational outcomes are determined by student behavior. Teaching more andlor teaching better make it possible for students to learn and retain more; whether or not they do so depends upon them, not on the curriculum. Unfortunatelv, the curriculum is the sole focus for most reform in most of the current schemes. Students respond to incentives like everyone else. In spite of our hopes to the contrary, grades are the primary motivators for most students. Grades are the tokens collected and accumulated to spend later, for example, to help gain admission to collegesand universities of their preference or to keep them from getting "grounded" on a given weekend. Indeed, nrades are more versatile than the more conventional kinds of tokens in a t least one respect-they can he used repeatedly and in a number of different ways without diminishing their value, and the student still retains them even if they are used. When educational reformers eet around to addressing- student incentives as a key component of reform, testing issues, as thev relate to erades. will become important if significant is to hemade by any reform~movement.-current
testing practices involve regurgitation of undigested answers to questions of "who", "what", "where", and "how" for the most part. There appears to be little incentive to pose questions that ask "why", perhaps because i t is relatively easy to ask and to grade the other kinds of questions. Chemistry examinations are all too often filled with auestions that address minutia; for example, .'HOWmany grams of sodium ohosohate is reauired to oreoare 260 ml. of a 0.001 M a w e . ous solution?" such questio& probe whether studentscan perform standard tasks. Do they know how to apply the rules of nomenclature, how to obtain the molecular weight from the formula of a compound, and how to use the definition of molarity? But to what end? Unfortunately, chemistry is permeated by such minutiae, which involve important ideas and concepts, but still, individually, represent only pieces of what we call chemistry. What of those hroader aspects of chemistrv for which the minutiae have been created? How do we test our students on subjects requiring higher levels of thought such as their ability to apply knowledge, analyze relationships, synthesize new situations, or evaluate a new combination of circumstances? Relatively few textbooks provide the basis for giving students experience in developing higher-level thinking skills. Classroom evaluation is generally viewed as an integral part of the teaching-learning process. The basic problem with testing for higher-level thinking skills is the difficulty of creating "good" test items, that is, items that can he validated as measures of the skill heing taught. Sometimes part of the prohlem invol\.es defining the skills that are taught; such definition is often dune by example, which is tantamount to giving students more items to memorize. The suhiects-the minutiae-eenerallv . taueht .. in manv chemistry courses encourages testing for knowledge. Thus, in spite of all the effort men1 in class huildine hvootheses, solving .. problems, and encouraging critical thinking, when it comes to test time in chemistry, students have learned that they can do well using simple-rke memorization. Curriculum reform in itself is not enough.
JJL
Volume 65 Number 7 July 1988
559
