The shocking truth about STEM education by Jenay Robert
Most of us have been there: it’s your freshman year and you’re in a crowded lecture hall, a completely anonymous face in a sea of 300 students. At about three minutes past class time, a professor enters the room with a notebook full of faded pages and begins to talk. He’s talking about science; it’s clear because you only understand about half of the words coming out of his mouth. But what really strikes you on this day, your grand college debut, is that he seems to be entirely unaware of your existence. Your learning has been placed completely in your hands; he is providing you with information, and it is up to you to consume it, digest it, and incorporate it into your personal knowledge base.
Some of my readers might find this picture to be unnecessarily harsh and unfair, weighted against their own positive experiences of college science teaching. Some of us have absolutely enjoyed passionate, engaging, exciting college science teachers. However, researchers are uncovering that poor college science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) teaching is more than something undergraduates exaggerate to explain away bad grades; it is a real and serious epidemic. Furthermore, the consequences of this travesty are far beyond the scope of what any of us would have guessed.
A recent report by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA (Degree of Success: Bachelor’s Degree Completion Rates among Initial STEM Majors, 2010) revealed that not only are first-year STEM majors more likely to change fields of study before they graduate, but they are also more likely to withdraw from college than their non-STEM counterparts. While this revelation seems discouraging enough, a 1997 study revealed that a staggering 90% of students leaving STEM majors cited poor teaching as one of their primary concerns (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997).
Therein lies the shocking truth about STEM education. Poor college science teaching is legitimately to blame (at least in part) for students choosing not to just change majors, but drop out of college entirely. In a society where a college degree has replaced the role of the high school diploma in work force qualifications, the profession of science teaching could have a serious impact on America’s economy at large. Fortunately, governing institutions are finally taking notice. In particular, the Association for American Universities (AAU) recently announced a major initiative (“Five-Year Initiative for Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Discussion Draft,” 2011) to improve the effectiveness of undergraduate STEM education (as measured by graduation and retention rates). But there is much work to be done. Before the state of post-secondary STEM education can be improved upon, a clear understanding of its current dysfunction must be achieved.
Reasons for poor teaching at the college level remain speculative in the literature. The AAU proposes that universities’ emphasis on research over teaching could partially explain this phenomenon. In fact, in a 2010 survey of university professors (Savkar & Lokere, 2010), 48% of respondents indicated that “a star researcher with significant research publications but who has no significant teaching experience” would be favorable over applicants with either balanced teaching/research experience or “superb teacher[s]…with no significant research projects.” Additionally, lack of support for college teacher professional development is clearly reported in the literature (Myers & Kircher, 2007). These results are in stark contrast to the fact that 77% of respondents in Savkar and Lokere’s survey indicated that teaching and research were equally important missions of their schools. What is the true nature of this discrepancy? Is the value system reflected in this data related to the attrition problems experienced by post-secondary STEM programs?
I propose that the issues at hand are not generated by uncaring individuals, but by a flawed system: a culture that values notoriety and profit over equitable educational opportunities and a society that is willing to accept unfair practices from the college science teaching community because it is composed of “experts.” Change will take place slowly, but it is encouraging to see that organizations such as the AAU are taking notice of the issues and calling for action. Perhaps even more important, new grassroots initiatives are arising every day within STEM departments, driven by professors who are not afraid to contest the norms of college science teaching and work tirelessly to become better teachers and support others to do the same. I thank these professors for their work and encourage all of my colleagues to scrutinize their practices and never fear challenging the traditions of our field.
References
Degree of Success: Bachelor’s Degree Completion Rates Among Initial STEM Majors. (2010). Higher Education Research Institute.
Five-Year Initiative for Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Discussion Draft. (2011). Association of American Universities.
Myers, J. C., & Kircher, C. (2007). Teaching Without License: Outsider Perspectives on First-Year Writing. Teaching English in the Two Year College, 34(4), 396-404.
Seymour, E., & Hewitt, N. (1997). Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Savkar, V., & Lokere, J. (2010). Time to Decide: The Ambivalence of Science Toward Education. Nature Education, 1-14.
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I’m not sure that it’s about bad teaching. Could it have to do with students feeling pressured to enter stem fields when their interests and talents lie elsewhere? Or, might it relate to the test-focused curriculum of high school AP courses?
Thanks for joining the conversation Dr. Shouse. I think that poor teaching is only one of many factors that students must overcome in order to succeed in post-secondary science. Certainly the issues you raise are important as well, especially concerning the poor science content knowledge with which students enter college. However, I am quite concerned about the Seymour & Hewitt finding that 90% of students leaving STEM majors cite poor teaching as a concern, and I hope that it is something we can improve by introducing more research-based teaching practices into our post-secondary classrooms.
Sure, there are students out there that may feel pressured to go into STEM fields when their passion/strengths aren’t in them, but I think that there are those students in every field and they don’t explain the problem.
I go even further and pose the question: could it have to do with students feeling pressured to go university in the first place? Do we have an enormous amount of students at universities today that just aren’t serious, getting degrees (and taking out nearly $30,000 on average while doing so, if they actually finish) in majors that didn’t even exist 20 years ago, that have close to a 0% chance of enabling them to go into a career that uses that knowledge, that will allow them to actually pay off their debts (oh, the woes of the Russian literature/gender studies/comic book collecting major)?
The problem is that we are so terrified of stratifying individuals anymore, in almost any way, that we’re pathologically watering down the quality of our most important natural resource: the education of people. We have societal atychiphobia, and it’s metastasized to other areas, and becoming more and more terminal.
Couldn’t agree more. Our universities now operate economically and ethically as for-profit corporations (and they don’t like competition) as their principal goal and the effects are being pumped out every day. I believe there is a direct conflict-of-interest with the goal of bringing in as much revenue as possible, and providing engaging faculty/lecturers who are proficient at equipping their students to be educated critical thinkers. Simply put: one is profitable, the other is not. Great researchers are viewed as revenue generators, whereas great teachers are looked at as line items (and the problem is exacerbated by the fact that finding someone who is stellar at both is about as fruitful as a unicorn hunt in most cases). The goals of maximizing revenue and quality of education are, to a certain extent, what Gould called ‘non-overlapping magisteria.’ Which one outweighs the other is very telling of what we truly value as a nation and culture (we spend more money per capita on a student than any other country in the world, save Switzerland, and are laughable in rank) as opposed to what we say we value.
Even the methods and logistics of how these classes you’re discussing operate, tells the same story. The primary learning modality for most of these 250+ auditorium style courses (mind you, that are the foundation of all the sciences they’ll be taking later in their career…if they’re still around, that is) being utilized by students is simple memorization. Why? Well, look at how they’re being evaluated and why. A 50 question multiple choice scantron exam, which is the status quo, makes not for a qualitative and conceptual understanding of the material (i.e. just look at the data of how biological science majors perform in physics courses!). “If you memorize it well enough, you can pass for sure, and for lots of classes make an A.” So, why do faculty use this testing format? Limited resources? No, that is only a symptom of the problem. I concede, it is unreasonable for someone even with even 2 or 3 TAs to hand grade 400 exams that have essays (one of the most comprehensive and deepest means of evaluation for some science subjects), short answers, etc. in a timely manner. The real problem is that the system is designed to operate in such a way that a class can have that many students, while staffing the class with someone who may or may not be a good teacher. What do you get? Exactly that you’re talking about.
The significance of this problem goes so much deeper than just the surface too. For instance, by 2020 it’s estimated that there will be 120 million high tech jobs that require STEM sort of backgrounds in the United States….but that there will only be 50 million Americans qualified for them (Guggenheim). So unemployment is going to continue to go up, and outsourcing jobs for hi tech industries in the US is going to become necessary to have employees who can actually run the companies. Why? Because we’re so obsessed with money that we’ve designed our education system to make ourselves obsolete (“They took my job!”).
The question of importance is, how do people learn science at undergraduate and graduate levels? I’m betting it’s not by sitting in a 300 person auditorium and taking notes from a Power Point. We know lots from the research on how people learn science — see the National Research Council report by that name. Learners need engaging questions and activities,and a teacher who cares about what they already know and think and who understands the conceptual landscape well enough to guide others to more sophisticated understanding. Teachers also need to appreciate the history, philosophy and sociology of the discipline of science, so that they can convey how people make knowledge in the sciences — not the “scientific method” but in collaborative communities of scientists who build on what they already know, move into the boundaries of theories and findings, push on alternative possibilities, and communicate what and how they know what they know to others. So, the next question is, what opportunities do we provide for young doctoral students to explore any of those things, so that they have the knowledge and practices needed for university teaching in the sciences? If the answer is “none,” then what opportunities to develop those kinds of knowledge and practices do universities provide, when an assistant professor is hired? If that answer is ‘none,” then what would it take to help science professors at all levels of the tenure stream to develop those qualities that all learners deserve? It all comes down to money and where it comes from and where it’s spent at the university level. We need the research in university science classrooms and laboratories to document what actually happens and whether that helps students to accomplish meaningful understanding or not.
Deb Smith
There are professors who are not only boring, confusing and tricky, but are genuinely mean. A student should not have to walk out in tears from an Intro Chem course because the Professor embarrasses her with indirect comments in a large lecture hall after she makes an attempt to learn the material during his office hours.
These professors are known to the school. One need only read Rate My Professor or other websites to see the repeated comments by students across the years for a particular professor. When this occurs, one can legitimately say that the school from the Provost on down condone these abusive and other non-didactic behaviors (deliberate boring lectures, no visuals where they would be helpful and are supported by ready technology,except for the professor showing his dog, etc.) What purpose is there to grade homework when the material was not presented in class, yet, nor are there other supportive TAs available to go over the homework problems.
How to deal with the school: Cut Money!
1.Have funding Agencies, such as the NSF review the student online comments. Use these comments as part of the criteria for determining funding or NOT funding the schools for their STEM courses or STEM initiatives. I’m not saying to cut off funding because one sole, bad professor is a jerk. I’m saying that if a reasonable person will look across the comments within each STEM department and finds repeated cases of poor,negligent and/or mean instruction, then the funding Agency will see it’s throwing good money away by funding the University. A criterion for funding MUST be a professionally based evaluation of the comments on teacher poor performance. I’m not saying look at the grades, necessarily. Look at the repeated comments over a three year period for each professor and make the prudent judgment with the taxpayer’s money.
2. Have Higher Education State Education Departments review the State and City Universities in a similar fashion as suggested above. State Universities have been disproportionately attended by Engineering, Science and Ag majors (not sure if that’s true for Math majors.) Professional evaluation of student comments will, again have a positive impact on instruction, especially with the threat of funding withdrawal when the State sees the poor instruction is resulting in a waste of public funds and the understandable disillusionment in science careers by its studious, young citizens.
This post perfectly sums up my freshman year of college. As a freshman at the Pennsylvania State University, I began my college career intending to major in Electrical Engineering. After spending my first year of classes struggling to keep my grades afloat, however, I came to the realization that STEM in the collegiate setting was not for me. While some of my best memories from elementary through high school consisted of strong relationships with STEM teachers and success in their classes, something about the way those classes were taught in college made them leave an entirely different impact. While I would not like to blame poor STEM teaching entirely for my struggles, I can definitively say that it did not help.
In my opinion, part of the issue comes from having such difficult and abstract concepts taught in a several-hundred-person lecture hall. Surely only so many classrooms are available on a daily basis, and with STEM majors being some of the most competitive ones offered there will certainly be many students enrolled in these classes, but with the extremely high potential for concepts to be misunderstood there must be some way for students to receive more direct help. This, paired with universities’ emphasis on research over teaching experience, helps to show where this issue could be originating from. While it is useful to have a professor who knows what they are teaching extremely thoroughly and has a full understanding of it beyond what is being taught, field experience and familiarity with a subject does not make someone a teacher.