Fixing K-12 biology

Education expert Melanie Barron calls for an inquiry-based curriculum

Worried about the state of biology education in U.S. public schools? Keep worrying.

In May, the National Assessment of Educational Progress released its Science Scorecard, revealing that while modest gains have been made at the 4th grade level in U.S. public schools, scores have been flat for 8th and 12th grade compared to the previous NAEP survey in 2002.

Melanie Barron Photo: Sam Ogden

Fortunately, the picture is improving in the Cambridge, Massachusetts Public School District, says Melanie Barron, the system’s K-12 science coordinator, and a long-time advisor for Whitehead Institute’s public outreach programs.

Barron has helped to replace the lecture-dominated curriculum with more hands-on “inquiry-based” approaches, including innovative programs in epidemiology, ecology, environmental science and marine biology. Science writer Eric S. Brown recently spoke with Barron about new strategies for improving K-12 science education and how they might be expanded nationwide.

How has biology education changed in recent years?

Thanks to National Science Foundation support, the Cambridge K-8 schools now have excellent science curriculum. We have implemented a new hands-on, inquiry-based biology curriculum from Biological Science Curriculum Study called Biology: A Human Approach. In high school, we now teach physics first, then chemistry, then biology, rather than the reverse. The complexity of biology demands an understanding of physics and chemistry. The change is happening all around the country, but there’s still some skepticism out there. We need to get the curriculum to better support the shift.

Is there much skepticism about inquiry-based teaching as well?

Nationwide, there’s resistance among high school teachers. There’s a misunderstanding that if you use an inquiry-based approach, you won’t learn enough science. Yet science is not only studying the “it”—it’s doing the “it.” One of Cambridge’s high school teachers is in the Arctic on an Earthwatch expedition with four students looking at climate change. If schools were more flexible and incorporated more field-based research into the curriculum, you’d see a tremendous difference.

We need to apply instructional techniques that we’re using in elementary school to high school. High school classrooms can learn from the organization of a kindergarten room, in which you have some students working together around computers while others are reading and others are building something, and others are having a session with the teacher.

With an inquiry-based approach, will the students still be prepared for college entrance exams?

The colleges are looking for high Advanced Placement scores, but then they are complaining that the students don’t have inquiry-based, problem-solving skills. I think you can have both—they’re not mutually exclusive.

Some MIT undergraduates who volunteered in our classrooms argued that if they had grown up learning with an inquiry-based approach, they would never have gotten the scores they needed to get into MIT. Yet once these kids get into places like MIT, they revert to that inquiry-based approach, that hysterical, build-your-own-robot, steal-the-cannon style, and they do beautiful work.

What’s going on in biotechnology requires that you know how to question, how to think, how to solve problems. [Cambridge biotech firm] Microbia isn’t doing microbial research anymore because the company found a more successful direction. But if they didn’t know how to question, could they have turned the company around?

What can be done to recruit and retain qualified science teachers?

Science teachers should have regular sabbaticals to do research and visit research sites. There should be opportunities like the Whitehead Institute’s seminar series for high school science teachers. The talks are given about current research by the best researchers, and the teachers are treated like professionals.

What other challenges do biology teachers face?

The big issue is testing, testing, testing. We have a wonderful science curriculum in Cambridge, but by the 5th and 6th grades, instructional time starts to decline because teachers are told to prepare the students for math and reading tests. Above all, the teachers need to have the time to teach science.