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SCIENCE LEARNING & LITERACY
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An emerging trend in education is the attempt to dynamically link ongoing research initiatives for advancing the quality of K-12 teaching and learning with the more generally evolving process of systemic school reform (e.g., Secretary’s Summit on Science, 2004). In advocating an operational strategy that integrates and applies paradigmatically different interdisciplinary research perspectives (e.g., Bransford et al, 2000) to the persistent problems of school reform, the objective of this project is to raise the awareness of educators and policy makers regarding the potential for in-depth science as a form of content area instruction to serve as a critical element in furthering school reform efforts that, to the present, have emphasized the improvement of achievement outcomes in literacy (e.g., reading comprehension, writing) as ends in themselves rather than as a vehicle for meaningful content-area learning. In doing so, this project provides support of the related questions of how and why increasing the allocation of instructional time for in-depth science instruction at the upper elementary levels (grades 3-5) offers a research-validated means for significantly accelerating the achievement progress of all students in reading comprehension and writing.

Despite a continuing national emphasis on educational reform for the past 20 years, student proficiency in content-area reading comprehension (and writing) and achievement in content areas such as science have remained systemic problems. When reaching high school, many students representative of all SES strata do not have sufficient academic preparation in prior knowledge or reading comprehension proficiency to perform successfully in content-oriented courses. In addition, there are indications that the lack of emphasis for in-depth teaching of science and other content areas in elementary schools is a systemic barrier to successful school reform (Hirsch, 1996; Vitale & Romance, 2006). Within a framework of school accountability, a predominant school reform strategy has been to increase the time allocated to school- or district-adopted basal reading programs by reducing the instructional time allocated to science and other content areas, especially for those at-risk students most dependent upon school to learn. However, allocating increased instructional time to prepare students for non-content-oriented reading tests effectively withholds opportunities for meaningful content learning for school-dependent children across grades 3-8. In turn, the resulting lack of curricular preparation of such students for high school content courses is likely a major contributor to the magnification of the “black-white” test gap from elementary to the secondary levels. Although the short-term pressures of accountability might be difficult for schools to overcome, of even greater importance are the negative long-term curricular implications for student general reading comprehension proficiency and preparation for high school science courses that ultimately become manifest at the high school level (NAEP, 2002, 2003; Rand Report, 2003).

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