In the New York Times, Tom Friedman makes a persuasive case about why schools need to teach students how to innovate. In today's highly-demanding workforce, it is not enough to simply teach content knowledge. Students today need to be able to apply this content knowledge and often the best application of knowledge will not be spelled out for students. To be competitive in the workforce, they will need to create ways to use knowledge themselves.
Friedman writes in the article, "This is dangerous at a time when there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job…
The National Bureau of Economic Research released an engaging and informative paper yesterday providing a historical perspective on the fluctuating demand for skilled labor in the United States and the forces that influence its demand.
This paper examines shifts over time in the relative demand for skilled labor in the United States. Although de-skilling in the conventional sense did occur overall in nineteenth century manufacturing, a more nuanced picture is that occupations “hollowed out”: the share of “middle-skill” jobs – artisans – declined while those of “high-skill” – white…
The Report of the 2012 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education was recently released and contains valuable data. The Report details the results of a survey of 7,752 science and mathematics teachers in schools across the United States. Areas addressed include: teacher backgrounds and beliefs, teachers as professionals, science and mathematics courses, instructional objectives and activities, instructional resources, and factors affecting instruction.
In 2012, the National Science Foundation supported the fifth in a series of national surveys of science and mathematics…
Virginia Governor's Schools for the Gifted by Louise Epstein
Many states have at least one selective public high school. Virginia is unusual, and provides funding to nineteen academic-year Governors Schools. According to the Virginia Department of Education web site:
The Academic-Year Governor's Schools are established as "joint schools" by Virginia school law. As such, they are typically managed by a regional governing board of representatives from the school boards of each participating division. The regional governing board is charged with…
A new report released by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) documented the performance of U.S. and non-U.S. students taking the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). The new report on GRE data is the first to be released since ETS made a series of changes to the GRE, and is the first with country-by-country breakdowns.
According to the report, Non-U.S. citizens outperform U.S. citizens on the quantitative reasoning section of the GRE. The non-U.S. quantitative mean is 155.6, compared to 149.5 for U.S. citizens. While these scores are not perfect comparisons, it illustrates…
At a time when the Higgs boson, graphene, and atom trapping are often in the headlines, this partnership finds fertile ground for its goal of spreading awareness of physics and physics education across the country.
Physics students are traditionally taught to break down a complicated system into manageable pieces, to identify the physical laws or principles guiding each piece, and to describe the resulting behavior of the complete system. This approach is rigorous enough to yield precise quantitative results, yet flexible enough to apply to new and unexpected systems or problems. …
Getting Girls Hooked on Physics and Engineering Design
By Arundhati Jayarao, Ph.D. - CEE, Principal STEM Strategist
Science and Mathematics fascinated me even as a young girl. Never great at memorization or rote, I was drawn to the fields of physical sciences and mathematics charmed by the sheer logic of the subject matter. As I ventured into a full-fledged physics research career, I was struck by the dearth of female role models in the field. Granted that was the eighties, but what piques me is the fact that year after year the NSF science…
As a follow up to Dr. Hudgings' post about creating a welcoming environment for women in physics, we wanted to share this interactive graph released by the New York Times. An exam was given in 65 developed countries by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.The results show that among a representative sample of 15-year-olds around the world, girls generally outperform boys in science — but not in the United States. The interactive graph depicts where the U.S. falls relative to other countries.
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How to create an undergraduate physics program in which women can excel
Janice Hudgings, Physics Department Chair and Associate Dean of Faculty, Mount Holyoke College
We have all heard the grim statistics: Despite rising number of bachelor’s degrees being awarded nationwide, the number of physics bachelor’s degrees awarded in the US is relatively stagnant. Furthermore, the fraction of those physics bachelor’s degrees awarded to women remains around 22% nationwide, with the pipeline leaking female talent most heavily at the undergraduate level.
So, given that…
In a bold step, Dartmouth College has announced that it will no longer award college credit for top scores on Advanced Placement (AP) examinations.
Dartmouth carefully analyzed incoming freshmen who scored a “5” on their AP Psychology examination and placed out of the college’s introductory Psychology course. The result according to Dartmouth: 90% of freshmen who placed out of the course based on AP examination scores did not pass a condensed version of the introductory Psychology final examination.
This finding leaves a lot of unanswered questions. How can we best…