“As a former high school teacher, I always worried about whether it was better to teach less in greater depth or more with no real depth. This study offers evidence that teaching fewer topics in greater depth is a better way to prepare students for success in college science.”

- Robert Tai, Associate Professor, University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education

In a post on the teaching of science, I have put forth the view that not much science if actually being taught in Singapore schools. I was referring to the lack of the teaching and application of scientific inquiry in Singapore schools. What it means is that the teaching approach for science and the humanities in Singapore is probably no different as what they amount to most of the time is a strong reliance on textbooks and teacher-prepared notes. Not much in the way of skills to differentiate a student of science from a student of the humanities. I also suggested that perhaps this is because of the high stakes examinations-based science curriculum in Singapore.

The high stakes examinations in Singapore schools also meant that a premium is given to the teaching of a wide range of topics rather than depth. This I have suggested is a reason for the lack of proper teaching of concepts. Teaching is at best tuned at the superficial level of the kinds of examination questions that students in Singapore schools are likely to face at the PSLE, GCE O and A levels. In the light of this it is important for us to take note of a recent study made in the US. The study found that “high school students who study fewer science topics, but study them in greater depth, have an advantage in college science classes over their peers who study more topics and spend less time on each.”

The study (click here for more) done by a team comprising of Associate Professor Robert Tai of the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, Marc S. Schwartz of the University of Texas at Arlington, and Philip M. Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, compared the performance of 8310 students. They found that in courses that stress mastering a particular topic had double the impact on students as compared to those students in courses that touched on every major topic.

In another interesting conclusion, the team found that standardized testing “may not capture a student’s high level of mastery in a few key science topics.” Tai also noted that teachers who “teach to the test” may not be properly preparing their students’ chance of success in college science courses.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) of Singapore should take note of this study. It is another piece of evidence which shows that the Singapore’s education system while garnering lots of accolades is in serious need of a major overhaul. If Singapore is to prove itself competitive in the economic and scientific fields it has to produce students who have greater and deeper mastery of what they have learned rather than make them just masters of high stakes examinations and international surveys like TIMSS.

Some time ago, while I was with the Educational Technology Division (ETD) of Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE), a colleague of mine and I was asked to accompany a visiting master teacher from the United States as she went round a few places in Singapore. We visited the Sungei Buloh Wetlands Nature Reserve.

During the course of our conversation there, the topic of acid rain came up. She regaled us of how an American senator, in his attempt to show off his green credentials while talking about acid rain, said that he would like to bring the pH level to zero! We had a good laugh then. But a few moments later while still taking about how students could study the water quality in the area to check for acid rain and its effects, I received a first-hand experience of scientific ignorance (now that’s contradiction of terms). While she was explaining how it could be done, she asked what the water quality would be like if the rain clouds had passed over industrial areas before pouring into the reserve. My colleague, who was a Science teacher, promptly answered, “It would be acidic!” He did it with a big knowing smile like a child who had provided the teacher with the correct answer in school.

On my part, I think I looked stumped by the answer. The master teacher also looked a little surprised. I am not sure if she was annoyed but we both knew that the water from the rain may not be acidic. It may be alkaline. It all depends on the kinds of pollutants in the air! The master teacher then proceeded to explain with a  straight face why the rain water might not be acidic as my colleague had blurted out.

Even then, I felt that my colleague’s “answer” was a reflection of the kind of science teaching that goes on in Singapore schools. All too often what goes on is the teaching to the examinations. This implies again rote-learning and mechanical operations.  Little time time is spent to teach the scientific approach which is about asking questions and testing hypothesis. Little effort is spent at making observations and inferences or deductions and classifying data and trying to understand processes. Laboratory work in schools usually only have students follow written set of instructions about what to do and is left for them to carry out the experiment and draw their conclusions from “their” experiments. Students don’t create their own experiments to answer their own questions. We in fact don’t teach them to ask questions. We don’t encourage them to be curious. This was a point raised by the American master teacher too. At Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve, she noticed that at the exhibits were all in the “telling” mode. Information was given about the plants and animals found there. But what about the questions? I remember her saying that it is not important to provide the answers to the questions as what we want the visitors to do is to think. This is what science education is about.

On the other hand, in Singapore, concepts are over-simplified (see what happens to the idea of acid rain) and memorized rather than understood and applied outside of the examination papers. Little knowledge transfer is attempted by teachers to make the learning meaningful. It is because of this approach to the teaching of science in Singapore schools that many false or wrong ideas are carried to adulthood. I have often come across many “educated” people who believe all fishes lay eggs. Or that all mammals give birth to their young. Simplistic ideas are taught and these tend to stick in the students’ heads till adulthood due to what is known as contiguity. Perhaps this is the reason why we are importing scientists from overseas to pad our R & D pool in Singapore. We simply don’t teach our students science. What we teach them is bordering on science fiction sometimes. I will end this post with a quote from Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics and also tough critic of Science education. He said:

“…I couldn’t see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.”

(PS My thanks to Kelvin for the quote and for inspiring me to write this piece.)

Addendum: Just for a comparison with the way Science is taught in Singapore’s , read this article.

In this video you see Obama asking why the US can’t provide “math instruction and science instruction for our children that matches countries like Taiwan and Singapore.” I cannot help again feeling that foreigners tend to see only an official rose-tinted view of Singapore’s education.

Do we have great Science instruction or teaching in Singapore? If we look at how Science is taught in Singapore it is not much different from that of teaching another content-based subject, like History. Only the content is different. Is the student encouraged to do scientific inquiry? Is he familiar and conscious with the scientific approach? Is cramming our students with Science “facts” considered science instruction? How different is that from teaching History “facts” in History lessons? Not much really except for the subject-related information taught.

I hope we in Singapore don’t allow such praise get to our heads. Teaching science is not happening in our schools. Only now is some of it happening. Even then it is happening only in the most elite schools here as if it is beyond the ken of the rest of the school-going population in Singapore.