Science THE BOOKS

Education

Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better, edited
by Bryk A. S., Gomez L. M. Grunow A., and LeMahieu P. Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 2015. 280 pp. ISBN-10: 1612507913.

In recent years, federal education agencies have adopted a model of funding research and
development that closely resembles that of the health sciences. The adoption of this model
was driven by a concern that education research did not reliably produce strong evidence
of what works for decision makers. The health sciences have a powerful model for moving
basic science from “bench to bedside,” in which researchers develop treatments that they test
using randomized experiments conducted initially under very tightly controlled conditions
and then, if successful, in large-scale field trials. Educational policy makers hope this kind
of translational model can lead to widespread adoption of evidence-based programs and
practices and thus to the transformation of teaching and learning in schools.
Learning to Improve presents a different approach for organizing the research and devel-
opment enterprise from the translational model. Developed by the leaders of the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the book offers a critique of the transla-
tional model and then presents an alternative approach to improving schools. They argue
that demonstrating impact from a single well-designed study is not sufficient to improve
practice. Such studies may yield promising prototypes that are celebrated in the research
community and that are largely unworkable in schools. The approach the authors define
is not one focused on developing evidence of “what works”; rather, it is focused on the
problem of “[l]earning how to make interventions work effectively in the hands of different
individuals in varied contexts” (p. 181).
The alternative approach to research and development presented in Learning to Improve
relies on the methods of improvement science. Improvement science is a methodology de-
veloped in health care that traces its roots to quality improvement in Japanese manufacturing
and the ideas of the American management expert William Edwards Deming. Improve-
ment research sees variation in outcomes as the problem to be solved in any system, and
it focuses on solutions that change “the ways that work systems are designed and thereby
shape how individuals carry out their responsibilities” (p. 7). It relies on the use of rapid
tests of change (called Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycles) in work systems to guide development,
refinement, and ongoing evolution of tools, processes, and work relationships. The aim is
to develop know how for an innovation to spread relatively quickly and effectively.
The differences between rapid tests of change in improvement research and the kinds
of prototypes we commonly develop in science education are subtle but important. In our
research, we often test changes that we hope will improve science teaching and learning,
and we rely on evidence to support claims about what is working, when, and for whom. Our
tests are often “small,” too, in that we focus attention on a few classrooms. But improvement


C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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science starts small but aims to “learn fast” to expand quickly. Many of our projects never
scale; nor do we aim to learn systematically from variation in implementation and outcomes,
as improvement science does. Improvement research engages teachers as codesigners and
testers of solutions: “[i]n an improvement centered world, practitioners are not just passive
recipients of others’ research, but active agents of change; they own problems, examine
causes, and collaborate with researchers and others” (p. 183). In science education research,
many of us are quick to view teachers from a deficit perspective or assign blame to teachers
as the cause of problems, not a source of solutions.
A second inspiration for the approach outlined in Learning to comes from the writings
of Douglas Engelbart, a software engineer from SRI International. Engelbart was better
known as the engineer who led the “mother of all demos” on a single day in 1968, when
he introduced a number of tools we now consider to be essential to modern computing:
the graphical user interface, the mouse, online collaborative editing tools, and videocon-
ferencing. He is less well known for another idea, that of the “networked improvement
community,” which builds from his view that technology systems should “combine with
human capabilities and organizational processes to enable more productive collective ac-
tion” (p. 142). A networked improvement community is one that is organized around
“improving improvement” or “getting better at getting better.” It is a community of inquiry
organized around improvement of some process or work practice. It focuses not just on the
strategies for improving those practices but also works on how we go about the work of
improvement. Learning and improvement are accelerated, argued Englebart, when people
engaged in common problems join together to work on those problems and test different
strategies for addressing them.
While promising, improving schools through networked improvement communities and
improvement science methodologies is not likely to be easy to accomplish. Networked
improvement communities depend on participants adopting the view that teaching is not
a private matter, but an activity that benefits from a group trying out common strategies
and gathering data on their effectiveness. But there are many educators and teachers who
do not share this view, and changing these beliefs is likely to be challenging. Networked
improvement communities, moreover, often cross the boundaries of schools, districts, and
states. But the very work processes and systems that are targeted in improvement science are
embedded within these organizational structures. It is still unclear how network members
work within or to change these structures or how they will be accountable to students,
teachers, parents, and community members outside the network who have a legitimate
stake in the goals of public schools.
For the authors of Learning to Improve, equity is a core concern, but for some of us,
it has a broader set of meanings. The authors rightly frame getting to scale with good
practice as a matter of equity, and they note that the persistent failure of reform efforts
in American schools has tended to exacerbate inequities rather than diminish them (p.
ix). They also argue convincingly that closing achievement gaps will require more than
“telling educators to do better, extending rewards to those who somehow figure that out and
imposing sanctions on those who don’t (p. 193). In public education, equity also is a matter
of voice, specifically of who is at the table deciding on the aims of improvement, strategies
to be tested, and measures to be used. Expanding design to encompass educators is not
enough to ensure equity. Historically and today, students and families of African American,
Latino, and Native American communities are rarely at the table designing improvements
to educational systems. Improvement science must address this dimension as well, if it is
to be a strategy for promoting equity.
These concerns aside, science education researchers interested in bringing to scale
promising prototypes they have developed or studied will find both inspiration and valuable
Science Education, Vol. 100, No. 4, pp. 777–779 (2016)
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practical guidance in this volume. Similarly, those seeking a fresh perspective on problems
of implementation will find one here. From the authors’ standpoint, “Each attempt to
implement an intervention in a new setting is itself an act of design” (p. 182). For those of
us in science education who identify as designers of solutions to problems of teaching and
learning, Learning to Improve presents us with a challenge that is likely to expand the scope
of science education research into new territory, beyond the classroom and into territory of
scholars of organizations, institutions, and political science. It is uncharted and unfamiliar
territory, but Learning to Improve makes a strong and inspiring case for exploring it.

REFERENCE
Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. (2015). Learning to improve: How America’s schools
can get better at getting better. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

WILLIAM R. PENUEL
School of Education
University of Colorado
Boulder
Boulder, CO 80309, USA
DOI 10.1002/sce.21223
Published online 15 June 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

Who’s Asking? Native Science, Western Science and Science Education, by Douglas.
L. Medin, & Megan Bang. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2014. 304 pp. ISBN
9780262026628.

In Who’s Asking? Native Science, Western Science and Science Education, authors Douglas
L. Medin and Megan Bang skillfully weave together compelling arguments to “unsettle” the
notion of a value-neutral, one-truth seeking Science. Throughout the first 10 chapters, the
authors present studies from a plethora of scientific fields—including cognitive psychology,
the history of science, molecular biology, and primatology—not so much to reiterate well-
rehearsed arguments on inequities inherent in the exclusive nature of Western science
(governed by an elite White male scientists’ fraternity), but to warn readers that the entire
enterprise of science is impoverished, and will remain so, if the lack of diversity in who is
asking scientific research questions continues unchanged.
The authors begin by questioning the notion of an objective, culture and value-neutral
“Science,” an elite discipline that is unencumbered by power and politics, singular in its
pursuit of truth. Medin and Bang systematically disabuse the reader of such a notion, citing
work from feminist scholars such as Sharon Traweek and Sandra Harding to problematize
such ideals in Science as the “unity of science” (p. 41), the biases inherent in the language
of science that often “invites an asymmetry of causal explanation that may not be justified”
(p. 42), and the reductionist approach to data analysis that is the hallmark of science.
The authors remind readers that far from value-free, science reflects the values of who
does it (hence, the title, “Who’s Asking”). Thus, the more insular and homogeneous the
cadre of scientists, the more the field (and society, by extension, as recipients of potential
applications of scientific progress) is at risk of not interrogating potentially hidden biases.
Quoting Sandra Harding, Medin and Bang remind readers that “the goal of only one true
Science Education, Vol. 100, No. 4, pp. 779–781 (2016)
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account of the natural world seems too little to ask” (Harding, 2006, as cited in Medin and
Bang, 2014, p. 54).
Another compelling idea the authors put forth is that of “psychological distance and the
conception of nature.” The authors discuss findings from their studies which suggested
that while European American participants reported practices that backgrounded nature
species (including flora and fauna), Native American Menominee participants reported
practices that very much foregrounded nature species. The authors posit that this difference
between Native Americans and European Americans is not one of degree but one of
kind. For Native Americans, nature is psychologically closer with animals and plants
regarded as “relatives” that one listens to, talks to, and cares for. From such a difference in
perspective come creativity and different approaches in scientific endeavors. The authors
share a marvelous anecdote of a Native American scientist, who, possibly because she
operated from a psychologically close, relational framework with buffalos, was unwilling
to draw the animal’s blood to extract DNA for research. Instead, she devised a novel way
of extracting DNA from buffalo feces. The promise in increasing diversity in the scientist
population is neatly encapsulated by this one anecdote.
Essentially, the authors reject the perspective of “border crossing” (Aikenhead, 2006),
an approach that science educators who work with diverse student populations are familiar
with. That is, in order for underrepresented youth in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) fields to gain access and have some degree of success in school
science and higher level STEM, they need to be explicitly taught the norms and practices
of Western science, to take on the identity of the elite other—a White, middle class male.
Instead of exclusively questioning the assumption that Western science is the “Science,”
science educators and K–16 science teachers need to equip their students from under-
represented groups with the skills and dispositions to “play the game in order to change
the game” (Gutierrez, 2007). What is unknown is at which juncture, and through what
process, underrepresented students in STEM disciplines can begin to change the game,
the kinds and degrees of successes that might be wrought, and what consequences might
result. Even when one assumes that underrepresented youth and their teachers are willing,
and able, to engage in such border crossing, Medin and Bang remind us of the sobering
and disturbing statistics: Between 1998 and 2007, only 108 Native American scholars
earned doctorates in the biological sciences, with another 33 doctorates earned in the fields
of astronomy, physics, computer science, ocean studies, and atmospheric sciences, com-
bined. These 141 Native American scientists represent 0.3% of the total number of degrees
awarded.
This may be another reason to embrace Medin and Bang’s vision: Instead of maintaining
current borders in Science, we need to significantly expand the borders of Science to include
other populations beyond the White male fraternity. With that vision comes the concomitant
acceptance, and commitment, to wrestle with uncertainties and fresh tensions that will no
doubt emerge when new stakeholders are brought together to negotiate what a version of
expansive science, in the case of the book, grounded in Native American perspectives, could
look like. The authors also make the distinction between culturally based science education
and community-based science education. They engage in the latter, “with culture coming
into play as a necessary corollary” (p. 193). The authors define community-based science
education as engaging as equal stakeholders, community members who have variable
yet relevant science-related expertise. In one of the projects the authors shared, these
community members included “teachers, loggers, forest ecologists and other fishery and
forestry employees” (p. 193) from the rural Menominee Wisconsin community. They were
all equal stakeholders engaged in designing a 3-week summer science program in science
for Menominee youth.
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A significant strength of the book lies in how the authors share examples of such dis-
comfort, what they termed “‘in the trenches’ examination of discourse” (p. 226), while
simultaneously raising further thorny issues for the science, and science education commu-
nities, to consider. The authors share transcripts in chapters 13 and 14, where Menominee
and other Native American teachers, community members and elders based in Chicago
engaged in discussion about the principles of a forestry science curriculum that honors
Native American legacy, resilience, knowledge, and practices. Among the issues that were
apparent in the discussion was the nonneutrality and outright injustices that mark Native
American histories with regard to their integrated ways of life, especially in forestry hus-
bandry and education. Engaging in conversation toward a goal of crafting their own Native
American science necessitates revisiting painful memories and grappling with repercus-
sions that continue to endure. Some of these difficult issues include the politics involved
in claiming ownership over a community-specific science by naming it “Native Science”
(p. 223) to distinguish it from (Western) “Science.” If so named, “Native Science” may
inadvertently suffer negative connotations of being the “other,” and therefore of lesser
quality, when compared to Western Science, which has claimed the title of “Science,” at
least in North America and Europe.
Whereas the authors report encouraging results from their collaborative projects—
specifically that the Native American youth showed a significant shift after the 3-week
program in owning both scientific knowledge and practices as a core heritage of their peo-
ple (instead of a body of facts that had nothing to do with them)—one is left wishing for
more details about how the activities and tasks of the program unfolded, what sticky points
were encountered and resolved (or not), and what insights the community and researchers
gained that could be brought to bear on designing such community-based science expe-
riences for other students. How do we go from changing the game in a flexible informal
setting, to doing so in the gatekeeping formal classroom? It is to the credit of the authors
that they succeed in demanding that science educators, researchers, and teachers wrestle
with these issues, not only for keeping true to our collective vision of Science for All but
also to safeguard the robust development of the scientific fields.

REFERENCES
Aikenhead, G. S. (2006). Science education for everyday life: Evidence-based practice. New York, NY: Teachers
College Press.
Harding, S. (2006). Science and social inequality: Feminist and postcolonial issues. University of Illinois Press.
Gutierrez, R. (2007). (Re)defining equity: The importance of a critical perspective. In N. S. Nasir & P. Cobb
(Eds.), Improving access to mathematics: Diversity and equity in the classroom (pp. 37 – 50). New York, NY:
Teachers College Press.

EDNA TAN
The University of North
Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402, USA
DOI 10.1002/sce.21224
Published online 15 June 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

Science Education, Vol. 100, No. 4, pp. 779–781 (2016)