Theoretical and Empirical Investigations of Integrated Mathematics and Science Education in the Middle Grades With Implications for Teacher Education

Goals and objectives of school curricula are generally defined in strands paralleling traditional academic disciplines. The traditional organization of curriculum becomes particularly prominent in the experiences of students as they move into middle grades, where content specialists often provide instruction in separate courses. Separation of the content strands is characteristic of the school curriculum, with separation deepening as one progresses up the grades to high school and beyond (House, 1990). Mathematics and science are no exception to this general trend. Two hundred years ago, schoolwork covered the gamut of mathematics and science under the title natural philosophy. With the exponential growth of knowledge over the last two centuries, few people can keep up with more than a small subarea within a field as broad as natural philosophy. This has caused fragmentation of the field into different disciplines--mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and the like (Education Development Center, 1969). Although mathematics and science curricula have become separate, an undercurrent of support for their integration has always existed, with support waxing and waning over time (Berlin, 1991; House, 1990). There is presently extensive support for integrating the teaching and learning of mathematics and science (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1990; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989; National Research Council, 1996). The current widespread support for integrated teaching of mathematics and science in the school curriculum is advocated as a means by which students can develop deeply organized knowledge and richly interconnected structures. Scant research and experimentation exist investigating the hypothesis that integrated mathematics and science is a way for students to acquire conceptual knowledge of mathematics and science (Berlin, 1991). It is difficult to reliably and validly compare the few existing studies because of the inconsistency with which the term integration is used; many research documents are only tangentially related to integrated mathematics and science education (Berlin, 1991). The meaning of the present-day term integrated mathematics and science education is not clear. What is integrated mathematics and science education? Does teaching mathematics through problem solving, where science is used solely for problem context, constitute integration? What about science instruction that focuses on problems and laboratory experiments with mathematics used merely as an analytical tool? Do only teaching and learning situations in which the connections between mathematics and science are fully exploited, with mathematics and science playing synergistic roles in explaining the world, exemplify integrated mathematics and science education? One working group at the 1991 national conference on integrated mathematics and science suggested a Turing-type test for determining whether instruction is integrated. This test involves sending a visitor to the class in question; if the visitor has difficulty distinguishing whether the class is a mathematics class or a science class, one could say that mathematics and science are integrated (Berlin & White, 1994). The plethora of terms commonly used to refer to integration complicates this definitional problem. These terms reflect various conceptions and degrees of integration; teachers, administrators, teacher educators, educational researchers, curriculum developers, and policymakers often use them in nonuniform ways (Berlin, 1991). Consensus on how to define integrated mathematics and science education may never occur. But this problem aside, research on integrated mathematics and science education has typically attempted to determine the effect of integration on students' mathematics achievement and/or mathematics attitude, or science achievement and/or science attitude, but not the effect on the achievement and/or attitude related to both disciplines (Berlin, 1991). …