Second Career in Science Education
Within a few years, Karplus had changed careers—from theoretical physics, to research on science and math learning, and then to curriculum developer. Karplus quickly learned what was already known about the development of thinking and reasoning, studying various psychologists, especially Jean Piaget. Characteristically, Karplus also immediately began generating his own questions about children's thinking, collecting evidence, and developing his own interpretations and explanations of what he observed.
Karplus’ new passion coincided, serendipitously, with the post-Sputnik wave of efforts to upgrade US science education. Beginning in the late 50s, many other scientists also devoted themselves to science education and the schools, but Karplus was from the start a leader at the elementary level. Initially there was substantial reluctance at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund science curriculum projects at the elementary level, but this was overcome in 1959, when Karplus and three colleagues received the first of many NSF grants for the improvement of science content at the elementary level. This work evolved into a monumental 15-year effort called the Science Curriculum Improvement Study (SCIS). Under the direction of Karplus and Herbert D. Thier, SCIS became a comprehensive, fully tested, hands-on, laboratory-based program in both physical and biological science for grades K-6.
Robert Karplus realized the importance of converting the SCIS elementary science materials into a systematic teaching process that would enable teachers to successfully use these materials while enabling students to learn and enjoy science. He, along with others, developed the learning cycle instructional strategy.
Karplus extended Piaget's theory to college students and adults; Piaget's theory included four stages, and he had documented children's thinking in great detail, finding that most children made the transition from the 3rd stage (concrete operations) to the 4th stage (abstract reasoning) by about 16 years of age. Karplus, however, extended Piaget's methodology to older groups and found that many of these individuals had important gaps in their ability to use abstract reasoning in solving scientific, logical, and mathematical problems. His most famous test of proportional reasoning was the Mr. Tall-Mr. Short problem. Karplus further explored and documented the details of college students’ and adults’ thinking as they confronted the issues involved in this critical intellectual transition, finding that many of the issues and problems that he, Piaget, and others had discovered as critical for younger students were still relevant for older individuals, particularly when they were attempting to solve a problem in a discipline that was new to them.
In 1977 Karplus was elected President of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), and in 1978 the National Science Teachers Association awarded him their Citation for Distinguished Service to Science Education. Karplus was chairman of the Graduate Group in Science and Mathematics Education (SESAME) from 1978 to 1980. In 1980 he was awarded the AAPT's highest honor, the Oersted Medal, "for his many contributions to physics teaching at all levels and especially for his work in revealing the implications for physics teaching of research in the development of reasoning." Karplus was appointed the Dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education in 1980. The prestigious Karplus Prize in Chemical Physics at Harvard is named after him.
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