大卫·H. Eddy Spicer

The Ingenuity Gap Revisited

Innovations Case Discussion:
Science-Lab

Collective intelligence involves a transformation in the way we think
about human capability. It suggests that all are capable rather than a few;
that intelligence is multiple rather than a matter of solving puzzles with
only one right answer; and that our human qualities for imagination and
emotional engagement are as important as our ability to become techni-
cal experts.

—Philip Brown and Hugh Lauder, Capitalism and Social Progress

Who would not want their young child to be in a Science-Lab afterschool program
with Dr. Heike Schettler and her colleagues? The vision offered is a compelling one
that we crave for all children—a program that sparks deep curiosity in the natural
world through the encouragement of skilled teachers, cheered on by a chorus of
engaged parents. The flourishing of Science-Lab over a short number of years tes-
tifies to the original designers’ alchemy, converting the zeitgeist of anxiety around
globalization and its consequences into a positive force for educational change on
a potentially broad scale within and beyond Germany. The effort is earnest and the
response enthusiastic, converting skeptical educators, inspiring anxious parents,
and attracting a swath of support from teachers and corporate sponsors.

Of greatest interest to me is what this case says about building knowledge for
educational change. My comments elaborate three spheres of such knowledge-
building. The first is the most obvious and has to do with what Dr. Schettler por-
trays as Science-Lab’s “recipe for success.” The ingredients of that recipe comprise
what Richard Elmore, a scholar of school reform, has called the “core” of teaching
和学习: the reciprocal relationships among student, teacher, and subject mat-
ter.1 The second sphere embraces this core, but adds an encompassing shell—the
relationship between the innovation’s designers and those who would carry for-

大卫·H. Eddy Spicer is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Bath in Bath,
U.K. His research interests are in the leadership of educational change, collaborative
inquiry in professional settings, organizational learning, and the role of new technolo-
gies in these areas.

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大卫·H. Eddy Spicer

ward their design. This comes in two parts with Science-Lab: the relationship with
the parents who started the Science-Lab afterschool activities, and that with the
teachers in state primary schools with whom Science-Lab sought to work to reach
more diverse students. The third sphere is yet more encompassing, enveloping the
first two. It concerns knowledge-building around change in the broader system of
schooling, touching on the recent engagement Science-Lab has had with state deci-
sion-makers and corporate sponsors.

THE KNOWLEDGE-BUILDING “PLANET”

The image of a planet captures the three spheres of knowledge-building and their
interdependent relationships. Imagine the fiery core of teaching and learning, 骗局-
tained by a fertile and breathing mantle, which in turn is encompassed within a
sustaining atmosphere. Of course the opposite image also holds: of a spent core, A
desolate mantle devoid of life, and a thin or poisoned enveloping atmosphere. 作为
with living systems, the three spheres are interdependent; what happens within one
affects all. These three spheres of knowledge-building are not unique to Science-
实验室; they pertain to any intervention that aims to have broad and enduring influ-
ence on the core of teaching and learning. Studies of educational innovations that
have sought to shift the dynamics within that core make clear the mutually
dependent relationships among core, mantle, and atmosphere.2

These relationships of mutual influence point toward a fundamental question
about the rationale for Science-Lab and the purpose of knowledge-building. 到
provide a shorthand answer, I turn to political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon,
whose notion of an “ingenuity gap” seems well-tuned to one aspect of what knowl-
edge-building at the broadest level needs to address.3 The ingenuity gap refers to
the critical distance between what makes us smarter and what makes us wiser, 两个都
as individuals and as a society. The readers of this publication know all too well
that despite cascades of information, solutions to the ill-structured problems that
beset us, such as climate change and persistent poverty, elude our grasp. The well-
structured disciplinary domains of our inheritance are necessary but not adequate.
The knowledge that we acquire from the past is but the prelude to new and useful
forms of practical, 技术的, and social knowledge that are urgently needed.

I want to add another dimension to ingenuity that goes back to the early roots
of the word in English. “Ingenuity” in the 16th century meant the quality of being
ingenious, of having a capacity for invention, but it also could mean being ingenu-
乌斯, open and frank.4 And the latter meaning was not just a personal characteris-
tic; it was an indicator of social status, of being “free-born” and having full access
to all that society might offer. This lost meaning of ingenuity as being open to all
is a leitmotif throughout the following. It is what I mean by “social franchise,“ 在
contrast with Dr. Schettler’s use of the term as an innovative solution to a vexing
contractual issue.

With the connotation of ingenuity as social franchise in mind, I want to take a
closer look at the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, 这

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The Ingenuity Gap Revisited

assessment sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
发展 (经合组织) that initially inspired Dr. Schettler and her colleague Sonja
Stuchtey to launch Science-Lab. PISA provides a basis for cross-national compar-
isons of education systems in economically developed countries, based on data
collected every three years from a random sample of 15-year-olds within a repre-
sentative selection of schools. PISA has several characteristics that distinguish it
from other kinds of large-scale summative assessments of students’ capabilities.
Foremost is that sampled students complete performance assessments in reading,
mathematics, and problem-solving, 作为
well as in science. In the terms I have
used above, performance assessments
are meant to provide some indication
the capacity for Homer-Dixon’s
的
notion of
in that they
require students to use what they
知道, not just to demonstrate the
knowledge they have acquired. 在阿迪-
tion to measuring students’ performance, PISA collects a wide range of sociologi-
cal data about socioeconomic status, family structure, and the organization of
schooling.

Early childhood education
is crucial for redressing
the ingenuity gap.

ingenuity,

A recent working paper analyzing 2006 PISA results for Germany, the admin-
istration of the assessment most recently analyzed, showed achievement in science
above the OECD average, placing Germany eighth highest among OECD coun-
tries.5 On that scale, Germany appears to be doing well on its prospects for address-
ing at least the original definition of the ingenuity gap, just ahead of the United
王国 (9th) and far ahead of the United States (21st).

This hardly means that Science-Lab should pack up its kits and head home.
Parsing these results reveals wide variation within the country. Students with
immigrant parents have much lower science scores than students with at least one
parent born in Germany. The disparity in achievement between students who are
the children of immigrants and those with German roots is among the largest
across the OECD countries. 而且, the analysis shows the gap widening for
more recent immigrants who, unlike the post-1989 wave of immigrants from
countries in the former Eastern Bloc, are not exposed to German at home from
older family members likely to be fluent. The children of more recent immigrants,
largely from Turkey, enter a radically different linguistic and cultural environment
at school than what they are accustomed to at home. 而且, these students and
their families confront greater social and economic disparities than earlier immi-
grants.6 Thus, the achievement gap revealed in assessment results reveals an equi-
ty gap when analyzed in more detail. The combination of gaps in achievement and
equity are what I mean to evoke with the term “ingenuity gap” in its fullest sense.
Early childhood education is crucial for redressing the ingenuity gap, a point
highlighted in the recent OECD report and a vital premise of the work of Science-
实验室. While the details of waves of immigration may be unique to Germany, dispar-

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大卫·H. Eddy Spicer

ities in achievement and equity and the role of early childhood education are cer-
tainly not. A wide range of studies from the United States and other countries
shows how early achievement gaps in science have consequences for enrollment in
science courses, decisions about college majors, and pursuit of career choices.7
Achievement and equity are inextricable aspects of ingenuity. Initiatives like
Science-Lab are of increasing importance, but they also risk privileging the already
privileged unless keenly attentive to those for whom full social franchise has yet to
be attained.

THE CORE

到这一点, I have been talking about the ingenuity gap at its broadest sweep.
Now I want to zoom in on where building knowledge to redress that gap first takes
shape. In the core of teaching and learning, knowledge-building has to do with the
everyday interactions of teacher, student, and subject matter. Just as at the broad-
est level, knowledge-building about such interactions concerns both the social and
the substantive. We often take for granted the social and underestimate the sub-
stantive. 孩子们, even very young children, do not lack the ability to reason; 他们
lack knowledge and experience. Developing the ability to assemble and examine
evidence and to test propositions is central to the eight factors that comprise
Science-Lab’s “recipe for success.” The ingredients of that recipe comprise knowl-
edge-seeking inquiry—an approach to teaching and learning science that has
gained broad acceptance as best practice. One scholar characterizes the shift in a
manner reminiscent of the “ingenious” side of the ingenuity gap. The shift toward
inquiry is a movement from the traditional approach that asks “what do we want
students to know?” to one that asks “what do we want students to be able to do and
what do they need to do it?”8 The National Research Council’s National Scientific
Education Standards and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science have been lauded as vision statements
for promoting broad shifts in the “core” toward inquiry in the United States.9
Articulation of exemplary science education in many countries has taken similar
aim.10 The National Research Council summarizes the main tenets:11
• Learner engages in scientifically oriented questions.
• Learner gives priority to evidence in responding to questions.
• Learner formulates explanations from evidence.
• Learner connects explanations to scientific knowledge.
• Learner communicates and justifies explanations.

The shorthand list above masks a crucial ingredient of classroom inquiry that
Science-Lab’s “recipe” highlights. Science-Lab’s recipe is written in the first-person
plural, an important acknowledgement of the role that peers and adults have in the
process of learning. The relationship with adults in particular is where the social
and substantive come together, at least initially. As John Bransford and colleagues
write in their synthesis of contemporary research, How People Learn, “Children’s
curiosity and persistence are supported by adults who direct their attention, struc-

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The Ingenuity Gap Revisited

ture their experiences, support their learning attempts, and regulate the complex-
ity and difficulty levels of information for them.”12 Such systematic inquiry facili-
tated by knowledgeable adults, referred to as guided inquiry, is well-established
through research and in policy as best practice for sustaining interest in science
and cultivating deep and flexible understanding.

David Perkins, a respected scholar of teaching and learning, uses the extended
metaphor of “playing the whole game” to help convey the complex interplay of
social and substantive that the best environments for learning entail, for adults as
well as children. Playing the whole game does not mean getting thrown onto the
varsity squad from the start; it means engaging an “accessible version of the whole
game early and often.”13 Creating conditions through which the whole game can be
accessible is the role for professional players and coaches (IE。, teachers and other
adults in school and preschool settings) with their deep knowledge and experience.
What results, according to Perkins, is a “threshold experience, a learning experi-
ence that gets us past initial disorientation and into the game. From there it’s eas-
ier to move forward in a meaningful, motivated way.”14 Important to highlight here
is that the “whole game” is not just about being child-centered or solely attentive
to the social. It is about creating experiences that engage conceptual relations
through social interaction. 而且, that mutual engagement aims at producing
knowledge—playing the whole game—not simply reproducing solitary parts of
it—batting practice.15

Science-Lab appears to be a good bet for the kind of “whole game” learning
that Perkins describes. The core of inquiry teaching and learning it espouses aligns
solidly with best practice in both the social and substantive aspects of inquiry by
offering a carefully tailored, accessible version of the whole game of science for
young children.

What about the social franchise side of the “ingenuity gap”? Research tells us
that the linguistic, 社会的, and cultural classroom environments of economically
developed countries are most closely aligned with the home environment of pro-
fessional, middle-class, non-immigrant parents.16 It is no wonder that just these
kinds of parents were the ones who responded so enthusiastically when Science-
Lab first got underway. The same research also implies that igniting and keeping
alive the fiery core of inquiry for children who experience great disparity between
their home and school environments requires approaches that might not fall neat-
ly into a single “recipe” and might entail considerable adaptation to particular cir-
情况, all of which hinges on knowledge-building to bridge the ingenuity gap
at the next level up.

THE MANTLE

Knowledge-building in this sphere has to do with the dynamics of scaling-up, 不是-
ing an innovation such as the Science-Lab afterschool program out of the hot-
房子 (or the backyard and kitchen, 在这种情况下) in which it was developed and
training others in its use. To do so requires enveloping a solid “core” with a vibrant

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大卫·H. Eddy Spicer

mantle. 博士. Schettler describes a two-stage process for Science-Lab in this realm.
The first had to do with developing a network of science and engineering profes-
sionals who, like Dr. Schettler and her colleague, were committed to active engage-
ment with their children’s education. When Dr. Schettler discovered that Science-
Lab was not reaching out to all, she and her colleague adapted the original design
and began working with teachers in state primary schools to ignite their interest in
科学.

Scaling-up educational
innovation entails a
基本的
contradiction between
fidelity and adaptability.

Scaling-up educational innovation entails a fundamental contradiction
between fidelity and adaptability. Fidelity requires the articulation of essence; 如何-
曾经, essence does not appear on command, like a genie from a lamp. Essential ele-
ments emerge as the innovation comes
into contact with the real world. 约瑟夫
磷. 麦当劳, an acclaimed scholar of
innovative educational change, 和他的
colleagues point to the importance of
clarifying “distinguishers” in their study
of a groundbreaking effort to re-envi-
sion schooling through social entrepre-
neurship known as Big Picture
Learning.17 Distinguishers are what the
staff of Big Picture Learning came to
see as aspects that set their initiative
apart from all others. Science-Lab has
clarified its distinguishers in relation to the core—a focus on early childhood, close
attention to inquiry. At the mantle, the program appears to be in the midst of iden-
tifying its distinguishers.

The key to clarifying distinguishers at the level of the mantle lies in organiza-
tional knowledge building around teacher learning. This entails both developing
an approach to teacher development that remains true to the distinguishers of the
core and continuously learning from teachers’ efforts to implement desired
改变. Research into teacher learning in the midst of their work broadly points to
the components of substance, 过程, and context as fundamental to ensuring
fidelity and nurturing adaptability. Science-Lab appears to have solid foundations
in the first two areas. Its work with teachers integrates two important areas of con-
tent—the substance of science and the substance of teaching science. 教师
learn science as they learn to teach it. The process of teacher learning models the
same inquiry process teachers are expected to carry out in their classrooms.

In relation to the three aspects of content, 过程, 和背景, Science-Lab
does not yet appear to have tackled context, and this aspect is the key to adaptabil-
性. Studies of sustained change in teaching practice point to the need to develop
supports for innovative practice within and across schools, and to provide ongo-
ing feedback around teacher and student learning over long periods of time. Shifts
in individual teaching practice may entail years of trial and error. Success is far
more likely when school leaders and staff are involved and most of the learning

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The Ingenuity Gap Revisited

takes place in the midst of ongoing work, building local capacity to sustain sys-
temwide improvement.18 The kind of workshops that Dr. Schettler describes may
well energize and engage teachers initially, 但, at least based on others’ experi-
恩塞斯, workshops organized externally have had only limited long-term success.

In the United States, research into teacher learning and the enactment of
inquiry has a long history. The comments of education researcher Fouad Abd-El-
Khalick in an international review of inquiry science education tersely sum up
what has been learned:

The history of science education reforms in the United States has taught
us that when envisioned conceptions of inquiry meet the reality of
schools and classroom teaching, and the associated social, 政治的, 生态-
nomic, and cultural spheres, these more philosophical conceptions [的
询问] are often transformed into incommensurate (实际的) curric-
ula and then translated into incongruent enactments or classroom prac-
tices.19

Both fidelity and adaptability are crucial to the vitality of the mantle, the orga-
nizational knowledge required to flourish. For Science-Lab, adaptability may
require reexamining assumptions about its distinguishers, especially as it becomes
more entwined with the existing system of schooling, which it must necessarily do.
Building knowledge about mutually beneficial adaptation will come from the
experiences of the teachers who try to put into practice the distinguishers that
Science-Lab preaches, which may require change. Such cycles of refinement and
adaptation are particularly needed to create learning conditions for students who
face large disparities between their school and home environments. Igniting teach-
ers’ enthusiasm for science and science teaching is an important place to start, 但
on its own it will not reveal effective approaches that engage all students, 特别的-
ly those on the social margins.

THE ATMOSPHERE

As intimated above, larger forces are at play that are well beyond the control of
individual teachers, their schools, or Science-Lab as an organization. 这
researchers who studied the scaling-up of Big Picture Learning in the United States
point to an overarching challenge that brings us to the outermost layers of our
spheres of knowledge-building for educational innovation. This is what they call
“the mindset challenge,” which consists of confronting our built-in assumptions
about schools and schooling.20 Science-Lab has confronted the mindset challenge
through decision-makers in state education ministries who have rebuffed their
approach because of its lack of alignment with the existing system. On the other
手, Science-Lab has made inroads in one German state, gaining influence that
has begun to shift that alignment.

I set out two dimensions to the ingenuity gap at the start, that of creativity
built atop deep understanding, and that of expanding the social franchise by open-

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大卫·H. Eddy Spicer

ing up what society has to offer to those excluded. If the full dimensions of the
ingenuity gap are to be grasped, Science-Lab and innovations like it that are
attempting to improve teaching and learning need to confront the mindset chal-
许久. Avoiding the challenge risks becoming either an outlier, a “boutique” pro-
gram that privileges those already privileged, or an insider absorbed by the very
system the innovation sought to change. Franchise must come to mean more than
just an entrepreneurial arrangement among the like-minded. In the words of
Ciaran Sugrue, in summing up an account of the future of educational change, 这
search for true social franchise entails “new forms of engagement that are populat-
ed by ‘coalitions of the willing’ rather than the serried phalanx of the coerced.”21

Science-Lab has had a remarkable run over the past several years, assembling
“coalitions of the willing” through the network of professionals it has built as a
part of its expanding afterschool activities and through the preschool and primary
years teachers it has trained. What may be required now as it begins to engage the
third sphere of knowledge-building around systems of schooling is to clarify its
own vision for education in a technologically advanced, globalizing, and increas-
ingly diverse society. Is it one of individual achievement toward technical expert-
ise, or is it one that sets a broader compass, pointing toward what sociologists
Philip Brown and Hugh Lauder, in the quote that began these comments, call “col-
lective intelligence”?

1. Richard F. Elmore, Penelope L. 彼得森, and Sarah J. McCarthey, Restructuring in the Classroom:

Teaching, 学习, and School Organization, 1st ed. (旧金山: 乔西·巴斯, 1996).

2. Some examples include Lea Hubbard, Hugh Mehan, and Mary Kay Stein, Reform as Learning:
School Reform, Organizational Culture, and Community Politics in San Diego (纽约:
劳特利奇, 2006); Joseph P. 麦当劳, Emily J. 克莱因, and Meg Riordan, Going to Scale with New
School Designs: Reinventing High School (纽约: 师范学院出版社, 2009); Mike Wallace
and Keith Pocklington, Managing Complex Educational Change: Large-Scale Reorganisation of
学校 (伦敦: RoutledgeFalmer, 2002).

3. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap (纽约: 克诺夫, 2000).
4. “Ingenuity,” in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd 版。, OED Online (牛津: 牛津大学

按, 1989). 2 九月. 2009 http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/display/50116722

5. David Carey, “Improving Education Outcomes in Germany,” in Economics Department Working

Paper No. 611 (巴黎: 经合组织, 2008).

6. 同上。, 6.
7. Susan T. Hill and Jean M. 约翰逊, Science and Engineering Degrees, by Race/Ethnicity of

Recipients: 1992-2001 (Arlington, VA: National Science Foundation, 2004).

8. Richard Grandy and Richard Duschl, “Reconsidering the Character and Role of Inquiry in School

科学: Analysis of a Conference,“ 科学 & 教育 16, 不. 2 (2007): 143.

9. National Research Council, National Science Education Standards (华盛顿, 直流: 国家的
Academy of Sciences, 1996); American Association for the Advancement of Science, Benchmarks
for Science Literacy, 编辑. 项目 2061 (纽约: 牛津大学出版社, 1993).

10. Fouad Abd-El-Khalick et al., “Inquiry in Science Education: International Perspectives,“ 科学

教育 88, 不. 3 (2004).

11 National Research Council, Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for

Teaching and Learning (华盛顿, 直流: National Acadamies Press, 2000), 29.

12. National Research Council, How People Learn: Brain, 头脑, 经验, and School (华盛顿,

直流: 美国国家科学院出版社, 2000), 112.

110

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The Ingenuity Gap Revisited

13. David N. Perkins, Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform

教育 (旧金山: 乔西·巴斯, 2009), 9.

14. 同上.
15. See also Seth Chaiklin, “A Developmental Teaching Approach to Schooling,” in Learning for Life
in the 21st Century, 编辑. Gordon Wells and Guy Claxton (Malden, 嘛: Blackwell Publishers,
2002); Carl Bereiter, “Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society,” in Liberal Education in a
Knowledge Society, 编辑. Barry Smith and Carl Bereiter (芝加哥: Open Court, 2002).

16. Ruqaiya Hasan, “Semiotic Mediation and Mental Development in Pluralistic Societies: 一些
Implications for Tomorrow’s Schooling,” in Wells and Claxton, Learning for Life in the 21st
世纪; Shirley B. Heath, Ways with Words Language, Life, and Work in Communities and
Classrooms (剑桥, England: 剑桥大学出版社, 1987).

在

阿尔伯特

Shanker

教育,”

发展

17. 麦当劳, 克莱因, and Riordan, Going to Scale with New School Designs.
18. Richard F. Elmore, “Bridging the Gap between Standards and Achievement: The Imperative for
研究所,
Professional
http://www.ashankerinst.org/Downloads/Bridging_Gap.pdf; Philip Adey, The Professional
Development of Teachers: Practice and Theory (波士顿: Kluwer Academic, 2004); Laura
Desimone et al., “Improving Teachers’ In-Service Professional Development in Mathematics and
科学: The Role of Postsecondary Institutions,” Educational Policy 17, 不. 5 (2003); Eleanor
Drago-Severson, “Helping Teachers Learn: Principals as Professional Development Leaders,”
Teachers College Record 107, 不. 1 (2007); David Eddy Spicer, “Collective Inquiry in the Context
of School-Wide Reform: Exploring Science Curriculum and Instruction through Team-Based
Professional Development,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2006;
Thomas R. Guskey, “Professional Development and Teacher Change,” Teachers and Teaching:
Theory and Practice 8, nos. 3/4 (2002); Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller, 编辑。, Teachers Caught
in the Action: Professional Development That Matters, The Series on School Reform (纽约:
师范学院出版社, 2001).

19. Abd-El-Khalick et al., “Inquiry in Science Education: International Perspectives.”
20. 麦当劳, 克莱因, and Riordan, Going to Scale with New School Designs, 94-119.
21. Ciaran Sugrue, The Future of Educational Change: International Perspectives (纽约:

劳特利奇, 2008), 223.

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