Editor’s Note: The University of Washington has embarked on more than 140 partnerships with K-12 schools to reform the way children learn math and science, This three-part series reports on UW efforts to bring more experimentation and discovery to K-12 classrooms. Last week we gave you an overview of partnerships. Today: Science. Next Week: Math.

Fifth-grade teachers know plenty about noise, but Katie Renschler didn’t understand its scientific origins until the moment she whacked a tuning fork and poked it into a glass of water.

The resulting splash revealed the nature of sound: “It’s vibration!”

This discovery took up roughly 10 minutes of the 100 hours of training Renschler and 1,400 other Seattle elementary teachers are getting as partners with the University of Washington.

Through the Partnership for Inquiry-based Science, UW professors and graduate students work with schoolteachers like Renschler to deepen their knowledge of science and transform the way they teach it to children.

Memorizing facts is out. Puzzling through problems is in.

“Teaching by telling doesn’t work;” said Stamatis Vokos, a UW assistant professor of physics who works with science teachers. “It’s forcing the student to go through the chain of reasoning.”

The goal: to reverse what the American Association for the Advancement of Science recently described as a widespread failure of the nation’s science and math textbooks and classrooms to encourage students to examine ideas.

More than 140 projects are under way at the University of Washington alone to promote the experimentation and discovery in elementary and secondary classrooms. The University’s K-12 Institute for Science, Math, & Technology Education helps coordinate and foster collaboration among many of these programs.

One of the largest, the Seattle Partnership for Inquiry-based Science, offers professional training to teachers like Renschler and supplies them with tuning forks, magnets, batteries, rubber bands and other materials to help children to discover science instead of getting it from a textbook.

Before the project began four years ago, if Seattle teachers wanted to use a science kit, they often had to scrounge.

“You don’t expect surgeons to stop off at the drugstore on the way to an operation,” said Seattle Schools project manager Elaine Woo, “and you can’t expect teachers to stop at the hardware store on the way to school.”

But such kits are merely tools toward a larger goal.

“It’s not simply about kids fooling around with materials,” said Dana Riley Black, associate director of the K-12 Institute for Science, Math & Technology Education. “It’s really kids going through a problem-solving process.”

At the recent afternoon workshop Renschler attended, for example, there were plenty of hands-on science kits. But the heart of the session was Seattle Schools resource teacher Kathryn Show’s presentation on how to ask kids a sequence of “productive questions” to provoke observation and thought.

Begin, she said, by asking attention-focusing questions (what did you notice about the __), then measuring and counting questions (how many? how long?), comparison questions (is it stronger? heavier? bigger?), action questions (what happens if __?), problem-posing questions (can you find a way to ___?), reasoning questions (why do you think this happens?) and clarifying questions (what do you mean when you say ___?)

This open-ended exploration is a far cry from the textbook learning on which today’s teachers grew up. Running an inquiry-based classroom is tricky, and there’s resistance to change.

“Some teachers see this as total chaos - a loss of control,” acknowledged Peggy Crew, who trains Bellevue teachers in inquiry techniques. “People are very fearful.”

Project leaders offer support. Faculty and graduate students from the UW’s Physics Education Group, for example, donated 600 hours last year alone to guide K-12 teachers through carefully structured workshops.

But teachers often find it difficult to carve out the extra professional development time, or resent having to shift gears after years of being told by parents and politicians that science was not part of the essential “basics” of reading, writing and numbers.

Acceptance is growing, however, as teachers discover that the livelier science lessons spark some students to read and write and do math. For some youngsters, experimental science is the only thing that provokes their interest, said Wanda Lofton, who works with science teachers in 15 Seattle schools.

Louis Fox, UW vice provost for educational partnerships, said skill at solving intellectual problems is no frill in this region’s knowledge-based economy.

“Inquiry is, in fact, a basic,” Fox said.

Teachers also discover that science can be an equalizer for youngsters for whom English is a second language And science education is increasingly what UW President Richard L. McCormick calls a “gatekeeper” - those who do well in it find virtually unlimited opportunities in society.

Woo said the new way of learning science is especially crucial to children from impoverished backgrounds.

“If they don’t get this kind of knowledge and exposure in elementary school,” she said, “they won’t get it at all.”

Selestine Davis, whose second-grade students at Seattle’s West Woodlawn Elementary manage their own compost bin, said there are other advantages to learning through experiments.

“This teaches the kids to work more cooperatively,” she said. “They realize that no one person has all the right answers, that no one person is always the star.”

The UW recruited Caroline Kiehle, a longtime Lake Washington math and science teacher to expand the elementary science program to middle schools in Bellevue, Highline, Northshore, Seattle and Shoreline. She has organized a cadre of “resource” teachers in the five districts who will share the new techniques with 350 classroom teachers. The result: Thousands of Seattle-area seventh and eighth graders will tackle more realistic intellectual challenges.

“They’re jazzed because they get to ask their own questions,” said Kiehle, who taught middle schoolers for a decade before accepting her new role. “They think they’re scientists, they assume the role of a chemist or a water quality manager. Middle school kids really think they can do those things. They believe they can solve difficult problems!”

A high school program is on the drawing boards.

One of the next major goals, said Ethan Allen, director of the UW’s K-12 Institute for Science, Math & Technology Education, is to get family members involved.

Unlike with the science fairs of bygone days, the new Family Science program takes pains to give every kid an even shot; much of the work is done during school hours. Each school throws two big annual family events, with organizers offering language interpreters and other inducements to lure parents.

“We’re getting parents that teachers say they never see at school,” Allen said.

And once engaged, these parents become an additional force for reform, prodding principals to provide even more inquiry-based science and math.

Or, as Seattle’s Woo puts it, “The idea is to get parents as excited about this as they are about football.” ¶

Steven Goldsmith, News & Information