High Schools Offering Science Courses Other Than General Science, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics

Various science courses other than general science, biology, chemistry, and physics were offered in the high schools. These were listed from the reports received from the schools and arranged into 11 groups for ease of tabulation. A total of 135 high schools, or about 19 percent of the 715 schools in the sample, reported one or more additional or alternate science course. Table 17 shows the 11 groups of science courses and indicates the number of high schools of various types and sizes offering these courses. The most common kind of additional or alternate science offering was an applied science type. Physiology was next in frequency, followed by related science, earth science, electricity and radio, science of aviation, applied physics, physical science, plant science, photography, and applied chemistry. If these science courses are arranged into three general groups, physical science, broad science courses, and biological science, we can note that 61 schools included offerings of the physical science type, 49 schools included broad science courses, and 25 schools offered additional courses of the biological science type. The more numerous offerings of additional or alternate science courses of the physical science type may indicate that schools were searching for science offerings to interest pupils who did not elect the usual chemistry and physics courses. Several schools reported biology courses which enrolled junior or senior students almost exclusively. These advanced biology courses may be considered as an additional type of science offering, although the schools did not report them as additional science courses.

It can be noted from table 17 that undivided high schools and separately administered senior high schools preceded by junior high school more often reported additional or alternate science courses than did the other types of high schools. High schools with enrollments of more than 100 pupils also offered additional or alternate science courses relatively often.

full-time and part-time

science teachers

In the 715 schools reported in this study, there were 827 full-time science teachers, of whom 520 were men and 307 were women.

There were also

1,011 part-time science teachers who taught one or more sections of science along with other teaching or school responsibilities. Of these, 570 were men and 441 were women. About 45 percent of the science teachers taught science full time. Men constituted 59 percent of all the science teachers, whereas in 1946 they represented 36.7 percent of the entire school staff.

4

The approximate number of science teachers in the public high schools can be estimated by multiplying the number of teachers reported for the 715 schools by the appropriate factor. Table 18 shows the general numbers of science teachers obtained by such a process. On the basis of the sample used in this study it can be estimated that in 1947-48, there were about 61,600 science teachers serving in our public high schools. About 27,700 were full-time science teachers and about 33,900 were part-time. About 36,500 were men and about 25,100 were women.

Table 19 shows the number of full-time and part-time science teachers distributed on the basis of the types and sizes of the schools in the sample. It shows the number of pupils enrolled and indicates the number of school pupils per science teacher serving in these schools. The over-all average indicates that there is 1 full-time science teacher for each 250 school pupils. There is 1 full-time or part-time science teacher for each 112 school pupils. In general, the number of high-school pupils per science teacher increases with the size of the school. It can also be seen that more than half of the schools with enrollments of fewer than 200 pupils had only part-time science teachers in 1947-48. It can be noted that the number of part-time science teachers exceeds the number of full-time science teachers in all types of high schools except in the separately administered senior high schools preceded by junior high school, in junior-senior high schools of the 3-3 plan, and in senior high schools with 2-year junior college. Only high schools with enrollments of 500 pupils or more have more full-time than part-time science teachers.

4 From Statistics of Public High Schools, 1945-46, Biennial Survey of Education in the United States, 1944-46. Ch. V, p. 18.

Table 18.-Science teachers in public high schools of the United States