Problem-Solving Model Proposed For Science Education

The standard way to teach science involves a lot of memorizing of facts, but a new proposal suggests that a new approach is needed in American education

Kenneth Chang, writing in The New York Times, reports that there may be changes coming to science education in the United States’ public school systems.  A new framework for improving science education calls for paring the curriculum to focus on core ideas and teaching students more about how to approach and solve problems rather than just memorizing factual nuggets.

“That is the failing of U.S. education today, that kids are expected to learn a lot of things but not expected to be able to use them,” said Helen Quinn, a retired physicist from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., who led an 18-member committee that spent more than a year devising the framework.

One of the big goals, the committee said in a 282-page report, is “to ensure that by the end of 12th grade, all students have some appreciation of the beauty and wonder of science.”

The report was released this week by the National Research Council, and also pushes for incorporating engineering into what is taught to students in elementary school through high school.  It is the latest in decades of efforts to improve the science knowledge of American students, who have typically ranked in the middle of the pack on international comparison tests. The research council, which is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, last weighed in on science education standards in 1996.

Now that the council has finished a framework, a nonprofit education group, Achieve Inc., will expand it into a set of standards. Similar efforts produced standards for math and language arts that have been adopted by 44 states.

It is Achieve’s goal to finish work by the end of next year, with drafts available publicly before then. Putting the standards into the classroom would take several more years as textbooks and lesson plans are rewritten.