Barriers to Innovation American educational institutions, at all levels, do not annear to he willine. or able. to suuuort innovation in the ezcational procesL'~nparticular, &h respect to the sciences, they seem to behave as if the subject matter and the process of education are static commodities given to science teachers durine their formative years or designed for teaching facilities that never have to be updated or altered. At the pre-college level, science teachers are expected to improve their knowledge of their subjects as well as their methods of learning. Fulfilling these continuing education requirements is usually the teachers' responsibility; few, if any, resources to defray the costs are provided by the school districts in which they work. Worse still-if that is possible--college teachers are not expected or required to put any effort into improving their teaching skills. College science teachers generally have little formal training in teaching techniques, yet, with rare exceptions, their formal assignment is to teach and do research. There is a curious dichotomy between these two assignments. With respect to research, most institutions clearly recognize that the sciences are constantly changing, and provisions are often made to help the researcher keep up with hisher suhjects, e.g., through the use of sabbaticals. The research imperative is unmistakable. If a research scholar in the sciences is to keep current to be able t o teach students about how changes affect hisfher subject, resources must be made, and indeed they are, available to help such scholars keep current with new developments in their fields. Ironically, however, this same logic is not often applied to the teaching function in most institutions of higher education. If administrators can be convinced that something must be done about a particular teaching problem, the necessary resources are often sought outside of the institution, e.g., through Federal agencies or private foundations, giving the impression that such problems are not really within the
purview of the institution. The lack of administrative encouragement and support also suggests that teaching improvements are of low priority in the overall scheme of science education. This kind of general attitude certainly is not conducive to the creation of innovative ideas for improving teaching. Still, there could be hope t o improve teaching because only a few ideas in a decade that might be shared among institutions can be described as innovative. Unfortunately, however, today's attitude of indifference toward classroom teaching does not encourage the adoption or acquiritim of innovative ideas that have been developed and evaluated by others. Even when potentially useful innovation exists outside of an institution's domain, a minimal level of local resources, usuallv in the form of facultv time. is necessarv, to import it. ~ i m i i required s todecide iow theelemenrs of'the innovation, which may have been orieinallv .tailored for different goals, will fit into the host environment. Other new equipment must be acquired, or assistants retrained. The availability of such resources for the improvement of science courses in institutions of higher education is limited at best and often simply nonexistent. Even if an innovation is deemed important, its adoption or importation is very likely dependent upon the availability of external resources from Federal agencies or private foundations. The net effect is that many educational institutions are not willing to, nor even have the capacity to support improvements in their formal (classroom) teaching obligations. Such conditions obtain because Boards of Trustees underfund educational institutions, administrators divert teaching funds into other activities, or both. In any event, it is clear why students exhihit negative feelines about their educationalexperience, why many dedicatedteachers feel frustrated, and why our system of education is in deep trouble. JJL ~~
Volume 67
Number 11 November 1990
903
