Chemical Education Today
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Commentary
The National Scene Implications of the National Science Education Standards for Higher Education by G. A. Crosby Recently the National Research Council, the operational arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine released the National Science Education Standards (NSES).1 The Standards are the product of many inThe Standards … should be dividuals and chewed, swallowed, and groups, including digested by all Americans. members of the SoEducation in a democracy is ciety Committee on Education of the everybody’s business. American Chemical Society. Organized into six complementary sets of standards,2 the NSES document is clearly a consensus one. It conveys a vision of hope and optimism for a future where science literacy is a reality and not just a slogan. The Standards should be read by all professional educators and by those connected to the Nation’s schools in any way; in short, they should be chewed, swallowed, and digested by all Americans. Education in a democracy is everybody’s business. To produce the Standards the scientific and educational communities have labored to reach consensus on what students should understand and be able to do, how students should be taught, and the means for assessing student understandings, abilities, and dispositions in science. The Standards, however, go further; they suggest that the responsibility for improving science literacy and implementing school reform goes well beyond those individuals involved directly with the schools and extends to society at large. The Standards focus on K–12 science. Implicit in this focus is the conviction that this segment of the educational continuum is most in need of improvement and, also, that the greatest gains in science literacy can be achieved by instituting reforms there. The writers of the
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1 National Research Council, “National Science Education Standards”, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1996. Available for sale from the National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Box 285, Washington, DC 20055 or call 800-624-6242. 2 Science Teaching Standards, Standards for Professional Development for Teachers of Science, Assessment in Science Education, Science Content Standards, Science Education Program Standards, Science Education System Standards.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 73 No. 9 September 1996
Chemical Education Today
Standards also recognize that effective teaching is at the heart of science education. On both accounts I agree. Revolutionary new practices instituted by highly educated and skilled teachers could indeed prepare our future voters and leaders to tackle the forthcoming political, social, and economic issues of the twenty-first century, issues that will involve science and technology at all levels of discourse. From where will this cadre of dynamic new teachers come? Since the colleges and universities produce the Nation’s teachers, the implications imbedded in the Standards for higher education are profound. The old adage, “Teachers teach as they were taught.” holds. Can those of us in higher education, particularly in the sciences, expect our graduates to transform the schools unless we transform ourselves? Can we really expect teachers to step from the universities into the schools and transform the system after four years of instruction that confirmed, daily, the old stodgy and ineffective ways of doing things? Can we expect a newly appointed teacher to ‘teach by inquiry’, as the Standards mandate when that individual witnessed no such teaching at any level? The Standards want teachers who can “integrate knowledge about science with knowledge about learning, pedagogy, and students”. Does a current student in higher education aspiring to be a teacher see integration of that type at all? Hardly. The scientists pack them into large lecture sections, lecture to them, and adIf, a decade or two from minister exams. The now, the Standards are colleges of education still a vision and not a run methods courses that are orthogonal reality, higher education to science departwill have no one to blame ments and, often, debut itself. Reform must void of science content. Where is the instart at the top. tegration of knowledge and pedagogy occurring during those formative years when a teacher is being educated? How many laboratory courses in higher education really emphasize inquiry, problem solving, and the synthesis of practical and theoretical knowledge? For that matter, where does a student write about science, have the opportunity to present his or her views on science, and experience the kind of mentoring that the Standards expect of that same individual after joining the ranks of teachers? In our current programs for prospective teachers of science, where is the excitement for science evident, the capacity for independent laboratory investigation developed, the attitude
for life-long learning inculcated? Where is the sense of history, so necessary for invoking the wonder of scientific progress, imbued? When the Standards are read with the current practices of higher education in mind, the gap between what we expect of future teachers and what we are willing to do to prepare them is starkly revealed. The colleges and universities are the acknowledged leaders. They produce the teachers. If, a decade or two from now, the Standards are still a vision and not a reality, higher education will have no one to blame but itself. Reform must start at the top.
Glenn Crosby is in the Department of Chemistry, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-4630;
[email protected].
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