editorially speaking Goals, Definitibns, and Reform In 1984, the President and Governors established national goals for improving education by the year 2000. Six goals were defined so as to produce a nation of learners and were expressed in terms of factors deemed important in improving the early school environment for students. Expected levels of achievement were also delineated. Although science and mathematics educatiou were not explicitly mentioned, the national goals, when viewed from the perspective of numerous discipline-oriented commission reports, could be rephrased as follows. * Strengthening seience and mathematics throughout the system with emphasis on the early grades. Increasing the number of precollege teachers with substantive backerounds in mathematics and science. lncreasmg the number uf collexe unnlverslty paduates in srience, rnnthernaties, and mgincering, nspcrially from undcrrepresented groups
The establishment of national goals has set priorities and provided needed support for educational reform. The postsecondary discipline-oriented education community must start doing something about helping the nation achieve those goals. Goals statements are broad and generally need to be clarified and refmed before they can be used to measure progress toward those goals. Elaboration on the meaning of "science", "achievement", "strengthening science in schools", and "substantive background" is required by the above eoals statements. Bv understandine-or clarifving-t&se words we might 6e in a better posytion to define the nature of the reform movement and establish the criteria for successful attainment of those goals. The national goals suggest science education is important in the general educatiou of all people. But what is science? What are its characteristics? Some commentators argue that critical thinking is science. Others believe that science is what scientists know, how they know it, and how they do it. Clearly, critical thinking can be taught outside of the context of science. Thus, a possible basic disagreement over the meaning of "science" must be resolved, especially in the K-12 system, ifreforms are to lead to meaningful measures of success toward achieving the national goals. Critical thinking skills could be improved without addressing what is perhaps a more important characteristic of science, i.e., doing. Most practicing scientists would agree that science is an exploration of the material universe that seeks orderly and testable explanations of observations, events, and phenomena. This definition makes science a human activity, which is in sharp contrast with the popular notion that science is sterile and depersonalized. Exploring, explaining, and testing are activities that all people can do. These are human activities that are immediately accessible to all
students and do not require mastering a textbook, absorbing what a teacher knows, or learning a specialized vocabulary It is possible to "do science" without a n elegant vocabulary and without a lot of prerequisite knowledge. Each activity involves personal action, involvement, and thinking. From this point of view, most current entry-level science experiences are a description-a catechism--of science; they are not science. Defining science as a process with certain characterinticfi mieht lead to a better understandine of the metric3 that must be designed to evaluate toward goals that incorporate the ideas of "achievement", "strengthening science in schools", and "substantive background". Achievement now no longer connotes standardized testing. Teachers, administrators, and potential employers-indeed, everyone concerned with education-must address the nature of assessment with respect to achievement. Even though we may not know how to measure achievement for process-oriented tasks, conventional testing methods are not appropriate. This suggests that we ought to turn to other disciplines for insight, and if that approach does not prove fruitful, we will have identified a new focus for creative activity in chemical education. "Strengthening science in schools" clearly addresses the quality of the science-teaching environment and includes teachers as well as the physical venue. If we accept the definition of science as process, there is a n enormous amount of work to be done with in-service teachers who, for the most part, have been educated to view science as facts, laws, and theories to be remembered along with the (more-or-less standard) supportive illustrations. In the realm of teacher education, it would also seem prudent to restructure the preservice curriculum for science teachers to accommodate to the "science-as-process"model so that more "science-as-remembered-things"teachers are not produced. This is an area of education that clearly falls under the purview of collegeluniversity faculty Finally, "substantive background" probably means a more discipline-based curriculum for science teachers and, indeed, one that probably includes some research. In the latter regard, the new curriculum would almost certainly demand a greater input from science faculty than in the past. Science, like bicycle riding, is a process. It is not a focus on the end result of that process (the places to which one can ride a bicycle). Accepting the idea that science is a process has significant implications regarding the input required from discipline-oriented postsecondary science faculty. If reform in science education in keeping with the national goals is to be achieved, more discipline-oriented JJL research-sensitive faculty need to be involved.
Volume 71 Number 5 May 1994
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