The Science Education Paralysis: Let's Fix What Needs To Be Fixed

I joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975 as a research assistant for a National Science Foundation-supported project designed to identify and analyze programs that had been successful in increasing the number of minorities in science, engineering, and biomedical careers. Although I had no special credentials for this work at the time, I was intensely curious about it, since during my undergraduate and graduate days I had been troubled by the fact that, as an African American woman, I had often been the only minority student in my science and mathematics classes. The project unearthed a vast array of successful efforts throughout the United States to connect African American, Latino, and American Indian students with science and engineering. A subsequent project concentrated on successful efforts to do the same for girls and women. In general, my colleagues and I discovered, these efforts--or "interventions"--had been developed to ensure that at least a few people from underrepresented groups could survive the inhospitable educational system to become scientists, engineers, and health professionals. For K-12 students, the interventions often took the form of measures created specifically to help them fit into and negotiate the existing educational system, no matter how flawed it might be. At no educational level, however, did these efforts challenge the institutions themselves to change. Over the years, those of us interested in reform programs have become convinced that we can no longer afford to select only a few students to guide through a faulty educational system, while leaving their colleagues to founder. It is time for a revised approach to education reform that focuses on fixing the system rather than the students. The nation's systems for teaching mathematics and the sciences are under stress overall; they are not doing an adequate job of preparing students to participate in an increasingly technology-driven, scientifically advanced economy. It is now time to fix what needs fixing, rather than that which is easy to fix. We are convinced that the lessons learned during the years of intervention on behalf of underrepresented students will be valuable to us as we move forward on behalf of the system at large. From the earlier efforts, we learned much about the necessary elements of systemic reform that, sooner or later, must be addressed: teacher education, curriculum development, assessment methods, and so forth. What is novel about the current reform is that all of the necessary elements, such as the following, must be addressed simultaneously: We must adequately educate our future science teachers so that they do not emerge from our colleges and universities in immediate need of additional professional training. We cannot achieve this by precept alone; we must also provide practical examples in the context of the science and mathematics classes as models that they take into their teaching. We must devise science curricula that will hold students' attention and make science connect to their daily lives. We must provide students the time they need to achieve higher standards of competence in science and mathematics. We must budget appropriately to provide the physical tools for learning science, as well as the classrooms and labs in which to do so. We must make parents, communities, and businesses significant partners in our educational efforts. We must maintain high expectations for all our students. We must learn to gauge students' progress by measuring not only the information they have acquired, but also the valuable work habits and attitudes toward learning they have gained. We don't know exactly what it would take to effect change in all cases, but we believe it will involve policymakers at local, state, and federal levels as well as a community convinced that reform is necessary to its well-being as a whole and to the future of its children. Shirley Malcom, an ecologist and former high school teacher, is director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Education and Human Resources Directorate. She has been a member of the National Research Council's National Committee on Science Education and Assessment, and is a recent appointee to the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST).

The Science Education Paralysis: Let's Fix What Needs To Be Fixed

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