NSF Report Paints Grim Picture Of Undergrad Science Education

'HOW SCIENCE WORKS': William Hammer emphasizes hands-on learning in his course. A recent report from the National Science Foundation warns that most of the thousands of schoolteachers returning to their classrooms this month were ill-prepared during their undergraduate years to teach science to their students. The report, "Shaping the Future: New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology," is generating widespread agreement that much improvement is needed in teaching science to undergraduates. However, several scientists contend that the document does not go far enough in describing the educational system's faults and recommending corrections. Even so, the implications for academic scientists are significant, with "Shaping the Future" calling for greater collaboration with other academic departments, an increase in hands-on learning, and an altered faculty reward system that emphasizes teaching. While few fault the teaching of science to science majors, most future teachers major in other subjects. "We all feel that the courses taught for majors at the upper levels are excellent. That's not our problem," observes Bruce M. Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, which issued the National Science Education Standards late last year (Notebook, The Scientist, Jan. 8, 1996, page 30). "The question is, how do we create the motivation and wherewithal for faculty to get together and be proud of courses they teach to the broad range of undergraduates who won't be scientists?" The authors of "Shaping the Future" are the nine-member Advisory Committee to NSF's Directorate for Education and Human Resources. Chaired by Melvin D. George, interim president of the University of Missouri, the group is a collection of higher-education officials who submitted the report in mid-May. It is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/EHR/DUE/EHRAC/start.htm. "Shaping the Future" recommends several courses of action for higher education, private industry, the United States government, and NSF itself. Chief among them is that undergraduate science and mathematics courses be refocused to better educate the 80 percent of students who do not major in the scientific disciplines, and particularly those who go on to teach elementary school. "Despite the observation that America's basic research in science, mathematics, and engineering is world-class, its education is still not," the report states. "America has produced a significant share of the world's great scientists while most of its population is virtually illiterate in science." "The thing that most surprised me was the comprehensive nature of what needs to be done as distinct from [the notion that] there are two or three or four or five easy answers that will 'fix things,'" George notes. "We had an awful lot of thoughtful people who contributed ideas and facts for us to think about." NOT SURPRISED: Gerry Wheeler says science departments must make an effort to reach all students. Gerry Wheeler is a nuclear physicist and the executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based National Science Teachers Association. He says the report's conclusions did not surprise him. "I think they're right on target," Wheeler declares. He agrees that science departments must make an effort to reach everyone, not just science majors. "The [science] departments are going to have to see beyond their myopic, traditional view and worry about all of the students. In my own field of physics, we have been notorious at seeing only those that go the full physics-major route as the ones we define as successful." TEACHING THE TEACHERS: Educators themselves must be better trained in sciences, notes Gerard Voland. Concurring with Wheeler is Gerard Voland, a special assistant to the vice provost for undergraduate education and an associate professor of mechanical, industrial, and manufacturing engineering at Northeastern University in Boston. Voland is the principal investigator for a $200,000 NSF grant to help Northeastern implement a curricular reform program designed to improve SME&T education for all undergraduates. "We've done a very poor job of this in science and engineering," Voland contends. "We have not reached out to the people in the departments of education who teach the teachers, who prepare the teachers of K through 12 students so that they can be effective in teaching engineering, science, and mathematics." The message of "Shaping the Future" is hardly unprecedented. Similar warnings and recommendations were contained in NSF's 1986 report "Undergraduate Science, Mathematics and Engineering Education," which came to be known as the Neal Report. Alberts notes that science is not alone in failing to heed those initial calls. "You could say the same thing about a lot of things in our society," he points out. "There's a lot of inertia. People have written about the fact that by the time students get to college, they're turned off to science because of the kind of science they got in high school." Alberts describes a cycle in which young people who are discouraged from pursuing science in high school go to college. There, instructors do not feel like making the effort to reach students who aren't interested. George believes that one reason the old system is changing is that today's employers are requiring applicants to have at least some science and technology in their background. Both he and the report itself note that vast differences in technology between now and 10 years ago lend an "urgency" to the current situation. Perhaps that urgency is receiving its due consideration. According to Robert F. Watson, who heads the Division of Undergraduate Education in NSF's Directorate for Education and Human Resources, "Shaping the Future" is unique in the way it is turning heads. "I've never seen such universal attention on the part of higher education to undergraduate education," Watson declares. Wheeler contends that a second cautionary report -- in addition to the Neal Report -- was necessary "because the faculty and administration and funding agencies didn't really believe" the first one. "We need the attention and sincere acceptance of the problems by university faculty and administration," he asserts. "Both groups must stay with it for more than a semester. Given that first step, we need to keep real reform-reform that includes changing reward systems and blurring departmental lines, at least from a teaching point of view." Wheeler's advice echoes the recommendations of "Shaping the Future" as well as those of several observers calling for reform. If the status of teaching is raised to that of research and academic departments work together more closely than they currently do, science education may yet recover, these observers say. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute of Chevy Chase, Md., has funded undergraduate science-education programs to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Joseph Perpich, HHMI's vice president for grants and special programs, notes that the institute's support is aimed at improving the very areas addressed by the report, such as "a climate so there are rewards for teaching as there are for research." "A lot more needs to be done, but enormous progress has been made," he notes. "I was very excited when I saw the latest [grant] proposals come in." Perpich is hopeful that things will get better. He contends that changes among faculty must be matched by improvements in curriculum, educational technologies, and pre-college students and teachers. "It's really a seamless web. It's like the [World Wide] Web and hot links. You've got to blend to the primary and secondary institutions. Colleges just can't do it all." Like HHMI, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., funds science education programs. For the last three summers, the institution has been funding the Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE), a five-year, $3.7 million program offering six-week teacher-training sessions to introduce Washington, D.C.-area educators to innovative methods for exciting elementary students about science (K.Y. Kreeger, The Scientist, March 7, 1994, page 1). CASE trains current teachers, emphasizing experimentation and experience. CURIOSITY: Teachers must understand the big picture so that they can handle children's questions, states Maxine Singer "With respect to science, most of them -- not all, because there are always exceptions -- but most of them fit the description [in the report]," says the Carnegie Institution's president, Maxine Singer. "They did not have a good, useful introduction to science, if any, during their years as undergraduates." According to Singer, a molecular biologist, the only answer is better training of elementary-school teachers, which can be difficult because "kids ask about everything. These people have to be prepared to deal with questions about everything." No one says correcting previous faults will be easy. Wheeler mentions "the disregard for the teaching aspects of a university faculty," and Voland notes that prior collaboration between academic departments has been difficult. Not every observer is cheering the report without reservations. CRITICAL: Kenneth Wilson believes the report "is not strong enough". "The report goes in the right direction, but it is not strong enough. It offers no strategy for implementing it," contends Kenneth Wilson, a Trustees Distinguished Professor of physics at Ohio State University and a 1982 Nobel Prize winner. "It's the usual thing -- you can count the number of recommendations. I believe I counted around 40, often aimed at people who aren't going to be able to do a thing about them." Wilson is a longtime advocate of science education reform (J. Mervis, The Scientist, July 8, 1991, page 1). He faults "Shaping the Future" for its call for greater collaboration between higher education and K through 12 systems, saying there are "no established techniques" in that area that work right now. "If you are willing to live with small changes, you can do the things they talk about. You can get collaboration and committees, and get faculty to collaborate," Wilson muses. "The trouble is that that just means higher education as a whole will fall further and further behind the changes that are taking place in society." Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, who headed NSF's Science and Engineering Education Directorate from 1984 to 1990, calls on scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and the government to support the foundation in its efforts. However, like Wilson, he gives "Shaping the Future" mixed reviews. "It is refreshing to see this report come out," begins Shakhashiri, now a professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "At the same time, it's a bit disappointing in that the level of effort called for is not commensurate with the national needs. I realize all the fiscal constraints that we must operate under. However, 10 years ago, NSF issued a report on undergraduate education calling for an investment of $100 million. A great deal has happened since then, but I am a bit disappointed in that the level of effort called for now doesn't even match that. "What is needed is bold action on the part of the NSF and its constituencies. They should be more aggressive." The new report is not entirely negative, and it is not difficult to find positive examples of scientists who teach undergraduates in a way that inspires and excites. William Hammer, professor and chairman of the department of geology at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., teaches a wildly popular dinosaur class designed specifically for nonscience majors. The emphasis is on hands-on learning, not factual memorization. He says "an awareness of the problem" described in "Shaping the Future" contributed to such an approach. "We look at the evidence from the fossil record and try to show them how we re-create what these things were like, using the scientific methodology," says Hammer. "It teaches them how science works." George adds that because there have been improvements in science and technology, there is a greater need to give more people access to them. For that reason, he calls the document "an affirmation that good things have happened, and an insistence and an urgency that we make them more widely available." There also is evidence that some educators have already realized the need for action. Caryn Murtha teaches fourth grade at Delair Elementary School in Pennsauken, N.J., and she notes that for the last few years, her students have taken weekly bus trips to one of the three Pennsauken elementary schools with science labs. There, they are taught by a science teacher while Murtha monitors and assists. "That's where they do an awful lot of hands-on problem-solving and experiments," she adds. "They never use the book. It's purely hands-on." In addition, Murtha and her colleagues are being "retrained" by their school district to teach their students problem-solving skills so that their science, mathematics, and technology education can be applied in other areas. "It's the old dog -- new tricks thing," she observes. "If we as teachers don't understand what needs to be done, how can we expect to teach something we're not comfortable with?" While Murtha and her peers are going through necessary retraining, NSF is calling for an overhaul in the way "the next generation of teachers," as Watson calls them, is educated. The message, according to Murtha, is that everything must be changed. "We've got to change it because it's not working. We need different techniques," she reports. "Get children out of memorizing what the nine planets are. Now it's, 'Tell me the differences of the surfaces. Tell me how Jupiter is different from Mars and why is it different.'" Most observers concur that allowing the system to continue as is would have dire consequences. "It begins with the . . . teacher who sparks the interest and fans the flame once it's ignited," Northeastern's Voland insists. "If we don't provide the teachers with the tools and knowledge and skills they need, not only will they not be able to fan the flames, they won't be able to spark the interest. And the country will suffer."

NSF Report Paints Grim Picture Of Undergrad Science Education

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