Study Highlights Need For More Scientists In Classroom

Sidebar: Focus On Inquiry ECHOES: TIMMS study director Albert Beaton says the U.S. elementary curiculum is too repetitive. International comparisons of precollege science and math achievement interest anyone concerned with future technological literacy and economic competitiveness. For scientists and mathematicians, such information also foreshadows the quality of future students and researchers in their professions. A poor performance at the elementary and secondary school levels can be a wak

Ricki Lewis

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Sidebar: Focus On Inquiry

CLASS ACT: Lester Rubenfeld urges researchers to visit classrooms routinely

But most scientists receive little, if any, training in teaching methods. "Scientists usually decide something needs to be done when their own kids are in school and are receiving an inadequate education. They think, 'I'll come in and tell them how it should be done,'" observes Lester Rubenfeld, director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Initiatives in Pre-College Education. For scientists' volunteer efforts to be effective, they need to know how to convey the excitement of what they do. The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a major, ongoing effort to chronicle how science and math are taught and learned in many nations, is showing them what works-and what doesn't.

TIMSS is opening a "window of opportunity" for scientists to learn how they can make a difference in the classroom, according to Luther Williams, assistant ...

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