Education for Teachers

Science Education is currently dominated by an almost exclusive focus on scientific content, teaching through sterilized textbooks, presenting the products of science (laws, equations, definitions, etc.) without attending to the development of the underlying rationale, the genesis of the ideas, or the subsequent modifications necessary to mediate incongruent findings, data, or anomalies, and is instead nearly focused entirely on the teacher teaching through monologic lecturing with a goal of coverage, memorization, number manipulation, and an adherence to “drill and kill” homework, paperwork, and testing, with little time or effort dedicated to the nature of science, its history, or its importance to not only past, but contemporary research and engineering.

Where to Begin?

If you are a teacher and are wondering how to get started in transforming your classroom into a more authentically scientific setting, rest assured that the answer is that you are the primary change agent. Money, while usually helpful in almost all educational settings, is less important than how you conduct your lessons. The book shown below, Idealized Science: A Framework for Practicing Science Authentically, includes a few fundamental lessons that can be implemented in your classroom starting tomorrow. Idealized Science is less about the content and more about how to investigate like a scientist.