Our Vision
For over a century, the educational research community has begged teachers to enable students to act as scientists. This involves students inquiring about nature and learning to develop models that are testable within the limits of the materials available. Moreover, students must learn to adopt the roles present in scientific communities and have appropriate skepticism while maintaining openness to new evidence. Long-term projects (“long terms” for short) epitomize Idealized Science and enable the enactment of the most recent science standards. Preparing students and teachers with the multifarious skills needed to engage in long-terms is the essence of the Idealized Science Institute’s vision.
The Problem
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.
The Goal
The Idealized Science movement has the goal of changing educational institutions, which seem impervious to educational research. For decades the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Research Council, and similar organizations have produced specialized reports begging educators to teach more authentically. The Idealized Science Institute optimizes the enactment of teaching science authentically, with the inclusion of long-term projects, students presenting original research at science conferences, as well as the associated lessons that engage students in the investigations of how nature is. This work should be showcased on student transcripts and treated as a compliment to other advanced courses that colleges and universities often deem desirable but are offered only at affluent schools. The Idealized Science Institute has the ability to empower underserved communities by guiding learners towards developing scientific thinking, actionable research skills, and ways of knowing that professional scientists possess, thus creating a more equity in science and engineering fields.