Connecting scientists and educators

Thanks to Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” program, more money is spent on science education now than ever before—but funding alone isn’t going to fix the problem. American students ranked 21st in science literacy out of 30 developed countries, according to a report by the Program for International Student Assessment—incontrovertible evidence of an ineffective education system and a society that does not value science. “Educate to Innovate” is making great strides toward putting science in the spotlight and rewarding the brightest of science students and educators, but students still don’t want to learn and scientists still don’t want to teach. To address the deficits of science education, we need to break the cycle of unimaginative teaching and societal apathy toward science. The only way we can achieve this is by tearing down the wall between “real” science and public science education.

As an enthusiastic college student and volunteer science teacher, I am part of both the problem and the solution. I am passionate about science and I absolutely love sharing my excitement with my students, but I have no intention of becoming a science teacher. In fact, I don’t personally know any undergraduates who do. The reason for this isn’t money, it’s the fact that public science education lies on the fringe of the science community—somewhere nobody who’s passionate about science wants to be.

In the public school system, most science teachers are educators first and scientists second or not at all. Schools organize education horizontally by grade level rather than vertically by subject. The focus is on completing the requirements for each grade level, rather than on building students’ knowledge and understanding of a subject over the span of their education. As a result, a third-grade science teacher works closely with other third-grade teachers, rather than with other science educators. There is little room for dialogue on the challenges of getting students excited about science.

While I admire those science lovers who take to the classroom to fight for science literacy, teaching shouldn’t be such a lonely battle. High-quality science teaching will increase public interest in science-based issues and, ultimately, boost American competitiveness in research and technology—two necessary and invaluable pursuits. Shouldn’t science be something we esteem?

The poor image of science education and the restrictive structure of science curricula lead to unimaginative teaching, and to a society that is indifferent and unmotivated when it comes to scientific progress. However, we can address this challenge by finding ways to get our teachers into laboratories and our scientists into classrooms.

From my experience as a teacher, I’ve learned that genuine enthusiasm is the foundation of any successful science lesson. When I get excited about science, my students do too. However, I draw much of my enthusiasm from my daily life as a science student at Columbia, a busy research university. I spend my days studying science and talking with my peers about their research and their ideas—something I’d have to give up if I became a science teacher.

To promote innovation and creativity in teaching, we need to support teacher education programs that put elementary and middle school educators into laboratories. This tactic is already being implemented through some privately funded programs, such as HHMI’s Science Education Leadership Fellows (SELF) program, which pairs elementary school science teachers with postdoctoral and graduate scientists to work on research projects, learn new lab methods, and talk about innovative ways to teach science. The success of this program is reflected in skyrocketing test scores among participating schools after only a year of participation. If public school science teachers were also researchers, even at a basic level, public school teaching would be much more appealing to science students, myself included.

In terms of American competitiveness, encouraging scientists to volunteer at public schools may be the best solution. Students need to see that science is more than just a body of knowledge—it can be a job. Scientists are in the perfect position to illustrate this. Furthermore, by talking about their own research, scientists can give students a glimpse into the inner workings of scientific inquiry, and introduce them to the oft-overlooked creative and innovative aspects of science.

We need to address the negative stigma of both science and science teaching if we are ever going to, in the words of President Obama, “return science to its rightful place.” This is an exciting time for science education. I can already see that science is garnering more attention in mainstream society, through increased funding for special programs and, more importantly, presidential interest. We must, however, develop substantial, innovative programs that turn teachers into scientists and scientists into teachers, if we are ever going to truly solve the crisis of poor science education.

The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in neuroscience. She is the editor in chief of the Columbia Science Review.