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Science 23 April 2004:
Vol. 304. no. 5670, pp. 521 - 522
DOI: 10.1126/science.1096022
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Policy Forum

EDUCATION:
Scientific Teaching

Jo Handelsman,1* Diane Ebert-May,2 Robert Beichner,3 Peter Bruns,4 Amy Chang,5 Robert DeHaan,6,Ý Jim Gentile,7 Sarah Lauffer,1 James Stewart,8 Shirley M. Tilghman,9 William B. Wood10

For more than a decade, reports from expert panels have called for improvements in science education. There is general agreement that science courses consisting of traditional lectures and cookbook laboratory exercises need to be changed. What is required instead is "scientific teaching," teaching that mirrors science at its best-experimental, rigorous, and based on evidence. This Policy Forum explores the reasons for the slow pace of change in the way science is taught at research universities and offers recommendations for faculty, staff, and administrators at research universities, funding agencies, and professional organizations in order to accelerate the reform of science education. To help faculty initiate change in their own classrooms, this forum includes extensive resources to guide the transition to tested, effective instructional methods, which include group-learning in lectures, inquiry-based laboratories, and interactive computer modules.

1Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin-Madison; 2Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University; 3Department of Physics, North Carolina State University; 4Howard Hughes Medical Institute; 5American Society for Microbiology; 6National Research Council; 7Dean of Natural Sciences, Hope College; 8Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Madison; 9President, Princeton University; 10Department of Molecular Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado at Boulder. For complete addresses, see SOM.

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: joh{at}plantpath.wisc.edu.
dagPresent address: Division of Educational Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA.

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