Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 31 July 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5940, p. 527
DOI: 10.1126/science.325_527a
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News of the Week

Science Education:

Universities Begin to Rethink First-Year Biology Courses

Jeffrey Mervis

This month, 500 researchers, educators, and policymakers met in Washington, D.C., at a conference sponsored by the National Science Foundation and AAAS (which publishes Science) to assess how far they have come in their efforts to improve undergraduate introductory biology courses, which are seen as a critical step toward raising the nation's scientific literacy. The consensus: There's still a long way to go. Correcting the problem, speakers agreed, will require changing a deep-rooted academic culture that values research over teaching and makes little provision for doing a good job in the classroom.

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)