Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

Science education specialists forced to take a back seat

We can all snicker about a bad science teacher we've had, but a recent study …

Teaching is no easy task—being responsible for accurately representing a subject so that a wide variety of students can comprehend is difficult, no matter the age of the students or the subject being taught. Where K-12 educators generally choose education as a career and then narrow their focus to a specific subject, university-level educators generally take a different path. They typically pick a subject and research it in depth, only to become an educator through the necessity of their professor-level position.

Science has published a statistical study run in the California State University (CSU) system that focuses specifically on a special breed of university level science teachers: Science Faculty with Education Specialties (SFES). The study paints a grim picture for those who are passionate about science education at a high level.

Anybody that has been in science classes at a big, research-driven university will relate the same horror story—you sign up for a challenging class, and the professor makes it clear that having to teach you is simply an inconvenience. They live by "publish or perish" so, unless you're the only freshman on the block with connections to the editor of a prestigious research journal, odds are that your pleas for help will fall on deaf ears.

It isn't always this bad; there are plenty of professors that do an excellent job, especially in upper-level classes where they can focus on their specialty. The simple fact remains though: they aren’t there to teach. A professor gets put on the tenure track primarily due to their research history and how much funding they pull in instead of their ability to explain an acid/base titration in 4 different ways to introductory chemistry students.

SFES professors are the attempt to get more effective science teaching to the university level and, in the process, fix the United States' continually declining interest in science. They engage in both basic science research and research and development of better educational methods. Using an in-depth survey to assess their working conditions, the paper's authors polled both SFES professors who were focused on teaching from their hiring, and pure scientists who later got education training.

The results suggest a significant number of these individuals feel a sense of of isolation and marginalization. Nearly 40 percent of those surveyed were considering leaving their current position, with 20 percent of those considering getting out of the field all together. 79 percent reported less access to graduate students than those involved solely in basic science research, and less than 10 percent perceived "equivalent academic infrastructure" for the teaching and research of science education.

The survey made it clear that the perception in the research community is that those who focus on anything other than basic science research are second-class citizens, which is a sad commentary on the ironically named higher education system. It's perfectly reasonable to be following funding dollars and basking in the prestige of a published paper—but that shouldn't come at the cost of neglecting the need to properly train the next generation of researchers, contributors to industry, and educators.

Next time you have a good science teacher, thank them. You'll never know if they'll wind up being the last one you ever have.

Science, 2008. DOI: 10.1126/science.1162072

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