Educating Americans for the 21st century

Abstract

Recent national commission reports have discussed a new era for science education. Unlike the sciences of the 1950s and 1960s, this new era has raised some provocative questions concerning science education for the future. The science movements of the post-sputnik period stressed science for the elite, more science and mathematics for the college-bound student, developing a corps of the very best engineers and scientists who could take us to the moon and let us assume the leadership in the international scientific enterprise. It was a time whose purpose was to get the most able students from our high schools into the calculus and physics courses at universities and colleges as quickly as possible. The recent report of the National Science Board's Commission on Precollege Education in Mathematics, Science, and Technology represents a radical departure from the movements of the 50s and 60s. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the implications of their recommendations for the future of science education.

Biosocial goals and human genetics: An impact study of NSF workshops

“…Major goals of the NSF biology workshops at Ball State University developed in the middle 1970s paralleled selected goals of Project Synthesis published in 1981, and, more recently, the goals of the National Science Board Comission on Precollege Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology (Coleman and Selby, 1983). All three groups advocate goals which emphasize human and biosocial concerns.…”

An epistemological framework for nanoscience and nanotechnology literacy

“…Currently students in the U.S. public school systems lack strong math and science aptitude and these can pose a serious challenge and endanger the growth of a nanoworkforce (NSB 2010). In an assessment of the state of U.S. precollege education in the early 1970s, the National Science Board's (NSB) Commission on Precollege Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology found these fields wanting (Coleman & Selby 1983). The Commission therefore made several recommendations and projected that U.S. precollege achievement should be best in the world by 1995.…”

Poskus konceptualizacija talentiranosti na športnem področju

“…33;Koncept odkrivanja in dela z nadarjenimi učenci, 1999;Marland, 1972;Žagar idr., 1999). Opredelitev termina nadarjenost se je spreminjala predvsem pod vplivi družbeno preoblikovanih vzgojnih ciljev, saj so se prejšnje opredelitve nadarjenosti usmerjale predvsem na nadpovprečne osebnostne karakteristike ali različne omejitve šolskega okolja (Binet, Simon, 1976;Coleman, Selby, 1983;Ferbežer, 2002;Sumption, Luecking, 1960;Witty, 1940).…”