Issues

For over 150 years American physicists have been making forays into elementary and high school science teaching. Their novel approaches have usually worked—but the results have always been short‐lived.

Standardized testing reveals some encouraging trends in science achievement of US students. However, international tests show them to be lagging behind their peers from many industrialized nations.

The mathematics and science communities are redefining what students should know and how they should learn it. Much new instructional material is available embodying the new reforms.

Physicists from the professional societies, the notional laboratories and industry run many active programs for teachers and students of pre‐college physics.

Traditional teaching practices only poorly reflect what is known about the learning process. To improve science education, teachers and scientists must take note of the implications of cognitive science.