Abstract
From previous and current efforts at science education reform, the author teases out a certain “culture of reform,” a set of assumptions about educational change that are no longer (if they ever were) appropriate to another task, namely managing change. With reference to a group of programs in undergraduate science instruction that work, she finds the research model, the preference for innovation, the dependence on short-term outside funding, and above all, the seeking after some universal curriculum or set of pedagogies that will solve the problem for all time, to be naive in terms of the reality and the politics of change. She would substitute what Gerald Holton in “A Nation at Risk, Revisited” calls “cumulative improvement,” and ends with some suggestions as to how such a model could be applied to the organization of college-level instruction in science.
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This is a portion of Chapter 1 of the bookPrograms That Work; The Implementation Challenge. Reprinted with permission by Research Corporation, Copyright 1991, all rights reserved.
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Tobias, S. Science education reform: What's wrong with the paradigm?. J Sci Educ Technol 1, 85–93 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00694832
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00694832