A growing limitation on secondary education is the lack of in discipline training for teachers which is particularly acute in science. Often in science, because of its technical nature and high labor force demand, it can be hard to recruit teachers with at least a Bachelor’s Degree in the field they teach and hard to provide content-specific professional develop that teachers say they need. Many science teachers are being asked to do more with less.
According to the Report of the 2012 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education released by Horizon Research, Inc. with funding from the National Science Foundation, there are noticeable differences in teacher preparation even between math and science teachers. The Report finds that, “Roughly 80 percent of elementary teachers feel very well prepared to teach reading/language arts and mathematics, but fewer than half feel very well prepared to teach science.” Also the Report declares that, “Elementary teachers stand out for the relative paucity of professional development in science or science teaching, with only 59 percent having participated in the last three years.” In comparison, the study found that 87% of elementary school math teachers reported receiving professional development in the last three years.
Fortunately this trend improves in high school and 85% of high school science teachers report having received professional development in the last three years. However, as the NGSS begin at kindergarten, it is imperative that elementary school science teachers receive adequate content-specific professional development as well. It has been assumed that teaching elementary school science does not require this type of specific training, but the Report shows that teachers are beginning to feel uncomfortable with the material they are being asked to cover and it counterproductive to evaluate concepts teachers are not prepared to teach.
The goal of the NGSS is to develop standards which identify science and engineering practices and content that all K-12 students should master in order to be fully prepared for college, careers and citizenship. The effort to identify these science and engineering practices, as in other disciplines, should be applauded. However, it should not be assumed that science can simply be treated in the same manner as other disciplines such mathematics or language arts. Science has a unique nature of investigation that must be respected and has unique challenges in teacher training that must be acknowledged.