I think we could make a lot of progress
in improving science education simply by
taking advantage of what's known about
learning and learning science and proper
measurements of student learning
I think there's been tremendous progress
over the last couple of decades in
cognitive science educational psychology
about how people learn and then there's
also been a lot of equivalent progress
and closely connected work in what works
in the university client physics
classroom in particular and in other
disciplines because it's one thing to
know in general how the brain learns
it's another to understand how that
plays out in what I should be doing in
junior year electricity and magnetism so
so one has to bring together a lot of
knowledge and assemble it and utilize it
that's really what my efforts these days
are about is trying to find a
institutional way to make that happen
because I I don't think we need
tremendous breakthroughs and
understanding we're it's kind of if you
think about a product development stage
the fundamental research has been done
we know what to do we now have to carry
out that the development of turning it
into a polished product that produces
you know leads to highly educated
students but it's not easy
one thing I've come to appreciate is
thinking scientifically is not a natural
condition for the human mind
I see routinely scientists who you know
have very strict ways of thinking and
their discipline assumes they move out
of it start talking about teaching they
become
trying to think of some charitable way
to describe but you know they they fall
back on on superstition and tradition
and things that they would totally
dismiss if they if they heard anyone
using that same kind of rationale in a
discussion about the science but you
know in 30 seconds they can switch to
that way of thinking so I I've come to
appreciate this is not an easy problem
it's not all that natural for people to
to think about anything where whether
it's you know physics phenomena or
education in this kind of rigorous
scientific way
