Position Statement NSTA supports the restructuring of schooling in the United States so that science teaching can become consistent with the professional practice model. Since making decisions collectively is critical to establishing science teaching as a profession, interaction among teachers and the time to interact are essential. Sharing, mutual commitment, and caring about community must be facilitated. This means establishing new priorities for how teachers allocate their work time so they can collaborate with each other and other stakeholders to make policies and regulations relating to science teaching. Teachers' success is evaluated in terms of these new priorities.
Decisions cover the entire range of school activities that impinge on science teaching.
The multifaceted nature of professional science teachers' responsibilities requires their work time be divided between interaction with students and interaction with parents, peers, administrators, scientists and other professionals, and other community members including people from business and industry. Support Teachers must have both technical and human support in order to make time available for the necessary interactions and to facilitate communication. Technical support includes ready access to a telephone, computer, modem, fax, photo copy machines, expertise to make maximum use of current hardware and software, and personal work space outside the classroom. Human support includes people such as a laboratory assistant, teacher assistant, and secretary to do tasks that do not require the unique expertise of the science teacher. Teachers should determine what they need to learn and when they need to learn it.