As long as students avoid sciences courses as much as possible during college and leave the courses with an unfavorable impression of science, they will be unable to communicate the beauty and necessity of science to their own students. A frequent complaint is that science doesn't have anything to do with their daily lives. Science education research has identified several other problems. The standard course format discourages student participation. The classes are often perceived as intensely competitive, discouraging the participation of women and minorities.
Students make extremely small gains in mastery of course materials.
They have trouble relating to abstract concepts. They learn little or nothing about the way scientists actually think about problems, or even about what science is. Approaches developed to overcome these problems have had some success in small institutions, or for a particular professor, but are too expensive or complicated to transfer to large comprehensive universities. Graduate students, the future instructors of science, are inadequately trained as educators. Dr. Stewart is developing a process model for learning in physics.