Research on Science Education

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Slide 13

What can we do to improve?

Teacher Quality

Speaker's notes:

Another area that cries out for reform is teacher quality. We know from a variety of research that the influence of teachers on student learning is large. The difference between having two good or two bad teachers in a row can be as much as a year of academic learning. We also know that content knowledge is particularly important in teaching science. It is common sense, empirically verified, that teachers who don't have undergraduate training in a scientific field such as physics, have trouble teaching it.