There was a government report on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education released over the past few days.  The report, combined with the National Research Council’s project which has developed a Conceptual Framework for a New Generation of Science Standards set the tone for STEM education over the next few years.

The National Science Board issued a report today entitled Preparing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators:
Identifying and Developing Our Nation’s Human Capital.  The NSB committee  uses as a rationale for fostering the development of STEM innovators Vannevar Bush’s Science–An Endless Frontier, a report on science and technology education presented in 1944 to President Roosevelt.  It was an important report, and the NSB committee felt it was relevant in their present report to the nation.

According to the NSB report,

STEM “innovators” are defined as those individuals who have developed the expertise to become leading STEM professionals and perhaps the creators of significant breakthroughs or advances in scientific and technological understanding.  To this end, this report addresses talent identification and development of children and young adults, and provides recommendations that should ultimately enhance the innovation capacity of our Nation.

According to the committee, three “keystone” recommendations have been made to enhance the development of STEM innovators.  They are:

1. Provide opportunities for excellence  by offeriing coordinated, proactive, sustained formal and informal interventions to develop their abilities.
2. Cast a wide net to identify all types of talents and to nurture potential in all demographics ofstudents.
3. Foster a supportive ecosystem that nurtures and celebrates excellence and innovative thinking.

This gifted and talented report recommends a pedagogy in which:

…all students, including the most talented, should have the opportunity to experience inquiry-based learning, peer collaboration, open-ended, real-world problem solving, hands-on training, and interactions with practicing scientists, engineers and other experts.  Currently, many of the opportunities for these activities materialize in the form of informal, out-of-school enrichment activities (e.g., summer camps, competitions, science museum visits, Math Circles), rather than as an integrated ingredient of a STEM curriculum.  Out-of-school enrichment is extremely valuable, particularly to inspire interest in STEM, but insufficient by itself.  Students spend the vast majority of their time in the regular, formal classroom.  Formal and informal education are mutually reinforcing and are most effective when synchronized.

There is a disconnect here between wanting on the one-hand an innovative science curriculum, but on the other hand, there is the growing insistence at the Federal, State and Corporate levels to have a single unity set of standards that all schools would subscribe to.  This unfortunately defines the present culture of school reform.  Top-down mandates developed by organizations and individuals with little or no accountability undermine real innovation and reform at the school district and school level.  Real innovation and change takes place at the community level—with groups of teachers collaborating with local universities and agencies—to create new curricula and innovative teaching methods.

This tension between innovation, inquiry, problem-based learning and national and state standards and high-stakes testing is an issue that teachers have had to deal with it seems for ever.  Teachers are quite able to make the decisions about what is best for their own students.