Project 2061 Teams Fine-Tuning Models For Science-Education Reforms

By Peter West

SAN DIEGO--In the schools that Philip Gay and his colleagues envision, science would no longer be a compartmentalized course in a student's daily schedule, but an ongoing, inquiry-based, interdisciplinary process reflecting a personal search for knowledge.

"A big part of our philosophy,'' Mr. Gay, a science supervisor for the San Diego Unified School District, told a recent visitor, "is that the student is not an open vessel for pouring learning into.''

The curriculum model that Mr. Gay and 24 of his colleagues here have developed over the last three years is one of a half-dozen alternative approaches to teaching science literacy produced by six teams in urban, suburban, and rural school districts nationwide as part of Project 2061. The project is a long-term curriculum-reform initiative of the American Association for...