Science Teachers See Benefits, Barriers in Standards Effort

By Meg Sommerfeld

Science teachers believe the voluntary national science standards will help improve the way they teach, a new survey shows.

But they expect to face a variety of obstacles as they try to adopt the standards. The top three barriers they cited were a lack of time for planning and meeting with other teachers, insufficient money for teacher training, and inadequate teaching materials and facilities.

Other barriers included: classroom-management problems, insufficient administrative support, personal difficulty with change, a lack of peer support, and a lack of...