First Name:
Sumer
Last Name:
Bottoms
Major Department:
Chemistry, Secondary Ed
Thesis Director:
P.M. Dass
Date of Thesis:
May 2011
Consider these questions: is there a cure for cancer; is there life on Mars; how do alcoholics become addicted; and how do we stop global warming? The first place to start finding the solutions to these questions is science. With an ever-changing world, our scientific understanding must evolve, along with the way we teach and learn science in our schools. However, the current science education programs in the United States are not showing sufficient advancement to keep pace with the scientific understandings needed to answer the types of question mentioned above. In my opinion, science education in the U.S. is deteriorating. In this thesis, these science education goals will be examined and discussed in greater detail. They will then be compared to the NC state curriculum, the U.S. national science education standards, the new proposed U.S. science education standards, and international curricula in Canada, Japan, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The comparison will be analyzed to determine the extent to which science education curricula in the U.S. are promoting these goals in comparison to the international models examined here.