To reform any human affair exacts great effort from the people who direct the affair. So it is with ocean sciences education. Many of the people directing it are striving to make “the change for the better” that we call “reform,” because it will enable students to learn betten The nucleus consists of the K-12 teachers and college and university education instructors and ocean scientist instructors who have made the change. The K- 12 teachers are being prepared in the pedagogy of reform by their education instructors. In this manner, they learn how to teach in support of the National Science Education Standards and the Benchmarks. But, like all other students, they must learn the science content from ocean scientist educators who, for the most part, do not know how to teach by the Standards. As a result, the teachers are not being taught ocean sciences as they are expected to teach them. Nor are other undergraduate or graduate students learning ocean sciences in the manner that assessment studies have reported to be most effective. In brief, a major impediment to the reform of ocean sciences education is the ocean scientist educator whose teaching does not support the reform. That this impediment should be the ocean scientist educator ought to surprise us. Although it doesn’t, here’s why it should.

McManus, D.A. 2001. In the oceanography classroom: Why is it so hard to reform ocean sciences education? Oceanography 14(4):130–131, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2001.16.

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