A chasm is growing between our rapidly rising aspirations for our educational systems and what schools can routinely accomplish. Education needs an improvement paradigm--one that recognizes the complexity of the work of education and the wide variability in outcomes that our systems currently produce. This article sketches out such a paradigm. It…

Discusses research on middle school science learning and instruction that suggests how generative models of scientific phenomena can be developed. The Computer as Learning Partner curriculum is introduced as a curriculum that provides a firm foundation for lifelong learning through the use of authentic questions. (SLD)