Teaching science and mathematics needs to be more of a science like astronomy, not a folk art like astrology as has been the case for too long, Nobel laureate Carl Wieman said at a national conference on strategies to build a stronger corps of science teachers.

The goal should be to have “all students think about and use science, mathematics, and engineering more like scientists do,” Wieman said. “The most valuable metric” for evaluating effective teaching should be creating patterns of scientific thinking.