




































50 
 

The contributions of science educator F. James Rutherford: 

Harvard Project Physics and Project 2061 

 
Catherine Lange 

Buffalo State University 

 

Abstract 

This research chronicles over sixty years of the 

contributions of science educator F. James 

Rutherford. Rutherford is one of the three 

masterminds behind Harvard Project Physics and 

more recently, creator and founder of the 

American Association for the Advancement of 

Science’s Project 2061. A long-term reform 

strategy, Project 2061 currently serves as the 

standard and guiding doctrine for the reform of 

science education foundational ideals and 

pedagogical premises in America. 

 

Introduction  

Over the past century, the attention and 

focus on science education in American K-12 

public schools has been tumultuous, rising to a 

place of dominance in post-Sputnik periods and 

declining to a state of near-invisibility in the wake 

of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation that 

places emphasis on reading and mathematics and 

standardized testing. Although NCLB has 

included testing in science, schools are not held 

publicly accountable for student science scores as 

they are for reading and mathematics. The post-

Sputnik funding that was spurred on by societal 

awareness and cultural acceptance of the 

importance of science is now, unfortunately, only 

a moment in history. The de-emphasis of science 

in present day K-12 education is not only vexing 

but also dangerous if we consider all the science-

based issues the world is now facing.  

This paper will examine one piece of the 

history of science education involving one of the 

most influential science educators of the twentieth 

century, F. James Rutherford. Rutherford began 

his career as a science teacher in the outskirts of 

San Francisco, California. Upset by the lack of 

sound science curriculum and teaching resources, 

and lacking background knowledge, Rutherford 

decided to study the history of science at Harvard. 

The first part of this story concerns Rutherford’s 

intention to develop practical and effective 

physics materials to help the high populations of 

second-language learners he had as students. 

What began as a few lesson plans burgeoned into 

a viable curriculum centered at Harvard 

University. Rutherford joined science educator 

Fletcher Watson and physicist/science historian 

Gerald Holton and together they created Harvard 

Project Physics (HPP) in 1962. By its completion 

in 1970, it was a massively expansive and 

comprehensive program of textbooks, 

worksheets, overhead transparencies, tests, 

readers, full-feature films and a plethora of 

teacher and student resources too numerous to 

mention. The program offered teachers content 

and resources that they would otherwise not have 

easy access to such as historic experiments, 

literature, assessment tools and depictions. 

Additionally it provided student-friendly 

information about cutting edge scientific research 

projects that average kids could read and 

understand. Its success was partly due to the 

comprehensive and interdisciplinary nature that 

connected science to a wide range of domains. 

Making physics relevant was a mainstay of the 

philosophy of the program; Rutherford 

understood that relevance was necessary to make 

science appealing to all students through exposure 

to the exciting, relevant and captivating nature of 

the scientific enterprise.  



51 
 

Harvard Project Physics was one of the 

Alphabet (or ABC) Curricula produced as a 

national response to the Russian launch of 

Sputnik. (Such curricular were so labeled because 

of the many acronyms that identified the Science, 

Technology, Engineering and Mathematics 

[STEM] projects.) Welch (1979) estimates that by 

1977 there were “more than 500 different 

projects” used in the United States high schools, 

and by 1972 Holton estimated that “300,000 

students per year were using Harvard Project 

Physics” (Holton 2011). In hindsight, we find that 

twenty of these projects were widely used and 

only one, Biological Sciences Curriculum Study 

(BSCS) has survived and is still published and 

still in wide use as of this as of this writing. 

Finally, and most notably, F. James 

Rutherford’s impact on twentieth and twenty-first 

century science education through the visionary 

Project 2061, instrumental in directing and 

shaping all American science education 

programs, signals a significant personal 

accomplishment. Supported by the American 

Association for the Advancement for Science 

(AAAS), the massive and well-known seminal 

publications and research projects that 

collectively referred to as Project 2061 have 

established a framework for all states to follow.  

Rutherford’s success as a curriculum 

designer (Harvard Project Physics) was 

exceptional and intuitive in its inclusion of 

appropriate pedagogical content knowledge and 

for the remarkable range of multimedia and 

interdisciplinary components. HPP and the many 

other ABC curricula had unlimited funding 

support from the National Science Foundation 

(NSF) and many other private sources. The 

success of the HPP program established the 

authors, Rutherford, Watson and Holton, as 

leaders in American science education. Many 

others benefited from their authorship and 

participation in ABC curricula projects but only 

Rutherford was instrumental in efforts to establish 

a national, systemic science education initiative 

with the scope and sequence of Project 2061. 

These two significant accomplishments, HPP and 

Project 2061, identify Rutherford as one of the 

most influential science educators in American 

history. 

  

Post-Sputnik Curricular Reforms  

Rutherford wrote his own teaching 

materials, which included science stories 

specifically directed at students who had low-

reading levels and little interest in science. At the 

2005 Brandwein Lecture, Rutherford recounted 

the advantage of going beyond “the discipline-

bound island of scientific information” of 

traditional textbook-centered instruction 

(Rutherford 2005, 270):  

 

Science is a grand human adventure, but 

you would not know it from reading 

science textbooks. In every science 

discipline there are stories to tell, ideas 

to explore and to try to understand, 

advances and disappointments to 

confront, applications to astound us or 

worry us, mysteries solved and new 

mysteries created-but that is not what 

comes through in science textbooks then 

or now. (371)  

 

Rutherford was modifying a college textbook 

written by Harvard professor Gerald Holton for 

use in his high school classroom. That text, 

Introduction to Concepts and Theories in 

Physical Science, included astronomy, chemistry, 

the history of science and three chapters on the 

philosophy of science. While Rutherford was a 

graduate student at Harvard, he approached 

Holton and asked him if he would write a version 

of the book for high school students. Holton 

responded, “Why don’t you do it?” (Holton 2011) 



52 
 

They agreed that Rutherford would attempt a 

revision with Holton monitoring the process, “and 

that would have been the end of it.” (Holton 

2011) But Holton, called to an emergency 

meeting at the National Science Foundation 

shortly after the release of the Soviet spacecraft, 

Sputnik, now had a fortuitous opportunity. He 

explains:  

 

We were implored by the NSF officials 

to throw ourselves, individually or in 

groups, into the awesome task of 

designing, writing, testing, re-editing 

and finally publishing a national high-

school physics course. . . Everyone at the 

meeting was sensible enough to say 

“no.” Except one. That’s how I became 

the principal investigator of what we 

first called Harvard Project Physics. 

(Holton 2011)  

 

Holton saw an opportunity to develop a 

“humanistic, historically orientated course” in 

physics that was not just “one damned thing after 

another, but a coherent story” made from the 

“thoughts and work of living beings.” (Holton 

2011) Holton pursued Rutherford and well-known 

science educator/scientist Fletcher Watson to join 

the project.  

The resulting “affluent” and “ambitious” 

curriculum was so incredibly varied and 

extensive, even by today’s standards. (Holton, 

2011) A supporting staff of over one hundred and 

fifty people ran the project with one hundred and 

twenty advisors. Rutherford served as the 

executive director and senior author and editor of 

the project until 1971. HPP was so massive that a 

42-page “Sears and Roebuck” catalogue was 

needed to order HPP materials (Holton 2011). 

Eventually large publishing companies took over 

the marketing and production of the ABC 

curricula. Today, teachers and districts have 

grown to expect the large-scale packaging of 

textbooks and supporting paraphernalia, but at the 

time, the HPP production was definitely 

groundbreaking. 

HPP stood as one of the most notable 

projects of the post-Sputnik era because of its 

widespread use and because of the many products 

that were available for teacher and student use.  

HPP was also well known for the excellent 

summer institutes that Rutherford organized. 

Holton elaborates: 

 

But the key for most such teachers was 

to take a paid-for leave to go to a six to 

eight-week summer institute at one of 

the many teacher training sites in various 

parts of the country, which we organized 

for many years.  Thousands of teachers 

went through those-great for them, but 

as you can imagine, an additional burden 

above all on Jim Rutherford, who acted 

tirelessly throughout the project as its 

Executive Director (Holton 2011). 

 

The high quality of the products was also part of 

the appeal. Rutherford hired designer Albert 

Gregory to incorporate historic depictions, photos 

and artwork to the pages of the materials. No 

expense was spared to include authentic historic 

documents such as Copernicus’s De 

Revolutionibus, obtained directly from the library 

at the University of Krakow. Teacher participants 

attended fully paid six to eight week summer 

workshops that showed them how to use the 

materials. In turn, the teachers provided feedback 

that often resulted in modifications to the 

materials. Participating teachers felt 

distinguished, and in many schools, things were 

noticeably different. Peter Dow, curriculum 

historian and contributor to Man: A Course of 

Study (M:ACOS) a cross-disciplinary and cross-

cultural social studies project for middle school 

and upper elementary grade describes what he 

noticed in his school: 



53 
 

  

As a young teacher just beginning my 

career at the time, I vividly remember 

the impact of these innovative programs 

on the classroom. I first learned about 

the NSF’s efforts when physics students 

in my school began building ripple tanks 

to examine wave motion and swinging 

pendulums from the rafters of the 

gymnasium to study the rotation of the 

Earth. This was very different from the 

textbook-based learning I had 

encountered in my own education. (Dow 

1991, 3)   

 

In realistic terms, Dow’s experience supports 

what McCormick indicates were “pockets of 

excellence where well-trained teachers conducted 

wonderful new NSF science programs” 

(McCormick 1992, 18). Teachers should be the 

decision-makers and implementers of new ideas 

and they “determine how much value to attach to 

what they already do, how much changes will 

help their students, and how much energy and 

time they can invest to make the changes, given 

the organizational and personal constraints that 

they face daily” (Cuban 1993, 239). Studies 

conducted by Glanz (1979) and Kyle (1985) are 

consistent with many other findings that suggest 

teachers involved in the curricular surge had 

changed their philosophies and approaches 

remarkably little. Rutherford understood what 

teachers faced in the classroom from his own 

experiences and focused a great deal of attention 

to the construction of materials in HPP so 

teachers would be able to easily add what they 

wanted or needed to their existing classroom 

lessons.   

     Science education researchers differ on the 

impact of the reform era and specific 

effectiveness of individual projects such as HPP. 

There is agreement that the most reviewed and 

successful high school science projects were 

BSCS, Physical Science Study Committee 

(PSSC) and HPP. Despite his crucial 

involvement, Rutherford is critical of the overall 

success of HPP and the many other ABC projects 

of the era. He claims that science education did 

not mature in the post-war years to become all 

that they could have. Why? “Indeed much of what 

passed for research were short-term assessment of 

courses, materials, approaches, and projects 

having more to do with justification than with the 

advancement of knowledge.” (Rutherford 2005, 

375) Rutherford points to a lack of persistence 

that would have created a steady and thus 

enduring pace for successful reform and indicates 

that there were immature “exuberant ups and 

disconcerting downs” throughout the past fifty 

years of science education . (Rutherford 2005, 

375) Notwithstanding such critical assessment, 

the unprecedented scope and scale of the post-

Sputnik projects are in themselves worthy of 

historical note, as DeBoer points out: 

  

What made the science curriculum 

projects unique as an education reform 

effort was the scale of the endeavor and 

the extent to which the projects were 

actually completed and used in the 

schools. The national scope of the 

projects, the funding by the federal 

government, the widespread use of the 

courses across the country, and the 

involvement of noted scientists in the 

development of courses all made this 

effort unmatched in the history of 

American education. The new 

curriculum projects offered the 

opportunity to put into practice a number 

of principles of good education that 

thoughtful science educators had been 

advocating for decades but had been 

unable to implement successfully on a 

wide-scale basis. (DeBoer 1991, 166)  

 



54 
 

      Unfortunately, many of the grant-funded 

projects lacked effective summative evaluation 

processes and procedures, making it difficult to 

determine how much students learned from the 

curricula. There was little or no attention paid to 

teacher attitudes and/or pedagogical implications 

of the new materials during the development and 

evaluation processes of the projects despite the 

disproportional amount of R & D resources 

directed towards teacher training. Following the 

release of the ABC curricula, throughout the late 

1970’s and early 1980’s many researchers sought 

out ways to assess overall changes in science 

classroom instruction. A myriad of qualitative and 

quantitative data emerged. Rutherford makes a 

critical point: 

 

It is no surprise that a complex 

educational “system” made up of more 

than 95,000 schools in 16,000 school 

districts with three million teachers, 

serving 54 million students and costing 

over $400 billion dollars to operate 

would create daunting reform issues on 

all levels (Rutherford 2005, 376).  

 

     One of the compelling attempts to determine 

the overall impact the ABC curricula was the 

1977 NSF survey which collected data from 

7,000 teachers, principals, central office personnel 

and state supervisors and officials (Strake & 

Easley 1978). The NSF 1977 National Survey of 

Science, Mathematics and Social Science 

Education used the percentage of program 

utilization by districts as a marker for determining 

the success of the programs (NSF 1978). This 

report found that HPP was used by 12% of the 

school districts in America. Over sixty studies of 

the effectiveness of HPP were evaluated by 

Wayne Welch and he determined that the most 

salient features of HPP were the contributions it 

made to “retention in science, participation of 

women….  [Performance] on critical thinking 

tests and understanding of subject matter all 

showed improvement where the Project Physics 

curriculum was adopted” (Matthews 1994, 6). 

Fletcher Watson published over sixty articles, 

research papers and reports and directed fifteen 

doctoral theses on HPP (Holton 2011). In one of 

the most popular research claims, Hurd (1969) 

describe a general pattern of overall science 

teaching trends in the following chart that 

McCormick published:  

 

FROM TO 
The textbook as the 

authoritative source of 

information 

Laboratory data as a 

primary source of 

knowledge. 

Everyday technology is 

presented as science. 

“Pure” science is 

emphasized. 

Many science topics 

studied briefly. 

In-depth studies of 

fewer topics. 

Laboratory activities 

used to verify concepts 

in textbook. 

Laboratory activities 

used to collect data 

from which concepts 

are derived. 

Deductive thinking is 

emphasized to arrive at 

“correct answers.” 

Inductive thinking is 

stressed in arriving at 

reasonable tentative 

answers. 

Rote and receptive 

learning. 

Discovery and inquiry 

learning. 

Fig. 1 Summary of significant trends in 

science teaching approaches adopted from 

McCormick (1992, 21) 

  

       McCormick’s insightful summary is a 

valuable gauge that demonstrates the bridge 

between the HPP and Project 2061 and helps to 

highlight the role that Rutherford played to carry 

ideas from one experience to another.  Rutherford 

added many examples of pure science into a 

collection of HPP readers which contained 

relevant stories written by famous scientists.   The 

immense supporting materials served the single 



55 
 

purpose to deemphasize the textbook by offering 

teachers laboratory ideas and activities to promote 

discovery and inquiry learning.   Rutherford 

directed the development of all HPP materials to 

fulfill all the criteria listed in McCormick’s 

summary of trends.  The trends described by 

McCormick are obvious in Project 2061 as well.    

      The debate over the effectiveness of the ABC 

projects has been over for at least twenty years. 

There is little to nothing written to document the 

history of the significance of the individuals that 

that participated as writers, leaders, advisors and 

directors of the ABC projects. The attention and 

promise that the projects held for making a 

difference in the quality of science instruction put 

pressure on science educators, scientists and other 

experts to excel in their fields and to deliver 

quality products. It was unmistakably a competent 

and prestigious playing field and market. Not yet 

captured in the science education literature is how 

this period of strong collaboration and team 

efforts impacted careers and science education as 

a discipline. Peter Dow, project editor of 

MACOS, tells the story of the development and 

life of MACOS in his exceptional book, 

Schoolhouse Politics: Lessons From the Sputnik 

Era. The National Association for Research in 

Science Teaching (NARST), the largest and 

oldest science education association in America, 

is currently working on a history of both the 

organization and a yet-to-be-determined history 

of science educators. Rutherford is working on a 

book about the history of science education. 

Clearly science education needs more research 

such as Dow has added to social studies education 

through his work on the history of MACOS. 

     There is no doubt that significant relationships 

were established during this post-Sputnik period 

and that some of the most respected science 

educators of the century were associated with this 

curriculum boom. Most educators continued as 

faculty and made greater contributions to the field 

at large or within specific domains. Others 

continued as curriculum specialists and writers or 

leaders in organizations. Rutherford’s 

involvement in HPP had many lasting effects on 

his career.  

      Rutherford left Harvard in 1971 to join the 

faculty of New York University where he stayed 

until 1977. In 1975 he was elected President of 

the National Science Teachers Association. 

Between 1977 and 1984 he served in two federal 

government positions. First he served as the 

Assistant Director of the NSF Education 

programs and then as Assistant Secretary of the 

Department of Education, National Center for 

Educational Statistics, the Fund for the 

Improvement of Post-Secondary Education.  

 

Project 2061 (1985-2061)  

     In 1985, Rutherford was invited to join the 

American Association for the Advancement of 

Science to develop “plans and actions to give life 

to the AAAS’s desire to engage the scientific 

community energetically and knowledgeably in a 

sustained K-12 science education reform effort” 

(Rutherford 2011). Rutherford was perfect for 

such an appointment with his diverse background 

as a science teacher, curriculum developer, 

professional development facilitator, university 

professor of science methods, grant writer, 

researcher, author, government education officer 

and reform leader. He fully appreciated the value 

and meaning of this new position and stated: 

  

It is from those experiences that I 

acquired a set of beliefs about science 

education reform-some fortifying my 

existing convictions, other changing 

them-that eventually led me to my role 

in the creation of Project 2061 and its 

first product, Science for All Americans 

(Rutherford 2011).  



56 
 

 

      He believed that the AAAS was the right 

organization for this work as well. It’s large 

membership cuts across all scientific areas and it 

was held in high regard globally, and by science 

policy makers worldwide. Because Rutherford 

had experience working in many different 

settings, he carefully weighted the association of 

this project to the AAAS.  

      The AAAS’s  board of directors is composed 

of outstanding scientists, most of whom care 

about and are informed on science education from 

K-12 to post-doc; its journal Science reaches 

scientists and science educators throughout the 

world; and being over a hundred years old, it 

seems likely to be in business for decades to come 

(Rutherford 2011).  

      The ultimate aim of Project 2061 is long-term 

commitment (hence the use of the year 2061, the 

year of the return of Halley’s Comet) that will 

lead to sustaining science, mathematics and 

technology reforms that facilitate the attainment 

of scientific literacy for all K-12 students by the 

time they graduate from high school. According 

to the goals outlined by Project 2061, the 

definition of science literacy is:  

 

“Science” in science literacy was to be 

broadly conceived to include the 

physical, biological, and social sciences, 

and the interrelationships among those 

sciences and mathematics and 

technology (Rutherford, 2011). 

  

      To achieve a scientific literate body of K-12 

students and future American citizens, Project 

2061 has created explicit learning goals that are 

compelling and challenging but attainable. The 

explicit learning goals are published in Science 

for All Americans and are “final rather than 

accumulating grade-band learning goals and 

without reference to teaching methods or 

materials” (Rutherford 2011). Most strongly 

stated is the determination that this 

accomplishment is to “be generated without 

involvement of or financial support from the 

federal government, in order that their authority 

will derive from the scientific community rather 

than from any agency of government” 

(Rutherford 2011). In order to create a systemic 

reform effort Rutherford relied on three valuable 

lessons from his other endeavors and career 

experiences and so was seeking to address the 

following problems that had stopped reform in the 

past: 

  

1. Sustainable science education reform 

needs to be steady rather than 

fragmented  

2. There needs to be a national 

consensus on the direction that science 

education should   take.  

3. There are no short term or impatient 

solutions; effective reform requires long-

term commitment from all involved.  

 

     With these issues in mind, Rutherford led the 

way to create reform tools for state, local and 

national curriculum revisions. What is a reform 

tool? Project 2061 consists of a series of 

publications (products) and web-based resources 

and currently includes Science for All Americans, 

Benchmarks to Science Literacy, Blueprints for 

Reform, Resources for Science Literacy, Designs 

for Science Literacy, and Atlas of Science 

Literacy (I & II). These products differ 

considerably one from another.  There are many 

other reports, studies, collaborative activities and 

resources.  

      Unlike curricular documents that spell out in 

vivid detail what science teachers should teach, 

fact by fact, Project 2061 “argues that less, not 

more, should be taught in schools” (Massey 1990, 

59). It contains information about how one idea in 



57 
 

science is connected to another through a 

subjective voice that professes the need for earthy 

stewardship.  

     With a consensus of what science literacy 

means, Rutherford began to pull educators, 

scientists, administrators, mathematicians, 

engineers, historians, and learning specialists to 

produce the book that would allow districts and 

teachers the tools they needed for “fashioning 

their own curricula (AAAS, 1990)”. This idea of 

setting a baseline, from which teachers can then 

individualize their programs to suit their needs 

and styles, is similar to the premise that 

Rutherford made in HPP. The goal of the 

“common conceptual focus” is stated in the 

preface to the book (AAAS 1990, x): 

 

Science for All Americans is the result of 

a three-year collaboration involving 

several hundred scientists, 

mathematicians, engineers, physicians, 

philosophers, historians, and educators. 

It is, we believe, as close as it is possible 

to come to valid expression of the view 

of the science community on what 

constitutes literacy in science, 

mathematics, and technology.  

 

      In an interview with the author, Rutherford 

describes the complex process of the production 

of Science for All Americans, 

 

Five independent science panels met 

regularly over this same period, to revise 

and rewrite the document as the panel of 

experts progressed. The panels examined 

five domains (Biological & Health 

Sciences, Mathematics, Physical & 

Information Sciences & Engineering, 

Social & Behavioral Sciences, and 

Technology) and were required to 

defend their positions according to 

scientific and educational significance. 

Consultants were invited to speak. In the 

end, the panels submitted drafts of 

reports on their decisions, which were 

sent to 130 highly qualified individuals 

and to the National Council for 

additional review. The final stamp of 

approval was issued after each of the 

AAAS Board of Directors read the 

document.  

 

     Science for All Americans was not a summary 

of these panel reports, but an “independent 

synthesis based on their recommendations.” 

(Massey 1990). Science For All Americans was 

released in 1989 and then again in 1990 to align 

with Benchmarks for Science Literacy,  the 

second book of Project 2061.  

      Several years following the release of Science 

for All Americans, and greatly influenced by the 

publication, the National Science Teachers 

Association and the National Academy of 

Sciences asked the National Research Council to 

coordinate the development of the national 

science education standards (NRC 1996, 14). The 

National Science Education Standards was a 

specific directive for what should be taught, and 

its sister companion, Inquiry and Learning: A 

Guide for Teaching and Learning Science (NRC  

2000) focused on how science should be taught 

with Project 2061, thus providing the tools to 

guide all states to uniformity in K-12 science.  

Rutherford, as director and leader of Project 2061 

had fulfilled the planned objectives upon joining 

the AAAS in 1985 in the “sustained K-12 science 

education reform effort” that would engage a 

scientific community (Rutherford 2011).    

      Lee and Paik (2000 17) believe there are five 

key reform documents that currently shape 

American education and include three assessment 

studies along with Project 2061 and the National 

Science Education Standards in the 

comprehensive analysis. They state “that Science 

for All Americans by Project 2061 (AAAS 1989) 



58 
 

represented a major milestone in shaping the 

discourse of science education reform since the 

late 1980”. Koppal and Caldwell (2004) provide 

valuable information about some of the tools of 

Project 2061: they indicate that The Atlas of 

Science Literacy (AAAS 2001a) “provides a 

collection of linked conceptual strand maps 

displaying the sequence of ideas that contribute to 

a sophisticated understanding of some key 

science and mathematics topics” (Koppal and 

Caldwell 2004, 29). Designs for Science Literacy 

(AAAS 2001b) “offers suggestions for 

restructuring time, instructional strategies, and 

content that can lead to very different kinds of 

curricula serving a common set of learning goals” 

(Koppal and Caldwell 2004, 29). These useful 

tools were the final products that spring at root, 

from Rutherford’s core beliefs clarified long 

before he retired as the director of Project 2061. 

      Under the current leadership, Project 2061 

hosts conferences to assist curriculum reformers 

with participants ranging from teachers, policy 

makers, textbook publishers and researchers. 

They have developed a partnership through an 

NSF-funded grant with Michigan State 

University, Northwestern University and the 

University of Michigan to create the Center for 

Curriculum Materials in Science. The purpose of 

the Center is to conduct significant research on 

issues related to “the design, analysis, and use of 

science materials, while also preparing a new 

generation of leadership through innovative 

graduate and postgraduate programs” (Koppal 

and Caldwell 2004, 29). Project 2061 has also 

been developing strategies and tools for 

evaluating the alignment of K–12 assessments in 

science and mathematics with national and state 

standards and benchmarks. A five-year 

comprehensive study provided data about testing 

has developed and offered  an assessment analysis 

methodology to determine the alignment of K–12 

science and mathematics assessment items to 

national and state standards. The Project 2061 

team has begun an Interagency Education 

Research Initiative with the University of 

Delaware and Texas A & M to study the best 

ways to coordinate curriculum, teaching methods 

and professional development to improve student 

learning outcomes in mathematics. Most recently, 

Project 2061 has established a parent portal with 

recommendations for families and communities 

as a response to international studies that point 

out American apathy towards science education.  

      Project 2061 is based on several deeply-held 

beliefs promoted by Rutherford’s influence. One 

is that the terms and circumstances of human 

existence can be expected to change as much and 

as unpredictably from 1985-2061  (coincidentally 

the approximate average human life span) as they 

did from 1910 to 1985 or 1835-1910. Science and 

technology will continue to be at the center of 

social and economic change-causing it, shaping it, 

responding to it. Science education will thus 

become ever more imperative in preparing 

individuals and societies for the current time and 

for their futures. Finally, there is a belief that 

science education is not now meeting that 

challenge and therefore must itself undergo 

extensive and insightful reform locally as well as 

globally. 

     At the outset, Project 2061 was an American 

undertaking to foster science literacy in its own 

people. With time, however, it became widely 

known outside of the United States. The Europe-

based Organization for Economic Cooperation 

and Development studied Project 2061 in 1989 

and characterized it as the “single most visible 

attempt at science education reform in American 

history” (Allman 1993).  Translations of Project 

2061 publications have been made in Asia, 

Europe, and Latin America. New Zealand 

researcher John Clark used the theoretical 



59 
 

premises of Project 2061 to support a call for 

reform in teacher preparation programs in New 

Zealand that he believes are: 

 

overstuffed and undernourished with too 

much emphasis on a detailed 

understanding of the nuts and bolts of 

individual components of the mandated 

curriculum and far too little emphasis on 

the more fundamental contextual aspects 

of the curriculum such as historical 

determinants, sociological influences, 

philosophical justifications and political 

motivations (Clark 2005, 520).  

 

     Rutherford stepped down as Education 

Director of the AAAS and Project 2061 in 1998 

and retired from the AAAS in 2001. It is clear 

that his contributions to science education reform 

were crucial to the success of advancing scientific 

literacy, and that his determination and his clear-

cut and clearly-stated goals have inspired many 

schools to obtain high quality science programs.  

    

Conclusion  

     This study attempted to present an account of a 

science educator whose great influence on a 

pivotal physics curriculum, Harvard Project 

Physics and his subsequent work, Project 2061 is 

unprecedented and sadly, mostly unknown. This 

research describes the impetus that drove one man 

to devote a very significant amount of intellectual 

energy to a reform process to facilitate the 

creation of quality K-12 science in the twentieth 

and twenty-first century.  Under his direction 

science education reform would proceed with the 

foundational ideals and pedagogical tools in place 

to give consistency and direction for sustained 

and long-term effects.         

 

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