At a time when colleges are looking for better ways to train prospective teachers and school systems are striving to improve math and science education, a research team at the University of Rhode Island is pursuing both those goals — reshaping how elementary teachers teach science.

The university has launched a five-year study — backed by a $2.25-million grant from the National Science Foundation — that explores the skills teachers need to effectively teach hands-on science.

“We are moving away from using textbook science, which is what was typically done, to experiments and working with materials the way scientists do,” said Betty Young, a URI education professor and lead investigator on the study.

“Teachers also need support in order to do science in a different way. It sort of has to be ‘No Teacher Left Behind,’ ” Young said, referring to the federal education law No Child Left Behind. “We need to be continually developing the knowledge of teachers.”

Improving science education is seen as critical to success in the global economy, which increasingly revolves around technology, biomedicine, pharmaceuticals and other high-tech industries. Students in the United States trail their counterparts in Europe and Asia in math and science.

In response to this trend, several states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts, have moved to bolster math, science, engineering and technology education at all levels.

Young says one of the chief problems with current science education is that teachers fail to engage elementary students in earth and physical sciences because the teachers themselves dread the subject.

“Elementary teachers are not, and cannot be, expert in all the areas that are covered in the elementary science curriculum, because the content area is too broad,” Young said.

Unlike high school science teachers who specialize in chemistry, biology, anatomy or physics, elementary teachers are trained to teach all subjects, and therefore have less specialized knowledge in hard sciences.

One way to address this problem is to use science kits that cover three broad themes each year and promote hands-on experiments. The kits guide teachers through the lessons. One problem, Young said, is that the kits used to cost about $300 per classroom but have doubled in price in recent years.

Young has helped to develop several such science kits that are used in some Rhode Island schools. Fourth graders, for example, can learn about electrical circuits by wiring a cardboard house they make. They can learn about motion and design by using toys that use different kinds of propulsion, such as rubber bands and ramps.

“We need to give [student teachers] a better send off from the university and to get them really excited about science,” Young said. “One of the things we are doing with this grant is following student teachers through their first year and beyond. We look at their beliefs about science, we videotape them in the classroom, to see if they are getting better, and we place them with cooperating mentor teachers, who help them.”

THE FIVE-YEAR STUDY aims to upgrade the way elementary science classes are taught, analyze the importance of mentoring new teachers and provide professional development programs for both new and veteran teachers.

Many of these goals could be applied to teacher training in general, said David Byrd, director of URI’s School of Education.

Many teacher training programs have not kept pace with dramatic changes in education, such as tougher standards required by No Child Left Behind. They are now struggling to find new ways to ensure that teachers are not only well-prepared in their subject area, but can also teach different kinds of students effectively, including special-education students and English language learners. Some programs also recognize that new teachers need extra support for the first couple of years and are starting mentoring programs similar to the one in Young’s study.

Byrd is overseeing a $7.55-million study exploring the way teachers are prepared at the eight Rhode Island colleges that offer teacher training programs: URI, Rhode Island College, Brown University, Johnson & Wales University, Providence College, Rhode Island School of Design, Roger Williams University and Salve Regina University.

“Teachers do need to be held accountable and higher education needs to be held accountable, too,” Byrd said. “We need to make sure our candidates come out of URI and get into districts and continue to be mentored. That’s a necessary component. ”Effective teacher preparation in math and science is essential, Byrd said.

“There are some content areas that are really gateways for students who are going to enter certain careers, and science is a gateway,” Byrd said. “You won’t become an engineer if you haven’t taken a full cadre of math and science courses in high school.”

And chances are a student won’t take honors physics in high school if he or she hasn’t been turned on to science in elementary school.