Change in U.S. science education urged EAST LANSING, Mich., April 5 (UPI) -- American students need a dramatically different approach if improvements are to be realized in how they learn science, a group of scientists and educators say. The group, led by Michigan State University professor William Schmidt, has a proposal called the 8+1 Science concept that calls for a radical overhaul in K-12 schools to move away from memorizing scientific facts and focus on helping students understand eight fundamental science concepts. "Now is the time to rethink how we teach science," Schmidt, a professor of statistics and education, said in an MSU release Thursday. What we are proposing through 8+1 Science is a new way of thinking about and teaching science, not a new set of science standards. It supports basic concepts included in most sets of state standards currently in use and complements standards-based education reform efforts. Traditionally, science in the United States has been taught in isolated disciplines such as chemistry, biology and physics without clear connections being made between the subjects, the group said. The 8+1 concepts, it said, were derived from two basic questions: What are things made of and how do systems interact and change? The eight concepts are: atoms, cells, radiation, systems change, forces, energy, conservation of mass and energy, and variation. "The natural world seems to operate through these laws and concepts, but when it comes to schooling we don't teach children these laws and then show how these apply in different situations," Schmidt said.