WASHINGTON — The National Science Foundation is awarding $8.6 million in grants to encourage middle schools and high schools to begin making sweeping changes in the way science is taught, officials said Thursday.

The grants represent the foundation’s largest single effort to reform pre-college science education since the Sputnik era of the 1950s, said Luther Williams, assistant director for education and human resources.

The project wants to update teaching methods, increase the time students spend on science and strengthen teacher training.

Six three-year grants were awarded from 12 proposals.

The National Science Teachers Association, the overall coordinator of the project, received $1.5 million; Baylor College of Medicine, $1.3 million; the California Department of Education, $1.4 million; the University of Iowa, $1.4 million; the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, $1.5 million; and the University of Puerto Rico, $1.4 million.

The Education Department funded $1.6 million of the earlier stages of the project.

The grant recipients will develop programs that will be tested in schools.

Current science education follows a pattern in grades seven through nine — life science in grade seven, earth science in grade eight, and another year of science in grade nine, either life science or physical science, said William Aldridge, executive director of the science teachers group.

Aldridge said that high school sciences follow a “rigid layer cake approach” that teaches facts and terminology without relating the information to the students’ daily lives.

Using the grants, new science curriculum materials will be tested in regional middle and high schools. National curriculum materials based on the regional materials then will be developed and distributed by the science teachers association.

Aldridge said course content would be coordinated and subjects offered over three or four years instead of just one year, which would lead to a more integrated high school science education.

The California Department of Education is coordinating the reform efforts of 214 high school and junior or middle schools across the state, said Tom Sachse of the California education department. A key focus will be on teacher training, he said.

The University of Puerto Rico plans to develop techniques to integrate mathematics with the sciences in grades seven through nine. It also will produce materials in Spanish.

The grants were awarded under the foundation’s Science and Math Education Network’s Scope, Sequence, and Coordination program.