This paper contends that the science education community would benefit from a three-step, research-based model that would allow science education researchers, in the final step, to make recommendations to classroom teachers. The first step would be to establish an interdisciplinary approach to research on how the brain and mind learn and remember. By collecting and consolidating available data and engaging in dialog with researchers in other fields, it is argued that the determination can be made as to what data are pertinent to educational needs. At that point researchers in science education would be ready for the planning of educational research based on comprehensive theory. These research results could then lead to the third step, the outlining of actual classroom implications. All three steps must be dynamic and open to new findings. This paper is intended to provide a stimulus for the outlined three-step approach by providing a short history of cognitive science research, by documenting the need for interdisciplinary studies, and by providing a review of current information available on memory systems from research in the cognitive sciences. An extensive bibliography is appended. (TW)