Science Education & Policy

Who are your all time favourite childrens' authors? Dr. Seuss, Enid Blyton, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Adolf Hitler? Warning: satire alert!Adolf Hitler - World's Best-Selling Children's Author. Adolf Hitler, famous author of the philosophical masterpiece Mein Kampf has his children' early learning books and methods placed on lists of approved materials for use in British and American schools. Whaaat!!!??? Of course, even if Hitler had written early-learners for children, nobody in their right mind would promote them.  Would they? Just look at the megalomaniac's background…

High school biology teachers may be even more important than the curriculm, according to a University of Minnesota study published in the May issue of BioScience. Co-authors Randy Moore and Sehoya Cotner, professors in the College of Biological Sciences, surveyed 1,000 students taking introductory biology classes at the University of Minnesota to learn how biology majors view evolution compared to non-majors. Results showed that the two groups' views were similar and revealed that high school biology teachers influence whether majors and non-majors college students accept evolution or…

This topic isn't new, but it's worth revisiting (h/t to Bioephemera) - over at Physicsworld read about science's need for "black swan" scientists: If the path to discovery is full of surprises, and if most of the gains come in just a handful of rare but exceptional events, then even judging whether a research programme is well conceived is deeply problematic... This raises an important question: does today’s scientific culture respect this reality? Are we doing our best to let the most important and most disruptive discoveries emerge? Or are we becoming too conservative and constrained…

Richard Dawkins doesn’t usually strike me as being naïve, but one has to wonder when Dawkins abandons himself to the following sort of writing about his favorite topic these days, the incompatibility between science and religion, on his web site: If they’ve [the creationists] been told that there’s an incompatibility between religion and evolution, well, let’s convince them of evolution, and we’re there! Because after all, we’ve got the evidence. ... I suspect that most of our regular readers here would agree that ridicule, of a humorous nature, is likely to be more effective than the…

Is tenure good for America? Mark Taylor, a professor of religion, has observed (in the New York Times) that: "graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist)…[with] sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans." This is not really true of the sciences, where the main product is the research that is central to graduate education, research that often leads directly to improvements in healthcare, agriculture, engineering, or environmental quality. Nor do science PhD's usually take on much debt. (If…

Graduate education in the humanities may have its problems, but don't try to tar science with the same brush. In a NY Times Op-Ed, by Dr. Mark Taylor, the chairman of Columbia's religion department, we're told that graduate education in general is in need of a major overhaul. Graduate programs train students for jobs that most of them won't get: Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and…

I have recently been contacted by a friend who is worried at the decline in numeracy in the West.  He asked me what I thought of the following: In 2005, Newt Gingrich (who had been on the Hart-Rudman Commission) stated: The collapse of math and science education in the US and the relative decline of investment in basic research is an enormous strategic threat to American national security. … Keeping America competitive in the twenty-first century is dependent upon having increasing number of students studying math and science. An author by the name of Gladwell states, in his book…

WHAT: New research from Baylor College of Medicine indicates a positive effect of chewing gum on academic performance in teenagers. The study examined whether chewing Wrigley sugar-free gum can lead to better academic performance in a "real life" classroom setting. Major findings include: The researchers found that students who chewed gum showed an increase in standardized math test scores and their final grades were better compared to those who didn't chew gum. Students who chewed gum had a significantly greater increase in their standardized math test scores after 14 weeks of chewing gum…

Continued from A Scientific Approach to Science Education - Beliefs, Guided Thinking And Technology. I assign students to groups the first day of class (typically three to four students in adjacent seats) and design each lecture around a series of seven to 10 clicker questions that cover the key learning goals for that day. The groups are told they must come to a consensus answer (entered with their clickers) and be prepared to offer reasons for their choice. It is in these peer discussions that most students do the primary processing of the new ideas and problem-solving approaches. The…

Bora has posted an interesting draft policy on social media from an unidentified "Big Research Institution" (BRI). It's already stimulating some good discussion (follow the link for more links) - no surprise, since the policy guidelines contain juicy quotes like these: All BRI social media output is the intellectual property of BRI. Whether you are setting up new BRI social media pages within the BRI website or on an existing social media site such as Flickr or Facebook, they need to follow the BRI interactive project process. In the first instance please discuss with your manager. If…