Science Education & Policy

Universities, with a young  constituency and an employee base of academics interested in new discoveries and ways of communication, should have embraced social media early - but they have not and if they don't embrace new techniques in pedagogy they risk becoming seen as anachronisms in today’s hyper-connected world where information is available freely, says a University of Illinois expert who studies the knowledge economy’s effect on higher education. Michael A. Peters, a professor of educational policy studies in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s College of Education…

New research from Vanderbilt University has found students benefit more from being taught the concepts behind math problems rather than the exact procedures to solve the problems. The findings offer teachers new insights on how best to shape math instruction to have the greatest impact on student learning. The research by Bethany Rittle-Johnson, assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College and Percival Mathews, a Peabody doctoral candidate, is in press at the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. "Teaching children the basic concept…

I'm not usually much for video - text allows me to do three other things at the same time whereas video occupies two of my senses and annoys me when I am playing guitar.    And I would like to ban all use of "X Whisperer" after the name of every person who thinks they have something clever to say.   But when someone I have never heard of (which means nothing, I am no microbiology expert) on a site I have never heard of(ditto regarding pop science) does something terrific in an interesting, elegant fashion,  I am willing to kill 18 minutes of my life not being ADD, or…

This is what I would do: Princeton's Integrated Science curriculum. This is how science should be taught: The course begins with an overview of the different disciplines in the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) and our strategy for providing a unified understanding of them. The rest of the semester is arranged around two major classes of quantitative models: dynamical and probabilistic (see below). The power of these models to describe key phenomena in physics, chemistry and biology will be taught. Through applying these models, students will learn both the most critical facts…

Last time I discussed reducing cognitive load in a new approach to scientific education: Some ways to do so are obvious, such as slowing down. Others include having a clear, logical, explicit organization to the class (including making connections between different ideas presented and connections to things the students already know), using figures where appropriate rather than relying only on verbal descriptions and minimizing the use of technical jargon. Addressing Beliefs A second way teachers can improve instruction is by recognizing the importance of student beliefs about science. This is…

The House passed  legislation by a 298-112 vote to grant FDA authority to regulate, but not ban, cigarettes and other tobacco products, according to NPR and the Wall Street Journal. The FDA could make ingredients public, ban flavoring and prohibit marketing campaigns. The Senate could take up the bill* this month, but whether it can pass is up in the air. The White House supports the bill, and surprisingly Philip Morris is on board**, but most other tobacco companies and some senators, including Republican Richard Burr, N.C., oppose the legislation. Burr has…

... Not that the Texas school board creationists were coherent before, but what else do they have left? After the defeat of language in the state standards to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution in Texas public schools, the creationist school board members have rallied under the motto "Somebody's got to stand up to experts!" Thus, in defiance of the logical thinking and coherent grammar embraced so fondly by those nefarious experts, the Texas school board on Friday passed a number of incoherent amendments to their state science standards. Ars Technica's Nobel Intent has the…

Creationists have put us into a bizarre, alternate universe, at least when it comes to curriculum design. Their latest attempt to undermine science education involves inserting the code words 'strengths and weaknesses' into the public school science standards. The idea is that, whenever something religious fundamentalists find controversial crops up in science class, teachers have to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of that particular topic. Fortunately, this creationist code has just been kept out of the Texas state science standards, but you can bet the code is going to crop up again at…

Continued from Part 2, A Scientific Approach to Science Education - Research On Learning On average, students have more novicelike beliefs after they have completed an introductory physics course than they had when they started; this was found for nearly every introductory course measured. More recently, my group started looking at beliefs about chemistry. If anything, the effect of taking an introductory college chemistry course is even worse than for taking physics. So we are faced with another puzzle about traditional science instruction. This instruction is explicitly built around…

Two guest writers on Olivia Judson's blog offer an interesting idea for spending stimulus money on research: Instead of simply funding more grants, we suggest using some of the windfall to provide an opportunity for fresh college graduates to pursue two years of research in the nation’s service while the job market is bottoming out. Call it “Research for America.” Our proposal would put young Americans to work and support science — without setting off a later bust cycle in research support, as previous funding booms have done. They make a good point about a boom and bust cycle in research…