Science Education & Policy

When there’s a report in the news about the latest science on climate change, the source is very often the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This body plays a very important role in global climate change policy around the world. Its reports, five of which have been published since 1990, enjoy a degree of credibility that renders them influential for public opinion. And more important, the reports are accepted as the definitive source by international negotiators working under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Now, though, the IPCC is…

It was mentioned in part 4 that a self-study modular instruction on teaching inorganic nomenclature was piloted and have been proven effective.  However, the use of the module was not implemented.  Why was the modular instruction not implemented? Nobody has actually told me formally the real reason that it left me wondering.  So to hypothesize,  maybe it is more on the politics in the school, or maybe an influential faculty member challenged the modular instruction on the following reasoning: 1.  There is another way to teach nomenclature.      …

Evaluations of research ethics do not benefit from a tick-box approach.  Australia’s social science research, like that in most developed countries since the infamous Milgram experiments took place at my alma mater in 1961, occurs under the watchful eye of ethics boards. University ethics boards assess research involving human subjects against standards, such as the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. The standards are guided by the core value of respect for the individual research participant. This value is of fundamental importance. Yet the recent case of a…

New gaps are opening up in educational achievement between teenage boys and girls, according to a comprehensive new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Analysis of its 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science across countries, shows that unfortunately, patterns between the performance of girls and boys have not changed much over time, although some of the gaps have closed a little. Girls are still doing better in reading. Boys still do better in maths and there is not much…

New York City professes to be tolerant, diverse and outcome-oriented in many ways - education for elites is not among them. 6 percent of 8th graders will get to go to one of 8 specialized elite schools, based on test scores and all of the racial, social and income inequality that perpetuates. Though New York City will happily ban Big Gulps and trans fats because they care about the poor and minorities, they rationalize why it is a meritocracy that female, black and Latino students are woefully underrepresented. Not all of them are underrepresented equally. The Bronx High School of Science is…

Picking cultural winners in the name of public interest is a time-honored tool of government and the social engineers giving them input, but the reasons for bans are often suspect. Banning cigarettes in bars and restaurants rather than creating an evidence-based ventilation requirement was going to cut smoking, it was said, but that hasn't happened no matter what sociological Laffer curve was invoked. Pundits wanted to create a ghetto-ized underclass but now smokers happily step outside at bars and restaurants, and they meet new people and create their own sub-culture. Less freedom and a more…

A child's reading progression isn't based on age, so you need to know what stage your child is up to in order to help them. Image credit:  Shutterstock Learning to read is a complicated process and parents often wonder if their child is developing reading abilities at the rate they “should”. Research agrees, however, that reading (and writing) is very much a developmental process, which can look very different for different children, regardless of their age. It can be very tempting to compare children of the same age in terms of their reading development. However, this is in no way a…

In America, teachers with tenure can't be fired and so it is more important than ever that the best people get the jobs in the first place.  Accountability is not going away in the American educational system, and neither are education unions, so new mechanisms for selecting individuals into teacher preparation could boost the quality. A new Video Assessment of Interactions and Learning (VAIL)  tool can inform teacher selection and help stop the ongoing educational reform undertaken by each new administration.  A new paper investigated the factor structure and…

A 10-year-old boy suffered seizures after over-indulging in licorice sweets and that has led to calls for manufacturers to put a warning on the labels of licorice.  After suffering a 2 minute tonic-clonic seizure, a 10-year-old boy was admitted to hospital in Bologna, Italy.  Three more generalized seizures occurred over the next few hours and so Dr. Davide Tassinari and colleagues used cranial computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to investigate the possibility of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES), but the major clinical…

Life is unpredictable, and we move forward the best we can despite not knowing every detail. It's no different in the natural world. The Earth is warming in some places and in some places it isn't, the weather is more variable today except it was always worse in the past when you talk to old people, some years there are more fish and deer than others.  Beware people who have magic bullets when it comes to conservation; it's all based on estimates and no small amount of speculation surrounding a kernel of things we know to be true. We can only get real policies when we are flexible -…