There's been a lot of talk about how to teach science literacy. The discussion in the USA centers around STEM (science, engineering, technology, mathematics) and this acronym has also spread to other countries. It's an unfortunate development since there's a big difference between teaching science and teaching those other three topics.
Most studies suggest that we focus on teaching The Nature of Science (NOS). There's no definition of this topic that everyone agrees to but the essence is that students need to understand how our society generates knowledge. In the context of the natural sciences, this means understanding the process of discovery. There's general agreement that what this means is critical thinking that's evidence-based. It's another way of saying that we need to teach critical thinking and the importance of using evidence to back up and test your claims of knowledge. "Appreciating the scientific process can be even more important than knowing scientific facts. People often encounter claims that something is scientifically known. If they understand how science generates and assesses evidence bearing on these claims, they possess analytical methods and critical thinking skills that are relevant to a wide variety of facts and concepts and can be used in a wide variety of contexts.”National Science Foundation, Science and Technology Indicators, 2008
The reasoning behind this emphasis is based on two pedagogical facts. The first is that it's impossible to teach all the facts and theories of a typical scientific discipline like astronomy or geology. It's pointless to make students memorize information that they will forget as soon as the class is over, Instead, as the argument goes, we need to teach students to understand how evidence is gathered and how it becomes fact. Teach students how to appreciate science and its power to create knowledge. That's something that will stick with them all their lives.
The second pedagogical fact is that very few students in a science class will ever become scientists. We should be teaching the majority and not the minority who are majoring in a science subject. This is especially true in high school and introductory college courses. Given this fact, our task is to ensure that these students are prepared to think critically and to understand and appreciate the nature of science and the importance of evidence-based reasoning.
Clearly, scientific education ought to mean the implanting of a rational, sceptical, experimental habit of mind. It ought to mean acquiring a method – a method that can be used on any problem that one meets – and not simply piling up a lot of facts.George Orwell
Many modern curricula recognize this goal and include some statements about teaching the nature of science. For example, here's what the curriculum for the province of Ontario in Canada says about the nature of science ....
THE NATURE OF SCIENCE
The primary goal of science is to understand the natural and human-designed worlds. Science refers to certain processes used by humans for obtaining knowledge about nature, and to an organized body of knowledge about nature obtained by these processes. Science is a dynamic and creative activity with a long and interesting history. Many societies have contributed to the development of scientific knowledge and understanding. ...Scientists continuously assess and judge the soundness of scientific knowledge claims by testing laws and theories, and modifying them in light of compelling new evidence or a re-conceptualization of existing evidence.
The Ontarion Curriculum: Grades 9 and 10, Science
It all sounds so easy but it's not. Resistance comes from many sides but one of the important issues is defining science. I subscribe to the idea that science is a way of knowing but that definition is not universally accepted [Is science the only way of knowing?]. We also have many attempts by some scientists to restrict science to methodological naturalism thus preventing science from investigating the truth of supernatural explanations. Is that part of teaching about the Nature of Science?
If science is a way of knowing and if we need to teach the nature of science then one of the key questions that comes up time and time again is how do we know what knowledge is correct? The obvious answer is that we have to rely on experts to define correct knowledge. Then part of teaching the nature of science involves teaching students how to sort the wheat from the chaff—how do you identify the real experts?
A recent study from Stanford University addressed this issue in an exellent report: Science Education in an Age of Misinformation. They point out that no student, or anybody else, can learn everything on their own. The idea of an intellectually independent thinker is a mth.
The ideal envisioned by the great American educator and philosopher John Dewey—that it is possible to educate students to be fully intellectually independent—is simply a delusion. We are always dependent on the knowledge of others. Moreover, the idea that education can educate independent critical thinkers ignores the fact that to think critically in any domain you need some expertise in that domain. How then, is education to prepare students for a context where they are faced with knowledge claims based on ideas, evidence, and arguments they do not understand?
Two of the lead authors of the Stanford Report published a short synopsis in Science where they discussed how to recognize experts [Science, misinformation, and the role of education]. Last year Bruce Alberts, Karen Hopkin, and Keith Roberts addressed the same issue in an essay that became part of their textbook [Why Trust Science?].
It's all very complicated. Do you think we should be focused on teaching the nature of science or is it too difficult? Is it easier, but still effective, to teach some version of a crude scientific method? Or is it all a waste of time and all we need to do is teach facts and get students to regurgitate them on an exam?
Note: I've been thinking a lot recently about teaching students how to think critically and use evidence-based reasoning. It's an issue when it comes to evaluating whether an ICE agent bears responsibility for shooting someone. There are people who claim to be experts but have reached different conclusions. There are even more complicated problems such as whether a major superpower should respect the territorial integrity of a less powerful sovereign nation, such as Greenland. Surely, there are important facts that should influence our opinion? And what about something like tariffs? What's the evidence that they lead to a better economy as some people claim? It seems to me that evidence based reasoning is not very popular in some places. Is that a fault of education?
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