Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

eolecki's picture

"Put a little Science in Your Life"/"Science and Knowledge"

            Both articles seem to be making the same point; many people have a skewed view when it comes to the idea of science.  Science is not just about learning facts and memorizing formulas; it involves a certain type of thinking.  In “Put a Little Science in Your Life” I really liked the comparison the author made to memorizing scales but never actually playing a masterpiece.  Science is about taking the things you learn and bring them all together to create a new question or to think of something in a new way.  It is great if you understand specific concepts like the parts of a cell and what they do, but science involves taking that knowledge one step further and asking questions and forming guesses and thinking about all the implications that knowledge has on your life. 

     “Science and Knowledge” talks about science as an “ongoing process” instead of teaching specific skills and content.  The nature of science is constantly changing, which is why simply memorizing facts is not enough to truly understand science.  I took biology my sophomore year and by my senior year when I took AP there had already been numerous discoveries that completely changed what I was taught only two years earlier.  Teaching students what to do with scientific knowledge is what should be the goal of all teachers.  Although, teaching students a thought process rather than facts is much more difficult and even more difficult to measure.  But once students learns to think like this, questioning, evaluating, experimenting, and drawing their own conclusions, than they really understand what science is.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
17 + 1 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.