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

• playground
• brain & behavior
• complex systems
• biology
• science education
• science & culture
• art exhibitions
• about us

What IS Science? or Science as Story-Telling or Science as a Common Human Story of Exploration, Discovery, and Creation or Finding Ways to Make it So

Context	Theory	Examples	Resources	On-Line Forum

The Context "I am an early childhood/elementary level trained teacher and I come from a humanities rather than a science background. I would like to increase my understanding of all the science topics that I will be teaching; could you recommend a few books about science for elementary level teachers? I am not looking for activity books as much as to increase my own understanding of science, the scientific method etc." ... Email to Serendip "My personal view of science for many years was, well, summed up with one word, "Yuck"; in primary school it was indistinguishable from the morass of general information we learned from uninspiring textbooks and well-meaning, but insipid teachers. Middle school was worse: sterile classrooms in which science was lectured at us... Then came the nightmarish annual science project... Along with college pretty much came the exit of science from my life" ... High school teacher "[T]here are new troubles in the peculiar form of paradise that science has created as well as new questions about whether it has the popular support to meet the future challenges... Science has also provoked a deeper unease by disturbing traditional beliefs" ... New York Times, Science Times, 11 November, 2003 "Oh, if we became scientists with sentiment and excitement [in] fantasy as well as [in] "truth" what a world, what a universe! ... Middle school teacher "Science has the potential to be what we all collectively need as we evolve into a world wide community: a nexus point that encourages and supports the evolution of shared human stories of exploration and growth, an evolution in which all human beings are involved and take pride. For this to happen, we all need to work much harder to not only reduce the perception of science as a specialized and isolated activity of the few but to make it in fact the product and property of all human beings" .... Revisiting Science in Culture

The Challenge: To move toward science seen as ... Primarily process rather than content knowledge Rigor without oppressiveness Concreteness without lifelessness Playfulness without meaninglessness Something that everyone can draw from and be empowered by Something to which everyone can contribute Engaged with rather than isolated from other spheres of human activity

Science as Story Telling in Action
Context	Theory	Examples	Resources	On-Line Forum
A project initiated by the Serendip/SciSoc 2005 summer working group