Teaching Skepticism In Science Classes Instead Of Facts

[HereSince1628]

10. I am glad people are thinking about the problem, but I think this isn't the solution

Last edited Mon Apr 9, 2012, 05:34 PM - Edit history (3)

It reminds me a lot of the original approach of the BSCS. As someone who taught freshman biology at university for 30 years I think that NSF funded effort, and it's unfortunate offspring, was poorly considered.

This 8 + 1 thing reminds me of those efforts, particularly an orientation that starts with the smallest possible things to understand--the components of atoms.

1) In addition to pedagogical issues, the thing that I see missing is the concept of integration of small things into bigger more complex and diverse things which exhibit emergent properties that weren't existent in the components from which they were made. Emergent properties not only can be studied THEY MUST BE STUDIED at higher levels of phenomenological integration/hierarchy and consequently at different levels of resolution than those of a group of like typical cells, molecules, or physical forces.

Explaining predator-prey relationship in terms of basic physical forces and chemical energy is possible (and done), but it provides a quite narrow platform for asking questions or for framing solutions for the sorts of problems encountered by most people actually dealing with predators (or prey) as part of their environment.

It's my experience that anticipation of emergent properties at different levels of resolution is a very important principal in 'the physical sciences' but I can't really speak for physics or chemistry. Levels of organization and integration into hierarchical systems is extraordinarily important to understanding to biology.

As an illustration I'll suggest that the concept of a 'skeletal bone' isn't really built into what knowledge can be drawn from a nominally 'typical cell'. Meaningful vocal communication requiring two individuals with complex bodies, special senses and organ systems doesn't follow as a logical certainty from anything that we 'know' by having a concept of a cell--contingent evolution of hierarchical levels of function does.

Without bones, there isn't muscular-skeletal system and vertebrate locomotion. And again conceptual understanding of a nominally typical 'model' cell doesn't anticipate an opposing thumb and grasping hand or a hoof much less organisms swinging through trees or stilting across a savannah.

It's true that eumetazoans are modular in some manner of cellularconceptualization, but awareness that an animal is essentially a big bag of many tiny somewhat similar bags composed of variations on mostly similar sub-cellular components falls way short of providing any understanding the structure of hominid social groupings on which each and everyone of us depends daily.

At a practical level, if you want an 18 year old to graduate from HS with knowledge of the basics of human reproduction, thorough knowledge of biochemistry is not as important as fully understanding the importance of ejaculation and coitus...things which definitely are not anticipated by knowing the basic molecular and membrane components of a nominally 'typical cell'.

Without an appreciation for emergent properties at different levels of resolution in sub-levels and higher levels of integrated hierarchical systems, understanding biology is very compromised. This 8 +1 thing seems to have been constructed by people without much appreciation for biology beyond the level of cellular and molecular biology.

Interestingly enough, this "from the bottom up path" used extensively in biology education largely ignores the historic fact that understanding emerges by integrating understanding from multiple lines of inquiry, nothing is seen to be waiting for a technological or intellectual development. By using the bottom-up pattern, rather than modelling student discovery/education on the model of successful research, biology courses can't follow the historic pursuit of questions in the teaching of methods of scientific inquiry or adequately express the importance of being broadly aware of advances beyond one's narrow interest.


2) My experience trying to teach beginning undergraduate biology to both majors and non-majors is that pedagogically things must go from the most familiar toward things that are novel. Starting first graders on the path to understanding biology by beginning with atoms and cells seems much more like starting with the least familiar.

The BSCS based curriculum model nearly universally used by American textbook publishers and American colleges and universities up to 3 years ago (when I left college teaching) began with atomic parts and biomolecules. It admittedly goes in a usually logical way from small to big (starting with the components of which other things are built and then moving on to the things that are built). But this really forces teachers to begin with what, frankly, is most UNfamilar in order to get to familiar things like plants and animals after 4 months of work (Of course one might argue that a person who has been dealing with the notion of polymerized bio-molecules, genomes and proteomes since kindergarten won't feel that way after 13 years, though I find the idea of first grade proteonomists who are struggling through their McGuffy readers rather mind boggling).

Finally, call me a radical politicized liberal academic if you wish, but I can't imagine an approach that more purposefully hides the utility of organismal and ecological biology and value of scientific integration.

This is an approach that leaves undeveloped, if not destroyed, K-12 students' interest in vast important areas of biology by having them spend 13 years at school to emerge with an understanding of biology that begins with atoms and stops with cells.

That's utterly heart breaking when you think about what that means to developing in the human population anything approaching biophilia.