Category Archives: Curricular issues

How important are labs for learning science?

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Steve Gimbel has a provocative post that suggests the costs of undergraduate lab classes may outweigh the benefits. Quoth Steve:

[E]verything I know about physics, I learned from my theory classes. You see, science classes come in two flavors. There are theory classes where a prof stands in front of the room and lectures and then there are lab classes where for many hours, students walk in ill-prepared and tried to figure out which one of these things we’ve never seen before is a potentiometer, fumble their way through procedures that yield results that are not even close to what they were led to expect, and then plug and chug their way through scientific and error calculations that frankly mean little to them. I will freely admit that all my experiences in lab classes were a waste of intellectual time and curricular space that could have much better utilized.

Now, I’m supposed to be writing a serious academic paper right now*, but Steve, as a fellow philosopher who is well aware of my misspent scientific, actually emailed me to see if I’d weigh in on the (as did another blogger coming at the issue from the perspective of a working scientist). And, coincidentally, just the night before Steve published his post, my better half and I were reminiscing about our undergraduate experiences with laboratory classes. So really, what choice do I have but to respond?

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Students learn less from ‘cookbooks’ than from working out their own approach.

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Score another point for my mother.
My mother is a really good cook. She is also an unrepentant violator of recipes. My earliest cookbook related memory involves noticing that, while Mom had a recipe in front of her, she was flagrantly measuring different amounts of ingredients than those called for, and combining them in a way that clearly contravened the method described on the page.
It turns out that this manifestation of her issues with authority may also explain why she has such a good understanding of what she’s doing in the kitchen.
At least, that’s a conclusion I’m inclined to draw from research done by Ohio State University professor Steve Rissing on two different approaches to an enzyme laboratory experiment in an introductory biology course:

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Is ‘what is this good for?’ a question to be discouraged?

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Larry Moran posts a response to my response to his earlier post on the advisability of putting ethical discussions into science classes. Careful fellow that he is, he’s decided to stick to a single issue per posting, so he starts with “the relationship between science and technology and where ‘ethics’ fits in”. Larry opines:

Part of what we need to do as science teachers is to make sure our students understand the difference between science and technology — between the uses of science and the accumulation of scientific knowledge. …
The goal, as far as I am concerned, is to convince students that knowledge for its own sake is a valuable commodity regardless of whether or not the knowledge can be applied to the betterment (or destruction) of Homo sapiens.

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Teaching about ethics and other sources of controversy in science class.

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In a post about curricular issues in genetics and biochemistry courses, Larry Moran raises some good questions:

It’s almost a requirement these days that introductory genetics courses include a section on genetically modified crops. This invariably leads to tutorials, or labs, or essays, about whether GM-foods are a good thing or not. These discussions are usually lots of fun and the students enjoy this part of the course. Professors are convinced they are teaching ethics and that it’s a good thing to show students that ethics is an important part of science.
In introductory biochemistry courses we often have a section on fuel metabolism. That’s the part of biochemistry that deals specifically with how your food is converted to energy. It’s human biochemistry. In that section of the course the Professor often raises the question of proper diet. Is it okay to eat meat? Are trans fatty acids bad for you? Should you be eating carbohydrates? Our experience is that Professors who teach this section often have very strong opinions and their personal ethical stance is portrayed as scientific fact.
These are two different cases. In the first one, the question is whether the value of debating controversial “ethical” issues outweighs the disadvantages. The biggest downside, in my opinion, is the emphasis on technology as opposed to pure basic science. By giving prominence to “ethical” issues we are emphasizing the consequences of genetic knowledge as it relates to the human condition. …
Part of the problem arises from a desire to please the students. How often do we hear the complaint that students aren’t interested in biochemistry and genetics? The students are bored by science so we have to add sections on genetically modified foods and genetic screening to our introductory genetics courses. Isn’t this strange? Rather than concentrate on making the basic science as interesting and exciting as possible, we cater to the students by giving them the topics they think are interesting. That’s no way to educate.
There’s another problem; what is ethics? Sometimes it’s hard to see the difference between simple controversy and ethics. Sometimes it’s hard to define exactly what “ethics” is all about in spite of the fact that “bioethics” is one of the biggest growth industries in science. Here’s where a philosopher or two could weigh in.

Hey, I’m a philosopher! Here’s my take:

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What’s the best way to excite kids about science (or at least not convince them it’s boring or impossible)?

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On the heels of my post wondering where the science is in elementary school, I’m interested in your sense of how things stand now and what, if anything, you think we should do about the situation. Draw on your experience as a former (or current) student, a parent, an educator (including educating future teachers), a working scientist, or whatever.
The possibilities that have been raised so far seem to be:

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Online AP science classes — with lab?

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Adventures in Ethics and Science field operative RMD alerted me to a recent article in the New York Times (free registration required) about an ongoing debate on the use of online instruction for Advanced Placement science classes. The crux of the debate is not the value of online science classes per se, but whether such courses can accomplish the objectives of an AP science course if they don’t include a traditional, hands-on laboratory component.
The debate is interesting for a few reasons. First, it gets to the question of what precisely an AP course is intended to do. Second, it brings up the question of who has access to AP courses — and the special challenges presented for science instruction in some regions. Finally, I think it also prompts an examination of how colleges and universities deal with incoming student bodies whose preparation for college is rather more heterogeneous than homogeneous.
Full disclosure: As some of you already know, I regularly teach an online section of my philosophy of science course.* As well, about a hundred years ago, I was a high school student who took a bunch** of AP classes and AP tests.

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We’re pro-truth.

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It’s not just a science thing, it’s also an ethics thing. The truth is good. Departures from it, more often than not, get you into trouble.
A couple examples:
The Guarantee of Medical Accuracy in Sex Education Act was recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. Wouldn’t you think that education would be premised on accurate information? What have we come to when it takes a law “to prohibit the federal government from providing assistance to any entity whose materials on human sexuality contain medically inaccurate information”?
Memo to the folks who are spinning this as an unwarranted attack on abstinence-only sex education: If abstinence-only education is not supported by medically accurate information, stop trying to sell it on the basis of medically inaccurate information. You can still try to sell it on the basis of its allignment with a moral standard, if that’s why you favor it, but don’t lie to sell it on the basis of advantages it doesn’t actually have.
Sheesh, if you have to use bad data to sell a view, can you really be certain it’s a good view? (And, even if you’re certain, should it surprise you that other people won’t be when they discover that some of the premises of your argument are false — and that you knew they were false as you repeated the argument?)
From the political to the personal, I want to pick up on a detail from First Year Teacher’s heart-breaking and angry-making letter of resignation (which I saw via A Blog Around the Clock).

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Study suggests U.S. science teaching falls short on content.

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The U.S. Department of Education has just announced the results of a study comparing what’s going on in 8th grade science classrooms in the U.S. , the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Japan, and Australia.
You will be shocked — shocked! — to learn that U.S. science students did not do as well as their counterparts in the other four countries in the study when it came to learning science content.
The Dept. of Ed. press release, and a wee bit of commentary, below the fold.

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First-year experience? Dude, just let me dig into those engineering courses!

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Inside Higher Ed is reporting that UT-Austin’s Task Force on Curricular Reform has issued its report on the kind of first-year experience that might dop good things for the undergraduates (in terms of making general education more coherent and so forth).
The faculty are commenting on the report. Apparently, the science and engineering faculty are less than enthusiastic.

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