Showing posts with label nature of science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature of science. Show all posts

Friday, March 28, 2008

Science Expelled

In April, a new film called Expelled will attempt to poison the well of public opinion about science education. It is a propaganda piece for Intelligent Design. Even astronomy teachers should be aware of its message. Here's why.

Science is not a dogma. It is a process.

A major responsibility we have in teaching any introductory science course, including astronomy, is to discuss how the scientific process works and the differences between science and pseudoscience. In the curriculum I have put together for my Astro 101 course, I include a few days on these topics (I should really have more!). In class, we discuss Occam’s Razor, falsification, peer review, pseudoscience, and logical fallacies, just to name a few topics. A major issue that I feel is important to bring up is that science has built in agnosticism. The idea that there is an invisible, omnipresent and omniscient God (or gods) that created the Universe and the life within it is an un-falsifiable hypothesis. There are no observations that we can make of the Universe before time zero. If anything was happening before the Universe started, we will probably never know about it. Any predictions made about what was happening before the Universe, whether they are the colliding branes of string theory, or the machinations of deities, are un-testable and so cannot be verified by science. Science must be agnostic when it comes to the origins of the Universe.

Science is also apolitical. It is merely a process by which we can discover ever more useful models that explain the workings of nature. The results of these models do not tell us whether we should join a Kyoto Protocol, they only give a range of possible outcomes. The results of scientific models have never said outright that the manufacturing industry should be regulated. The results only give detected levels of heavy metals in soils and water sources. Science has nothing to say about what people and politicians should do. It only provides data and models that can possibly be used in making pragmatic decisions.

Teaching science in the science classroom

An introductory science classroom should be about learning the results and processes of modern mainstream science. If I went to my curriculum committee and said that my school should teach Newton’s Laws in the World Religions course, I would be laughed at. But this is the kind of scenario we are witnessing across the country. Politically and religiously motivated people have decided that the results and processes of modern science are incongruous with their deeply held beliefs. They petition local school boards to adopt new definitions of science that inject supernatural causes into models of nature. They ask that equal time be given to other explanations (well, just one actually) of the Universes origins. They ask that if evolution is taught, then students should be subjected to a laundry list of (logically and scientifically unsound) “problems” with evolution.

The people who oppose the results and processes of modern science know that creationism and Intelligent Design will not gain a foothold within the scientific community. The reason is simple: these explanations make ZERO useful predictions that can be verified through observation and experiment. I have been careful to place the word “useful” in the last sentence. Certainly predictions can be made from following the reasoning of creationism. If the Biblical story of creation is to be taken literally, then we should occasionally find human fossils (or even horses, etc) among the ancient strata that actually do contain fossils of less developed organisms. In all of paleontology, no such observation has been made. Does this mean that it will not be made? No, but the likelihood is so small as to make the search for a human fossil there a waste of time. The best creationism and Intelligent Design can do is to generate philosophical and scientifically illiterate objections to evolution. Merely making objections does not qualify a set of ideas as a modern science.

Because of the failure of creationism and Intelligent Design to make any useful predictions about nature, there are very few peer-reviewed journal articles published that promote these ideas. Creationism and Intelligent Design are not likely to contribute any new and exciting ideas to modern science. Any scientific model of nature that wishes to become the dominant explanation of biology needs to be at least as useful as the current model. The current model is evolution. Modern biological evolution is useful and makes many novel predictions and retrodictions. However, contrary to what the anti-evolutionists say, biological evolution has nothing to say about what caused life to appear on the Earth in the first place.

Creationism and Intelligent Design have failed to gain traction within the scientific community because they are useless ideas. So, proponents of these ideas go to the courts and the school boards. It does not appear difficult to convince a school board to adopt educational standards that include the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in science classrooms. It does, however, appear difficult to get a court to agree on that point (just look at the Dover, PA court case on Intelligent Design).

ID proponents claim that scientists are part of a conspiracy

A new tactic has become the norm within the creationist and Intelligent Design community. It is a psychological tactic, meant to prey on the sense of fairness that Americans largely have. ID proponents now claim that mainstream science is suppressing their research and actively engaged in keeping ID out of the classroom. If ID is being kept out of the science classroom, it is because of the reasons I outlined above. It is not a useful model of nature and has no foreseeable promise as a part of modern science. But that is not what ID proponents are giving as the reason their ideas are rejected. They say that mainstream science is filled with “materialism”, a emotionally-loaded and nebulous term which asserts that scientists deny God and any sort of spirituality.

It is true that an individual scientist may be an atheist. But if they have that position, it is not because the process of science dictates it. Remember, science is agnostic. When ID proponents call mainstream scientists “materialists”, they are poisoning the well of public opinion. A scientist may just as well be a Christian or a Buddhist or an atheist. Such a position does not matter in the overall scope of the scientific process. But, of course, this is not the message ID proponents want people to know about.

To disseminate the message that scientists are close-minded “materialists”, ID proponents, mainly funded by the Discovery Institute (the major pro-ID organization), have produced a film called Expelled (subtitle: “No Intelligence Allowed”). It appears to be a documentary containing interviews by the mildly-recognizable Ben Stein. The ads for the film have taglines that say “Big Science has expelled smart new ideas from the classroom”. Did you see what they did? “Big Science”. It sounds like “Big Tobacco” or “Big Oil”.

Reports are in from those who have seen the advance prints of the film. Expelled tries to equate evolution with eugenics, implying that evolution was the cause of the Holocaust. The producers filmed interviews with prominent evolutionary scientists, such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Meyers. The interviews were under false pretenses. Dawkins and Meyers were told that the film was called “Crossroads” and that it was about science and religion. They were not told it was an Intelligent Design propaganda piece.

To Ben Stein, and creationism and ID proponents, I say this: “If you want to teach ID in the classroom, that is fine with me. Now, what is the specific, useful, and testable model that you will you teach?” This simple question should be enough to give pause to anybody who thinks scientists are trying to “expel” ID from the classroom.

This issue matters to all science teachers

So why am I writing about this in the Teaching Astronomy blog? Inevitably, when teaching about the nature of science and the difference between science and pseudoscience, you will have students ask you about this film (either in class or after class). It is best to know about these major salvos before you are told about them by students. You do not need to engage in a debate with students over religion, but you should have a stock of responses to the main points that the ID proponents are making today. You do not need to know how to respond to every claim that creationists make, but you should know where to direct students to find reliable information, such as the Index to Creationist Claims.

Introductory astronomy, earth science, astrobiology teachers must all discuss ideas that are controversial to the creationist set: the age of the Earth, age of the Universe, formation of stars and the creation of heavy elements, to name a few. I'm sure that we all understand the dangers of allowing creationism to enter the class through school boards and the courts. But now we must be aware of this new campaign based on emotional nudging. If a students says that science is "materialistic", remind your class about the agnostic nature of science. Science is not a dogma, it is merely a process.

~Paul Robinson

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Should One Use a ‘Backward’ Approach to Teaching the Nature of Science?

Random thoughts on teaching the nature of science.

It is generally accepted that successful science education results in learners developing a meaningful understanding of the nature of science. In fact, the various guidelines for what should be taught in introductory science courses throughout the educational levels uniformly state that students should develop an understanding of the nature of science (viz., AAS, AAAS, NSES, SCST). According to these documents and position statements, students who understand science know that scientific knowledge is based upon evidence generated through experimentation and evidence, that science is a process that uses models to make predictions about natural phenomena, and that scientific theories are tentative subject to additional evidence, often resulting from advances in technology. In the same sense, these authors suggest that one might further expect students to understand that science is fundamentally a human endeavor and is enhanced, as well as constrained, by societal values and technology.

If one agrees that enhancing students’ understandings of the nature of science is an important goal of science education, the next thing one wonders is how best to teach students these ideas. Along a continuum of ideas, one perspective might be that simply by students being exposed to and memorizing the methods and results of astronomical inquiry over the duration of a course, that students should intuitively develop an accurate sense of the nature of science. However, a robust research agenda by Norm Lederman and his colleagues (viz., Lederman, 1999 and references therein) argues that students do not develop deep understandings about the nature of science unless the underlying ideas are taught explicitly. Indeed, a cursory survey of the introductory chapters of typical astronomy textbooks suggests that students should learn about the components of scientific inquiry nearly independent of the context of astronomy. Many textbooks bold-face such key terms as hypothesis, theory, law, and experiment/observation are included as definitions in end-of-book glossary entries—BUT, these same texts rarely use such words ever again in the textbook after the introductory chapters.

A long-standing strategy for teaching students about the nature of science, and the process of scientific inquiry has been to assign students the task of completing a “science fair” project. In its most abstract form, students are commonly asked to first create a hypothesis, conduct background library research, design an experiment with controlled variables, manipulated variables, and responding variables, summary their results in a table or graph, and create a conclusion about the veracity of their proposed hypothesis. (In the absence of systematically gathered data, I submit to you that these components are those commonly found on the judges’ scoring forms for many secondary-level science fair competitions.) In support of students conducting science fair projects, numerous web sites and books have been written that go through these steps in sequence, starting with generating a question and writing it in the form of a testable hypothesis, and ending with a conclusion that uses data to support or reject the hypothesis.

Upon reflection, one wonders if a ‘backwards’ approach, based on the pedagogical notions of faded scaffolding proposed by Marx and his colleagues (Krajcik et. al., 1998) might be more effective at helping students develop a deeper understanding of the nature of science consistent with the aforementioned science education reform documents. In other words, instead of describing first the character of an if-then-because hypothesis followed by explaining the process of fair-testing by collecting data through appropriate experimental design, then ending with how to write a formal conclusion statement, what would happen if the instructional sequence was to provide students with scenarios starting with an entire inquiry sequence, then piece by piece, start replacing ideas from end-to-beginning? Perhaps a simplistic, yet illustrative, example might serve to clarify this notion.

Question Res. Procedure Data Collection Conclusion
1 Given Teacher Given Teacher Given Given
2 Given Teacher Given Teacher Given Created
3 Given Teacher Given Created by Student Created
4 Given Student Created Created by Student Created
5 Created Student Created Created by Student Created


ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE – MOTION OF THE SUN

STEP ONE: Students are shown a desktop planetarium program projection of the Sun’s daily motion through the sky at the equinox and asked to record the exact azimuth at which the Sun rises on the equinox in order to systematically collect data and use observational evidence to answer the question, “Does the Sun rise directly in the East on the first day of spring?” Note, the question, the research design/procedure, the data, and even the answer is provided to the students.

STEP TWO: Students are shown a desktop planetarium program projection of the Sun’s daily motion through the sky at the equinox and asked to record the exact azimuth at which the Sun sets on the equinox in order to systematically collect data and use observational evidence to answer the question, “In what direction does the Sun set on the first day of spring?” Note, the question, the research design/procedure, and the data is provided to the students, but NOT the answer.

STEP THREE: Students are shown a desktop planetarium program projection of the Sun’s daily motion through the sky at the equinox and asked to record the exact times, azimuth, and altitude of the Sun at rising, transit, and setting on the equinox in order to systematically collect data and use observational evidence to answer the question, “What is the altitude of the noontime Sun on the first day of spring?” Note, the question and the research procedure are provided to the students, but NOT the data collection nor the answer.

STEP FOUR: Students are shown a desktop planetarium program projection of the Sun’s daily motion through the sky and asked to create a list of observations they would need to make and record (an experimental procedure) in order to collect data to answer the question, “how does the Sun move through the sky on the first day of winter?” Note, the question is the only thing given by the teacher, whereas the data collection procedure and the answer must be generated by students.

STEP FIVE: Students are given access to a desktop planetarium program projection of the Sun’s daily motion through the sky asked to create a list of questions they could answer by planning a set of observations they would need to make (experimental procedure) in order to answer their question. Note that it is unlikely that students would pick questions far afield from the domain for which they have had four previous experiences – in this sense, although this meets the spirit of “open inquiry,” the activity falls within the overall conceptual domain of motions of the heavens. For certain, one might wonder if this approach requires significantly more time to instruct students than it would if one had given students a series of steps to follow or even simply demonstrated these ideas to students. I submit it takes considerably more time to teach in this manner; however, the goal here is to facilitate students to learn about the nature of scientific inquiry simultaneously, and perhaps superlative to developing students’ understandings about the motion of the Sun.

It seems to me that students do need help with understanding each of the components of scientific inquiry, as an important and simultaneous part of learning how to conduct scientific inquiry where: (i) students are engaged in questions; (ii) students are designing plans to pursue data; and (iii) students are generating conclusions based on evidence they have collected. Therefore, I propose that a series of exercises might help students to understand the nuances of each component in the following ways.

(A) students are generating to conclusions based on evidence

In each case, are the conclusions sufficiently justified by the evidence presented?

1. Polaris, the North Star, never rises and sets because observations reveal that it is visible in the same location any clear night of the year and any time of the night.

2. Solar eclipses are caused by our Moon blocking our view of the Sun based on the evidence that this only occurs during new moon phases when the moon’s path is close to the ecliptic.

3. Jupiter must be physically larger than Saturn because Jupiter takes up more of the field-of-view in the telescope eyepiece than Saturn does.

4. Pluto is not a planet because it has no life nor any liquid water on its surface.

(B) students are designing plans to pursue data

In each case, will the research design created answer the question posed?

1. To determine when the Sun will set on June 1, we will record the setting times on March 1, April 1, and May 1 and extrapolate.

2. To determine how long it takes the Jupiter to rotate on its axis, we will record the apparent longitudinal position of the great red spot every hour throughout the night.

3. To determine the azimuth (direction) the Sun sets, we will observe its highest altitude every day.

4. To determine the temperature of the Sun, we will measure the temperature of a glass of water achieves after being illuminated by the Sun all day.

(C) students are engaged in questions

In each case, determine if the question is scientific?

1. What time will the Sun set on my birthday?

2. How much larger does the Sun appear to be in the sky than the Moon?

3. Pluto is a planet?

4. Did God make the Sun spin?

In science education circles, people often speak of a continuum of student experiences ranging from step-by-step cookbook laboratory verification exercises, guided-inquiry experiences, to open-inquiry experiences. For the purposes of this discussion, I am defining open scientific inquiry as the process by which students are (i) engaged in questions; (ii) designing strategies to pursuing data; and (iii) generating and defending conclusions based on evidence they have collected. There seems to be considerable reluctance for teachers to “turn students loose” to pursue whatever they please in open-inquiry learning experiences. However, when using a backwards, faded scaffolding approach as outlined here, student inquiry is specifically, yet quietly, channeled into conceptual domains consistent with a teachers’ curriculum and instructional goals. Most importantly, the focus here is on scientific inquiry, rather than on memorizing the facts and figures of science. As such, it just might be that science becomes more attractive to individuals who often have the perception that science is boring rather than a creative endeavor worth pursing with intellectual energy.

REFERENCES

American Astronomical Society Position Statement on Introductory Astronomy Courses as reported in Partridge, B. & Greenstein, G. (2003). Goals for "Astro 101": A report on workshops for department leaders, Astronomy Education Review, 2(2).

American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1993). Benchmarks for Science Literacy. New York: NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Krajcik, J., Blumenfeld, P. C., Marx, R. W., Bass, K. M., Fredricks, J., & Soloway, E. (1998). Inquiry in project-based science classrooms: initial attempts by middle school students. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 7(3-4), 313-350.

Lederman, N. G. (1999). Teachers’ understanding of the nature of science and classroom practice: Factors that facilitate or impede the relationship. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36(8), 916-929.

National Research Council. (1996). National Science Education Standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Society of College Science Teachers Position Statement on Introductory Science Courses retrieved from www.nsta.org


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

Many of these ideas are the direct result of extended conversations with Stephanie Slater, University of Wyoming CAPER Team.


CORRESPONDANCE:

Tim Slater, University of Arizona & University of Wyoming

Cognition in Astronomy, Physics, and Earth sciences Research (CAPER) Team

Email: timslaterwyo@gmail.com