From Concept to Process: Teaching the Nature of Science
How do you prevent misunderstandings at a school like Long-View, where learning is student-directed? Under what circumstances does a teacher provide the "right answer," especially in the science classroom? Moreover, what constitutes scientific consensus? According to who? What does it mean to be "right"? Concern about the right answer belies a common misconception about science education—a misconception resulting from faulty science education—premised on the understanding of science as a body of settled knowledge.
Recent developments in science education reflect a shift in emphasis from science as a body of knowledge to a broader view of science that addresses the nature of scientific knowledge itself and the skills required to access and evaluate media accounts of science. In short, the goals of science education have shifted from scientific knowledge to science literacy—the scope of practice in the field of science has broadened from "how the scientific community produces science information, [to] how media repackage and share the information, and how individuals encounter and form opinions on this information" (Howell & Brossard, 2021).
Science educators typically divide science into three distinct domains: science as a body of knowledge, science as a method, and science as a way of knowing. As a body of knowledge, we learn about the theories, laws, definitions, and core concepts accumulated from generations of scientific discovery. The second domain, that of method, describes the processes and techniques used by scientists to generate the knowledge that constitutes the first domain. The third domain comprises the nature of science (NOS). NOS aims to describe the characteristics of the knowledge that science generates, the scope and kinds of questions germane to scientific inquiry, and the complex transformations that occur when scientific knowledge is filtered through culture and media.
While "the nature of science" is a tricky concept to define, science educators have identified several ideas of particular importance in cultivating scientifically literate citizens:
Scientific knowledge is tentative. Contrary to widely held views to the contrary, "there are no ideas in science so cherished or privileged as to be outside the possibility of revision, or even rejection, in the light of new evidence and new ways of thinking about existing evidence."
Scientific knowledge relies on empirical evidence—"all scientific ideas must conform to observational or experimental data to be considered valid."
Scientific knowledge relies on observation and inference. Though scientific inquiry relies on observational data, scientific explanations are inferential and frequently "involve entities that are not directly observable."
Scientific laws and theories constitute two distinct types of knowledge. A scientific law "is a succinct description of relationships or patterns...consistently observed in nature." Theories, on the other hand, are "well-supported explanations of natural phenomena." A theory will never change into law, and vice versa; neither is conclusive. Like all scientific knowledge, both theories and laws are subject to change in the light of new evidence.
There is no single scientific method. Experimentation is not the whole story. Rather, scientists use a variety of approaches to scientific inquiry including, "observation, inference, experimentation, and chance discovery."
Subjectivity and creativity are essential to scientific discovery. While the experimental method, peer review, and other practices that minimize bias and maximize reliability are crucial, "intuition, personal beliefs, and societal values all play significant roles in the development of scientific knowledge. (Bell, 2020)
We all exist in an extraordinarily complex information ecosystem wherein the lines between reliable and unreliable information, truth and falsehood, conspiracy and skepticism are difficult to delineate—and wherein mistakes are of real consequence. At Long-View, we strive to cultivate learners who can stay informed (and avoid being misinformed) on complex scientific and societal issues, and who can critically and confidently interrogate claims to knowledge, both scientific and otherwise.
Sources:
Bell, R. L. (n.d.). Virtual learning network. Teaching the Nature of Science: Three Critical Questions : Virtual Learning Network. Retrieved November 8, 2021, from https://vln.school.nz/resources/view/956729/teaching-the-nature-of-science-three-critical-questions.
Howell, E. L., & Brossard, D. (2021). (Mis)informed about what? What it means to be a science-literate citizen in a digital world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(15). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912436117
