My friends and I were talking about the purpose of education over dinner on Saturday night. This video criticizes one side of the issue; namely, the idea that the purpose of education is to prepare you for a job. It should not be the goal of education.1
1. But it may be a collateral benefit.
[Hat Tip: Veronica at Canadian Atheist.]
We all use the term "critical thinking to describe one of the primary goals of education. What do we mean by "critical thinking"?
As usual, it takes a philosopher to sort out the various meanings and arrive at a reasonable definition. (Philosophers are experts at critical thinking, although they often use it when it's not necessary.) Read what John Wilkins has to say at: What is critical thinking. Contrast his critical thinking about the subject with that illustrated in the Wikipedia article on Critical Thinking.
Here's his bottom line but you really need to see his examples of what is not critical thinking.
Critical thinking is the application of careful analysis and rational reconstruction to arguments, so that the correctness of the reasoning and the truth of the premises can be evaluated and the support for the conclusion determined.
Rational thinking is the assent of the reasoner to any conclusion that is both correctly reasoned and founded on known to be true, or likely to be true, premises.
In short, a critical and rational thinker is one who accepts the conclusions of good arguments.
I agree with John and this is what Chris DiCarlo and I teach in our course. But, you should read the comments on John's blog.
Once you've mastered the basic rules of logic, most arguments should be about whether the premises are likely to be true.
I don't know what's happening at Science these days. It got caught up in the arsenic affair last year and it recently made a fool of itself over the ENCODE publicity fiasco where it was completely duped by Ewan Birney.
Now it has published the following "perspective" in the October 12th issue. It reads like a Sokal hoax but it's perfectly legitimate. That's actually how Stuart Neuman proposes to solve the mystery of the Cambrian explosion.
Stuart A. Newman
Physico-Genetic Determinants in the Evolution of Development
Science 338:217-219 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1222003]
Abstract
Animal bodies and the embryos that generate them exhibit an assortment of stereotypic morphological motifs that first appeared more than half a billion years ago. During development, cells arrange themselves into tissues with interior cavities and multiple layers with immiscible boundaries, containing patterned arrangements of cell types. These tissues go on to elongate, fold, segment, and form appendages. Their motifs are similar to the outcomes of physical processes generic to condensed, chemically excitable, viscoelastic materials, although the embryonic mechanisms that generate them are typically much more complex. I propose that the origins of animal development lay in the mobilization of physical organizational effects that resulted when certain gene products of single-celled ancestors came to operate on the spatial scale of multicellular aggregates.
Neuman was one of the Alternberg 16, a group of scientists who met in Altenberg, Austria in 2008. Their purpose was to develop a new theory of evolution. The proceedings were collected in a book edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. M^uuml;ller, Evolution: The Extended Synthesis.
This story has been promoted by a rogue journalist named Suzan Mazur and she has written a book on the subject. Here's her interview with Stuart Newman, The New Master Of Evolution?. Elizabeth Pennisi, a senior editor at Science, helped publicize the Altenberg 16 back in 2008 by publishing an article in Science [Modernizing the Modern Synthesis]. She has been sympathetic to the bizarre views of some Altenberg 16 members so I suspect she's behind the publication of Stuart Newman's article in Science.
The March issue of Evolution: Education & Outreach contains an interesting article on "Educators of Prospective Teachers Hesitate to Embrace Evolution Due to Deficient Understanding of Science/Evolution and High Religiosity" (Paz-y-Miño-C and Espinosa, 2012). The authors surveyed three groups at 17 colleges and universities in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the USA (New England states). The three groups were (1) general faculty members, (2) faculty members who were involved with training prospective teachers (educators), and (3) undergraduates.
Most of the general faculty (82%) thought that evolution was definitely true but only 54% of the students agreed. Among the educators only 71% thought that evolution was definitely true. This is a general trend. Educators tend to be more religious and less certain of evolution than typical faculty members but less religious and more accepting of evolution than the average student.
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There's an interesting article on student attendance at lectures in the latest issue of BAMBED (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education): Engagement of students with lectures in biochemistry and pharmacology.
The authors surveyed students to find out why they skipped classes at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The answers they give are not surprising, especially for the 8AM biochemistry lecture. However, the really interesting finding is that there's hardly any correlation between the number of lectures attended and a student's final grade in the course. The slight difference could easily be due to motivation and not ability to master the material.
This is a common finding in studies like this and the paper provides several references to the pedagogical literature. (In fairness, there are some studies that show a more significant correlation—students who skip classes get a much lower grade than those who attend.)
Here's my take on the issue of skipping lectures. If the lecture doesn't provide any value in terms of your final grade then why waste time going to class? Why bother giving the lecture?
I'd like to see a study comparing attendance in a course that has adopted student-centered learning where the class time is devoted to explaining difficult concepts and helping students think critically. The exams and assignments would have to measure whether students have mastered the concepts and learned how to think critically about the subject. In an ideal course, a student shouldn't be able to pass if they've skipped most of the lectures. What would attendance look like in such a course?
If students are skipping your lectures and still getting good grades then it's time to change your course. If you can't, or won't, do that then just cancel the lectures. You could record them and put them online if it makes you feel better. Your students are clearly not getting anything of value from sitting in the classroom.
My copy of Science arrived in the mail last week and I wasn't surprised to see the article by Elizabeth Pennisi on ENCODE Project Writes Eulogy for Junk DNA. Pennisi has long been skeptical about junk DNA. She advocates the position that what makes us human is hidden in the "dark matter" of the genome. She has never lost an opportunity to promote those scientists who claim to have discovered function in junk DNA so it was natural for her to fall hook-line-and-sinker for the recent ENCODE publicity campaign [see Science Writes Eulogy for Junk DNA].
What did surprise me was a three-page spread on Ewan Birney: Genomics' Big Talker, written by Elizabeth Pennisi. This is extraordinary. I don't know of another example where a leading science journal has promoted a young scientist in this manner. Of course, it's doubly extraordinary because, in this case, Science is promoting a scientist who just made some serious mistakes interpreting his own data! The man who is so prominently featured in the Sept. 7, 2012 issue of Science magazine is coming under serious criticism for letting publicity rule his science. He has almost single-handedly1 damaged the reputation of 400 scientists in the ENCODE Consortium and he did it, in part, because he was not knowledgeable about his own field of expertise! [see ENCODE Leader Says that 80% of Our Genome Is Functional and The ENCODE Data Dump and the Responsibility of Scientists]
UPDATE:A reader has reminded me that Science published two pages (online) on Felicia Wolfe-Simon at the time of the arsenic affair. Hmmmm ... is this the beginning of a pattern?
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As I'm sure you can imagine, the Intelligent Design Creationists are delighted with the ENCODE publicity. This is a case where some expert scientists support one of their pet beliefs; namely, that there's no such thing as junk DNA. The IDiots tend not to talk about other expert evolutionary biologists who disagree with them—those experts are biased Darwinists or are part of a vast conspiracy to mislead the public.
You might think that distinguishing between these two types of expert scientists would be a real challenge and you would be right. Let's watch how David Klinghoffer manoeuvres through this logical minefield at: ENCODE Results Separate Science Advocates from Propagandists. He begins with ....
"I must say," observes an email correspondent of ours, who is also a biologist, "I'm getting a kick out of watching evolutionary biologists attack molecular biologists for 'hyping' the ENCODE results."
True, and equally enjoyable -- in the sense of confirming something you strongly suspected already -- is seeing the way the ENCODE news has drawn a bright line between voices in the science world that care about science and those that are more focussed on the politics of science, even as they profess otherwise.
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One of the good things to come out of this ENCODE/junk DNA fiasco is that I've discovered a number of excellent scientists who aren't afraid to speak out on behalf of science. One of them is Mike White, a systems biologist at the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology, Washington Univ. School of Medicine, St. Louis (USA). He blogs at The Finch & Pea.
Mike published an impressive article on the Huffington Post a few days ago. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the controversy over junk DNA: A Genome-Sized Media Failure. Here's part of what he says ...
If you read anything that emerged from the ENCODE media blitz, you were probably told some version of the "junk DNA is debunked" story. It goes like this: When scientists realized that classical, protein-encoding genes make up less than 2% of the human genome, they simply assumed, in a fit of hubris, that the rest of our DNA was useless junk. (You might have also heard this from your high school or college teacher. Your teacher was wrong.) Along came the ENCODE consortium, which found that, far from being useless, junk DNA is packed with functionality. And so everything scientists thought they knew about the genome was wrong, wrong wrong.
The Washington Post headline read, "'Junk DNA' concept debunked by new analysis of human genome." The New York Times wrote that "The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as 'junk' but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave." Influenced by misleading press releases and statements by scientists, story after story suggested that debunking junk DNA was the main result of the ENCODE studies. These stories failed us all in three major ways: they distorted the science done before ENCODE, they obscured the real significance of the ENCODE project, and most crucially, they mislead the public on how science really works.
What you should really know about the concept of junk DNA is that, first, it was not based on what scientists didn't know, but rather on what they did know about the genome; and second, that concept has held up quite well, even in light of the ENCODE results.
Way to go, Mike!
In the past week, lot's of scientists have demonstrated that they don't know what they're talking about when they make statements about junk DNA. I don't expect any of those scientists to apologize for misleading the public. After all, their statements were born of ignorance and that same ignorance prevents them from learning the truth, even now.
However, I do expect lots of science journalists to write follow-up articles correcting the misinformation that they have propagated. That's their job.
The Washington Post is a highly respected newspaper read by millions. It is very influential, especially among politicians in Washington.
Here's what David Brown and Hristio Boytchev published a few days ago:
‘Junk DNA’ concept debunked by new analysis of human genome.
Most of a person’s genetic risk for common diseases such as diabetes, asthma and hardening of the arteries appears to lie in the shadowy part of the human genome once disparaged as “junk DNA.”
Indeed, the vast majority of human DNA seems to be involved in maintaining individuals’ well being — a view radically at odds with what biologists have thought for the past three decades.
Those are among the key insights of a nine-year project to study the 97 percent of the human genome that’s not, strictly speaking, made up of genes.
The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project, nicknamed Encode, is the most comprehensive effort to make sense of the totality of the 3 billion nucleotides that are packed into our cells.
The project’s chief discovery is the identification of about 4 million sites involved in regulating gene activity. Previously, only a few thousand such sites were known. In all, at least 80 percent of the genome appears to be active at least sometime in our lives. Further research may reveal that virtually all of the DNA passed down from generation to generation has been kept for a reason.
“This concept of ‘junk DNA’ is really not accurate. It is an outdated metaphor,” said Richard Myers of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Alabama.
Myers is one of the leaders of the project, involving more than 400 scientists at 32 institutions.
Another Encode leader, Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Britain, said: “The genome is just alive with stuff. We just really didn’t realize that beforehand.”
“What I am sure of is that this is the science for this century,” he said. “In this century, we will be working out how humans are made from this instruction manual.”
This is wrong. Most of our genome is still junk in spite of what the ENCODE Consortium says.
Who is Richard Myers and where did he get the idea that the concept of junk DNA is an outdated metaphor? Does he have an explanation for all the evidence his statement refutes?
Here's the important question. Who is going to take responsibility for this PR fiasco?
I'm really interested in science education and I'd love to see improvements so that we can begin to create a scientifically literate society. Although I'm not an American, I'm quite interested in the views of American politicians because they can have a huge influence on science education.
That's why I was looking forward to seeing what Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had to say about science. Do they personally believe in evolution? Do they understand that homeopathy is useless? Do they think that science conflicts with their religious beliefs? Do they personally believe that the universe began almost 14 billion years ago with a Big Bang? Do they understand what causes earthquakes? Can they tell us why the discovery of the Higgs boson was important? Do they know what a gene is? Can they personally tell us in a few sentences how an eclipse of the sun occurs? Do they understand the concept of a chemical reaction?
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A few hours ago I criticized science journalists for getting suckered by the hype surrounding the publication of 30 papers from the ENCODE Consortium on the function of the human genome [The ENCODE Data Dump and the Responsibility of Science Journalists].
They got their information from supposedly reputable scientists but that's not an excuse. It is the duty and responsibility of science journalists to be skeptical of what scientists say about their own work. In this particular case, the scientists are saying the same things that were thoroughly criticized in 2007 when the preliminary results were published.
I'm not letting the science journalists off the hook but I reserve my harshest criticism for the scientists, especially Ewan Birney who is the lead analysis coordinator for the project and who has taken on the role as spokesperson for the consortium. Unless other members of the consortium speak out, I'll assume they agree with Ewan Birney. They bear the same responsibility for what has happened.
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ENCODE (ENcyclopedia Of DNA Elements) is a massive consortium of scientists dedicated to finding out what's in the human genome.
They published the results of a pilot study back in July 2007 (ENCODE, 2007) in which they analyzed a specific 1% of the human genome. That result suggested that much of our genome is transcribed at some time or another or in some cell type (pervasive transcription). The consortium also showed that the genome was littered with DNA binding sites that were frequently occupied by DNA binding proteins.
THEME
Genomes & Junk DNAAll of this suggested strongly that most of our genome has a function. However, in the actual paper the group was careful not to draw any firm conclusions.
... we also uncovered some surprises that challenge the current dogma on biological mechanisms. The generation of numerous intercalated transcripts spanning the majority of the genome has been repeatedly suggested, but this phenomenon has been met with mixed opinions about the biological importance of these transcripts. Our analyses of numerous orthogonal data sets firmly establish the presence of these transcripts, and thus the simple view of the genome as having a defined set of isolated loci transcribed independently does not seem to be accurate. Perhaps the genome encodes a network of transcripts, many of which are linked to protein-coding transcripts and to the majority of which we cannot (yet) assign a biological role. Our perspective of transcription and genes may have to evolve and also poses some interesting mechanistic questions. For example, how are splicing signals coordinated and used when there are so many overlapping primary transcripts? Similarly, to what extent does this reflect neutral turnover of reproducible transcripts with no biological role?
This didn't stop the hype. The results were widely interpreted as proof that most of our genome has a function and the result featured prominently in the creationist literature.
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Jeff Mahr is trying to teach his students how to think critically so he asked them a question about a graph. Check it out to see if you would pass his course: Clearly Critical Thinking?.
I want to draw your attention to an article in the July/August 2012 issue of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education (BAMBED). The authors are Michael Klymkowski and Melanie Cooper and the title is "Now for the Hard Part: The Path to Curricular Design."
There is a growing acknowledgement that STEM education, at all levels, is not producing learners with a deep understanding of core disciplinary concepts [1]. A number of efforts in STEM education reform have focused on the development of ‘‘student-centered’’ active learning environments, which, while believed to be more effective, have yet to be widely adopted [2]. What has not been nearly as carefully considered, however, is the role of the curriculum itself as perhaps the most persistent obstacle to effective science education. It is now time to examine not only how we teach, but also what we teach and how it affects student learning.
This is an important point. Most of the science education reforms that are being proposed these days focus on style rather than substance.
In the long run, it really doesn't matter whether you are employing the very latest pedagogical techniques if what you are teaching is crap.
But we also need to recognize that there's a relationship between what we teach and how we teach it. If you want to teach scientific thinking—as opposed to memorizing pathways—then there may be superior ways to do it.
Recognizing how challenging it is to build scientific understanding requires that we recognize that scientific thinking, in and of itself, is by no means easy and is certainly not ‘‘natural.’’ We are programmed by survival based and eminently practical evolutionary processes to ‘‘think fast’’ [8]. In contrast, scientific thinking is slow, hard, and difficult to maintain. If students are not exposed to environments where they must practice and use the skills (both metacognitive and procedural) that they need to learn, they may fall back on fast, surface level answers, and fail to recognize what it is that they do not understand.
Scientific thinking (and critical thinking) have to be experienced and practiced. That means you have to make time for that in your course.
Klymkowsky, M.W. and Cooper, M.M. (2012) Now for the hard part: The path to coherent curricular design. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education 40:271–272. [doi: 10.1002/bmb.20614]
An awful of of people seem to waking up to the idea that TED talks are not what they're supposed to be. They attract a lot of kooks who can speak well and exude enthusiasm. How many times have you listened to a TED talk in your area of expertise and wondered how the heck that person got on the stage?
TED talks are just big soundbites and soundbites are not good ways to explain complicated, and potentially revolutionary, ideas.
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Have you ever been at a social gathering and heard someone proclaim, somewhat proudly, that they just don't "get" math? They dropped it in high school as soon as they could. If so, you probably resisted telling them how sorry you are that they are stupid and you probably avoided getting into a discussion about people who say the same thing about history or literature. You know that those same people would be appalled to hear you say that you don't "get" the arts and dropped them as soon as you could.
If Andrew Hacker has his way, people who can't pass a simple math course will never have to apologize again. He proposes, in the New York Times, no less, to eliminate algebra from high school [Is Algebra Necessary?]. (Andrew Hacker is a former professor of political science.)
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Rosie Redfield doesn't like the way genetics is taught in most university courses. She thinks we should re-design genetics courses (Redfield, 2012).
As a first step, geneticists need to step back from the current curriculum and decide what 21st century students really need to know about genes and inheritance. These decisions should be based on how students will use what they learn, and not on what we as geneticists value.
She proposes that modern genetics courses should concentrate on subjects that really interest students. Subjects like ...
Is genetic testing a wise thing to do? Is it a sound financial investment? Should I have full access to my genetic information? Should my insurer and my employer? Should athletes be tested for genetic modifications (“gene doping”)? Is it ethical to DNA-fingerprint all convicted criminals? All suspects? Did my genes make me gay? Are genetically modified foods safe? Are cloned animals ethical? How different are human races, and how different are we all from chimpanzees and gorillas?
I explained in an earlier posting why I think this is wrong: Questions for Genetics Students. My main concern was that we might be sacrificing fundamental concepts and principles of genetics (i.e. science) in an attempt to appeal to students.
Rosie's goals sound like noble goals but is it even realistic to address these issues in a genetics course? That's the question that Heather Zeiger asks in her post on Genetics Class 2.0.
Many of these questions are ones bioethicists have been contending with for years. Bioethics is a multi-disciplinary field that is usually occupied by philosophers and healthcare professionals, but in the last twenty years it has seen an influx of lawyers, scientists, and people from many other disciplines.
Redfield suggests that it is the role of the scientist to address ethical questions. However, something that Redfield does not state in her paper, is that scientists are rarely trained in anything that would be helpful in assessing ethical issues, such as moral philosophy or rhetoric, and most programs do not include history and philosophy of science.
Now, I rarely agree with anything posted on The Best Schools but this is a legitimate concern.
My position is that philosophers and healthcare professionals have been spectacularly unsuccessful at clarifying bioethical questions. I cringe just about every time I see a "professional" bioethicist on television. Most of them can't separate science from ethics and most of them are more concerned about appeasing religion than getting to the bottom of a difficult issue.
Scientists often make much more sense but that doesn't mean that all scientists are good at dealing with ethical issues. I teach a course that deals with ethical issues (cloning, reproductive technology, immunization) and I find that it's an excellent way to get students to think critically. However, I've learned a lot from my colleagues about ethics and philosophy over the years and I don't think I would be very effective without this background1.
I doubt very much that the average genetics teacher or TA can really be effective at handling ethical debates in their classrooms. I don't think you should build a course around such issues no matter how much the students want it.
My friend, Rob Delore, taught with me for several years. He's a scientist and a Jesuit priest. This year I'll be teaching with another friend, Chris DiCarlo, a philosopher and author of How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Asking the Right Questions.
Redfield, R. (2012) "Why Do We Have to Learn This Stuff?"—A New Genetics for 21st Century Students. PLoS Biol 10(7): e1001356. [doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001356]
Anna Kuchment was there [Google Science Fair: Winners tackle breast cancer, hearing loss and water quality]. Just once, I'd like to see a science fair winner who actually did science and discovered something about the natural world that has nothing to do with technology or applications.
An expectant crowd gathered last night inside an airplane hangar at a flight school in Palo Alto, California to hear the winners of the second annual Google Science Fair. The grand prize went to Brittany Wenger, 17, of Sarasota, Florida, who wrote a computer program to help doctors diagnose breast cancer less invasively. Jonah Kohn, 14, of San Diego, Calif. won his age category for creating a device that converts sound into tactile vibration to improve the music-listening experience for the hearing impaired; and a trio from Spain won the 15 to 16 age category for documenting the hazardous and non-hazardous organisms found in water from different parts of their country.
Anna Kuchment works for Scientific American and posts on a blog called Budding Scientist: Everything you always wanted to know about raising science-literate kids.
Much to my embarrassment, the University of Toronto is promoting online courses [Online courses for anyone, anywhere]. These courses seem to be for information only—you can't get a university credit for them.
I'm not opposed to offering free "courses" for people who don't have easy access to a university campus. In fact, I think it's a good thing. But let's make sure we distinguish between public lectures and serious education. In my opinion, if the quality of an online course is equal to the quality of a course given on campus then all that says is that the campus-based course is lousy. We should not refer to these online examples as "university courses." They should be labelled as "public lectures."
I'll have more to say about this later but today I want to return to an issue I raised before. Is it true that the "best" universities also do the best teaching? I have suggested that the answer to this question is probabyy "no" [On the Quality of Online Courses] [Is Canada Lagging Behind in Online Education?].
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Healthy skepticism is an important part of science. One of the biggest differences between scientists and intelligent design creationists, for example, is that the creationists are rarely skeptical of anything they read in the scientific literature. If it appears to support their agenda, then it goes right onto the blogs without any discussion of whether it might be true or not.
Scientists, on the other hand, are often very skeptical of work that appears in the scientific literature. They treat most papers as tentative results that need to be confirmed. The most obvious flawed papers will be refuted by further work, as in the recent arsenic in DNA paper or earlier work on cold fusion. Usually, flawed papers will just be ignored and they will die a quiet death.
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nature science for kids,nature science definition,nature science articles,nature science jobs,nature science museum,nature science projects,nature science magazine,nature science journal
nature science for kids,nature science definition,nature science articles,nature science jobs,nature science museum,nature science projects,nature science magazine,nature science journal
