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College Students Lack Scientific Literacy
An anonymous reader writes with news of research into the scientific literacy of college biology students. Earlier studies found that students tended to "rely on mainly informal reasoning derived from their personal experiences," so the researchers derived a new instructional framework that explicitly taught principle-based reasoning. While the number of students who used this method did increase, more than half continued to use informal reasoning, which the researchers say points to a flaw in the way biology is taught (PDF). "Most college-level instruction presents students with complicated narratives about the details of key processes (e.g., cellular respiration), but does not explicitly reinforce the use of key principles to connect those processes. Therefore, students are understandably occupied with memorizing details of processes without focusing on the principles that govern and connect the processes. ... As a result, students may leave an introductory biology course with the ability to recite the reactions in the Calvin cycle but still believing that plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere, that plants photosynthesize but do not respire, or that the mass of a decomposing organism will primarily return to the soil."
literacy AND numeracy.
They don't lack Facebook.
Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout
Kids get discouraged way too early in their school lives. From their peers, their teachers and their parents, they get the message that science and math is boring and hard, and they take that to college. That's why in math classes, you might find a person that can perfectly integrate a function, but be utterly unable to describe what integration actually does. Science and math has become just an algorithm to them: If you follow X steps, then you will get the answer, then you will path the class.
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The title and summary don't make it clear, but this concerns American students at American colleges.
If it is, I'll memorize it. If not, I need to check my email.
[They still believe that...] plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere
How could this possibly work? Farmers ship millions of tons of foodstuffs every year, unless they're spreading an equal volume of human excrement on their fields they'd be farming in pit mines after a few decades. That doesn't even begin to address that the soil that plants actually grow in is only a matter of inches deep in many locations, or the fact that you can grow plants in water more efficiently than in soil. So yeah, I'd say we're missing some basic logic tools if biology majors can't think that one through.
Why is litmust test of biological knowledge (for college freshman) whether they know where plants get the majority of there mass? I'm not a biologist... but that doesn't seem to be the deepest or most fundamental principle of biology...
Science illiteracy is strongly rooted in math illiteracy. Cliff Mass, a Seattle area Professor of Meteorology, gives his incoming freshman students a math test. This is a test of basic math skills that should be mastered before high school. Yet the average score for college freshman science students is only 58%.
You can find the answers to the above test in his blog article.
I would speculate that at a logical philosophical level, a large number of students are ignorant of what science actually is. Science is often taught as a series of completed results, as a series of facts to be memorized. While to some extent this is difficult to avoid when teaching base knowledge, I suspect many students concentrate on what "gets them the grade", which is demonstrated knowledge of specific material, often memorized. In most high school programs, students are not adequately taught the reasons for knowledge (the International Baccalaureate program is often an exception to this). They are not explicitly taught logic and reason. And since the root of science is logic and reason, I would argue that most students are hobbled in their studies.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
> but still believing that plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere..
I may be a hick from a cow college, but most of the mass of my plants is water. Water that is sucked up from the soil via a root-system.
Granted, the atmosphere moves the water around, but the plant gets it's water (and thus most of it's mass) from the soil.
Miles
makes sense. When I was a kid doing well in school meant you were a nerd & a loser. Other countries don't allow that to happen. But we've got to devalue education so we can slash funding you know.
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It's not just scientific literacy, it's mathematical and grammatical as well. It's not that American kids are getting dumber, it's that American colleges are accepting anyone to a four year program if they sign up for one. The downside of that is that the average ability of incoming students trends downward.
The problem is that we've created a system that values a piece of paper that says you were in college for four years, even if those four years have absolutely nothing to do with the job position. There's nothing wrong with going to trade school, and in more than just a few trades you'll end up laughing all the way to the bank, making more money with your two year degree than a lot of people with a four year degree, all while paying a lot less for it.
Even many four year programs could be significantly shortened. A cousin of mine received a business degree from a program that crammed it all into one year. His job was school, his off-time was school, and they expected him to be there everyday in appropriate dress. They didn't fuck around and neither did he, and know he's out and being productive while a bunch of other kids are pissing away four years on classes they don't care about and keg parties.
"[they] rely on mainly informal reasoning derived from their personal experiences,
I hang around this lot!
http://www.slashdot.org/
News Flash! Students in conventional schools often memorize facts without truly understanding them!!!!111!
Film at eleven...
I would partly blame grade inflation. Nowdays it is possible to pass all your classes without doing much work at all. Given that certain counties (according to the census) have nearly universal college attendance (95% in orange county in CA if I remember correctly) means that college curriculum must be brought to a level such that only the dumbest 5% of the population cannot obtain a degree (unless you make a convincing argument that being born in a richer county automatically adds braincells).
Point is, that the half that didn't get it wasn't supposed to get further. This isn't going to fly if current political climate all over the western world treats college education as a service to be provided for a fee.
TFA notes that some carpenter can't find workers who know basic arithmetic to cut up the wood. So, even trade schools couldn't accept this low a math skills level.
Is biology a science, or is it merely a study?
Biology?
We'll all be computers in robot bodies in the next 100 years anyway.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
That's unhelpful. Even if you're right, you didn't say why, and you implied the GP is stupid. They gave their reasoning, which you didn't bother to refute. (It just annoys me when people debate poorly.)
I think the problem is that exams, which determine whether you pass or not - is the only point for studying that subject.
I used to love science when I was younger, and I used to ask a ton of questions during class, some of which returned the answer "Because that's how it is" or "That's not in the sillabus"
The idea that we're implanting into people's heads is "You study You get a good mark in the exam". The exam will ask you to regurgitate the knowledge that you know back on the paper - and don't bother reasoning it or thinking it out.
At higher levels, then science or whatever does touch into 'you have to think', but for the first few years, the idea implanted into your head is that the exam is the most important thing, and it is a test of memory. Not logic. That's where it fails.
Early on you learn to learn just what you need to in order to pass a class, nothing more if you have no interest in the class.
Tests, quizzes, the purpose they serve is to test your knowledge and understanding, but ironically they undermine this very effort.
It gets 99% of it's mass from the AIR. It's pretty basic.
Actually, trees are about 50% water. The rest is mostly cellulose (C6H10O5). The carbon comes from the air; the hydrogen and some of the oxygen come from water. 6CO2 + 6H2O -> C6H12O6 + 6O2.
This was covered in 7th grade when I was in school.
I think that most plant eating organisms would be inclined to pick (C).
May the Maths Be with you!
As a result, students may leave an introductory biology course with the ability to recite the reactions in the Calvin cycle but still believing that plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere [...]
I've known this since (at least) high school as it had been a childhood hobby of mine to sink seeds into jars of water after I read about the wonderful concept known as "hydroponics". So, yes, I've used "informal" reasoning to come to the conclusion that plants get much of their mass from the atmosphere. This worked in my case because I happened to have done informal "experiments" on the subject.
While I doubt whether one can experience high science concepts like quantum mechanics or Einstein's theories of relativity, cultivating a DIY, or should I say, TIY (try-it-yourself) attitude may help students understand better the principles behind scientific discoveries. Simply reading about the nuts and bolts won't do. Get out the screw driver. A good course would force the student to do experiments, perhaps not to make research-quality discoveries but merely to demonstrate to themselves why something is so. In an age where knowledge is a Google search or a Wikipedia article away, there's no still substitute for hands-on work.
Looking at the test, possible mistakes a student can make include believing that glucose can be converted into ATP. (To avoid making this mistake you have to understand that ATP contains phosphorous.) Also, you have to know that most of a plant's mass comes from CO2 it takes in, not things it absorbs in the soil, which is also tricky because most people know that gas doesn't weight very much. Another question is "An animal inhales O2 and exhales CO2, what happens to its mass?" The correct answer is that it loses mass, but you really have to be paying attention to realize that.
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It gets 99% of it's dry mass from the AIR. It's pretty basic.
[appropriate acronym]
Ewe get a green line for the right word in the wrong pasture.
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You could form the Trolls Under the Bridge College!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
(Wrestling) ... what the Right ... is Cooking!?
Big words there.
I have a Teal Deer for ya!
Can you smell
(/Wrestling)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
"Students are understandably occupied with memorizing details of processes without focusing on the principles that govern and connect the processes."
I have noticed that the less science/music, math/art, and language based a student's field of study, the greater their scope of unknown.
Regurgitation of information sustains simple and safe dogmatic thinking that fills in the gross-gaps in understanding factual-reality. Business, clergy, politics, athletics majors will react fast with plausible pseudo-reasons (guesses) and respond poorly.
Yes! There are some business, clergy leaders that can respond well to the anomalous, atypical, and asymmetric reality, but most are witless reactionaries in unusual or stressful situations. Hence, most are born followers always seeking to be the leader. The leaders of religion, industry, politics reminds me of primitive specialized species living in a controlled environment.
We should all be concerned, because we are allowing/following their controlled environment survival methods, which do determine the flexibility of our reality and ability to introduce positive and evolutionary change.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Harvard Physics discovered this exact problem in the 1960s and hence started all the misconception work by Hestenes, et al. and that work's spread to just about everything (except computer science). The TOLT (Tobin and Capie, 1981) test is readily available for physics and similar ones for each discipline --- enjoy: try it on your kids, spouse and others.
D. E. (Steve) Stevenson, Ph.D. Emeritus Associate Professor,School of Computing,Clemson University.
The way things are going now, the scientific culture of biology ("shotgun" testing and details over derivation) is making inroads into the rest of science and engineering, not the other way around. Even in something like as computational physics, some (not most) students will not understand the physics they're trying to test, focusing only on making more, faster, higher density models rather than correct or improved models. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a "shotgun" approach research, but I think it needs to be balanced with research focused on fundamental understanding.
The reason for this is that there are more research biologists than the number of research scientists in all other fields put together. Biology so dominates the science landscape that working in another (even major) field often feels like a "niche" position.
There are a slew of comments pointing out the correct answer to the biomass question should be water. However this is due to the fact that the slashdot summary is phrased incorrectly. The answer to the slashdot summary is of course water due to the high relative mass contribution of water compared to non water in plants/animals. However the actual question is phrased as follows:
5. a mature maple tree can have a mass of 1 ton or more (dry biomass, after removing the water), yet it starts from a seed that weighs less than 1 gram.
Which of the following processes contributes the most to this huge increase in biomass? circle the correct answer.
(A) absorption of mineral substances from the soil via the roots
(B) absorption of organic substances from the soil via the roots
(C) incorporation of CO2 gas from the atmosphere into molecules by green leaves
(D) incorporation of H2o from the soil into molecules by green leaves
(E) absorption of solar radiation into the leaf
Clearly the correct answer to this question is (C). (Only 29% of students got this answer correct).
10) students today are not like students in the past; but blame the teachers anyhow its all their fault. My father had a shooting range in his high school and a gun in his locker. Some kids also got a needed SMACK without a lawsuit or child protection getting involved. Some foreign systems don't care if your brat fail and go to a non-college track so the kid has some responsibility.
9) parents today are not like parents of the past (both likely work; among other issues) but blame the teachers anyhow its all their fault.
8) The culture today is not like it was in the past; but blame the teachers anyhow its all their fault.
7) Statistical measurements being the sole measure of educational success is a NEW obsession of modern times; forget how we got to the moon and the major accomplishments unparallelled by the recent generations without anything like the "accountability" system we have today.
6) Education is NOT business and can not effectively be run as one; this is another cultural shift.
5) Teachers are not shrinks. The fucked up student needs professional help as well as involved parents; oh, those mental behavior drugs seem to be connected with the school shootings... can't wait to hear what the long term impact is on a developing brain.... but don't let your 6 year old watch 3D movies...it'll mess up their vision.... but give your teen drugs to make them act less like caffeinated children.
4) A few generations of teaching patterns continue onward today simply because teachers are influenced by their education and the college system promotes a certain methodology as well -- both do not adapt that well and when it goes downward it takes many years before it can be noticed and a huge movement can alter the course which then takes many years to spread. The college system is poorly suited at creating teachers in my non-expert opinion (although my whole family are educators and I'm just a college instructor - which requires no education training) while a long term internship like apprenticeship system would work much better; although it would promote keeping old patterns (although human learning doesn't change so once you get decent at it...) I know that here we make teachers intern a short while with some reviewing involved. But I also know we review active old teachers and critique them by a system that is top heavy with management that lacks teaching talent or even experience! Nothing is more useless than 10 management disrupting class and then giving advice based upon that observation and their own opinions.
3) Not everbody can teach; some can learn - but they NEED to learn how. Old near-retired workers can sometimes be good mentors but I bet they'd make horrible teachers to uninterested inexperienced short attention span students. Somebody good for industry can be poor for education; same thing the other way! Sure, the lack of educators especially when their job is HARDER, lower paying, and has more deaths than the police does lower the bar so people who are poor in industry go into teaching-- but some people change careers because they "suck" when they may excel at teaching that topic and just never thought about teaching it... because after all, the only possible measure of your skill is if you can make money at it RIGHT??? (sarcasm- see Vincent van Gogh)
Oh, do any of you find yourself spouting off about education because you were a student?? I bet you don't feel fit to tell a dentist how to fix your teeth simply because you've been to the dentist for years. Some of these people ARE professionals...
2) Textbooks, paper pushing, standardized tests and a newly devised national standardized testing system dictate WHAT, WHEN, and to some degree HOW things are tested and leaves little room for more effective techniques, ordering, etc. A super teacher (and I've had 1) may not function within an arbitrary scheme devised by politicians and their appointments - in fact, my super teacher was given ALL the troubled students who'd turn them all around but under the c
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Kinda like Japanese. You can write any thing in the spoken language with the few Kana characters, but the dirty nips fuck that up with the damn kanji. Thousands of those (well, hundreds) just to read a decently advanced book.
Time to rethink the College system in the usa.
The high cost is just part of whats messed up hear.
We are pushing to many people in 4 year or more Colleges.
People who tech and community Colleges get pass over by people who went to a College more well known for the Sports teams. In some colleges players on the sports teams get easy classes / more of pass or brake on there school work.
There are to much filler and forced credit hours why should a MBA have to take biology or why should some in a tech / cs / it have to take art history?
We need more apprentices even more so in the tech areas as the way the book say to do things is not the same real work place.
We need to take the good parts from the apprentice system, tech and community Colleges and the older 4 year system as well lowering the cost and not just makeing people have a piece of paper to get jobs.
Now some it certification are ok but others are to easy to just learn to take the test and have no idea to any real work or others have questions / setup that you are not used that much in the work place or are why would want to have things setup like that. Some MS test seem be set in world where software seems to free or cost is not a factor in the setup that is in the question.
Regarding this quote: "As a result, students may leave an introductory biology course with the ability to recite the reactions in the Calvin cycle but still believing that plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere, that plants photosynthesize but do not respire, or that the mass of a decomposing organism will primarily return to the soil."
I believe that the main reason for the misunderstanding is the confusion between mass and biomass. The plant's water makes up the majority of its mass, but the plants carbon (from its cellulose etc) content makes up the majority of its biomass.
Of course to understand the word "biomass", its definition must be initially memorised.
(my bad if a similar comment has already been made)
6. A mature maple tree can have a mass of 1 ton or more (dry biomass, after
removing the water), yet it starts from a seed that weighs less than 1 gram. Which
of the following processes contributes the most to this huge increase in biomass?
Circle the correct answer.
(A) absorption of mineral substances from the soil via the roots
(B) absorption of organic substances from the soil via the roots
(C) incorporation of CO2 gas from the atmosphere into molecules by green leaves
(D) incorporation of H2O from the soil into molecules by green leaves
(E) absorption of solar radiation into the leaf
Key phrase: "dry biomass, after removing the water"
Feynman taught.
Are you better than him?
Schools denounce students asking 'why'.
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
As a result, students may leave an introductory biology course with the ability to recite the reactions in the Calvin cycle but still believing that plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere, that plants photosynthesize but do not respire, or that the mass of a decomposing organism will primarily return to the soil.
The main point of this article is that biology students do not learn science: scientific method and scientific thinking. Ironically, this quote is a good example: it lists a number of items of information as if that was it was all about. It isn't.
Biologists are supposed to be scientists. The single defining characteristic of a scientists is that they understand and apply scientific method - everything else is secondary to that. And the reason that this is so, is that the scientific method is the only reasonably reliable tool we have that can reliable identify what is not true. This, incidentally, seems to be one of the most mistunderstood parts of science: that it is not so much about finding the truth, as it is about identifying the falsehoods.
I read an interesting opinion that teaching was better in the 50s and 60s in America because of the limited job opportunities for women, thus the smartest women went into teaching (in a general statistical sense). As women were accepted into the workplace, the intelligence and energy level of teachers as a whole went down because the best and brightest women were siphoned off into other jobs.
For best teaching results, we ought to make teaching one of the most respected (highest-paid) professions like Finland does.
Most people don't want to be scientists. They want a good paying job so as that they can enjoy a comfortable and not-too-stressful life.
Personally, I think it's natural, and I also think it's good, because not everyone can be a scientist.
I think we need more testing, especially in Latin.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Much of the reason why college students do not understand the scientific method is that they are not taught it in high school. Instead, they are given evolution's "just-so" stories which cannot be proven by the scientific method. Rather than risk the nascent students finding out that the dominant model might have flaws, they leave the "lessons" at indoctrination and shove them out the door. Can't blame this one on the creationists!
Cranky educator.
Let me just say "yuuuuup". The way biology is taught in undergrad curricula is absolutely insane, and as a result a majority of the students coming out of undergrad biology programs know a lot of facts but have very little understanding of what science is or what it does. A kid with a great memory and awful critical reasoning skills will have a much easier time getting through school than a kid who has a bad memory but can actually think. I try my best to foster critical thinking and investigation in classes I teach, but the whole curriculum desperately needs to be reformed.