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."

Comments

Early Development

[Sonny Yatsen]

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.

Re:Early Development

[I8TheWorm]

A huge problem with that is getting qualified (and hopefully excited) teachers in those fields. If people do well in math or science, they tend to go into higher paying jobs rather than into teaching. What happens then is the math or science teaching vacancy goes to the newly hired teacher with a general knowledge and an education degree, they're handed the book and curriculum, and told to teach.

It's my contention that those who have a nice career and a deep knowledge of math and/or science should consider spending the last few years working as a (fully qualified) teacher.

Re:Early Development

[0123456]

It's my contention that those who have a nice career and a deep knowledge of math and/or science should consider spending the last few years working as a (fully qualified) teacher.

A while back I was reading an article by someone (engineer, I think) who looked at doing that. Then they discovered they'd have to take numerous training courses to prove they could teach kids about what they'd been doing for years and decided they had better things to do with their life.

If you really want better teachers in schools, you could start by eliminating all the roadblocks that keep them out.

Re:Early Development

[Have Brain Will Rent]

I've met some very bright and talented teachers but I have to say that on the whole teachers do not seem to be the cream of the crop, or even the whole milk... maybe non-fortified skim would be about right. The teachers here are very well paid. They don't seem to have much facility with logic and seem, well, woefully uneducated. It might help if they also had to complete an actual degree in something other than teaching.

I don't see teaching to tests as a problem... if the tests are well thought out.

Re:Early Development

[hedwards]

Yes, but in college I had a faculty member in genetics, the man definitely knew his stuff, but as a teacher he was more or less a complete flop. Yes, the requirements do need to be reasonable, but just because somebody knows their field doesn't mean that they're qualified to teach. I know that there's this common conception that teaching is easy if you know how to do the tasks, but that's really not true.

The point is, that having to demonstrate capability exists for a reason. Sure it is cumbersome and probably could use a modernization and culling of some of the requirements, but it's there to try and minimize the cases where teachers are thrown into a classroom environment without being able to teach.

Re:Early Development

[Seumas]

In the US, people who think rationally and value knowledge and critical thinking are considered "elitists" and derided. Just talking properly will probably get the occasional "what are you, a homo?!" thrown at you. Then there's the whole typical US rationality (which is probably more global, but what do I know?) of things like "I can't imagine a world where god doesn't exist; therefore, god exists".

Also, I remember finally being so thoroughly depressed by high school that I just gave up. The specific cause in question was that my freshman science curriculum was the same "Earth Science" book that we had used in fifth grade.

Anyway, in this country, we have a saying - "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

Re:Early Development

[Seumas]

Government has learned that teaching you to think critically doesn't help them, but teaching you the joys of obeying authority figures does.

Re:Early Development

[Attila Dimedici]

Except that you don't have to demonstrate that you can teach, you just have to meet a set of semi-arbitrary standards that are primarily designed to ensure employment for those who teach "Education".
If they wanted to ensure that potential teachers could teach, they would test the students at the beginning and end of the student teaching assignment and only those whose students showed an improvement in understanding the subject above a certain level would get certified. Designing the tests and defining the level is another subject.

Re:Early Development

[Americano]

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

There's an uncomfortable element of truth to this too, and I say this as a devoted son of two career teachers: If you are top in your Computer Science class, Google or Apple or Microsoft comes along to hire you, offers you a good starting salary with benefits, and a brand-name employer that you can show off to your friends. There's less demand for "the guy who graduated last," which means that the lower-paying jobs - i.e., teaching - will fall to those who... 'can't' get the job at Google.

There simply isn't a great deal of incentive for the "top of the class" to go into education: fight your way through a mystifyingly complex government bureaucracy for a full day of discipline problems and budget cuts, all for the same pay as the meathead who barely graduated college? Gee, where do I sign up?

A couple changes that I think would go a long way towards addressing some of this:
1) Abolish tenure. If you're good, your job is safe. If you're not good, you should be turfed.
2) Merit pay for teachers. GOOD merit pay - competitive with industry, and awarded in equal measure to your effectiveness & talents as a teacher.
3) Incentives for effective teachers to work with disadvantaged students.
4) Expand grants, scholarships, etc. - think the Americorps concept. "We give you a scholarship, and in return, you teach for several years after graduation."

Re:Early Development

[Anonymous Coward]

"You really think people look down on doctors and scientists?"

Doctors are highly regarded, scientists however are definitely not. Scientists are the mad freaks who are hell bent on destroying the world, or the clueless fools who carelessly come within a half-second of accidentally wiping out the human race, or are the corrupt assholes sucking down megabucks from (insert taxpayer/government tit, Big Oil, Big Pharma, or other common target here) while doing next to nothing except fabricating results, or at best, scientists are the harmless, socially awkward, nerdy guys in white labcoats with inch-thick glasses endlessly puttering about on something they find fascinating but is absolutely useless. Those stereotypes are pure bullshit as any actual scientist will tell you, but that's how we're viewed.

Logic Fail

[MozeeToby]

[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.

Re:Logic Fail

[blair1q]

It points out the real problem with science education: we're not teaching the big facts and then delving into the intricacies, we're teaching the intricacies and hoping the big facts are obvious.

It's nothing about "informal" or "principle-based" reasoning, it's just inadequate communication.

Re:Most of the mass of a plant is water.

[gurps_npc]

You confused current mass with intake/outtake. While most organic life is water, we are talking about intake and out take, not current composition

The Cycle they mentioned means that plants consume 6 C20 (12 Carbon + 6 Oxygen) for every 5 H20 (10 Hydrogen and 5 Oxygen), every time they photosynthesize.

This means that while the end plant may be mostly water, they are consuming more of their weight in Carbon dioxide than in water.

So now you are asking, if the plant is consuming more carbon dioxide than water, what happens to the carbon dioxide, as the water is at least partly kept? The Carbon is kept, while the oxygen is given off. The amount of water that is taken in and kept is relatively small compared to the carbon that is kept PLUS the oxygen that is given off.