>Dewey
>
>please explain how the teaching of science can produce this state of
>affairs.
>
>s
>
>"Dewey Dykstra, Jr." wrote:
>
>> > Since scientists provide this rock-bottom
>> >foundation for our lives, their *stewardship* is even
>> >greater than a judge's, for all a judge can do is
>> >decide based on the evidence, but the judge cannot
>> >verify what the evidence is -- only scientists can do that.
>> >
>> >Now! If we live in a world where we
>> >have very little idea "what's going on",
>> >but must depend on *scientists* to tell us, how does this differ
>> >from the role in past of The Roman Catholic Church?
>>
>> I agree with Brad McCormick's assessment of the situation and it's
>> implications.  I would argue that this "state of affairs" is socially
>> constructed in schools as a consequence of the way we teach; the way we
>> teach science, in particular.
>>
>> Dewey

It's fairly simple.  For the last 20 years a large amount of work has been
done studying students' conceptions of phenomena that we attempt to teach
in science.  The basic result is that students' conceptions in general do
not change in any significant way.  A very small percentage eventually do
change but not until they are well into the process of being majors in
science and even then it is almost never attributable to direct instruction.

A bibliography containing more than 5000 entries assembled from works as
early as 1978 is available electronically.  This bibliography documents
these findings.

At the same time most people, at least in the U.S.A., seem to conclude,
from experiences in science classes that they are increasingly less
enthusiastic about, that only certain special, smart people can really
understand this stuff and that they do not count among that number.  I have
for some years taught a course for non-science majors most of whom start by
apologizing for the fact that they are not good at science.*

Doesn't this result in Brad's decision being an inevitable outcome?

Dewey
PS:*We in the US also learn from our language classes in high school that
we are not good at learning languages.  Yet, we can express this in
"perfect" English most of which we learned from scratch (no previous
language and no language in which we could be instructed at the time).


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Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr.                 Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics                  Dept:  (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418      Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University            [log in to unmask]
1910 University Drive                 Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570                  novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"As a result of modern research in physics, the ambition and hope,
still cherished by most authorities of the last century, that physical
science could offer a photographic picture and true image of reality
had to be abandoned."  --M. Jammer in Concepts of Force, 1957.

"If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make
reality the basis of our philosophy? ...But we cannot distinguish
what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense
to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what
reality is independent of a theory."--S. Hawking in Black Holes
and Baby Universes, 1993.
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