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28 E DUCATIONAL L EADERSHIP / S EPTEMBER 2009 The Science Students Science education is not just about training the next generation of scientists—it’s also about developing responsible citizens. James Trefil and Wanda O’Brien-Trefil O ur students live in a world increasingly dominated by science and technology. To be responsible citizens, they will need to have informed opinions on all sorts of issues, from global warming, to stem cells, to the storage of nuclear waste. We can only speculate on what issues will arise in the future, but they’re sure to have a scientific or technological component. So what sort of science education will best prepare students to face that world? For most scientists, the goal of general education in science is to turn out a minia- ture scientist, someone who can do, at some level, the kinds of things that profes- sional scientists do. They would agree with Nobel Laureate Carl Weiman when he said, “We want them to think like us.” Given the limited amount of class time we can devote to the sciences, this goal inevitably produces students who have, at best, a good understanding of a limited range of sciences. This sort of education prepares students for the world of Galileo—not for the world they will actually enter. Scientific Literacy and Responsible Citizenship Science education should have a different goal: Students should be able to compre- hend the news on the day they graduate. Will they understand the news article about a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions? The one on wind and solar power? Many news items on a typical day will involve such topics; students should be able to understand these scientific issues with the same facility that they understand polit- ical, economic, and legal issues. Someone who can do this is scientifically literate. We should, then, judge the education that students receive in science on the basis of whether students will eventually become citizens who can meaningfully partici- pate in the kind of debate that is the core process of our democratic system. Once we adopt this goal—rather than the goal of producing miniature scientists—several important conclusions follow. First, we see that students will need to have some understanding of a wide array of scientific topics. What you need to know to make an informed judgment about storing nuclear waste is rather different from what you need to know to make an informed judgment about stem cells. To function effectively on all issues, future citizens will need to be conversant with many more aspects of science than the POLAR BEAR PHOTO: PAUL MILES/GETTY IMAGES. MAN IN PROTECTIVE CLOTHING PHOTO: KARL GRUPE/GETTY IMAGES
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28 E D U C AT I O N A L L E A D E R S H I P / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 9

The Science StudentsScience education is not just about trainingthe next generation of scientists—it’s also

about developing responsible citizens.

James Trefil and Wanda O’Brien-Trefil

Our students live in a world increasingly dominated by science andtechnology. To be responsible citizens, they will need to haveinformed opinions on all sorts of issues, from global warming, to stemcells, to the storage of nuclear waste. We can only speculate on whatissues will arise in the future, but they’re sure to have a scientific or

technological component. So what sort of science education will best preparestudents to face that world?

For most scientists, the goal of general education in science is to turn out a minia-ture scientist, someone who can do, at some level, the kinds of things that profes-sional scientists do. They would agree with Nobel Laureate Carl Weiman when hesaid, “We want them to think like us.” Given the limited amount of class time we candevote to the sciences, this goal inevitably produces students who have, at best, agood understanding of a limited range of sciences. This sort of education preparesstudents for the world of Galileo—not for the world they will actually enter.

Scientific Literacy and Responsible CitizenshipScience education should have a different goal: Students should be able to compre-hend the news on the day they graduate. Will they understand the news article abouta cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions? The one on wind and solar power?Many news items on a typical day will involve such topics; students should be ableto understand these scientific issues with the same facility that they understand polit-ical, economic, and legal issues. Someone who can do this is scientifically literate.

We should, then, judge the education that students receive in science on the basisof whether students will eventually become citizens who can meaningfully partici-pate in the kind of debate that is the core process of our democratic system. Once weadopt this goal—rather than the goal of producing miniature scientists—severalimportant conclusions follow.

First, we see that students will need to have some understanding of a wide array ofscientific topics. What you need to know to make an informed judgment aboutstoring nuclear waste is rather different from what you need to know to make aninformed judgment about stem cells. To function effectively on all issues, future citizens will need to be conversant with many more aspects of science than the

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Need to Know

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standard university-level “eight hours oflab science” or a single high schoolbiology course can cover.

Second and more important, thekinds of issues we can expect future citi-zens to face will not be just aboutscience. Instead, they will be issues inwhich science is woven seamlessly intoa rich tapestry that includes ethical,political, social, economic, and moralideas, all of which form part of thedebate. In arguing about stem cells, forexample, the real issues involve thingslike the destruction of embryos and thelegal protection due a collection of cellsthat may someday develop into ahuman being. You can’t even begin thisdebate that gets into moral/religiousterritory, however, unless you knowwhat a stem cell is. Scientific knowledgebecomes a kind of entry ticket into thatwider debate; you can’t get into thedebate without it, even though you’llneed more than a scientific backgroundonce you do.

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The Great Ideas of ScienceThe following ideas form a superstructure for the edifice ofscience. If students have this framework in place, they will bescientifically literate.

1. The universe is regular and predictable. The notion thatrepeated experiments or observations will give the same resultsis the basis for the scientific method. Understanding this is anecessary condition for doing science.

2. Energy is conserved and always goes from more useful toless useful forms. This idea helps us understand such conceptsas global warming (energy captured by greenhouse gases hasto go somewhere—in this case, to warming the planet) andexplains why, when we burn coal, two-thirds of its energy willbe dumped into the environment as waste heat.

3. Electricity and magnetism are two aspects of the sameforce. This law tells us that moving electrical charges producemagnetism—the basic operating principle of the electricmotor—and that changing magnetic fields produce electricalcurrents—the basic operating principle of the generator.

4. All matter is made of atoms. This idea suggests the basicstructure of matter in the universe. Through time, scientists

have suggested various models: the atom as indivisible, as amini-solar system, and as composed of smaller particles(quarks). More currently, matter is being considered as manifes-tations of vibrating strings (string theory).

5. Everything comes in discrete units, and you can’t measureanything without changing it. This law deals with quantummechanics—what the world looks like at the atomic level.Although quantum mechanics deals with areas far removedfrom everyday experience, everyone should be familiar with it.

6. Atoms are bound by electron glue. This law describes chem-ical bonding, the glue that holds molecules together.

7. The way a material behaves depends on how its atoms arearranged. Knowing how atoms come together and form bondsin chemical reactions enables us to understand the kinds ofproperties the resulting materials will have. This law clarifieshow the periodic table of elements was formed.

8. Nuclear energy comes from the conversion of mass. Tounderstand such issues as nuclear power, radioactivity, andradioactive tracers in medicine, people need to know how anucleus is put together and how to tap the energy within it.

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Fortunately, an inherent structure inthe sciences—a kind of hierarchy—points toward an effective way ofachieving scientific literacy. Think of thephysical universe as being somethinglike a spider web. Around the outside ofthe web are all the objects that make upour world—trees, mountains, cells,butterflies. If you start anywhere onthat web and start asking questions—What is this thing? How does itwork?—you begin working your wayin. Along the way, you will discoverunexpected connections. Think, forexample, of Benjamin Franklin discov-ering the connection between staticelectricity and lightning.

Once you work your way into thecenter of the web, however, you find arelatively small number of laws thatgovern the entire universe—the conser-vation of energy is a good example. Icall these laws the Great Ideas ofScience (see sidebar). They create akind of skeleton, a matrix of concepts

that tie everything together and formthe foundation of our view of theuniverse. They are the essential core ofthe way the universe works. They alsoconstitute the framework that allstudents need when they leave oureducation system, whether that meansfinishing high school, university, orgraduate school.

I would like every student to have amental filing cabinet based on thesegreat ideas. When he or she comesacross a public issue involving geneticengineering, for instance, I want thatstudent to be able to open the drawerlabeled “molecular genetics” and fit the

new information into a matrix of pre-existing knowledge about how cellswork, how information in DNA isexpressed, and so on.

I don’t know what scientific issueswill frame political debates 20 yearsfrom now. No one 20 years ago wouldhave imagined that we’d be talkingabout stem cells today, and few peoplewere even aware of the possibility ofglobal warming. What I do know,however, is that whatever those futureissues are, they will fit into the intellec-tual matrix provided by these greatideas. That’s simply a consequence ofthe way science is organized.

A S C D / W W W. A S C D . O R G 31

The standard cookbook experiments sobeloved of advocates of teaching thescientific method aren’t going to help.

9. All matter is made of quarks and leptons. Although this isanother topic removed from everyday experience, you won’tunderstand what the Large Hadron Collider is without it. (It’sthe world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator.)

10. Stars live and die. A discussion of stellar lifetimes can leadto investigating supernovae and black holes, always topics ofhigh interest.

11. The universe was born at a specific time in the past, and ithas been expanding ever since. This is the main tenet of the bigbang theory of the universe. It serves as the basis for currentdiscussions of an accelerating universe, along with dark energyand dark matter.

12. Every observer sees the same laws of nature in operation.Known as the principle of relativity, this is the basis of Einstein’sfamous theories: moving clocks slowing down; nothing travelingfaster than the speed of light; E = mc2.

13. The surface of the earth is constantly changing. This ideaencompasses plate tectonics, our current dynamic picture ofthe earth, and the notion—surprising to many people—thateverything is impermanent, from mountains to oceans.

14. The earth operates in many cycles. Understanding the rockcycle, the water cycle, and the atmospheric cycle will enable

students to more effectively look at such environmental prob-lems as acid rain, the ozone hole, and global warming.

15. All living things are made from cells, the chemical factoriesof life. This idea helps us understand that the basic reasonhumans are different from other organisms is that our cells rundifferent chemical reactions than theirs do.

16. All life is based on the same genetic code. This simple factprovides the scientific basis for genetic engineering. It alsoraises enormous ethical, moral, religious, and legal issues thatare already being hotly debated.

17. All forms of life evolved by natural selection. This refers to a two-step process. The first is chemical evolution, in whichinorganic materials initially gave rise to the first living cell; thesecond is evolution by natural selection, in which that cell andits descendants produced the millions of species we seearound us today. Controversies surrounding this idea often dealwith a perceived conflict with religious doctrines.

18. All life is connected. Living things on earth interact with oneanother in complex webs called ecosystems. Understandinghow these systems work is essential for the future manage-ment of our planet.

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A New Building CodeI like to think of the great ideasof science and scientific literacyas constituting a kind of buildingcode for education. If you wantto erect a building, various codestell you the minimum standardsyou must meet. For example,detailed rules stipulate how manyelectrical outlets have to be oneach wall in your house. Thecode guarantees that no buildingwill be constructed if it fails tomeet a certain standard. You canexceed those standards if youwant to, but you can’t fall belowthem.

In the same way, no studentshould be allowed to leave theeducation system withoutacquiring the basic knowledge ofthe physical world incorporatedin the great ideas. Only then willwe be sure that students will beable to become fully participatingmembers of our modern technologicalsociety. In the best of all possible worlds,we will turn out students who far exceedthis minimal building code of knowl-edge. I would certainly expect more ofuniversity graduates, for example.

What follows, then, for the organiza-tion of instruction? One clear implica-tion of the argument for scientificliteracy is that students must be exposedto the whole spectrum of science, notjust a part of it. Every student needs toknow something about the standardtriumvirate of subjects—physics, chem-istry, and biology. Further, the oft-neglected earth and environmentalsciences have to be included as well.These areas of study should be inte-grated into the regular science courses—climate change in physics or chemistry,ecology in biology, and so on.

We do not underestimate the difficultyin carrying out this task. Teachers

would, first of all, require training inintegrated science. The important thingat this point is to highlight the require-ment that after graduation, studentsshould be prepared to take on issuesinvolving science.

A Word About the Scientific MethodOne issue often raised in discussions ofscience education is the question of theproper role of something called the scien-tific method. All science educators arelocated somewhere on a continuumbetween those advocating the teachingof method and those advocating theteaching of content. (In case you haven’tguessed, I’m located toward the contentside of this continuum.)

On the basis of my own researchcareer, which has included severalchanges of field—from elementaryparticle theory to experimental cancer

therapy, for example—I can saywithout hesitation that knowinghow to apply the scientificmethod in one field doesn’t takeyou very far when you go intoanother. In the same way, I wouldargue that the quasi-mysticalbelief that students need to“know what scientists do” ismisguided. There is, in fact, nomagical scientific method, nosilver bullet that, once mastered,will enable someone to easilyacquire knowledge of newscience. If you expect yourstudents to understand molecularbiology, you have to teach themmolecular biology. You don’tteach them physics and hope thatthis knowledge will help themunderstand stem cells. It won’t.

The New ScienceNo one has really addressed oneaspect of science education thatwe’re going to have to grapple

with in the near future. The fact of thematter is that science has undergone asea change over the past 50 yearsbecause of the introduction and avail-ability of the computer. From the time ofNewton until the mid-20th century,scientific explanations involved theincreasingly sophisticated use ofcalculus. But as sophisticated as themathematical methods became, theywere still essentially pencil-and-paperoperations, which means that scientistscould only deal with relatively simplesystems. A calculation involving theorbits of all the planets in our solarsystem was beyond their power.

Computers have changed all thatbecause they can keep track of hugenumbers of factors at the same time.This means that in the past 50 years,science has progressed steadily intoexplaining more and more complexsystems. The global circulation models

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No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. W

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that form the basis of our predictions offuture climates, for example, containliterally hundreds of different factors thathave to be accounted for.

For example, in a warming world,there might be less sea ice; sea icereflects sunlight whereas water absorbsthe light. Models have to deal with boththe change in ice and the change inenergy balance. Add in man-made andnatural aerosol particles (which reflectsunlight); changes in vegetation (plantsabsorb light whereas bare ground

reflects it); and cloud formation (highclouds reflect sunlight whereas lowclouds trap heat)—and you can see thecomplexity. Because of this, I suspectthat no single individual on the planetreally understands everything that goesinto these models.

Despite this, students are going tohave to tackle policy issues that arisefrom the output of these computermodels. In the same way, they will haveto deal with the scientific complexity ofother issues and the questions that arise.For example, is the depository at YuccaMountain an appropriate place to putnuclear waste? If we use alternate energygenerators, such as windmills, howmany birds will these windmills kill?

Is there anything in the current educa-tion system that will prepare students tomake judgments about this new kind ofscience? I don’t see it. Certainly the stan-dard cookbook experiments so belovedof advocates of teaching the scientific

method aren’t going to help. Given theglacial pace at which major curriculumchanges are made in our current system,it’s not too early for us to start thinkingabout how we’re going to integrate thisaspect of the modern, computer-dominated world into science classrooms.

It would be helpful, for example, tohave computer labs in which studentsmake different assumptions about aprocess like cloud formation, which ishighly uncertain from a science point ofview. Students could then observe howtheir choices affect the computer predic-tions that result from the set of assump-tions that they plugged in. If nothingelse, such exercises would rid studentsforever of the naive belief that if some-thing comes from a computer, it must betrue.

So what will the science education ofthe future look like? It will start, as itmust, with introducing students to thebasic laws that govern the universe.Instead of presenting these laws in acompartmentalized way—divided intophysics, chemistry, and biology—teachers would get across the notion thatnature presents itself to us in a seamlessweb, without artificial labels. A studentin a physics class might study the trans-mission of nerve signals as well as thelaws governing electrical circuits; astudent in biology might learn about theprocess of energy flow while studyingecosystems.

It’s time to roll up our sleeves and getto work!

Authors’ note: For a longer treatment ofthis topic, see James Trefil’s latest book, WhyScience? (Teachers College Press & NationalScience Teachers Association Press, 2008).

James Trefil is the Clarence J. RobinsonProfessor of Physics at George MasonUniversity, Fairfax, Virginia; [email protected]. Wanda O’Brien-Trefil teaches 8thgrade English at Thomas Pyle MiddleSchool in Bethesda, Maryland.

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Scientific knowledgebecomes a kind ofentry ticket into thewider debate.

A S C D / W W W. A S C D . O R G 33

We need to see the world anew. —Albert Einstein

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