SPRING 2012
BASIC INFORMATION
Instructor: Alan Colburn
Classroom: PH2-105
Meeting Time: Mondays 4:00-6:45
Office: HSCI-216
Office Hours: M,W 11-12. I'm also available by appointment. I check e-mail frequently. I am on campus everyday, and I usually stay after class for awhile, too.
Telephone: 562 985 5948
E-mail: acolburn@csulb.edu
OVERVIEW OF THE COURSE & COURSE GOALS
SCED 404 is a special course. It's going to challenge your thinking, but most of you are going to like the challenge. You may feel confused with some ideas for a little while, but by the time spring break comes along you'll be so tuned in to the course's ideas you spontaneously start finding errors in your own textbooks! I enjoy teaching SCED 404, and I'm going to try my best to assure you really enjoy it.
Let me orient you to the course a bit. I have three aims for you. The first aim is that you better understand the nature of science . "Nature of science" (or nature of scientific knowledge, usually abbreviated NOS) is a broad term denoting the history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology of science--basically, though, it's about what science is & how science works.
The nature of scientific knolwedge is simple, on the surface. Most of us who study it accept a handful of key tenets as underpinning the way science works. Scientific knowledge changes, it's empirical, creative, subjective, and culturally embedded. Different classes of knowledge exist, and each has its own methods. Yet fully understanding the ideas proves elusive. Scientific knowledge, for example, is tentative; it’s always subject to change. But it’s also durable, long lasting—not likely to change. It’s empirical—based on observations and experimental data. Sometimes the observations are direct, but sometime they aren’t. It’s subjective, in some ways, and objective in others. Science is always done by people; sometimes they act the way scientists are "supposed to," other times they do not. Like other human activities, it’s creative, imaginative—and embedded in the times in which it was created. Some say scientific knowledge is invented or created, others say it’s discovered. We'll look at all these points—and more—in our time together.
The course's second aim is for you to better understand the methods of science and evaluate reports about scientific investigations. In truth, the science most people hear about is what they receive from sources like TV, radio, and newspapers. Most people don't read Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, or the New England Journal of Medicine. The K-12 science teacher needs to be able to help his or her students evaluate scientific reports presented in the media. How do you figure out whether to believe something you see reported? Should you believe reports that the earth is warming? Does cigarette smoking cause coronary heart disease? Do some people really have ESP? Should we all drink red wine—for our health? Evaluating these kinds of questions requires an understanding of scientific methods and attitudes.
Finally, you need to be able to able to take what you learn about the NOS and scientific reasoning, and apply it to the K-12 classroom. What can teachers do to encourage students to leave school with an accurate picture of the NOS? Thus, my third aim is that you apply knowledge about the nature of science to teaching science .
When the course ends, if I have been successful, you will have reasoned responses to most of these questions:
Notice that at the beginning of this list I said you'd have "reasoned responses" to the questions. Many of the questions are philosophical in nature, and don't have single correct answers. Some of the questions have responses generally accepted by most science educators or science philosophers, dome don't. So, please be sure this point is clear to you: I won't be evaluating the correctness of your responses (sometimes); I will be listening for your reasoning and how you support your thinking (always).
REQUIRED COURSE MATERIALSYou must purchase two books: A Beginner's Guide to Scientific Methods by Stephen Carey, and Philosophy of Science: a very short introduction. The books are available at the university book store. Additional readings for the course will be posted online via BeachBoard.
Assignments are expected to be handed in on time. Late assignments will be marked down unless arrangements have been made with the instructor before the assignment is due.
Attendance and participation are essential components of this course. You will do a lot of activities, and spend a lot of time discussing ideas. If you don't come, and talk, class won't work! You and your classmates' ideas need to be heard for individual and collective growth to occur. As such, your final course grade will reflect your level of attendance and participation: an "A" student will have attended virtually all classes and participated in each. I understand, of course, that things happen. I don't want you coming to class if you have a contagious disease, for example! So, you can miss one class session (of 15 total) without a penalty. However, if you miss two sessions you will have missed more than 10% of the total classtime. In a class like this, you can't miss that much class and learn as much as if you were present and participating. Thus, your final grade will decrease 5% if you miss two class sessions, 10% if you miss three class sessions, etc. If you know weeks beforehand that you will miss a class, please let me know.
Course grades will be based on these assignments.
1. Course attendance, reading, and reasoned participation: Almost every week you'll e-mail me a brief summary of the assigned reading (a paragraph) & your reaction to it (another paragraph), sent in before class begins. Your reaction includes not only something as simple as what you did or didn't like about the reading, but also discussion about particular parts that were unclear, questions you had as a result of the reading, connections between the readings and other readings, courses, or experiences you've had, etc. The purpose of this brief assignment is simple: I want you to have completed the assigned readings, and seriously thought about them, before coming to class.
I may occasionally substitute something different for this assignment. Most commonly, I could give you a question or two ahead of time & ask you to e-mail reasonded responses to these questions, in place of the usual summary/reaction paragraphs. Occasional problems may also be assigned, and short in-class assignments are also possible.
After each class period, I will note the extent to which members of the class participated in that day's discussion. As the semester progresses, if I would like to see you participating more in class I will probably let you know. At the end of the semester, I will review these notes & grade accordingly.
This is an upper level class, and you are all motivated. I assume most students will earn an "A" for this part of the course—though nothing is guaranteed. (30% of total grade)
2. Write a detailed three day (or more) lesson plan showing ways you would modify a pre-existing lesson to make the lesson better exemplify some aspect(s) of the nature of science. Choose a lesson that was not initially created with the nature of science as a primary student learning outcome. You don't need to start from scratch; find some curriculum materials in the Science Ed office, lesson ideas from an NSTA journal, online lesson plans, or any other source that strikes your fancy. Try to find something you might teach someday. The purpose of this assignment is to accent the idea that you teach students about the nature of science while still teaching your "regular" lessons.
Include separate discussion about how your lesson modifications exemplify aspects of the nature of science. For each change you make to a lesson, tell me about (1) what you changed, (2) your rationale for the change, the aspect(s) of the nature of science whose learning is facilitated by the change, (3) what you would do (or say) during the changed part of the lesson, and (4) what you would assume students would do (or say) during the changed part of the lesson.
I can't say ahead of time what you will change, of course, but common changes include adding questions, changing written or spoken wording to be a more accurate reflection of the nature of science, "lecturettes" at opportune points in a lesson about a relevant aspect of the NOS, and changing activities to become more open-ended (along with thoughts about aspects of the NOS students might likely demonstrate during the more open-ended activity). (20% of total grade)
3. Research Project In this assignment you will apply what you know about science to answer a question that you choose. You will be using raw data from any of several publicly available databases. I'll show you some data sources in class, to get you started, and show you how the assignment works. Your job is to devise a question that uses that data to support a possible answer. The questions should examine trends or relationships between two (or more) variables, and you will have to parse the data yourself--you are not using someone else's study. Once you've selected a question, please check with me to be sure it's OK.
You will analyze and interpret what you have found and communicate your findings through a written report of 4-6 pages (double spaced) that includes:
4. Exams and/or Quizzes (25% of total grade)
| Week | Date | Topic for this Evening's Class | Assignment Due Today |
| 1 | Jan 23 | Course intro; activity: Q's sci can/can't answer; lecture on defining NOS | |
| 2 | Jan 30 | Discuss reading; activity: card exchange; sci. as puzzle solving; activity: Havholm activity; activity: pendulums or sticky tape from NOS perspective | Clough (Clearinghouse), McComas (Keys), Okasha 1-18 [what is sci] |
| 3 | Feb 6 | Discuss reading; observation activity; lecture on correlation & causation; activity: parsing and graphing manatee dataset | Wolpert, Carey 1-7 [what is sci.], |
| 4 | Feb 13 | Discuss reading; lecture on study types; demo the use of databases and large datasets in school science (intro to LTRP assignment) | Derry (ch 1), Carey 8-19 [observation], Carey 26-35 [explanation, theory, cause, correlation], Gott & Duggan |
| 5 | Feb 20 | Discuss reading; lecture on theories & laws; activity: chromatography and NOS | Carey 83-91 [study types], Jenkins |
| 6 | Feb 27 | Discuss reading; lecture on induction, deduction & the wheel of science; activity: Floating & Sinking (illustrates induction); activity: sampling demos | Ben-Moti 45-56 [words], McComas (Bio Theory), Carey 52-60 [testing explanations] |
| 7 | Mar 5 | LTRP Presentations ... Discuss/work on lesson plan assignment | LTRP due |
| 8 | Mar 12 | Discuss reading; investigate textbooks & NOS; course review (students define key terms) |
Okasha 18-40 [sci. reasoning] |
| 9 | Mar 19 | Discuss reading; lecture on operational definitions; activity: cat's meow; prep for quiz via sample? | Derry (ch 2) |
| 10 | Apr 2 | Discuss reading; lecture on philosophical & methodological naturalism, assumptions underlying investigations; activity: check activity; activity: skulls | Clough (Interchange), Kruse |
| 11 | Apr 9 | Quiz ... Discuss readings; lecture on teaching NOS; prep for lesson plan assignment; activity (opt.): mystery powders | Bell, Lederman, Henriques |
| 12 | Apr 16 | Discuss reading; jigsaw re: standards & NOS; lecture on realism & anti-realism; video: astrology; activity: pseudoscience; intro critical incidents | Okasha 58-77 [realism & instrumentalism], Carey 119-124 [pseudoscience] |
| 13 | Apr 23 | Discuss reading, critical incident; lecture on critiques of the classical view of NOS: Kuhn, paradigms & the social construction of knowledge; activity: umbrellaology; guest speaker? | Lesson plans due, McCain & Segal 82-95 or Okasha 77-95 [sci change & revolutions] |
| 14 | Apr 30 | Discuss reading; lecture on evolution, creationism, science & religion; activity: natural selection; discuss '15 myths' | Ayala, Narguizian, Derry ch. 9, Okasha 120-135 [sci & its critics] |
| 15 | May 7 | Final quiz/rationale paper assignment? | Final quiz |
Students with disabilities who need reasonable modifications, special assistance, or accomodations in this course should promptly direct their request to the course instructor. If a student with a disability feels that modifications, special assistance, or accomodations offered are inappropriate or insufficient, s/he should seek the assistance of the Director of Disabled Student Services on campus.
