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While researchers have addressed the question of whether the model of behavior of the scientist should be the model of behavior for the science educator, there remains a deficit of clear understanding about how best to develop and prepare future scientists for science professions. Numerous studies of students' attitudes toward school science reveal that positive attitudes peak before the teenage years and become more negative with time. Furthermore, many studies reveal that students' attitudes toward science itself are consistently positive. The mediating factor, then, appears to be the teaching, or learning, of science. Therefore, one may deduce that science education may need improvement.
As a former and current student of science as well as a former teacher of secondary sciences, I have been surprised by the widespread use of traditional teaching approaches in science. That is, I expected that middle school science would be less "hands-on" than elementary school science and that high school science might be less so than middle school science. And, with the exception of minimal and often recipe-like labwork, this has generally been true. I did not, however, expect that post-secondary science would be less "hands-on" than secondary science. My question is, at what point do science-profession hopefuls actually begin to regularly engage in scientific problem-solving and thinking? It appears that we withhold discovery learning and inductive-reasoning based learning for our most promising future researchers in the very field of inquiry requiring as much if not more of these skills than any other they could choose.
This issue is likely to become exponentially more pressing in the current technological society and the biotechnological economy projected for this century. In other words, when access to knowledge is as pervasive as it is (and one should not expect this access to decrease) the capabilities that most poignantly discriminate success from competence become what one is able to do with that knowledge and how well one is able to think about and manipulate that knowledge. Herein lies not only the foundation for the support for discovery learning, critical and inductive reasoning skills, and the scientific method, but the foundation of what defines and thus separates science professions (particularly research science) from several other professions. These skills are integrally important in the daily rigors of scientific work and so these skills are essential in the sciences to perhaps an even higher degree than they are in other fields.
A good metaphor for addressing this issue in science education is what I call the States of Matter metaphor. This metaphor is particularly important with respect to America's gifted and talented students and then again increasingly relevant for the next generation of scientists. This metaphor infers that education at all levels, elementary through post-secondary, should move from more rigid "solid" states (exemplified by traditional pedagogy) to the more fluid "liquid" state (exemplified by flexibility, individualization, and real-world problem-solving). The ultimate goal of such a transition is to create an educational environment wherein students' potential is realized. Such realization of potential constitutes the "gas" state, a state even more dynamic and flexible than the liquid. Full discussion of this metaphor is beyond the scope of this commentary, but please refer to the Changing States of Matter: Science, Education, and Giftedness in 21st Century High Schools (Sytsma, 2001) for elaboration of the metaphor. If education-and science education, in particular-can transition to a liquid state, then those students most likely to become professional scientists will have ample opportunities to do science and to think science. Likewise, the scientific awareness and understanding of students not inclined to become scientists will increase, as the science classroom begins to more accurately reflect the science professions, and those positive attitudes toward science itself (consistently high, according to some research) will begin to parallel students' attitudes toward school science. When students' learning of science more closely follows the doing of science—researching, designing, applying scientific thinking and the scientific method—I believe that students' attitudes toward science will become more favorable overall, and perhaps many students who would have been unable to envision themselves as scientists may find themselves confidently planning careers in science.
The more students see that science is a dynamic, creative, problem-solving endeavor, the more students science, as a field, can draw in. Currently, with the focus of science education still quite rigid (i.e., reliant upon the traditional lecture-notes-lab-test routine), science may be selling itself short by keeping in its discipline only (or largely) those students most inclined toward didactic learning, memorization, and linear thinking. Ironically, however, many of the most eminent scientists throughout history were highly creative thinkers, able to utilize visualization, imagination, integration, and application of facts and theories. Today, access to information affords science students the time to focus more on the processing and manipulation of that information than ever before. Yet all too frequently, science classrooms have failed to capitalize upon this access, choosing rather to remain in the habit of tradition.
There seems to remain a distinction between science education and doing science or scientific thinking. Many post-secondary students are only able to get regular access to actual laboratory research and opportunities for scientific problem-solving outside of class—typically, if they are able to secure a position in someone's lab as an assistant. However, many students are either unable to get such positions unless they have some experience in labwork or never discover that they enjoy and are good at such work because they have already shut out science as a potential professional opportunity by the time they would have such an opportunity.
Therefore, the issue confronting science education is how to change students' attitudes toward school science in order to reflect what appear to be their consistently positive attitudes toward science itself. In doing this, we as science educators will not only be improving science education for those who currently know they wish to pursue science but will be opening doors to other young people who may very well make outstanding scientists, given a more flexible, creative, thinking, and problem-based pedagogy. When we move science education from the solid state to the liquid state, we better prepare young people for the doing of science, give them the gift of possible careers in science, and maximize their potential for success in a global society replete with scientific thinking and literacy demands.
Systma, R. E., (2001). Changing states of matter: Science, education, and giftedness in 21st century high school. The Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 7, 181-184.