Anthony Carpi, John Jay College, New York, NY
Teaching the process of science is critical at the undergraduate level because many students enter college with minimal understanding of the scientific endeavor beyond methodical procedure (Moss et al., 2001; Bell et al., 2003). Unfortunately, the vast majority of students are never taught scientific process; instead, science is presented to them as a system of discipline-specific facts to be memorized. A growing number of studies point to the effectiveness of explicitly teaching the nature and process of science; however textbooks fail to provide any support in this area (Dagher & Boujaoude, 1997). This project was funded in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education FIPSE program to develop a series of materials targeted at explicitly teaching scientific process. Topics in the series include: Scientific Process and Knowledge, Experimentation, Scientific Theories, Scientific Controversy, Ethics, and more. These materials will be launched and freely available online (http://www.visionlearning.com) where they will be paired with disciplinary science lessons (Atomic Theory, the Periodic Table, Chemical Kinetics, etc.). In this way, they will allow instructors to teach a stand-alone scientific process course or integrate scientific process directly into disciplinary science courses including general chemistry. This presentation will discuss the materials being developed in more detail and the project's progress to date.
Web Page:
www.visionlearning.com