Suggest a paper

3 Responses to Suggest a paper

1. Alex Weatherall says:

   September 1, 2011 at 2248

   I sug­gest: Towards a sci­ence cur­ricu­lum for pub­lic under­stand­ing; Robin Mil­lar; SSR 77 (280) ASE.

   Sug­gested ques­tions:
   Do you think sci­ence should be com­pul­sory up to 16?
   Should we teach sci­ence dif­fer­ently to stu­dents who don’t intend to become sci­en­tists?
   If so how and what? E.g. should we sep­a­rate sci­ence for the cit­i­zen and sci­ence for the poten­tial sci­en­tist
   If not what do we do to encour­age the stu­dents who have the atti­tude that they don’t see the point in learn­ing sci­ence?
   Do you agree with the premise put for­ward by the paper (which pre-dates How Sci­ence Works) that the core of the sci­ence cur­ricu­lum 5–16 should be designed to pro­mote pub­lic understanding?

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2. Mark Crookes says:

   October 25, 2011 at 0931

   sorry i got dis­tracted and put this in the wrong place..

   This is one of my favourites

   The Role of Delib­er­ate Prac­tice in the Acqui­si­tion of Expert Per­for­mance
   K. Anders Eric­s­son, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer

   http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.169.9712&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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3. Griff John says:

   November 13, 2011 at 1043

   Here’s my sug­ges­tion for a paper for the club to discuss

   I reckon it makes a good one for dis­cus­sion because

   1) energy is a topic that is sig­nif­i­cant to all the sci­ences
   2) energy is often taught at Key Stage 3 in a way that just adds con­fu­sion, rather than help­ing stu­dents or their teachers

   http://iopscience.iop.org/0031–9120/42/4/011

   Lawrence, I. (2007) ‘Teach­ing energy: thoughts from the SPT11-14 project’. Physics Edu­ca­tion 42 (4) 402–409

   Abstract
   ———

   Describ­ing the world in terms of energy is nec­es­sar­ily quan­ti­ta­tive: one must be able to do the sums for the descrip­tion to gain a pur­chase. Whilst teach­ing younger chil­dren (say 11–14 years old) the full quan­ti­ta­tive descrip­tion is not avail­able and this has made the intro­duc­tory teach­ing of energy a con­tentious area. By focus­ing on rep­re­sen­ta­tions of energy that respect this quan­ti­ta­tive essence, with­out demand­ing that cal­cu­la­tions are actu­ally done, one can develop a manip­u­la­ble model of the abstract idea of energy to be shared with chil­dren that is much more plau­si­ble, intel­li­gi­ble and fruit­ful than one based solely on a ver­bal descrip­tion. Here I argue this case, indi­cat­ing the ways in which such a model may be useful.

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