Less school science

Taking Science to School

ion, information at various levels of,

Public School Creation Science

Many public school teachers are caught in a “no-mans land” when it comes to the teaching of origins. On the one hand, they want to teach creation. On the other hand they are told, ordered, coerced, or otherwise led to believe that they cannot teach creation and must teach evolution. Not only must they teach it, they must teach it as truth. What are these teachers to do? When should they “step o...

How School Science Lies

School science lies. It lies about Mendelian genetics, the peppered moth, male and female, the motion of a pendulum, the Bohr atom, the fluid model of electricity and many other basic concepts, all due to simplification. Real science relies on domain-specific models and so always lies at some level. Teachers thus need to help students appreciate how science interprets complexity and how to mana...

Translational Science of Cognitive Science in Middle School Science Curricula

There have often been complaints about the lack of implementation of basic research findings from cognitive science into curricula. We are conducting a large research study to examine whether systematic modification of middle school science curricula using general cognitive science principles can significantly improve student learning in large urban school districts. A team of cognitive scienti...

Good science with less animal experimentation