Engaging Science, Advancing Learning:
General Education, Majors, and the New Global Century
November 6 - 8, 2008
Providence, Rhode Island
This conference will explore the place and practice of science in college learning for the twenty-first century.
Conference sessions will feature practices that engage students with the power and centrality of science and with the global reach of science and technology in addressing the world’s urgent challenges. Participants will work on ways to accelerate hands-on learning in science, both in general education and in majors, especially reforms that put critical inquiry, undergraduate research, and social responsibility at the center of the educational experience. And they will work on ways to remove the many barriers—in campus culture and the reward systems—that still impede faculty efforts to teach “science as science is done.”
There is strong agreement that the United States must make science achievement a top priority. We need more successful science graduates, and we need many more graduates—whatever their major—who can evaluate and use scientific information in making decisions. But fostering these capacities remains an elusive goal. And for undergraduate education, the problem is exacerbated by the disconnects between how science is actually done, and how it is portrayed in high school science education, in culturally negative stereotypes, and often in the routine practices of general or introductory courses.
In response, this conference will ask: what works? With decades of innovation in science teaching behind us, what are the most promising avenues for raising the quality and level of students’ engagement and achievement in science and scientific research?
How can we move beyond menu-driven general education requirements to more integrative designs for learning? How can colleges and universities provide early—and recurrent--experiences with science research and problem-based science studies? How do we build science students’ competence in learning how experiments are done, data analyzed and tested for statistical validity, and findings modeled mathematically? What are we learning through widespread efforts to connect science and related disciplines to big global, health and policy challenges such as the environment or health pandemics? What are we learning from projects that use technology to involve students in global investigations, multi-national teams and creative projects? What is the role of cross-disciplinary learning for science majors? For advanced general education? Does the new outcomes emphasis offer promise or peril for learning and achievement in science?
Too often, breakthroughs in science and technology—both in general education and in majors--are limited to individual courses or to special programs that reach only a few students. Participants in this conference will probe ways to scale up the pace of change and to better support faculty leadership in curricular and pedagogical innovation. It will take systemic change to reverse the long-term pattern of American students’ under-achievement in science. But how can colleges and universities—working together—create a positive climate for engaging science with far-reaching educational change?
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