News & Views item - January 2011

 

 

Understanding Science for Anyone Who Wants To. (January 24, 2011)

The Australian Academy of Science in partnership with the federal government's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations  undertook the development of Primary Connections to link "science with literacy’ [in] an innovative approach to teaching and learning. It aims to enhance primary school teachers' confidence and competence for teaching science [and] focuses on developing students' knowledge, skills, understanding and capacities in both science and literacy".

 

Because Primary Connections is aligned with the rationale and aims of the Science portion of the Australian Curriculum it "will support its national implementation by continuing to provide an innovative, inquiry-based program linking the teaching of science with literacy".

 

However, following a rather different agenda the University of California's Museum of Paleontology beginning in 2000 brought together stakeholders from education, academia, and the media to fill what it saw was a "critical need for a collection of vetted tools for teaching evolutionary biology. Understanding Evolution (www.understandingevolution.org) was built, in collaboration with the National Center for Science Education, to meet this need and to provide a clear and comprehensive reference for the general public. It was launched in 2004.

 

But what is of immediate interest for this webpage is what followed. Writing in Science the designers of Understanding Evolution noted: "As we developed Understanding Evolution and [noticing] similar tensions and misinformation arising around topics like climate change, we realized that much of the public's mistrust of evolution stems from more basic and even more important issues: poor understanding of how science works to build reliable knowledge and confusion about the strengths and limitations of this process. Hence, we envisioned a Web site that would leverage the format of Understanding Evolution toward the goal of helping teachers reinforce the true nature and process of science throughout their teaching."

 

In consequence Understanding Science was launched in January 2009. Following is its home page:

 

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And were you to click on the button within Understanding Science 101 entitled "How Science Works" you would come upon:

 

 

 

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The graphic table below shows the avenues that Understanding Science explores:

 

  

 

Understanding Science, for those who are prepared to investigate it, will be found to be an invaluable resource for the general public, bloggers, journos, teachers, scientists and even parliamentarians should they care to have a look in.