The Reform of Introductory Science Courses for Non-Majors

Informed by the Meaning of Science Literacy

A Working Paper

Purpose and Outline of this Working Paper

    The purpose of this Working Paper is to foster conversation among ACS science faculty about what science literacy means and how it can inform individual campus and consortial efforts in the ACS Reform of Introductory Science Courses for Non-Majors Program. The paragraphs on Background and Current Consortial Efforts are shared first to set the stage and to provide a common starting place and understanding of both the general concern about science literacy and the consortial Reform efforts. The section on Questions About Science Literacy and Reform raises questions about the role and impact of science reform. And the section on Science Literacy looks briefly at the National Science Education Standards for K-12 and the Goals for Science Literacy in ACS Students.

Background

    The fact is the general American populace, including college graduates, has a very poor understanding of science, which impedes discernment of the role science plays in national and international policy, as well as in personal business pursuits. Furthermore, the southern states historically have lagged behind the rest of the country in science education. Even though the southern region of the United States is engaged in a major reform of its K-16 science education programs, there still remains much to be done to create a scientifically literate population.

    Not only is science literacy and fluency a critical and urgent problem in general, it also is important for the ACS institutions, from the standpoint of being true to and fulfilling their institutional missions, as they prepare students to be capable, effective, and informed citizens of the world. Our students must leave our institutions with an understanding of the planet on which we live and the Universe in which it exists and have an appreciation of the Earth’s environment and the sustainability of resources.

    The students in our lens are not likely to enter graduate school and seek masters or doctoral degrees in any of the sciences. Nor are they likely to seek scientific jobs immediately after college. So, why do they need to be scientifically literate? Because science impacts every day life, and the impact will increase as scientific knowledge increases. For example, science literacy may enable a business person to better understand his/her product, the scientific underpinnings of that product and the environment in which the product may be grown, manufactured, and/or used. A basic understanding of science could help an attorney deal with a case with scientific implications, equipping the attorney to fully comprehend what happened in the circumstance at hand and evaluate the nature and impact of scientific evidence and testimony. The perspectives of any K-12 teacher can be widened by an acquaintance with science. For instance, a social studies teacher or a political scientist could derive significant benefit by applying basic scientific understanding to issues of national security that involve nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare.

    In these areas, as in others, being scientifically literate strengthens one’s professional capabilities and enables our graduates to serve as empowered citizens and informed voters as they are called upon to evaluate a vast array of complicated issues facing society at large.

Current Consortial Efforts

    The Associated Colleges of the South, with support from the W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles, is engaged in a major project designed to promote the Reform of Introductory Science Courses for Non-Majors in its sixteen member institutions. There are two objectives at the heart of this initiative:

• To raise the level of science literacy of students at ACS member institutions, and
• To demonstrate the value of confronting this difficult and perplexing problem through collaborative efforts of faculty and institutions.

    More specifically, the mission of this initiative is to:

• Increase the visibility and to sharpen the focus on issues in science education across the sixteen member campuses.
• Provide the ACS faculty with the expertise and the resources to raise the level of science literacy among non-science majors.
• Improve the scientific and technological understanding and skills of non-science majors.
• Demonstrate the value of confronting this problem through collaborative efforts among the sixteen member institutions.

    By its very nature, science reform must address both faculty development efforts and curricular modification at the same time. To this end, the ACS Science Reform Program has activities and opportunities in place to assist in these efforts, including course mini-grants and mentoring grants. Additional programs may be undertaken at the discretion of the ACS Science Reform Program Committee. Full program details may be reviewed at http://www.colleges.org/sciencereform/index.html.

Questions About Science Literacy and Reform

   Beyond the programs and activities that are in place to foster reform, ACS efforts could be well informed by a discussion of what exactly science literacy means in and for liberal arts colleges. Some of the questions that come to mind include:

• How do you, the [college level] introductory science teacher, define science literacy?
• Should science reform focus on discipline content, scientific process, or both?
• Are there principles and/or concepts that transcend specific science disciplines and are necessary for all scientific disciplines, whether or not one is a major in that field?
• In what ways does science literacy and reform inform and impact the goals/objectives, structure and resources of an introductory course for non-majors?
• What difference does the definition of science literacy for K-12 make to our agenda? Or should it make any difference?
• Should or can we assume that K-12 institutions are meeting the science literacy standards that have been set forth for them? (The basic standards are found below, in the next section.)
• In your non-science major student population is there evidence of uneven science preparation among students who take the introductory courses? If so, how are the deficiencies addressed in introductory courses?
• What benefits might there be in crafting a basic, common understanding, standards and/or guidelines for ACS member institutions to consider as they reform their introductory science courses for non-majors? What would be the advantages and/or disadvantages to pursue this?
• In what ways might reforming introductory science courses for non-majors impact the pace of classes, conflicting purposes of courses, attitudes of professors and fellow students, the implicit conventions of particular sciences (paradigm), exam design and grading practices, class size, and building community?
• Since higher education cannot solve the science literacy problem alone, how can ACS and/or our individual member institutions encourage partnerships with K-12 institutions, community colleges, business, and industry?
• How can we encourage and invite students who are typically under-represented in any science courses to take science courses for non-majors?
• Would ACS workshops focusing on experiential, collaborative, cooperative, active, and/or interdisciplinary teaching be of interest?

Science Literacy

A. National Science Education Standards for K-12

• Download/read a free pdf file of the National Science Education Standards at http://www.nap.edu
• National Science Teachers’ website: http://www.nsta.org
• National Association for the Advancement of Science
• Abstract of an article published in Educational Leadership, October 1999, Vol. 57, Number2, “Science Literacy for All in the 21 st Century”

    The origins of national standards and goals for science education date back to 1989, when the National Governors’ Association endorsed national education goals. In a show of support for the Governors’ action, President George Bush created The National Education Goals Panel (NEGP), and support for content standards continued under the presidency of Bill Clinton. The National Research Council produced the National Science Education Standards in 1995 and published them in 1996. According to the information on the National Science Teachers’ website, the Standards were the result of four years of work by twenty-two scientific and science education societies and over 18,000 individual contributors.

    In the National Science Education Standards, science literacy is defined by content standards and is the knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity. It also includes specific types of abilities. Underlying these standards are four general goals that were designed to educate students who will able to:

• experience the richness and excitement of knowing about and understanding the natural world;
• use appropriate scientific processes and principles in making personal decisions;
• engage intelligently in public discourse and debate about matters of scientific and technological concern; and
• increase their economic productivity through the use of the knowledge, understanding, and skills of the scientifically literate person in their careers .

    The common concepts and processes that serve as the foundation for the specific grade appropriate science education standards, the progressive knowledge base, and skill building opportunities suggested for each grade level fall are:

• Systems, order, and organization
• Evidence, models, and explanation
• Constancy, change, and measurement
• Evolution and equilibrium
• Form and function

    The eight (8) categories of content standards for K-12 are:

• Unifying concepts and processes in science
• Science as inquiry
• Physical science
• Life science
• Earth and space science
• Science and technology
• Science in personal and social perspectives
• History and nature of science

    The content standards are intended to outline what students should know, understand, and be able to do in natural science. It is important to keep in mind that the science content standards are a set of outcomes for students, not a prescribed curriculum, and that each standard subsumes the knowledge and skills of other standards and assumes the use of student inquiry to develop understandings and skills in both the personal and social aspects of science. Furthermore, the standards show a progression from the concept of “science as inquiry” to the “history and nature of science standards.”

B. Information from Two Non-ACS Institutions of Higher Education

    There is scattered information available concerning science reform efforts in higher education. Information from two of these institutions are presented here for consideration.

  1. Drury University , where the SaM-VI (Science and Math Values Inventory) is being developed, and which we hope to be available for use at ACS institutions, defines science literacy as:

• An appreciation of the relevance of mathematics and science to our history, our current status and our global future.
• Understanding and use of the methods of science and mathematics, especially an understanding of “How we know what we think we know,” and how this knowledge evolves.
• Quantitative and abstract reasoning skills required to solve complex scientific and technological real-world problems.
• Sufficient knowledge of terms and concepts required to evaluate quantitative and scientific information presented to the public.
• Skills that allow access to current sources of mathematics and scientific knowledge.
• An excitement for mathematics and science that will involve individuals in life-long learning.

  2. Through science reform efforts at Grinnell College , they identified seven reasons “Why Students Get Turned Off by Science.” According to their research, students dislike:

• Memorizing Isolated Facts
• Lack of Unifying Concepts/Frameworks
• Emphasis on Terms Never Used Again
• Lack of Discovery/Cook-book Approach
• Lack of Relevance
• Attitude of Instructor
• Attitude of Student (don’t care)

    Furthermore, as part of the assessment of why students are scientifically illiterate, the team from Grinnell discovered that students:

• Leave Class with Memorized Collection of Isolated Terms and Facts
• Retain Very Little (less than 10%) in Long-Term Memory
• Have Little Understanding of Concepts/Processes
• Are Unaware of Math-Science-Society Links

    One question is “How can we help students learn to think critically and to reason, in order to become scientifically literate?”

C . Goals for Science Literacy in ACS Students

    In the ACS Science Reform grant funded by the W.M Keck Foundation of Los Angeles , ACS proposed that scientifically literate students who graduate from ACS member institutions will be able to:

• articulate basic key scientific principles.
• identify major sources of scientific information.
• access useful information and be able to distinguish between authentic and bogus notions about science.
• understand and appreciate the scientific-world view, including its limitations, and how it differs from other perspectives.
• understand the increase of inter-relationships among the different disciplines of science.
• understand the connection between scientific concepts and technological developments, their impact on society, and the cultural and historical context in which they emerge.
• use their understanding to evaluate rationally scientific controversies in the world.

D. Where Do We Go From Here?

The current literature largely agrees that science literacy can and will be expressed in different ways, at different levels and in different domains, and proposes [generally] that a scientifically literate person will be able to:

• ask, find, or determine answers to questions derived from curiosity about everyday experiences.
• describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena.
• read with understanding articles about science in the popular press and to engage in social conversations about the validity of the conclusions.
• identify scientific issues underlying national and local decisions and express positions that are scientifically and technologically informed.
• evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it.
• pose and evaluate arguments based on evidence and to apply conclusions from such arguments appropriately.

Do these qualities adequately embrace what we desire for the students who graduate from ACS member institutions? What would you add to the above or rephrase in order to strengthen your campus science reform efforts as well as the basis for the ACS Science Reform Program?

In Closing

    As stated at the beginning of this document, this is a WORKING PAPER, a beginning point for dialogue. Through sharing the history and goals of science reform/literacy efforts currently underway in the K-12 arena, information about the ACS science reform program, examples of science reform efforts at two post-secondary institutions, and raising questions, the intention of this paper is to provide a common starting point for discussion about what science literacy means and how it can inform individual campus and consortial efforts in the ACS Reform of Introductory Science Courses for Non-Majors Program.

    A number of questions were raised in the section on Questions About Science Literacy and Reform. No doubt, by the time one reaches the end of this paper, even more questions will be added to that list. However, it seems that the following questions remain central to the discussion, if we take seriously science reform efforts within the consortium:

• How do you define science literacy, and how is science literacy defined on your campus? How can the conversation about science reform and literacy be furthered on your campus?
• In what ways will introductory science courses for non-majors need to be changed on your campus, in order to fulfill the agreed upon definition of and goals for science literacy What resources and/or skills do/will faculty need to meet the definition and resulting goals?
• What would be the benefits, if any, of developing and/or promoting an “ACS Definition of Science Literacy,” which would inform science reform efforts on its member campuses?
• How can the ACS Science Reform program support its individual member campuses in their science reform efforts?

The ACS Reform of Introductory Science Courses for Non-Science Majors Program is supported by the W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles.