Norman Lederman lectures on science education

According to Norman Lederman, schools aren't teaching science the right way.
Lederman, who spoke Wednesday at Westminster College's Hancock Symposium, holds a Ph.D. in science education from Syracuse University and has spent 30 years studying methods for science education and tracking students' and teachers' understanding of
science. He's been published more than 200 times in professional journals and has written 10 books.
When Lederman said today's education standards are lacking, his words carry some serious authority. He pointed out the deep divide between the necessity of science in daily life, and peoples' attitudes toward science.
"Kids start off loving science, but over time, they become afraid of it," Lederman said. "They take minimal courses on it."
But at the same time, Lederman continued, "society today has become more science-based. People rely on science to make decisions on what to eat, how to live."
In order to make informed decisions based on the science people hear about in news stories, these people require a level of scientific literacy. Scientific literacy isn't just about knowing basic scientific facts, Lederman explained. In fact, science has three parts.
First, there's the body of knowledge. This encompasses scientific theories, laws and so on. Today's education standards, as laid out by the Next Generation Science Standards, heavily emphasize this aspect.
Second is inquiry, which involves scientific methods and understanding how the way science is done impacts the results.
Third is "nature of science." These are the characteristics of scientific knowledge. For example, part of the nature of science is knowledge changes over time as new research emerges and old research is reevaluated.
Lederman gave an anecdote that demonstrated the effects of not knowing the nature of science.
"I often have students say, when asked about their conclusion, 'We didn't have one. We didn't get what we expected,'" he said.
In science, the result should inform the conclusion, even if it was an unexpected one.
Lederman contends the latter two, inquiry and nature of science, have the greatest impact on scientific literacy. However, they're de-emphasized in the NGSS.
Many teachers believe as students do science in class, such as guided experiments, they'll absorb inquiry and the nature of science along the way.
In Lederman's experience, and according research he has done, this isn't necessarily true.
"It's not uncommon for students in science classes to be able to do something and not know why they'd do it," he said.
Nor is it true teachers' own knowledge about inquiry and the nature of science will come through in their teaching. Rather, it's best to take an explicit approach.
"Students won't learn what is not taught," Lederman said.
He suggested following up in-class experiments with discussion time, where students can learn the "why" of the procedures they carried out. During this time for example, students can also talk about why other groups got different results despite following the same steps - which plays into inquiry.
Lederman cautioned he doesn't mean "doing science" doesn't have a place in schools, saying it's a necessary platform for learning important skills that scientists use every day. But there's far more to teaching science, and certainly more is needed for students to become scientifically literate.
"Doing science is a means to an end of scientific literacy," Lederman said. "If we stop at that point, we're not doing enough. The means have become an endpoint."
After the talk, the Westminster students in attendance were animated as they left the auditorium.
"I thought he was pretty interesting in his philosophy of how to teach science," said Ian Whittington, a Westminster freshman. "When I was a kid, I always treasured science. My parents taught me how important it was. I made a pretty good connection (with his topic)."