As I prepare for parents night here at BUA, I often get questions about the pedagogy employed in my classroom. I often turn parents to this article from Science Service, (who publish Science News) about the problems with the Scientific Method. There are some nice quotes from Heidi Schweingruber, director of the Board on Science Education at the National Research Council.
“In the future, she says, students and teachers will be encouraged to think not about the scientific method, but instead about “practices of science” — or the many ways in which scientists look for answers.”
“In the past, students have largely been taught there’s one way to do science,” she says. “It’s been reduced to ‘Here are the five steps, and this is how every scientist does it.’“
But that one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t reflect how scientists in different fields actually “do” science, she says.
“Ninety percent of the experiments I did as a scientist didn’t work out,” says Bill Wallace, a former biologist with the National Institutes of Health.
You may have noticed the article also quotes a mild mannered physics teacher from Melrose.
