ETEC Blog P Collins

I had a great time with the quiz that we completed this week which basically asked… What kind of Science teacher are you? As it turns out I’m not the science teacher I thought I was (according to their definitions)

Week 2 Post:
Maybe I’m alone in this but having been an educator dealing with science these last 12 years…. I think I might have been over thinking some of the questions. As it turns out I seem to be on the side of

Positivist

Deductivism

Decontextualism

Process

Realism

When I read the information that elaborated on these descriptors I could see some accuracy in how they applied to me. And some inaccuracy (probably from how I read the questions) I do feel that good science gives us good information. And that really good experimental (and sometimes theoretical) science should involve controlled experimentation. And that this is very much what we should be sharing in science classes with youth. However, even though I was identified as a decontextualist, I don’t share the view that science is completely independent of its cultural location and sociological structure. Western science has been influenced greatly over the last 150 years by the rigid social structures existing in the past, and still in existence today. This is especially apparent by what is accepted and what isn’t accepted as good theoretical science. I’m thinking of an example I had read about in M. Gladwell’s book “the Outliers” about a gentleman from the States with supreme intellectual powers who has spent the majority of his adult life studying science and mathematics but with no formal post-secondary education. Something he had to forgo because of affordability. However, he has worked out some very complex theories but will never see them published in an academic journal. Is this an example of societal prejudices/structure impeding scientific thought? What are your thoughts? Is there still an “old boys club” at work in the scientific field – and is this an impediment to our understanding of the universe?

PC