Collaborative Research: Focusing a General Science Course on Improving Science Literacy

跨学科(99)。麦克丹尼尔学院和南康涅狄格州立大学（SCSU）的合作将一所私立的住宿文理学院与一所公立的综合性大学联合起来，为非科学专业的学生开发一门通识教育课程，以提高学生的科学处理技能，他们对科学的态度，以及他们对科学本质的理解。为此，课程材料的设计旨在增强学生的科学意识，拓展学生理解和实验的能力，培养学生对科学与社会关系的认识。来自多个学科的科学内容有助于激励和奠定学生的学习基础，并为培养科学素养提供了一种工具。这个项目的计划成果是一套17个模块，每个模块都侧重于一个狭窄的科学素养技能范围。通过实践活动、练习、讨论和/或项目的结合，模块的重点是让学生更好地观察和记录自然现象；测量物理现象；确定科学与社会之间的重要联系；或者理解科学知识的发展和组织。两所院校之间的合作确保了广泛的学生使用这些材料。麦克丹尼尔大学在一个住宿的文科社区里接待学生，在那里，材料被用在一个小型的、综合的实验室讨论教室里。SCSU的学生在纽黑文城市的一所公立综合性大学学习，在这里，学生们在一个中等大小的课堂环境中，以研究为基础，以活动为中心的课程中学习材料。拟议活动的智力价值在于增加教育界对在大学层面上可以做些什么来帮助提高国家科学素养的理解，特别是对传统上代表性不足的群体的学生。多年来，不断有人呼吁提高美国学生的科学素养。然而，对具体科学内容的理解仍然主导着通识教育课程的学习目标。精心设计的课程材料可以培养学生的创造性和科学推理能力，以及他们对科学的态度和理解，这将帮助他们看到科学的相关性。反过来，通过培养更多知识渊博的学生担任中小学科学教师，以及培养更多知识渊博的公民，形成了一个科学能力的循环。

Interdisciplinary (99). This collaboration between McDaniel College and Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) brings together a private, residential liberal arts college with a public, comprehensive university to develop a general education course for non-science majors to improve students' scientific process skills, their attitudes toward science, and their understanding of the nature of science. To accomplish this, course materials are designed to strengthen students' sense of science, expand their ability to understand and conduct experiments, and cultivate recognition of the relationships between science and society. Science content from a host of disciplines helps to motivate and ground students' learning and provide a vehicle for developing scientific literacy. A suite of seventeen modules, each focusing on a narrow range of scientific literacy skills is the planned outcome of this project. Through a combination of hands-on activities, exercises, discussions, and/or projects, modules focus, for example, on having students be better able to observe and record natural phenomena; measure physical phenomena; identify significant links between science and society; or understand the progression and organization of scientific knowledge. The collaboration between the two institutions ensures that a broad range of students use the materials. McDaniel hosts students in a residential liberal arts community, where materials are used in a small, integrated laboratory-discussion classroom setting. SCSU's students experience a public, comprehensive university in urban New Haven, where students experience the materials in a researched-based, activities-centered course situated in a medium-sized lecture environment. The intellectual merit of the proposed activity rests on increasing the education community's understanding of what can be done at the college-level to help improve national science literacy, particularly with students in traditionally underrepresented groups. For years there have been repeated calls to raise American students' scientific literacy. Yet, understanding of specific science content still dominates learning goals for general education courses. Well-crafted curricular materials fostering students' own creative, scientific reasoning skills and their attitudes about and understanding of science will help them see science's relevancy. In turn a cycle of scientific competency is created through the development of more informed students entering the roles of elementary and secondary-science teachers as well as the creation of more informed citizens.