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Online Course for Teachers: Teaching Evolution

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SESSION 1

SESSION 1: What Is the Nature of Science?

Explore Part B: Biology Textbook Review

1. Read and reflect on the following quote:

The process of science making is narrative. It consists of spinning hypotheses about nature, testing them, correcting hypotheses, and getting one's head straight. En route to producing testable hypotheses, we play with ideas, try to create anomalies, try to find neat puzzle forms that we can apply... . Our instruction in science from start to finish should be mindful of the lively process of science making, rather than being an account only of "finished science" as represented in a textbook.

-- Jerome Bruner. The Culture of Education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. p. 127.

2. Look through the textbook you are using with your biology classes to answer these questions:

How does your biology text describe the process of science?

Can you find at least three examples in your text that describe or infer the "unfinished" nature of science?


 

Facilitator Notes 3 & 4

 

Next: Explain Part A: Describing Science Processes

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