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The Secret to Successful Science Education
Why do Young Learners Lose Interest in Science? We’re Teaching it Wrong.
Science is one of the greatest innovations of humankind. It will become even more of an imperative discipline to our species’ sustainable continuation in the coming decades. With near-inevitable carbon emission-induced chaos, overpopulation, food shortages, and more, our future workforce needs to exponentially increase our rate of discovery and innovation to counteract these disasters.
And yet, studies over the past few years have found troubling perceptions of science. Many students find themselves discouraged due to perceived difficulty, others are dissuaded because they believe they’re too feminine for science. We are failing to inspire students to find interest in the world around them, resulting in a decline in science interest when we need it the most.
Despite this, there’s still an ounce of hope. With some modifications to the way we teach STEM, we won’t just reverse the decline in scientific interest, we’ll also have a shot at saving our species from its own failures.
The Scientific Method
We start off on the wrong foot from the onset of most science classes. We teach the scientific method like it’s a separate process from the rest of science. Once our students can repeat it, we abandon the whole notion and move on to the next lesson. Science builds upon itself, with this principle at the foundation of every revelation. Instead of casting the scientific method aside, we must bake it into the way students learn their science.
Implementation of the scientific method allows students to ask their own questions, investigate what they’re interested in already, and learn through projects and actions, rather than through rote memorization. Plus, when their curriculum does require that sort of study, they’ll more easily understand why it matters; they’ll make connections to tangible activities.
Into the Unknown
We still know so little about this universe. Scientists still ponder questions that seem, on the surface, rudimentary. Biologists still have no distinct definition of a species, chemists are still working on what makes up matter, physicists still…
