Download or read book Issues and Challenges in Science Education Research written by Kim Chwee Daniel Tan and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-04-27 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contemporary society, science constitutes a significant part of human life in that it impacts on how people experience and understand the world and themselves. The rapid advances in science and technology, newly established societal and cultural norms and values, and changes in the climate and environment, as well as, the depletion of natural resources all greatly impact the lives of children and youths, and hence their ways of learning, viewing the world, experiencing phenomena around them and interacting with others. These changes challenge science educators to rethink the epistemology and pedagogy in science classrooms today as the practice of science education needs to be proactive and relevant to students and prepare them for life in the present and in the future. Featuring contributions from highly experienced and celebrated science educators, as well as research perspectives from Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia, this book addresses theoretical and practical examples in science education that, on the one hand, plays a key role in our understanding of the world, and yet, paradoxically, now acknowledges a growing number of uncertainties of knowledge about the world. The material is in four sections that cover the learning and teaching of science from science literacy to multiple representations; science teacher education; the use of innovations and new technologies in science teaching and learning; and science learning in informal settings including outdoor environmental learning activities. Acknowledging the issues and challenges in science education, this book hopes to generate collaborative discussions among scholars, researchers, and educators to develop critical and creative ways of science teaching to improve and enrich the lives of our children and youths.

Download or read book Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems written by Jerome R. Ravetz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is continually confronted by new and difficult social and ethical problems. Some of these problems have arisen from the transformation of the academic science of the prewar period into the industrialized science of the present. Traditional theories of science are now widely recognized as obsolete. In Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (originally published in 1971), Jerome R. Ravetz analyzes the work of science as the creation and investigation of problems. He demonstrates the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error, in scientific research. Ravetz's new introductory essay is a masterful statement of how our understanding of science has evolved over the last two decades.

Download or read book Computational Problems in Science and Engineering written by Nikos Mastorakis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-26 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides readers with modern computational techniques for solving variety of problems from electrical, mechanical, civil and chemical engineering. Mathematical methods are presented in a unified manner, so they can be applied consistently to problems in applied electromagnetics, strength of materials, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, environmental engineering, biomedical engineering, signal processing, automatic control and more.

Download or read book Communicating Science Effectively written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-03-08 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science and technology are embedded in virtually every aspect of modern life. As a result, people face an increasing need to integrate information from science with their personal values and other considerations as they make important life decisions about medical care, the safety of foods, what to do about climate change, and many other issues. Communicating science effectively, however, is a complex task and an acquired skill. Moreover, the approaches to communicating science that will be most effective for specific audiences and circumstances are not obvious. Fortunately, there is an expanding science base from diverse disciplines that can support science communicators in making these determinations. Communicating Science Effectively offers a research agenda for science communicators and researchers seeking to apply this research and fill gaps in knowledge about how to communicate effectively about science, focusing in particular on issues that are contentious in the public sphere. To inform this research agenda, this publication identifies important influences â€" psychological, economic, political, social, cultural, and media-related â€" on how science related to such issues is understood, perceived, and used.

Download or read book Socio scientific Issues in the Classroom written by Troy D. Sadler and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-05-11 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Socio-scientific issues (SSI) are open-ended, multifaceted social issues with conceptual links to science. They are challenging to negotiate and resolve, and they create ideal contexts for bridging school science and the lived experience of students. This book presents the latest findings from the innovative practice and systematic investigation of science education in the context of socio-scientific issues. Socio-scientific Issues in the Classroom: Teaching, Learning and Research focuses on how SSI can be productively incorporated into science classrooms and what SSI-based education can accomplish regarding student learning, practices and interest. It covers numerous topics that address key themes for contemporary science education including scientific literacy, goals for science teaching and learning, situated learning as a theoretical perspective for science education, and science for citizenship. It presents a wide range of classroom-based research projects that offer new insights for SSI-based education. Authored by leading researchers from eight countries across four continents, this book is an important compendium of syntheses and insights for veteran researchers, teachers and curriculum designers eager to advance the SSI agenda.

Download or read book Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past half-century has witnessed a dramatic increase in the scale and complexity of scientific research. The growing scale of science has been accompanied by a shift toward collaborative research, referred to as "team science." Scientific research is increasingly conducted by small teams and larger groups rather than individual investigators, but the challenges of collaboration can slow these teams' progress in achieving their scientific goals. How does a team-based approach work, and how can universities and research institutions support teams? Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science synthesizes and integrates the available research to provide guidance on assembling the science team; leadership, education and professional development for science teams and groups. It also examines institutional and organizational structures and policies to support science teams and identifies areas where further research is needed to help science teams and groups achieve their scientific and translational goals. This report offers major public policy recommendations for science research agencies and policymakers, as well as recommendations for individual scientists, disciplinary associations, and research universities. Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science will be of interest to university research administrators, team science leaders, science faculty, and graduate and postdoctoral students.

Download or read book Science the Endless Frontier written by Vannevar Bush and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic case for why government must support science—with a new essay by physicist and former congressman Rush Holt on what democracy needs from science today Science, the Endless Frontier is recognized as the landmark argument for the essential role of science in society and government’s responsibility to support scientific endeavors. First issued when Vannevar Bush was the director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during the Second World War, this classic remains vital in making the case that scientific progress is necessary to a nation’s health, security, and prosperity. Bush’s vision set the course for US science policy for more than half a century, building the world’s most productive scientific enterprise. Today, amid a changing funding landscape and challenges to science’s very credibility, Science, the Endless Frontier resonates as a powerful reminder that scientific progress and public well-being alike depend on the successful symbiosis between science and government. This timely new edition presents this iconic text alongside a new companion essay from scientist and former congressman Rush Holt, who offers a brief introduction and consideration of what society needs most from science now. Reflecting on the report’s legacy and relevance along with its limitations, Holt contends that the public’s ability to cope with today’s issues—such as public health, the changing climate and environment, and challenging technologies in modern society—requires a more capacious understanding of what science can contribute. Holt considers how scientists should think of their obligation to society and what the public should demand from science, and he calls for a renewed understanding of science’s value for democracy and society at large. A touchstone for concerned citizens, scientists, and policymakers, Science, the Endless Frontier endures as a passionate articulation of the power and potential of science.

Download or read book The Science of Science written by Dashun Wang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive overview of the exciting field of the 'science of science'. With anecdotes and detailed, easy-to-follow explanations of the research, this book is accessible to all scientists, policy makers, and administrators with an interest in the wider scientific enterprise.

Download or read book Fixed Point Algorithms for Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering written by Heinz H. Bauschke and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-05-27 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fixed-Point Algorithms for Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering" presents some of the most recent work from top-notch researchers studying projection and other first-order fixed-point algorithms in several areas of mathematics and the applied sciences. The material presented provides a survey of the state-of-the-art theory and practice in fixed-point algorithms, identifying emerging problems driven by applications, and discussing new approaches for solving these problems. This book incorporates diverse perspectives from broad-ranging areas of research including, variational analysis, numerical linear algebra, biotechnology, materials science, computational solid-state physics, and chemistry. Topics presented include: Theory of Fixed-point algorithms: convex analysis, convex optimization, subdifferential calculus, nonsmooth analysis, proximal point methods, projection methods, resolvent and related fixed-point theoretic methods, and monotone operator theory. Numerical analysis of fixed-point algorithms: choice of step lengths, of weights, of blocks for block-iterative and parallel methods, and of relaxation parameters; regularization of ill-posed problems; numerical comparison of various methods. Areas of Applications: engineering (image and signal reconstruction and decompression problems), computer tomography and radiation treatment planning (convex feasibility problems), astronomy (adaptive optics), crystallography (molecular structure reconstruction), computational chemistry (molecular structure simulation) and other areas. Because of the variety of applications presented, this book can easily serve as a basis for new and innovated research and collaboration.

Download or read book Science Unlimited written by Maarten Boudry and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-01-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All too often in contemporary discourse, we hear about science overstepping its proper limits—about its brazenness, arrogance, and intellectual imperialism. The problem, critics say, is scientism: the privileging of science over all other ways of knowing. Science, they warn, cannot do or explain everything, no matter what some enthusiasts believe. In Science Unlimited?, noted philosophers of science Maarten Boudry and Massimo Pigliucci gather a diverse group of scientists, science communicators, and philosophers of science to explore the limits of science and this alleged threat of scientism. In this wide-ranging collection, contributors ask whether the term scientism in fact (or in belief) captures an interesting and important intellectual stance, and whether it is something that should alarm us. Is scientism a well-developed position about the superiority of science over all other modes of human inquiry? Or is it more a form of excessive confidence, an uncritical attitude of glowing admiration? What, if any, are its dangers? Are fears that science will marginalize the humanities and eradicate the human subject—that it will explain away emotion, free will, consciousness, and the mystery of existence—justified? Does science need to be reined in before it drives out all other disciplines and ways of knowing? Both rigorous and balanced, Science Unlimited? interrogates our use of a term that is now all but ubiquitous in a wide variety of contexts and debates. Bringing together scientists and philosophers, both friends and foes of scientism, it is a conversation long overdue.

Download or read book Science in a Democratic Society written by Philip Kitcher and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this successor to his pioneering Science, Truth, and Democracy, the author revisits the topic explored in his previous work—namely, the challenges of integrating science, the most successful knowledge-generating system of all time, with the problems of democracy. But in this new work, the author goes far beyond that earlier book in studying places at which the practice of science fails to answer social needs. He considers a variety of examples of pressing concern, ranging from climate change to religiously inspired constraints on biomedical research to the neglect of diseases that kill millions of children annually, analyzing the sources of trouble. He shows the fallacies of thinking that democracy always requires public debate of issues most people cannot comprehend, and argues that properly constituted expertise is essential to genuine democracy. No previous book has treated the place of science in democratic society so comprehensively and systematically, with attention to different aspects of science and to pressing problems of our times.

Download or read book The End Of Science written by John Horgan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

Download or read book A Framework for K 12 Science Education written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.

Download or read book The Knowledge Machine How Irrationality Created Modern Science written by Michael Strevens and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Knowledge Machine is the most stunningly illuminating book of the last several decades regarding the all-important scientific enterprise.” —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex A paradigm-shifting work, The Knowledge Machine revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. • Why is science so powerful? • Why did it take so long—two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics—for the human race to start using science to learn the secrets of the universe? In a groundbreaking work that blends science, philosophy, and history, leading philosopher of science Michael Strevens answers these challenging questions, showing how science came about only once thinkers stumbled upon the astonishing idea that scientific breakthroughs could be accomplished by breaking the rules of logical argument. Like such classic works as Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine grapples with the meaning and origins of science, using a plethora of vivid historical examples to demonstrate that scientists willfully ignore religion, theoretical beauty, and even philosophy to embrace a constricted code of argument whose very narrowness channels unprecedented energy into empirical observation and experimentation. Strevens calls this scientific code the iron rule of explanation, and reveals the way in which the rule, precisely because it is unreasonably close-minded, overcomes individual prejudices to lead humanity inexorably toward the secrets of nature. “With a mixture of philosophical and historical argument, and written in an engrossing style” (Alan Ryan), The Knowledge Machine provides captivating portraits of some of the greatest luminaries in science’s history, including Isaac Newton, the chief architect of modern science and its foundational theories of motion and gravitation; William Whewell, perhaps the greatest philosopher-scientist of the early nineteenth century; and Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of the quark. Today, Strevens argues, in the face of threats from a changing climate and global pandemics, the idiosyncratic but highly effective scientific knowledge machine must be protected from politicians, commercial interests, and even scientists themselves who seek to open it up, to make it less narrow and more rational—and thus to undermine its devotedly empirical search for truth. Rich with illuminating and often delightfully quirky illustrations, The Knowledge Machine, written in a winningly accessible style that belies the import of its revisionist and groundbreaking concepts, radically reframes much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world.

Download or read book Another Science is Possible written by Isabelle Stengers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like fast food, fast science is quickly prepared, not particularly good, and it clogs up the system. Efforts to tackle our most pressing issues have been stymied by conflict within the scientific community and mixed messages symptomatic of a rushed approach. What is more, scientific research is being shaped by the bubbles and crashes associated with economic speculation and the market. A focus on conformism, competitiveness, opportunism and flexibility has made it extremely difficult to present cases of failure to the public, for fear that it will lose confidence in science altogether. In this bold new book, distinguished philosopher Isabelle Stengers shows that research is deeply intertwined with broader social interests, which means that science cannot race ahead in isolation but must learn instead to slow down. Stengers offers a path to an alternative science, arguing that researchers should stop seeing themselves as the 'thinking, rational brain of humanity' and refuse to allow their expertise to be used to shut down the concerns of the public, or to spread the belief that scientific progress is inevitable and will resolve all of society's problems. Rather, science must engage openly and honestly with an intelligent public and be clear about the kind of knowledge it is capable of producing. This timely and accessible book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers in a wide range of fields, as well anyone concerned with the role of science and its future.

Download or read book Reproducibility and Replicability in Science written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-10-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the pathways by which the scientific community confirms the validity of a new scientific discovery is by repeating the research that produced it. When a scientific effort fails to independently confirm the computations or results of a previous study, some fear that it may be a symptom of a lack of rigor in science, while others argue that such an observed inconsistency can be an important precursor to new discovery. Concerns about reproducibility and replicability have been expressed in both scientific and popular media. As these concerns came to light, Congress requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conduct a study to assess the extent of issues related to reproducibility and replicability and to offer recommendations for improving rigor and transparency in scientific research. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. Unlike the typical expectation of reproducibility between two computations, expectations about replicability are more nuanced, and in some cases a lack of replicability can aid the process of scientific discovery. This report provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science.

Download or read book Open Science the Very Idea written by Frank Miedema and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book provides a broad context for the understanding of current problems of science and of the different movements aiming to improve the societal impact of science and research. The author offers insights with regard to ideas, old and new, about science, and their historical origins in philosophy and sociology of science, which is of interest to a broad readership. The book shows that scientifically grounded knowledge is required and helpful in understanding intellectual and political positions in various discussions on the grand challenges of our time and how science makes impact on society. The book reveals why interventions that look good or even obvious, are often met with resistance and are hard to realize in practice. Based on a thorough analysis, as well as personal experiences in aids research, university administration and as a science observer, the author provides - while being totally open regarding science's limitations- a realistic narrative about how research is conducted, and how reliable ‘objective’ knowledge is produced. His idea of science, which draws heavily on American pragmatism, fits in with the global Open Science movement. It is argued that Open Science is a truly and historically unique movement in that it translates the analysis of the problems of science into major institutional actions of system change in order to improve academic culture and the impact of science, engaging all actors in the field of science and academia.