Some Good Books I Can
Recommend
Distinguished Contributions Award
Presentation
Andy Anderson
NARST Conference, 2013
Kuhn, T. (1962). The structure of
scientific revolutions
• On what basis can we claim that scientific
knowledge is “true?”
• What do we mean by “true?”
• First conference presentation:
First Conference Presentation
Anderson, C.W. (1979, April). The evolution
controversy: Is science a religion? Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the National
Association for Research in Science Teaching,
Atlanta, GA.
• I know that I am right about evolution.
• Creationists know that they are right.
• On what basis can we privilege one person’s
certainty over another’s?
Good, T. & Brophy, J. Looking in
Classrooms
• What works in classroom teaching?
• How can we help students learn with
understanding?
• Where does science content fit in?
• Dissertation: observational study of science
classrooms
Reading at MSU
Mayr, E. (1982). The growth of biological thought.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Toulmin, S. (1961). Foresight and understanding.
Great Britain: The Anchor Press, Ltd.
Toulmin, S. (1972). Human understanding.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• History of science as evolution of “intellectual
ecologies”
• Utility rather than truth as a basis for privileging
particular knowledge and practices.
Conceptual Change
Eric McWilliams and Mary Budd Rowe: RISE PI
meeting, Carnegie Mellon University, 1980.
Posner, J., Strike, K., Hewson, P., & Gertzog, W.
(1982). Accommodation of a scientific
conception: Toward a theory of conceptual
change. Science Education, 66, 211-227.
• We can study what students say in ways
similar to how we study what professors say.
• I can do this!
Light from the sun helps the girl to see the
tree. How does it do this?
Adapted from Transparencies
on Light: Teachers’ Manual.
1983. Anderson, Charles W. &
Edward L. Smith.
The Institute for Research on
Some of the light bounces (is reflected) off the
tree and goes to the girl’s eyes.
Adapted from Transparencies
on Light: Teachers’ Manual.
1983. Anderson, Charles W. &
Edward L. Smith.
The Institute for Research on
Bishop, B.A., & Anderson, C.W. (1990). Student conceptions of natural
selection and its role in evolution. Journal of Research in Science
Teaching. 27(5), 415-427
Last Conceptual Change Article
• Lee, O., Eichinger, D., Anderson, C. W.,
Berkheimer, G. D., & Blakeslee, T. D. (1993).
Changing middle school students' conceptions
of matter and molecules. Journal of Research
in Science Teaching, 30(3), 249-270.
• Matter and Molecules unit
Social and Experiential Learning
Wertsch, J. (1985). Vygotsky and the social
formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind: A
sociocultural approach to mediated action.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• How are knowledge, practice, and language
interconnected?
• How do we learn from other people?
• National languages and social languages.
Michigan Essential Goals and Objectives for
Science Education (1991)
Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life,
and work in communities and classrooms.
• How is our knowledge embedded in our
practices and ways of talking?
• How is privilege passed from one generation
to the next?
• How can we tap into students’ funds of
knowledge?
Language, Identity, and Learning
• Discourse: “a socially accepted association among
ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that
can be used to identify oneself as a member of a
socially meaningful group” (Gee, J. P. (1991). What is
literacy? In C. Mitchell and K. Weiler (eds.), Rewriting
literacy: Culture and the discourse of the other. New
York: Bergin & Garvey, p. 3)
• Kurth, L., Anderson, C. W., & Palincsar, A. S. (2002).
The case of Carla: Dilemmas of helping all students to
understand science. Science Education, 86(3), 287-313.
Some New Ideas
• Environmental science literacy as a way to
address the “depth vs. breadth” problem:
citizenship as a core goal of science education
• Learning progressions as a way to integrate
cognitive and sociocultural insights (but still
more cognitive than sociocultural)
Pinker, S. (2007). The stuff of thought:
Language as a window into human nature
• There is a theory of space and time embedded in
the way we use words. There is a theory of
matter and causality, too. … These conceptions…
add up to a distinctively human model of reality,
which differs in major ways from the objective
understanding of reality eked out by our best
science and logic. Though these ideas are woven
into language, their roots are deeper than
language itself. They lay out the ground rules for
how we understand our surroundings… Pinker,
The Stuff of Thought, page vii.
Contrasts between Force-dynamic and Scientific
Discourse (Pinker, Talmy)
• Force-dynamic discourse: Actors (e.g., animals,
plants, machines) make things happen with the
help of enablers that satisfy their “needs.”
– This is everyone’s “first language” that we have to
master in order to speak grammatical English (or
French, Spanish, Chinese, etc.)
• Scientific discourse: Systems are composed of
enduring entities (e.g., matter, energy) which
change according to laws or principles (e.g.,
conservation laws)
– This is a “second language” that is powerful for
analyzing the material world
• We often have the illusion of communication
because speakers of these languages use the
same words with different meanings (e.g., energy,
carbon, nutrient, etc.)
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow:
The Psychology of False Certainty
Metaphor of our minds working with a dual
processing system:
• System 1 (thinking fast) instantly and
subconsciously fits what we see and know about
the world into perceptions and narrative
frameworks.
• System 2 (thinking slow) allows us with conscious
effort to question and modify the perceptions
and narratives that System 1 gives to us.
Advantages of System 1
• Enables quick,
decisive action based
on incomplete data
• Enables us to persist
when the odds are
against us
Problems with System 1
• Sometimes wrong
• Is just as certain
when we are wrong
as when we are right
Characteristics of System 1
1. WYSIATI: What You See Is All There Is
2. Substituting an easier question
3. Source amnesia.
4. Confirmation bias
5. Stories, not statistics
6. False certainty
Relationship between System 1 and
System 2
• System 1 always processes first,
producing perceptions and stories that are
sometimes wrong but always subjectively
certain
• System 2 sometimes adds doubts and
reconsider
• Note temporal order: Certainty precedes
doubt
Scientific Inquiry: Reversing the
Temporal Order
Scientific inquiry is a collective process that puts System 2
in charge
• Assume all knowledge claims are initially uncertain
• Study and quantify uncertainty (error bars, inferential
statistics)
• Communicate about uncertainty (e.g., by how sources
are cited)
• Follow strategies to reduce uncertainty
• Giving authority to arguments from evidence rather than
individual people
• Commitment to rigor in research methods
• Collective validation through consensus of scientific
communities (peer review)
• Identifying sources for knowledge claims
Where are we now?
• Science education has never been as
important as it is today.
• We need to mount a national response to an
existential threat: climate change
• Scientific literacy can play a key role in that
response
• We have conceptual tools that we didn’t have
at the start of my career