Topics

Learning to Learn from Data

Posted: Feb 15 2011 by

Kim Kastens

Scientists learn from data. Learning to learn from data is obviously an essential aspect of the education of a future scientist.

These days, however, many other kinds of people also learn from data--including business people, investors, education leaders, and people who care about pollution, disease, or the quality of their local schools. My daily newspaper is rich in data-based graphs and maps--and so is the newsletter from my local library. These days, learning to learn from data is a necessary part of everyone's education.

However, learning to learn from data is not a typical part of everyone's education. This post explores what might be required to construct a thorough learning progression for learning from Earth Science data, beginning where a good elementary school leaves off and carrying on through to what an upper level college course or adult job might demand. More

Comments (4)

What could the President do?

Posted: Jan 30 2011 by Cathy Manduca Earlier this month I was invited to attend a planning meeting for PCAST, the President's advisors on science and technology. They (via a subcommittee) are gearing up to write a report on STEM higher education, which will be a companion to their excellent piece on STEM K-12 education (my favorite parts of this are the emphasis on preparation and inspiration together, and the reminder that we do need to worry about high-achieving students). You can find the report here by scrolling down to K-12 STEM Education report.

By way of introduction at the meeting, we were asked to provide three minutes of advice to the President as to how he could help improve STEM higher education and in particular the preparation of students for the STEM workforce. Here is my response. There were lots of people at the meeting who could speak to the general question, so I spoke from the point of view of helping faculty be better teachers. More

Comments (1)

GSA goes Metacognitive

Posted: Dec 23 2010 by Kim Kastens

Looking around the website of the Geological Society of America, I found myself on the page announcing the Society's upcoming 125th anniversary celebration. In bold print, the Society congratulates itself for: "ADVANCES IN GEOSCIENCES: Our science, our societal impact, and our unique thought processes." More

Comments (1)

Should we call on non-volunteering students?

Posted: Nov 29 2010 by Kim Kastens Before the beginning of this semester's "Frontiers of Science" course, the folks in charge of Columbia's Core Curriculum put on a one-day professional development session for instructors new to the course. Among the suggestions for leading a successful seminar was that we should call on non-volunteering students.

This suggestion took me aback. It did not align with my prior practice teaching either undergraduates or graduate students at Columbia. And it certainly did not align with my own experience as a university student. More

Comments (6)

Multiple lines of reasoning in support of one claim

Posted: Nov 22 2010 by Kim Kastens One of the attributes of most K-12 classroom science inquiries is that the reasoning that leads from data to interpretation is simple and straightforward. From this experience, students develop the habit of mind of expecting that a data set in science class will lead by a single linear robust chain of reasoning to a claim or "answer," like this:

Earth Science, in my experience, tends not to work this way. Instead, many of the most bold and important claims in Earth Science have been built from many different forms of data and observations. More

Comments (2)