Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Scientific World View, Information Technology, and Science Education: Closing the Gap Between Knowledge-Generation and Knowledge–Consumption

  • Published:
Journal of Science Education and Technology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Scholars of science and society have documented a rising public discontent with the scientific enterprise. Low scientific literacy, and an almost instinctive mistrust of scientists and the scientific enterprise, dominate current public discourse about science-intensive matters. Ironically, this disillusionment has come at a time when the ability of scientific discoveries to inform the human condition has perhaps never been greater. New information technologies, including those for accessing data, interacting with data, and communicating with other people through space and time, may offer new pathways for bridging the large gaps that lie between the frontiers of science, students and laypeople. Examples of recent scientific discoveries that exemplify aspects of the “scientific world view” are reviewed, and traditional classroom pedagogy is examined in light of the habits of mind these discoveries embody. Finally, specific information technologies and model projects are reviewed. This review reveals both promise and challenges: while information technologies may foster new modes of teaching and learning, they also demand new forms of interaction among scientists, teachers, and technology/software developers, for which there are both few systemic incentives and a largely incomplete theoretical foundation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

REFERENCES

  • American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 1989. Science for All Americans: A Project 2061 Report on Literacy Goals in Science, Mathematics, and Technology. Washington, DC: AAAS.

    Google Scholar 

  • American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). 1993. Benchmarks for Science Literacy. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barron, E. J. 1996. Climatic Variation in Earth History. Sausalito, California: University Science Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blumenfeld, P., Soloway, E., Marx, R., Krajcik, J., Guzdial, M., and Palincsar, A. 1991. Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist, 26(3, 4).

  • Bretherton. 1988. Earth System Science: A Closer Look. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, J. S., Collins, A., and Duguid, P. 1989. Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1).

  • Bush, Vannevar. 1945. Science, The Endless Frontier: A report to the President on a program for postwar scientific research. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy. 1992. The influence of testing on teaching math and science in grades 4–12. Boston, Massachusetts: Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, W. C. 1989. Managing planet earth. Scientific American, 261(3), 53–54.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, J. E. 1995 How many people can the Earth support? W. W. Norton & Co., New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • COHMAP Members. 1988. Climatic changes of the last 18,000 years: Observations and model simulations. Science, 241, 1043–1052.

    Google Scholar 

  • Costanza, R. (Ed.). 1991. Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability. Columbia University Press: New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cuban, L. 1986. Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920. Teachers College Press: New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Draper, F., and Swanson, M. 1990. Learner-directed systems education: A successful example. System Dynamics Review, 6(2), 209–213.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelson, D. C., and Gordin, D. N. 1996. Adapting digital libraries for learners: Accessibility vs. availability. D-Lib Magazine, September, 1996. http://www.covis.nwu.edu/sciviz/papers/dlib/09edelson.html.

  • Gordin, D. N, Edelson, D. C., and Pea, R. D. 1996. Supporting students' science inquiry through scientific visualization activities. Presentation to annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York April, 1996. http://www.covis.nwu.edu/sciviz/papers/aeralaerapaper.html.

  • Gordin, D. N., Edelson, D. C., Gomez, L. M., Lento, E. M., and Pea, R. D. In press. Student conference on global warming: A collaborative network-supported ecologically hierarchic geosciences curriculum. Proceedings of the Fifth American Meteorological Society Education Symposium. http://www.covis.nwu.edu/sciviz/papers/ams/amspaper.html.

  • Haas, P. M., Keohane, R. O., and Levy, M. A. (Eds.). 1993. Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawkins, J., & Pea, R. D. 1987. Tools for bridging everyday and scientific thinking. Journal for Research in Science Teaching, 24(4), 291–307.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hays, J. D., Imbrie, J., and Shackleton, N. J. 1976. Variations in the Earth's orbit: Pacemaker of the ice ages. Science, 194, 1121–1123.

    Google Scholar 

  • High Performance Systems. 1996. The High Performance Systems home page. http://www.hps-inc.com.

  • Holton, G. 1996. Einstein, history, and other passions: The rebellion against science at the end of the twentieth century. Addison-Wesley: New York, 240 pp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Houghton, J. T., Callander, B. A., and Varney, S. K. (Eds.). 1992. Climate Change 1992: The Supplementary Report to the IPCC Scientific Assessment. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kastens, K. 1996. Earth science as a vehicle for illuminating the boundary between the known and the unknown. Journal of Geological Education, in press.

  • Keeler, M., and Mahootian, F. 1996. The Earth system science community curriculum home page. http://www.circles.org/ESSCC/.

  • Kerr, R. A. 1996. Ice rhythms: Core reveals a plethora of climate cycles. Science, 274, 499–500.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lamont-Dohaty Earth Observatory. 1996. The LDEO home page. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu.

  • Lemann, N. 1995. The structure of success in America. The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1995, pp. 41–60.

  • Melillo, J. M., McGuire, A. D., Kicklighter, D. W., Moore III, B., Vorosmarty, C. J., and Schloss, A. L. 1993. Global climate change and net primary production. Nature, 363, 234–240.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 1996. The NASA home page. http://www.nasa.gov.

  • National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. 1996. The NOAA home page. http://www.noaa.gov.

  • National Research Council. 1995. National science education standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • National Science Foundation. 1995. Indicators of science and mathematics education 1995. Washington, DC: NSF. pp. 28–29, 31.

    Google Scholar 

  • National Science Foundation (Division for Research, Evaluation, and Communication, Directorate for Education and Human Resources). 1996. The learning curve: What we are learning about U.S. science and math education. Edited by Larry E. Suter. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation (NSF 96-53).

    Google Scholar 

  • O'Neill, D. K., and Gomez, L. 1994. The Collaboratory Notebook: A distributed knowledge-building environment for project-enhanced learning. In T. Ottmann and I. Tomek (Eds.), Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 1994: Proceedings of Ed-Media 1994 (pp. 416–423). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • O'Neill, D. K. 1995. A telementoring intervention to strengthen project-based science learning: Proposal for a learning sciences dissertation. Northwestern University, pp. 8–10.

  • Pea, R. D. 1993. Learning scientific concepts through material and social activities: Conversational analysis meets conceptual change. Educational Psychologist, 28(3), 265–277.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prince, C. H. 1992. The evolution of a food web. System Dynamics Group, System Dynamics in Education Project. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  • Roberts, N. 1978. Teaching dynamic feedback systems thinking: An elementary view. Management Science, 24(8), 836–843.

    Google Scholar 

  • Russell, G. L., Miller, J. R., and Rind, D. A coupled atmosphereocean model for transient climate change studies. Atmos. Oceans. In press.

  • Tinker, R. (1992). Thinking About Science. CEEB, Princeton, NJ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tosteson, J. L. 1996. System dynamics and earth system science: Bridging the gaps between research and education. Proceedings: Conference of the International System Dynamics Society, July, 1996.

  • Tosteson, J. L., and Marino, B. D. 1996. The Biosphere 2 global change testbed world wide web server: Closed system, research and education using the Internet. Life Support and Biosphere Science, 2, 193–197.

    Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Department of Education. 1991. America 2000: An Education Strategy. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education.

    Google Scholar 

  • Webb, T. III. 1991. The spectrum of temporal climatic variability: Current estimates and the need for global and regional time series. In Bradley, R. W. (Ed.), Records of past, global change. Office of Interdisciplinary Earth Studies, UCAR: Boulder, Colorado.

    Google Scholar 

  • Webb, T. III. 1992. Past changes in vegetation and climate: Lessons for the future. In Peters, R. L., and Lovejoy, T. E. (Eds.). 1992. Global Warming and Biological Diversity. Yale University Press: New haven, Connecticut.

    Google Scholar 

  • World Resources Institute. 1996. The World Resources Institute home page. http://www.wri.org.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Planetworks Consulting, 40 Pine Road, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02167

    Joshua L. Tosteson

  2. Earth Institute and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, 405 Low Memorial Library, New York, NY, 10027

    Joshua L. Tosteson

Authors
  1. Joshua L. Tosteson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Tosteson, J.L. The Scientific World View, Information Technology, and Science Education: Closing the Gap Between Knowledge-Generation and Knowledge–Consumption. Journal of Science Education and Technology 6, 273–284 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022598011060

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022598011060

Search

Navigation