Scientific Research in Education

Researchers, historians, and philosophers of science have debated the nature of scientific research in education for more than 100 years. Recent enthusiasm for "evidence-based" policy and practice in educationa "now codified in the federal law that authorizes the bulk of elementary and secondary education programsa "have brought a new sense of urgency to understanding the ways in which the basic tenets of science manifest in the study of teaching, learning, and schooling. Scientific Research in Education describes the similarities and differences between scientific inquiry in education and scientific inquiry in other fields and disciplines and provides a number of examples to illustrate these ideas. Its main argument is that all scientific endeavors share a common set of principles, and that each fielda "including education researcha "develops a specialization that accounts for the particulars of what is being studied. The book also provides suggestions for how the federal government can best support high-quality scientific research in education.

Preliminaries: Note on conventions Basic homotopy notions Surgery below the middle dimension Appendix: Applications Simple Poincare complexes The main theorem: Statement of results An important special case The even-dimensional case The odd-dimensional case The bounded odd-dimensional case The bounded even-dimensional case Completion of the proof Patterns of application: Manifold structures on Poincare complexes Applications to submanifolds Submanifolds: Other techniques Separating submanifolds Two-sided submanifolds One-sided submanifolds Calculations and applications: Calculations: Surgery obstruction groups Calculations: The surgery obstructions Applications: Free actions on spheres General remarks An extension of the Atiyah-Singer $G$-signature theorem Free actions of $S^1$ Fake projective spaces (real) Fake lens spaces Applications: Free uniform actions on euclidean space Fake tori Polycyclic groups Applications to 4-manifolds Postscript: Further ideas and suggestions: Recent work Function space methods Topological manifolds Poincare embeddings Homotopy and simple homotopy Further calculations Sullivan's results Reformulations of the algebra Rational surgery References Index.

Surgery on compact manifolds

Recent arguments in science education have proposed that school science should pay more attention to teaching the nature of science and its social practices. However, unlike the content of science, for which there is well-established consensus, there would appear to be much less unanimity within the academic community about which ideas-about-science are essential elements that should be included in the contemporary school science curriculum. Hence, this study sought to determine empirically the extent of any consensus using a three stage Delphi questionnaire with 23 participants drawn from the communities of leading and acknowledged international experts of science educators; scientists; historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science; experts engaged in work to improve the public understanding of science; and expert science teachers. The outcome of the research was a set of nine themes encapsulating key ideas about the nature of science for which there was consensus and which were considered to be an essential component of school science curriculum. Together with extensive comments provided by the participants, these data give some measure of the existing level of agreement in the community engaged in science education and science communication about the salient features of a vulgarized account of the nature of science. Although some of the themes are already a feature of existing school science curricula, many others are not. The findings of this research, therefore, challenge (a) whether the picture of science represented in the school science curriculum is sufficiently comprehensive, and (b) whether there balance in the curriculum between teaching about the content of science and the nature of science is appropriate.

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What “ideas‐about‐science” should be taught in school science? A Delphi study of the expert community

Leading feminist scholar and one of the founders of Standpoint Theory, Sandra Harding brings together the biggest names in the field--Dorothy Smith, Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Hartsock and Hilary Rose--to not only showcase the most influential essays on the topic but to also highlight subsequent interrogations and developments of these approaches from a wide variety of disciplines and intellectual and political positions.

The feminist standpoint theory reader : intellectual andpolitical controversies

Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

"Evidence of a flight from reason is as old as human record-keeping: the 'fact' of it certainly goes back an even longer way. Flight from science specifically, among the forms of rational inquiry, goes back as far as science itself...But rejection of reason is now a pattern to be found in most branches of scholarship and in all the learned professions."--from the introduction In the widely acclaimed 'Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science,' Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt offered a spirited response to the "science bashers", raising serious questions about the growing criticism of scientific practice from humanists and social scientists on the academic left. Now, in 'The Flight from Science and Reason,' Gross and Levitt are joined by Martin W. Lewis to bring together a diverse and distinguished group of scholars, scientists, and experts to engage these questions from a wide variety of perspectives. The authors take on critics of science whose views range from moderate to extreme, from social constructivists to deconstructionists, from creationists and feminists to Afro-centrists. They discuss the rise of "alternative medicine" and radical environmentalism (here skewered as "ecosentimentalism"). They explain why the "uncertainty principle" does not work as a metaphor for ambiguity, and why "chaos theory" cannot be invoked without an understanding of mathematics. Throughout, they grapple with the paradox inherent in arguing with opponents who contend that reason itself, and thus logic, is suspect. 'Distributed for the New York Academy of Sciences'

The flight from science and reason

If a numerical homotopy invariant of finite simplicial complexes has a local formula, then, up to multiplication by an obvious constant, the invariant is the Euler characteristic. Moreover, the Euler characteristic itself has a unique local formula.

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The Euler characteristic is the unique locally determined numerical homotopy invariant of finite complexes

In this lucid critique, Norman Levitt examines the strained relations between science and contemporary society. For the most part, Levitt states, we idolize musicians and cheer on athletes, yet we view scientists with a mixture of awe and unease. Significantly, too, we are unsure how scientific discovery actually fits into the broader schemes of politics, and policy. Even beyond pragmatic questions, we remain anxious about the implications of science for our basic understanding of human values and purpose. One result of this uncertainty about scientific work is an ill-informed crusade to i?1/2democratizei?1/2 science. It has become fashionable lately, Levitt states, for non-scientists to attempt to intervene in science policy, which often results in methodologically unsound decisions. The embrace of ""alternative medicine"" is a particularly ominous example. Levitt suggests that science, by virtue of its accuracy and reliability, deserves to be at the top of the hierarchy of knowledge, and that our social institutions ought to take this fact strongly into account. Levitt hopes that Americans will become aware of the limitations of unchecked populism and will be willing to yield a bit of i?1/2democratici?1/2 control over certain questions in order to minimize the danger that sound science will be ignored or overridden. However, this trust in scientific methodology must be part of a broader understanding. Science must not only act responsibly toward our democratic institutions; it must also concede that our society has the right to decide what kinds of research are most consistent with larger goals and therefore deserve the most support.

Norman Levitt

Papers

Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

The flight from science and reason

Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

The Euler characteristic is the unique locally determined numerical homotopy invariant of finite complexes

Prometheus Bedeviled: Science and the Contradictions of Contemporary Culture