{"id":365,"date":"2008-01-02T07:05:06","date_gmt":"2008-01-02T11:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=365"},"modified":"2008-08-05T21:22:20","modified_gmt":"2008-08-06T01:22:20","slug":"coalition-says-scientists-and-teachers-need-to-get-involved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=365","title":{"rendered":"Coalition says scientists and teachers need to get involved"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Coalition of Scientific Societies recently conducted a survey<\/a> about evolution in science education and the public’s attitudes toward evolution. I’ve lamented in the past about how lousy such surveys tend to be, but this one is by far one of the better, more interesting ones to me. I always thought that it would be beneficial to\u00c2\u00a0ask a few questions about other science subjects other than evolution to get an idea for how much the respondents know. This survey did so.<\/p>\n

Although 69% of survey participants had some college education (27% were college graduates, and 14% had attended graduate school), only 23% gave correct responses to all three of the following statements: the continents or land masses on which we live have been moving for millions of years and will continue to move in the future (79% correctly agreed); antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria (43% correctly disagreed); the earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs (53% correctly disagreed). Respondents who answered all three questions correctly were much more likely to respond that humans and other living things evolved (78%) rather than that they were created in their present form (11%), and more favored teaching evolution (78%) than creationism (27%) or intelligent design (24%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The survey also determined that the public would rather hear from scientists and educators\u00c2\u00a0on\u00c2\u00a0matters such\u00c2\u00a0as evolution rather than judges or school board members. This prompted the Coalition to\u00c2\u00a0advise scientists across the country to get involved in promoting and defending sound science.<\/p>\n

There is a clear need for scientists to become involved in promoting science education. Challenges to teaching science undermine students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 understanding of the scientific method, how scientific consensus develops, and the distinction between scientific and non-scientific explanations of natural phenomena.<\/strong> If our nation is to continue to develop the talent necessary to advance scientific and medical research, we must ensure that high standards in science education are maintained and that efforts to introduce non-science into science classes do not succeed. Failure to reach out effectively to a public that is supportive of science and open to information from the scientific community is not just a missed opportunity, it is a disservice to the scientific enterprise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More information is available at the ScienceDaily article<\/a>. The Coalition is an impressive collection of organizations: American Association of Physics Teachers, American Astronomical Society, American Chemical Society, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, American Physiological Society, American Society for Investigative Pathology, American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, American Society of Human Genetics, Biophysical Society, Consortium of Social Science Associations, Geological Society of America, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, National Academy of Sciences, National Science Teachers Association, and Society for Developmental Biology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Coalition of Scientific Societies recently conducted a survey about evolution in science education and the public’s attitudes toward evolution. I’ve lamented in the past about how lousy such surveys tend to be, but this one is by far one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-5T","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":791,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=791","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":0},"title":"Texas scientists strike back","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"November 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent survey takes the pulse of the Texas higher education folks to see where evolution stands. The TFN Education Fund's press release summarizes five key findings from the survey: \"1. Texas scientists (97.7 percent) overwhelmingly reject 'intelligent design' as valid science. 2. Texas science faculty (95 percent) want only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other states' news"","block_context":{"text":"Other states' news","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=28"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":443,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=443","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":1},"title":"News roundup","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The St. Petersburg Times has an editorial up supporting evolution in the state science standards. On Tuesday, the state Board of Education will vote on new science standards that finally insist that Florida's students receive comprehensive biology instruction that includes evolution as its underlying concept. It is an economic imperative\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Science Standards"","block_context":{"text":"Our Science Standards","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":422,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=422","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":2},"title":"What’s happening in the classroom? No one really knows.","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The St. Petersburg Times has been the only newspaper in Florida I've seen that really puts a lot of attention on the evolution in the state science standards issue. A story in today's paper attempts to peek into the science classroom. That's where the actual teaching happens, after all. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1203,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1203","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":3},"title":"Yet another survey","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"July 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A survey was published earlier this year detailing Americans' attitudes toward science in conjunction with their religious beliefs (download pdf here). The section on evolution is devoid of any real surprises. Jerry Coyne summarizes the results nicely, so I'll just do a brief recap from the survey: A majority of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1086,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1086","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":4},"title":"Workshop: Controversial Issues in the Science Classroom","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"July 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Several of us from Florida Citizens for Science will be heading over to Hillsborough County to participate in a Controversial Issues in the Science Classroom workshop next week. The four-day event for science teachers features talks by folks from Hillsborough County Public Schools, the University of South Florida College of\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1086#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1314,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1314","url_meta":{"origin":365,"position":5},"title":"Elementary school teachers need more science","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The Center for American Progress issued a report recently entitled Slow Off the Mark: Elementary School Teachers and the Crisis in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education. The main point of the report is that elementary school teachers are ill prepared to effectively teach their students math and science. From\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1314#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}