College Students Lack Scientific Literacy

An anonymous reader writes with news of research into the scientific literacy of college biology students. Earlier studies found that students tended to "rely on mainly informal reasoning derived from their personal experiences," so the researchers derived a new instructional framework that explicitly taught principle-based reasoning. While the number of students who used this method did increase, more than half continued to use informal reasoning, which the researchers say points to a flaw in the way biology is taught (PDF). "Most college-level instruction presents students with complicated narratives about the details of key processes (e.g., cellular respiration), but does not explicitly reinforce the use of key principles to connect those processes. Therefore, students are understandably occupied with memorizing details of processes without focusing on the principles that govern and connect the processes. ... As a result, students may leave an introductory biology course with the ability to recite the reactions in the Calvin cycle but still believing that plants obtain most of their mass from the soil rather than from the atmosphere, that plants photosynthesize but do not respire, or that the mass of a decomposing organism will primarily return to the soil."

Re:Early Development

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, you'll still get a grade of 110% just for trying.

Re:Logic Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that they were never asked the question, and never asked themselves the question either (presumably because they had simply assumed the mass come from the soil from a young age). This was never addressed in any of my science courses which included two highschool biology courses - though I did have to memorize the details of the Krebs cycle and RNA transcription (which I have since forgotten).

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I did not realize that the bulk of the mass came from the air until I vacationed in China long after graduation, and saw large trees growing from tiny pads of dirt on mountain cliffs. That was a strong indication that the mass was most likely coming from the air.

Re:Early Development

[doconnor]

Spelling is boring and hard and kids get discouraged from writing way too early in their school lives.

Re:Logic Fail

[PRMan]

I think you'll find more critical thinking and science at the Creation Museum than the average freshman could fathom. While you may not agree with their evidence that evolution and the big bang have major holes that cannot be explained and that some evidence points to creation more than to evolution, your statement only proves that you have never been to the Creation Museum, thereby committing exactly what the Slashdot article is outlining: people making scientific "statements of fact" without ever considering the evidence.