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Date: | Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:14:22 -0500 |
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ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Perhaps one reason I introduced the idea of dress code was to talk about the
topic of culture in scientific disciplines. As Lath describes with icons
that have taken on meaning independent of the referents, we have some of the
same type of thing going on in science education. My niece took physics,
necessary for her degree program and a very important to understand as part
of physical therapy--her major. At her undergraduate school, with a very
strong engineering program, physics had traditionally been one of the flunk
out courses for engineering. It was taught in the engineering school, and
the team responsible for the course proudly flunked 60 to 70% of
non-engineering majors each semester. It may be that this idea of flunking
people out of a lower level course was functional at some point--finding the
people who could teach themselves the content for more advanced courses and
prepare only a few to enter the job market--keeping the resource scarce and
the income level high. But, with more and more fields requiring an
understanding of physics for people to perform the job, that part of the
engineering school culture appears to have become dysfunctional. One reason,
we, as science educators need to keep our eye on the values taught and
practiced in scientific disciplines is that sometimes a strong culture,
adapted well in one historical environment, is dysfunctional in another. Any
career involves initiation and acceptance of some group norms and identity.
Being aware of those functioning within various scientific disciplines can
help us communicate in ways that make science more lively and interesting.
It can also let us question the functionality of some of the values and
norms which affect the questions being asked in scientific disciplines and
the boundaries that are there to exclude/include entry into the group.
Carey
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