Stanford School of Education Cubberley Lecture Series Presents:
Teaching Science: How, What, and Who Decides?
A talk by Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief of Science
Many of us know that students are losing interest in science education as they grow older and move farther along in the K-12 educational system. But there is little agreement about what is needed to improve science education in the United States. Should children learn how to actively engage in science through ways that encourage learning the "whats" and "hows" of the scientific process? Or instead, should teachers go "back to basics" with a more traditional approach that emphasizes vocabulary and memorizing scientific facts? Don Kennedy, Stanford President Emeritus and editor-in-chief of Science, will explore how scientists are thinking about K-12 science teaching -- and why scientific insights about how the human brain might connect to learning have been disappointing. Part of the discussion will focus on the critics of science teaching, with some attention to the increasing efforts by Christian conservatives to challenge the teaching of evolution in public schools.
This event kicks off The Stanford Challenge's initiative on Improving K-12 Education, a campus-wide effort that brings together scholars from across the university to identify and demonstrate strategies for making fundamental improvements in the way our nation educates its children.
A Q&A session and reception will immediately follow the lecture.
Don Kennedy has served on the faculty of Stanford University since 1960. He is presently a Senior Fellow at the Center for Environmental Sciences & Policy. From 1980 to 1992, he served as the President of Stanford University. Prior to his presidency, Kennedy was the Director of the Program in Human Biology and the Chair of the Biology Department. Apart from Stanford, Kennedy was Commissioner of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration from 1977-79 and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He serves as a director of the Carnegie Endowment and co-chair of the National Academies' Project on Science, Technology and Law. Kennedy received AB and PhD degrees in biology from Harvard University.