Rationale and Outline for a Fifth Course:

The Philosophy and Methods of Science (P&M)

Deanna Kuhn

Teachers College, Columbia University

Some readers of this document will likely read the proposed course title and immediately be concerned that it’s too narrow and we’re on the wrong track. I ask you to momentarily suspend judgment and read on.

The proposal reflects three assumptions:

1. It is important to formulate and make explicit an overall philosophy and rationale that integrate and give purpose to the entire curriculum.

2. It is important that this rationale and purpose be compelling, hopefully, but at the very least understandable, to the broader community who will be interested in our curriculum. Hence, we should not design a curriculum consisting of a core and numerous “add-ons,” e.g., philosophy, ethics, health, community activity, arts, even foreign language, that are susceptible to being seen as “fluff” to many observers and accordingly deemed expendable as soon as time in the school day becomes pressed (as it inevitably will) and competing activities are seen to take precedence.

3. Most important, this rationale and purpose should be as explicit, understandable, and compelling as possible to its primary constituents – the students who will experience it. My interviews with young adolescents show them to be largely clueless as to why they are studying what they are in school and to not even expect there to be an answer to this question. A cornerstone of our curriculum will be making school make sense and thereby enlisting students as partners in undertaking their own education and assuming responsibility for it.

The preceding objectives can be met, I propose, by building on the school’s identified theme of science and technology. Science is one method of seeking to understand the world, in order to help us live in it more productively. And the purpose of their education, we will stress to students, is to prepare them to address the significant problems of their day, both individually and collectively.

Problem-based curriculum. The curriculum, accordingly, will be extensively problem-based, with the P&M course providing an explicit foundation in thinking skills and interfacing with the other curriculum areas as they draw on these skills. An example is the study of history via the problem-based approach reflected in the text by Kevin O’Reilly in which an issue is identified (e.g., worker dissatisfaction and strikes) and historical examples are then examined for what light they shed on the issue. Similarly, literature can be selected to coordinate with such issue-based themes, and student writing assignments can be coordinated with the theme. Science topics are particularly well-suited to a problem-based approach, and I provide some examples below.

I turn now to the P&M class itself. My proposal is that the class meet twice weekly in small sections that emphasize intellectual skill development and once weekly in a larger (possibly all-school) meeting having a theme focus.

Inquiry and argument skill development. The objective of the small-section classes will be to foster and offer practice in the core intellectual skills of inquiry and of argument. Inquiry work will intersect most directly with science and math classes, and argument work will intersect with humanities classes as well as science classes. We can choose whether to address both simultaneously (which would have the potential disadvantage of limiting class frequency for both to once per week and thereby risking fragmentation) or sequentially, e.g., in six-week-long blocks, one block focusing on inquiry and one on argument each semester. Both programs have been implemented successfully in past years with a sixth-grade age group at the Columbia University School for Children. Descriptions of the scope and pedagogy for each appear below. In addition, a number of P&M class periods each semester will be devoted to the “meta-curriculum” described next.

The meta-curriculum. At the meta level, addressed to students’ understanding of the purpose and objectives of these efforts, the following topic headings give an idea of a reflective curriculum, using as a foundation and organizing framework (but extending considerably beyond) the ”P&M” course title. This “meta-curriculum” complements the more explicit skills focus that will be implemented by engaging students in the exercise of inquiry and argument. The meta-curriculum will be addressed via a combination of methods including small-group and whole-group discussion, debate, and written reflection assignments.

1. Science as a way of knowing

a. Doing science: Asking questions and seeking answers

b. The inquiry cycle: formulating questions, examining evidence, making inferences, constructing and evaluating arguments

c. Science as theories or facts?

d. Science as argument

e. Goals of science: description, explanation, modeling, prediction, control

f. Scientific thought, and critical thought more generally, as the coordination of theory and evidence

g. The scientific method

2. The epistemology of science and human knowing more generally

a. How do people know?

b. Confronting diversity of positions and perspectives

c. Can scientists, or anyone, ever be certain?

d. The transition from absolutist, to relativist, to evaluativist thought: Where do I stand?

e. Why argue?

Can one ever be too tolerant?

Criticizing ideas vs. people

The goals of argument

3. Science and human values

a. Is vs. ought

b. Where do values come from?

c. Do values have a place in science?

d. Values and decision-making

4, Science and society

a. What role can and should science and technology play to enhance society?

b. How will my education in science prepare me to address the issues raised by life in modern society?

c. How will study of other cultures, of history and of literature contribute to my ability to address such issues in my own personal decision-making and in contributing to decision-making at a societal level?

d. The roles of science, values, argument, and emotion in personal decision-making

5. Identifying and tackling life’s most challenging and enduring questions

a. Where did we come from and why are we here?

b. Faith and reason: The interface between science and religion

c. Morality: Perspectives from philosophy, religion, science, and biology

d. What makes a good life?

Living for self or others

Theme activities. Many of the preceding questions are most productively addressed in the context of specific problems and situations that highlight them. The third (large-group) weekly class session will also be problem-based, but in this case with a problem topic introduced and involvement sustained over a number of weeks or even up to a semester. These multi-week theme topics have the potential to serve as integrative experiences spanning the entire curriculum. They have the potential to encompass original empirical research investigation, as well as library/internet research, debate in various formats, and community activity. They should be topics of genuine social significance but also ones that students can relate to, and that allow investigation from multiple perspectives that span both physical and social science. Two such topics I propose as exemplars: a) childhood obesity, and b) teen smoking.

Inquiry skill development. Both inquiry and argument skill development are technology-supported in different ways. The inquiry program is founded on the repeated finding that students at the sixth-grade level typically exhibit difficulty in firmly differentiating their own beliefs and expectations from the evidence they generate or observe. Hence, they need support in recognizing that the goal of inquiry is to find something out (rather than simply illustrate what one already knows) and in developing the meta-level and strategic skills involved in identifying a question and seeking answers, designing investigations, interpreting evidence, drawing conclusions, and making predictions. None of these skills can be assumed to “come naturally.”

The software we have developed for this purpose begins with simple exercises in looking for relationships and coordinating theories and evidence. They gradually increase in complexity, incorporating more complex (interactive and probabilistic) relations among variables and eventually students’ identification of their own questions and design of their own investigations. Students work together, in pairs or small groups, with the software, and are instructed to discuss and debate each of their choices and decisions, requiring them to be reflective, and thus externalizing and strengthening reasoning processes that typically would remain covert. The software is designed in a way that content can easily be adapted, and exercises can be adapted for non-computer use to extend and generalize students’ skills beyong computer simulations. Eventually, students write collaborative research reports of their investigations. (For further description, see Kuhn, 2002, 2005, and Kuhn & Pease, 2006.)

Argument skill development. The argument skill development program is based on the claim (Kuhn, 1991; Graff, 2003) that engagement in dialogic argumentation is the most effective way to build written or verbal individual argument skills. It provides the missing interlocutor (Graff, 2003) and helps students see their arguments as having a purpose. As is the case with inquiry, here again we cannot assume students of this age level to be in command of even rudimentary dialogic argumentation skills, such as counterargument and rebuttal.

In its current instantiation, “Arguing on the Computer.” students engage in dialogic argumentation via internet chat software that leads to a final, all-class “Showdown” debate on the topic. A similar format has been used, in which dialogs are verbal (Kuhn & Udell, 2003), and the expectation is that we would use a combination of the two for different topics.

Topics are ones for which the class shows a fairly even split in endorsing one or the other position and students are on this basis divided into two teams. A pair of students from one team engages in an I-Chat dialog with a different pair from the opposing team at each session. Additional reflective activities include: (a) written exercises in which students examine their own argument, counterarguments, and rebuttals and reflect on how they could be improved, (b) planning exercises for the Showdown, and (c) the Showdown itself (conducted Smartboard to Smartboard, with each team occupying a different classroom), followed by (d) an argument map portraying the Showdown dialog and prepared for the students for them to reflect on in group discussion.

Topics that have been used previously with this activity appear in the appendix which follows. It is expected, however, that topics will be expanded, to coordinate with and promote cross-curriculum integration and to give students experience with a wide range of content, from classical philosophical dilemmas to current social issues to personal dilemmas (see “Meta-curriculum” above). It is anticipated that the I-Chat methodology will be employed in conjunction with verbal methods and extended to individual writing assignments, as all of these forms are critical for students to master.

Appendix

Sample topics used in dialogic argument exercise

ColumbiaTown Theme

1. ColumbiaTown is a new town being formed in the middle USA. The governing board of the new town has to establish rules and laws for the new town, including the new school being formed to serve the town’s children. The first topic is whether attendance at school should be mandatory for all children in the town. Specifically, the following dilemma is introduced:

The Costa family has moved to the edge of town from far away Greece with their 11-year-old son Nick. Nick was a good student and soccer player back home in Greece. Nick’s parents have decided that in this new place, they want to keep Nick at home with them, and not have him be at the school with the other children. The family speaks only Greek, and they think Nick will do better if he sticks to his family’s language and doesn’t try to learn English. They say they can teach him everything he needs at home.

What should happen? Is it okay for the Costa family to live in the town but keep Nick at home, or should they be required to send their son to the town school like all the other families do?

2. Two students, Jack and Doris, are introduced as troublesome students who continually disrupt the class despite repeated warnings. Should they be allowed to stay in the school or should they be expelled?

3. How should teachers be paid at the school? Should all teachers receive the same pay or should teacher pay be based on a teacher’s experience?

More General Topics

1. Throughout its history and continuing today, the US has often had to decide whether to be concerned about another country’s problems. Some take the view that the US shouldn’t try to help another country with its problems and should work only on its own issues at home. Others take the view that in some cases the US should try to do something useful if it can and knows for sure it will help.

2. Should the practice of capital punishment be allowed?

References

Graff, G. (2003). Clueless in academe: How schooling obscures the life of the mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Kuhn, D. (2005). Education for thinking. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Kuhn, D. (2002). What is scientific thinking and how does it develop? In U. Goswami (Ed.), Handbook of childhood cognitive development. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kuhn, D. (1991). The skills of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kuhn, D., & Udell, W. (2003). The development of argument skills. Child Development, 74, 1245-1260.

Kuhn, D., & Pease, M. (2006). What needs to develop in the development of inquiry skills? Unpublished ms.

Kuhn, D., Goh, W., Iordanou, K., & Shaenfield, D. (2006). Arguing on the computer: A microgenetic study of developing argument skills in a computer-supported environment. Unpublished ms.