What is Retrospectacle? This series of posts are a kind of Thomas Dolby-inspired ‘retrospectacle’ of earlier popular entries from my site, which will fill in during the time that I am away from this site for about a week. Even though this blog post is from an earlier time — enjoy, feel free to comment and see you later!
Thanks to Greg Laden over at Science Blogs, who refers to this earlier interview (and the rest of the ‘Skepticism Essays‘ section) in his post Science Online 2010. I’ve reposted it today in case you are reading from over there.
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Welcome to my sequence of posts for this week! I’m going to be foregrounding some people via online interviews, on a range of topics and issues.
My first is Australian Michael McRae, who is currently living and working in Australia’s capital city, Canberra.
You’ve had a rich and interesting career, having started as a pathologist and then training as a science teacher, worked internationally for inner-city multicultural schools, at an all-girls’ school and even travelled outback and overland as a Science Circus member for Questacon – Australia’s National Science and Technology Centre. In your experience, what’s the difference between Science Communication and Education?
If I were to draw a Venn diagram of the two, communication would be the big circle with education nestled neatly inside of it. Communication is merely the exchange of information between individuals. However, while education is also an exchange of information, it has a specific purpose which goes beyond just providing content. In terms of education, content plays a minor role. The real focus is in providing a set of skills which can be used in the future to evaluate other sources of information the individual comes across. It’s the old proverb ‘Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he’ll never go hungry again’. Communication is the interaction between two people which could result in them eating a fish or knowing how to catch it for themselves. Only education can result in the latter.
Is being a “spokesperson for science and reason” as easy as wearing a lab coat – or taking one off – as you explain a science concept? What are the pitfalls?
Humans are social animals. Try as we might, we can’t escape that truth and the behaviours that come with it. As such, we learn best from people we like and can sympathise with. Science and reason are thinking skills that demand an ability to be critical of what you’re told. Therefore if you’re encouraging people to think reasonably, you must be able to connect with them enough to encourage them to agree or disagree dispassionately. Wearing a lab coat or not, if you can’t communicate in a way that makes people want to listen first, and then want to digest what you’re telling them second, you haven’t got a hope.
I think a lot of science communicators feel this means being ‘crazy’ or ‘whacky’ in their presentation, or to glorify being geeky. In truth, people are naturally curious about science, and have an ability to reason. Encouraging them to want to listen to you without having them switch off due to some bias or boredom is a matter of knowing your audience and having them not see you as a threat to their beliefs. Far from an easy task, but essential if we want to reach as many people as possible.
You’ve been a keen investigator of critical thinking programs and have even researched and initiated a school-wide IT policy at an exclusive private school. What would be your advice to teachers who are seeking to integrate a ‘critical thinking’ program and don’t know where to start? What factors influence these initiatives ever ‘taking off’?
Firstly, establish a common language across the school and embed it in a critical literacy policy which all teachers have access to. Whatever terms you want to use in your school, have all teachers know them and use them. When a Math teacher uses the word ‘evidence’, it must be in the same context with the same meaning as when the English teacher uses it. Language is a powerful way to get people to think reasonably, as it opens the way for healthy discourse that doesn’t get bogged down in semantics. If a student is asked for an opinion in one class, they know a) opinion is not a ’science’ word or an ‘English’ word, but a word that extends across disciplines, and b) that they can use those same skills which form an opinion across all classes.
Secondly, establish across the school an open social environment which encourages discussion without fear of reprisal. Again, we’re social animals. We will often believe something based on who says it rather than the evidence supporting it. To get past this, it must be socially acceptable to openly show the reasoning process. This can be tricky, as classroom dynamics can often get in the way of this. But it is essential from an early age to have a social environment which supports healthy argument.
Thirdly, role modelling. Don’t tell; show! If you can demonstrate the process of critical thinking, students and other teachers will see it in action, and know it to be something people do (rather than just something they have to do to pass a test).
Lastly, encourage students to be wrong. It seems counter-intuitive, but schools have always focussed on being correct to the degree that students don’t see how to deal with the process of correction. Take wrong answers as a gift – they provide you with a means to understanding what the student is thinking, and an opportunity to have them practice critical thinking on their own beliefs.
By personally doing these things in your own classroom and making it apparent to other teachers, it will grease the wheels for a school culture of critical thinking.
Your current role is as the editor for CSIRO’s ‘Science by Email’, an online newsletter that draws on many of the skills that you also used whilst working at Questacon under their scholarship program, and your work program for CSIRO Education. Do you find that your additional experience as an artist and published science fiction author influence your views on how to make science appealing to the younger years?
I think it’s the other way around. Perhaps I’ve just retained a good grasp of what most appeals to younger people. Maybe I never really left my childhood, or I simply remember clearly what it was about many of the things I appreciated as a kid. I’m not sure. In any case, kids and adolescents are simply adults in training. They watch what people do around them and then try to copy it. Not always successfully, mind you, but nobody gets to being good at anything without practice.
Daniel Loxton of ‘Junior Skeptic’ once discussed the various challenges facing skeptics in an audio essay on Skepticality. As a like-minded skeptic, what are your views on how skeptic organizations could be more proactive when addressing the needs of primary and secondary teachers, as well as concerned parents who seek advice and support on schooling initiatives or networking opportunities world-wide?
Understanding what efforts are being made would be a good start, and exploring how to become involved with them. I feel a lot of skeptic groups have great intentions but little idea of how to implement them. Competitions and resources such as worksheets, videos and books are fantastic, however if they don’t work with a curriculum or have small pedagogical value due to the way they are constructed or implemented, then there is little hope a teacher will make use of them. In Australia especially, there has been a trend to create more consistent national frameworks across states when it comes to curricula. For any group interested in the education of youth in this country it is essential that they have some grasp of the cultural dynamics at work regarding this.
We have in this country science education groups such as Primary Connections – who aim to promote science literacy in primary schools – supported by a body of informed educational professionals. They know the curriculum links and take advantage of them, which sees their programs succeeding in appealing to teachers and, importantly, working in achieving their goals.
Massive science communication bodies such as Questacon work well because they research the way people learn and have educationalists advising them. CSIRO Education again consists of professionals who see the benefit in being armed with good research and knowledge about what is out there in terms of education. They all succeed because of that. If skeptic groups wish do more than preach to the converted, they need to start taking education seriously.
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