Every day, I have to pick and choose which science blog posts I’m going to read. Titles scroll across my twitter feed, tempting me to push away my work and immerse myself in stories of tri-vaginated marsupials and XNA constructs. I’ve been following the opening of the NRC in Raleigh, NC, desperately wishing I could be there. Looking forlornly at images of Discovery, I’ve been saying farewell to the science giant that was the Space Program. The wealth of reading material in science blogs is staggering, and a lot of the writing is good.
I’ve been thinking a lot, since Science Online 2012 in January, about how students struggle to write effectively, and about how putting our work out there (like in this blog) can be so intimidating as to be paralyzing. In several different sessions at SciO12, I heard comments about the unpreparedness of college freshman to navigate science literature. Inability to distinguish between blog opinions and peer-reviewed papers is rather alarming, but it speaks to the experience of these students, not their intelligence. Understanding of resources begins with exposure. It develops when the interaction with those resources (articles, interviews, texts) is scaffolded in a meaningful way by teachers. It occurs to me that, although my students are prolific writers in English and History classes, they do virtually no science writing at all in their high school careers. I have a plan to change this, but, like any scientist, I need some preliminary data.
If you are a science instructor in higher education, an editor of a science publication or blog, or in any other field where you face the challenge of working with young science writers, I invite you to comment on the quality of science writing you see in undergraduate, graduate school, and beyond. Where do you see gaps in the science writing education of your students? What kinds of errors do you see, repeatedly, in your new hires that make you frustrated? When does the writing work?
If you’re challenged by science writing, what do you think your science education could have done to better prepare you?
Comment here to share your thoughts, or email me privately if you prefer.
(to reply privately, write me at lalsox(at)gmail(dot)com)
This is your chance to tell a high school science teacher writing work you wish she’d done with her students’ writing before they graduated.
I think the most important deficiency I see in new science writers – which includes grad students writing their first papers, perhaps already several years into a PhD program – is the inability to distinctly describe a question or aim, a result, a conclusion, and an opinion about the implications of a conclusion. Results, aims, conclusions often get jumbled together by new writers, and so the writing fails to present a coherent argument.
I’ve never had an opportunity to try this in a class, but it seems to me that working in distinct bite-sized chunks in an undergrad or high school lab class would help. Instead of having students complete the same standardized lab report for every lab exercise, perhaps one lab can be devoted to writing about results. The students generate their data in lab (perhaps just enough for a single figure), and then their write-up task is to describe those results in 1-2 paragraphs, as you would see in the description of a single figure in a scientific paper.
Not every writing assignment needs to have an intro/methods/results/discussion, and perhaps students would be helped by having these sections broken into separate writing assignments.
Thanks for reading, Mike. I agree that the “Form” approach to lab write-ups is time wasting and redundant with little in the way of writing instruction. At the graduate level, I had a good experience where our professor had us take peer review articles and write an explanation of each section at an 8th-grade reading level. I found it challenging but I was immediately aware of how much more closely I was reading.
I’d like to do the same thing at the high school level, but am worried that the gap between high school reading and professional scholarly articles may be too great (I am not a reading or language acquisition expert). My next thought was to have the younger kids (9th grade) read the AP students’ labs, but there is not a writing requirement there apart from test essays.
I’d like to ask my admins to let me have one section of kids to try alternative methods on, but I think every parent would want their kid in the control group. Heh.
Great blog, and what a great topic for discussion! Having graduate students write 8th grade level summaries sounds like a useful idea. My postdoc advisor talks about using Neanderthal language when you write proposals, meaning that you state your point in the most simple, direct way possible.
For 9th graders, I don’t think reading professional papers is necessary. Give them a single figure (or have them generate the data themselves), and then have them go through a writing exercise where they clearly describe the results in just two paragraphs, without incorporating a background section, or a discussion section (e.g., To test idea x, we did y. We observed that… These results show that…).
Mike, I agree, that would be a great exercise to do with 9th graders. I can anticipate that teachers who share my preps would be apprehensive about where to put that in the curriculum. The way our labs are set up right now, there is next to no time for writing/revision with the number of students we have. I think its important and should probably be the first thing we do during the school year.
Agree with Mike. I teach a variety of courses in undergraduate psychology, and organizing into questions, claims, results and conclusions is often a challenge to students.
I will add one caveat: I am sure that some of science writing is a skill, but a good deal of it is also dependent on having a lot of background knowledge. If you don’t know the difference between a gene and DNA, you are not going to be able to identify, nor describe a question or results of a study about these topics. So, while I applaud your aims to give students more practice in science writing, you should also rest assured that you are teaching writing and reading because you are teaching them content.
Oh, one thing I will add to Mike’s suggestion: I think one of the hallmarks of good science writing is a careful precision that I think is a great habit for kids to cultivate. Any vagueness or ambiguity must be resolved.
One activity I enjoy with my kids, that I think might work well with just about any age to drive home this point is this one:
I give pairs of students about 10-15 lego pieces. They have to construct a sculpture, and then (with their partner) write down instructions on how to make it, without using any drawings or figures. Then, they take their sculpture apart and trade with another pair and try to use the instructions to recreate the sculpture. Inevitably, there are errors because of ambiguity. And it’s legos, so it’s fun.
When I am sitting around, dreaming of courses I’d like to offer (other teachers do this too, right?), I imagine a History of Science class, where all the reading is primary sources of scientists, beginning with Aristotle, where do close readings and dissect the content. Somehow, it doesn’t come across as fun as it is in my head when I tell people about it, though.
I LOVE the Lego idea! I agree that vague language is a problem for many students (some of it purposeful, since they’re not sure what the answer is). My 9th graders are still at an age where Legos hold a strong appeal. I think I even may have KNEX in the lab – those would work too.
Thank you for reading, Cedar.
Yes! I would be one of the people loving that idea. But then again, I was a history of science major as an undergraduate, so I am already that kind of nerd.
I think you could totally do this, but you’d have to choose the right readings. One good place to look might be Alan Lightman’s The Discoveries. It is a collection of primary scientific articles, with great little essays before putting the articles in context. I highly recommend it.
Right, vagueness and ambiguity are very common problems, and it really takes practice to learn to spot them and eliminate them. I love the lego idea!
Great Post Lali!
Certainly the previous comments are well worth the read, and I may even implement the Lego idea in some of my classes – thanks for sharing!
I think the root of the problem is the fact that teaches and educators have fallen behind to the times. Perhaps, not those of us in this forum, as we seek alternative ways of delivering the information, but the vast majority of teachers, educators, faculty members – whatever you want to call them – have not changed their delivery even when we know that today’s student is different than 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago (I have a great PowerPoint Presentation I found on-line comparing four different generations). While in High School, I remember sitting in a quite corner and hammering down physics, chemistry and trigonometry (and some calculus) problems all by my self, or perhaps in a small group. To this end, I was able to turn my ‘pager’ off and, if I wanted to, I could be far from the “grasp of the world” for one or two hours. I’ll challenge any student today to turn off their cell phones and/or refrain from using Facebook, etc for an hour! Student’s today seek ‘short’ bits of information, are less likely to “think for themselves” and are more dependent on the faculty member than generations ago – we must change to keep their interest.
This “dependency” I refer to – in my opinion – is due to the how kids are taught today. Perhaps I’m wrong – I am in a college setting and far removed from other teaching environments – but it doesn’t seem as if the kids have any particular time where they can be creative and learn things outside of the curriculum that is provided by the school board. Schools and teachers seem to teach the basis of standardize tests that are nothing more than a way to objectively tell a kid that they failed. Don’t get me wrong, I think there is much more value in loosing than winning all the time, but standardized testing is not the answer for our kids to learn. The kid who struggles most, will receive additional help to pass the test, where as the kid who performs better, or has learned how to effectively navigate through the test, does not really learn anything. Really, that’s it? My nephew (18 y/o) is about to graduate from HS and over the last year, he has been “asked” by the school not to come to school during FCAT days (Standardized testing days in FL) because they do not have anything for them to do because all teachers will be testing. Those who do come to school, spend the day in ‘first period’ – ALL DAY until testing has finished…
On the other hand, I think the mastering of the language is trouble some. As a former ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) student I am appalled at the mastering of the English language, or lack thereof. Is grammar not being taught in schools anymore? Is it possible that students only communicate in txt language (I’ve had a lab reported turned in txt language!) It boggles my mind that someone who only speaks one language would have such a poor understanding of it. I can certainly understand, and I’m sensitive to, the international student who is really trying, but struggles to write English – from personal experience is NOT easy – however, these are the students that have the least trouble with… So, if they don’t have an understanding of plain language how can we ask them to write scientifically? How do we ask them to have scientific inquiry if they have never been asked to “question” anything?
Sorry, you asked!
No apology necessary! Thanks for commenting.
I think my point is that students CAN write plainly and still get scientific concepts across. In fact, I think an emphasis on direct, plain language is what is needed. At a certain level, jargon becomes part of the tools for communication, but the hallmark of understanding a concept is whether one can explain it to a lay person.
I disagree that students haven’t been asked to question. We ask them to question all the time. In fact, they are pre-wired for it (ask anyone with young children asking why? Why? WHY?). I think the failure on the part of the teachers (myself included) is that we assume that asking the question is enough and that they can do the rest. Just as math proofs need to be taught, so does writing with precision.
I have often wondered about how language is taught in the states. Because of the way I entered public school, I missed a lot of grammar instruction, but still feel my grasp of it is good. I have always felt that the way to get good at writing is to write more. I wonder if time is lost on sentence diagramming when kids could be writing and editing instead. (the caveat, of course, is that I am not an language instructor, so I am largely ignorant on the process). Do I need to be able to explain the mechanical principles of how my car runs to be able to drive well? Does one need to be a nutritionist to be an excellent chef?