We are pleased to announce the Winter 2012 issue of Science Education and Civic Engagement: An International Journal.This is one of our largest issues to date, which reflects the growth of high-quality scholarly work on teaching science within the context of important social and civic issues.
This issue opens with Part 2 of a Teaching and Learningessay by Wm. David Burns, Executive Director of the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement at Harrisburg University, PA (Part 1 of this article was published in the Summer 2011 issue). Reflecting on his experiences as the longstanding Principal Investigator of SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities), David shares his insights about “lessons learned” from the first 10 years of the SENCER project.
A Point of Viewcontribution comes from Orianna Carter(Ohio University Southern), who discusses the opportunities and challenges of teaching science at a rural campus in Appalachia.
In the Research Article section, Janice Ballou(an independent consultant) presents extensive survey data about how faculty teaching and their perspectives on students have been affected by the participation in the SENCER project. Her analysis of these data shows a widespread impact of professional development activities such as the SENCER Summer Institute.
In the journal section on Science Education and Public Policy, Joseph Karlesky (Franklin & Marshall College) contributes a thought-provoking article on how the use of scientific evidence to make public policy decisions is influenced by contested political interests. He proposes that science education would benefit from being more cognizant of how scientific information can be promoted, manipulated, or rejected during the political process.
We are pleased to have a broad selection of Project Reports that span a range of topics, including mathematics, public health, water quality, environmental science, and traffic analysis. Michael Berger (Simmons College), Jack Duggan (Wentworth Institute of Technology) and Ellen E. Faszewski (Wheelock College) discuss a collaborative curriculum project called The Environmental Forum, which promotes, community-building, and service-learning throughout the Colleges of the Fenway, located outside of Boston. The “trans-disciplinary” challenge of traffic issues in Los Angeles is tackled by an appropriately interdisciplinary team. This project has been developed by a group of faculty from Woodbury University–Nageswar Rao Chekuri, Zelda Gilbert and Marty Tippens, who have partnered with Ken Johnson (City of Burbank) and Anil Kantak (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). Another example of interdisciplinary synergy is provided by Urmi Ghosh-Dastidar and Liana Tsenova, both from the New York City College of Technology, who describe a project called Bio-Math Mapping. This project introduced mathematics and computer science students to the techniques of water quality analysis and applied them to two New York City waterways. After collecting authentic scientific data, students applied their knowledge of statistics to determine the risk from disease-causing and drug-resistant bacteria.
Reem Jafaar (LaGuardia Community College) provides a mathematics teaching module based on the serious problem of student debt, which is now attracting widespread national attention. Kathleen FitzPatrick (Merrimack College) describes course that is organized around contemporary health issues (immunization, obesity, immunization, etc.) and links these themes to service-learning projects. SALG-based assessment data of student learning gains reveals that the course design promoted improved understanding of the interplay between science and civic issues, in addition to other documented gain. The final project report is a contribution from a faculty team at Indiana State University—Peter J. Rosene, M. Ross Alexander, and James H. Speer—who describe the implementation and assessment of the SENCER educational model within the introductory laboratory courses in the natural sciences. They evaluate how the change in educational approach affected student’s perceptions of teaching effectiveness in comparison to a more traditional curriculum.
In conclusion, we wish to express our thanks to all the authors who have contributed to this issue of the journal.
— Trace Jordan and Eliza Reilly, Co-Editors-in-Chief