NO ONE EVER said science education was easy. Certainly the concepts we teach, like conservation of momentum or quantum mechanics, can be hard to grasp. But what really complicates the attempt is that we're also trying to teach a deeper lesson at the same time — to help students understand the nature of science itself.
All too often, young people get the impression that science is about learning certain "laws" and then applying them to different situations. After all, that's what we make them do on tests, to show that they've been doing the work. But that's not it at all. Science is the process of building these concepts through the collection of experimental evidence.
And while I'm on it, let's call these concepts what they really are—not laws, but models. Science is all about building and testing models. It's difficult to help students understand that aspect of science when we just give them the models to begin with. Sure, in physics we often include historical or mathematical evidence to support big ideas, but that often isn't enough.
Of course, we can't start from nothing. If students had to build their own models from the ground up, it would be like trying to learn programming by inventing computers. As Isaac Newton is supposed to have said, we stand on the shoulders of giants. We must take models built by others and go from there.
What I'd like to suggest is that this actually provides a great way into the adventure of science and an opportunity to meet our objectives as educators. If you can create a situation that challenges students' assumptions and produces conceptual conflict, that's a great opportunity for learning.
