Masterminding Science Education: Cost and Pedagogical Potency in Science Education

Abstract

Science education is often under attack from many quarters today. Some taxpayers bemoan its cost ineffectiveness in light of standardized tests. Post-modernists critique the idea there are ever any truths to seek. Finally, others charge that science education, whether it's a matter of the "hug a tree approach" or "memorize the periodic table approach," leaves students with little sense of what science is really all about. The idea that science is an intellectual adventure, full of excitement, mystery and tentativeness is seemingly lost. In what follows, the authors describe thirty hours of instruction using a common inexpensive board game that goes far to respond to what may be of merit to each and every one of the criticisms above.