Taking a Scientific Approach to Science and Engineering Education

A lecture by Nobel Prize Winner, Professor Carl Wieman, Stanford University that took place on Wednesday 25 September 2019 at UCL Institute of Education (IOE). About the lecture: Guided by experimental tests of theory and practice, science and engineering has advanced rapidly in the past 500 years. Guided primarily by tradition and dogma, science education meanwhile has remained largely medieval. Research on how people learn is now revealing much more effective ways to teach and evaluate learning than what is in use in the traditional science class. It makes much more use in the classroom of the instructor’s expertise, and it also shows students how to learn most effectively. This research is setting the stage for a new approach to teaching and learning that can provide the relevant and effective science education for all students that is needed for the 21st century. Although the focus of the talk is on undergraduate science teaching, where the data is the most compelling, the underlying principles come from studies of the general development of expertise and apply widely. This lecture was co-hosted by the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) and the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE).