Shaping Attitudes Toward Science in an Introductory Astronomy Class
Abstract
At many universities, astronomy is a popular way for non-science majors to fulfill a general education requirement. Because general-education astronomy may be the only college-level science course taken by these students, it is the last chance to shape the science attitudes of these future journalists, teachers, politicians, and voters. I report on an attempt to measure and induce changes in science attitudes in my general-education astronomy course. I describe construction of the attitude survey, classroom activities designed to influence attitudes, and give numerical results indicating a significant improvement. In contrast, the literature on attitudes in introductory physics courses generally reports stagnation or decline. I briefly comment on some plausible explanations for this difference.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0902.3321,
title = {Shaping Attitudes Toward Science in an Introductory Astronomy Class},
author = {D. Wittman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.3321},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
v2 includes a copy of the survey