Learn to Think Like a Scientist: A Global Initiative to Change Science Education in our Schools

Abstract.  We will describe an emerging scientist-led global initiative, GSEE/TLS, that we hope will change the way science is currently taught in primary and middle schools in the US and elsewhere. Our long term goal is to develop an experiment-based and concept-based approach that will teach every middle schoolkid how to think like a scientist. We are using the global infrastructure developed by the Global Partnership of Scientists Engaged in Education to form working groups that build on what has been learned from previous large scale experiments in the engagement of scientists with school education. These will introduce the Big Ideas of science through two deliverables: Inquire!, a manual that describes hands-on experiments for primary school students and connects these to the Big Ideas, visualizations, games, citizen science experiments, and exhibits; and Learn to Think Like a Scientist, a multi-faceted online course, addressed to middle-schoolers and their teachers, that includes textual materials, online exhibits, games, citizen science experiments, interviews with TLS scientists, visualizations, and guides for teachers. We will reserve at least twenty minutes of our presentation for a discussion with our audience of the initiative and the role that GSEE/TLS Partners can play in it.