An article in the Sydney Morning Herald tells its readers: Scientists urge unis to axe alternative medicine courses. According to the article, [a]lmost one in three Australian universities now offer courses in some form of alternative therapy or complementary medicine, including traditional Chinese herbal medicine, chiropractics, homeopathy, naturopathy, reflexology and aromatherapy. We were talking about it […]
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chris stringer talks about human origins
Just a heads-up for teachers & students: next month Chris Stringer will be giving public lectures on human evolution in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch & Dunedin. (No Hamilton talk! I am sad 🙁 I’ve got an all-day meeting that means I’d never get up to the Auckland event in time.) From the latest Royal Society "Alert": […]
Continue readingweb 2.0, postmodernism, & attitudes to science
A new post by Orac discusses various tactics of the anti-vaccine movement, with reference to a new paper published in the journal Vaccine. (Link is to a pdf – apologies if this isn’t accessible to all as it’s well worth the time spent reading.) In the paper (entitled Anti-vaccine activists, Web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm – […]
Continue readingthe status & quality of year 11 & 12 science in australian schools
My reading assignment today was a report just out from the Australian Academy of Science (the AAS) on science in Australian secondary schools (Goodrum, Druhan & Abbs, 2011). Not what you might expect on a reading list in the week before Christmas, but I was up to speak (briefly) about it on Radio NZ & […]
Continue readingletters to the editor: science & god
From today’s "Letters to the Editor" in today’s NZ Herald: Your correspondent correctly states that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is under threat. The main threat, however, is not coming from "conservative religious school." It is coming from science. Well, as a scientist, this is news to me. What scientific evidence does our correspondent present […]
Continue readingusing pseudoscience to teach science
The following post is an article that I originally wrote for the New Zealand Science Teacher journal (the official journal of the New Zealand Association of Science Educators), and is reproduced here by kind permission of the editor. We live in a time when science features large in our lives, probably more so than ever […]
Continue readingPM’s Science Teacher Prize: Dr Angela Sharples
The Prime Minister’s Science Prizes were announced today, & among the winners was my good friend & colleague Angela Sharples, who was awarded the Science Teacher Prize. Angela & I have worked together to prepare NZ’s teams for the International Biology Olympiad since 2004, during which time I’ve seen first-hand just what a superb teacher […]
Continue readingassessment for learning
A few days back, Grant asked if I would follow up on my promise to write something on assessment. It would be great to get a discussion going around how & why we assess students, so after a bit of thought I decided to kick things off with the following post, derived from my own […]
Continue readingwhat about genetic evidence linking us to chimpanzees
As Grant said earlier, there is a rich mine of potential posts in this particular website… This time, let’s review its author’s take on the phylogenetic relationship between Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes. We are indeed linked to chimpanzees – by a common Designer.
Continue readingprior learning & university success in biology
One of the sessions at FYBEC – on the changes in NCEA Achievement Standards in order to align them with the 2007 Curriculum document – generated a lot of discussion. It was great to have this session, as a heads-up to the changes in prior learning that we’ll see in students coming in to uni-level […]
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