CREATE for STEM Seminar Series

The CREATE for STEM Seminar Series will kick off with David Fortus presenting on Wednesday, September 18 at 12:00 p.m. This seminar invites participants to gather in the CREATE for STEM Seminar space at noon. Light refreshments will be provided, but please feel free to bring your lunch with you, if you’d like.

A Zoom option will be offered. Register here. 

This presentation will be recorded and will be available after the seminar.

Speaker:

David Fortus is a Professor and The Chief Justice Bora Laskin Professorial Chair of Science Learning at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovat, Israel. His research interest is focused on increasing middle – high school students’ motivation to engage with science in a meaningful way. David is currently a co-principal investigator on the “Constructing Quantitative Knowledge-in-Use of Energy” project, housed in the CREATE for STEM Institute.

Abstract:

The goal of science literacy for all underlies much of today’s K-12 science education. This goal assumes that the citizens of contemporary societies must be able to appreciate the relevance of and draw upon scientific knowledge and practices in a broad range of personal and social issues. However, many national science education standards, which aim to promote science literacy for all, focus almost entirely on prescribing the conceptual knowledge and practices that underlie science literacy, with only little, if any, reference to the affective characteristics that need to be fostered in parallel to conceptual knowledge and skills in order to achieve general science literacy.

In this speech David Fortus will highlight why affect is so important for the development of science literacy by critiquing the arguments that underlie many national standards documents and by considering the crucial role played by affective characteristics in becoming and remaining scientifically literate and a lifelong learner of science. Fortus argues that there is a discrepancy between what is known in the science education research literature about the importance of affect and the national science education standards of many countries, with the latter often not acknowledging the affective domain as an important education outcome. This discrepancy is an obstacle to the attainment of science literacy for all.