Subject: Curriculum - cross-discipl Science (Palfreyman)

Posted by John Heinbokel on 12/8/2005
In Reply To:Collaboration on Curricula Posted by Prof. Dr. Niall Palfreyman on 11/21/2005

Message:

Niall,



You’ve been more active to date than I on this List (in part because I allow myself to get distracted, as in the case even of this thread that I initiated!); I’ve appreciated your contributions and willingness to join the conversation over the years. I hope we can keep that going with this thread.



As a biological oceanographer in a past life, I too experienced the challenge of integrating biology (ecology in my case) with a number of the more precise sciences, math and statistics, and also some of the social sciences. That blending of disciplines is characteristic (IMHO) of the interesting problems that face us (and our students) in that ‘real-world’ out there. One of the challenges that our (U.S. at least) educational system is not good at meeting, however, is breaking out of those disciplinary boxes – at least or especially at the secondary and college/university levels. The tool- and mind-sets of SD are wonderfully suited for supporting such cross-disciplinary efforts, but a major problem continues to be providing the credible motivation to get students, teachers, and administrators to consider pushing against the formidable inertia of such a discipline-focused system.



I can’t claim any special wisdom on how to support making that happen, but I am convinced that it needs to happen. I’d welcome suggestions from folks lurking out there on how develop curricular units that would be attractive to the educational community (that is, meet their needs, not necessarily just be pretty) and help make these contributions. Perhaps, a non-trivial starting place might even be to wrestle a bit more on defining just what it is we’d be trying to accomplish: what will our students be able to do better, if we’re successful in such an endeavor?



I’ll be curious to see if this strikes any nerves. In the meantime, Niall, I’d appreciate a short definition or description of just what ‘bioinformatics’ is. To my knowledge nothing by that name is included in the U.S. pre-college science program; indeed, I have no recollection of the term from my formal education through the mid-late 70’s.



John

Follow Ups:

Curriculum - cross-discipl Science (Palfreyman) - Prof. Dr. Niall Palfreyman 12/9/2005