In order to get an untainted insight into any misconceptions about science that your students may have, you may want to administer a short pre-test within the first day or so of the course. So, after your dramatic opening (see below), plan to insert your pre-test (or Science Knowledge Survey) in some 15-20 minute time slot as early as you can. Take a look at the "Science Knowledge Survey" below as an example. If you have the means (e.g., a Scantron system), you may find that an item-analysis of the questions would be very revealing. You could even share the frequencies of hits and misses for each item (or selected items) with your class as an opening to discussion, or as a rationale for the need to take a look at What Science is NOT, You could make an overhead listing each numbered item, revealing it as you proceed with your comments and discussion. Then look at What Science IS. From there, you should provide your students with a variety of experiences that illustrate the true nature of science. To do this, use a fair sampling of the NOS lessons in the ENSI collection, all designed and selected to clarify cocepts and repair the main misconceptions about real science.

See the PDF version of this Survey at the bottom of this page, for easy download and printing.

At the end of the unit, or end of the course, you could use this same test as a "post-test" to see how much your students have improved, and/or to see how effective your teaching has been.

This test is given to check your understanding about the nature of science and certain basic science concepts. It will NOT affect your grade. However, if necessary, the results may influence what we will study in this course to help you develop a more accurate understanding of science. Please answer all items on your answer sheet, honestly, as you think a working scientist would.

PLEASE DO NOT WRITE ON THIS SHEET.

MARKING CODE:
A = true, or you agree, (or you lean this way)
B = not true, or you disagree, (or you lean this way)

1. Science is primarily a method for inventing new devices.
2. Science can solve any problem or answer any question.
3. Science is primarily concerned with understanding how the natural world works.
4. Science can use supernatural explanations if necessary.
5. Astrology (predicting your future from the arrangement of stars and planets) is a science.
6. Science requires a lot of creative activity.
7. Science always provides tentative (temporary) answers to questions.
8. A "hypothesis" is just an "educated guess" about anything.
9. Scientists can believe in God or a supernatural being and still do good science.
10. Science is most concerned with collecting facts.
11. Most engineers and medical doctors are actually scientists.
12. A scientific fact is absolute, fixed, permanent.
13. Science can be done poorly.
14. A scientific theory is merely a conjecture, a guess.
15. Scientists have solved most of the major mysteries of nature.
16. Science can study events that happened millions of years ago.
17. Knowledge of what science is, what it can and cannot do, and how it works, is important for all educated people.
18. Scientific experimentation usually involves trying something just to see what will happen, without predicting a likely outcome.
19. Anything done scientifically can be relied upon to be accurate and reliable.
20. Scientists assume that nature follows the same "rules" throughout the universe.
21. Scientists often try to disprove possible explanations.
22. Science can be influenced by race, gender, nationality, or religion of the scientists.
23. All scientific problems are solved by the Scientific Method.
24. Disagreement between scientists is one of the weaknesses of science.
25. Any study done carefully and based on observation is scientific.