How To Teach Science
And Why A Good Science Education Is So Important Today
When we think of science, we often think of scientific facts. Photosynthesis is when plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Gravity means what goes up, must come down. Life on Earth evolved from one common ancestor. Herbivores eat plants. The Earth revolves around the Sun. However, these facts are not science. Or better yet, science is much more than just facts. Science, at its core, is about making sense of the world around us.
Yet, science and science education are under attack right now in the United States. This site, The Union of Concerned Scientists, highlights and breaks down instances of political administrations interfering with the scientific process and institutions. Attacks on science include cutting funding, laying off scientists, censoring data, and so on and so forth. Notably, the site covers concerns spanning several recent political administrations, not just the current Trump administration.
All this to say, we have an ongoing science crisis in our country. However, when someone says they are anti-science or they don’t like science, that makes me believe they don’t understand what science really is. How can anyone be against making sense of the world around us? What is really going on is decisions being made by folks who are scientifically illiterate. When we have leaders or a general public that is scientifically illiterate, we are susceptible to misinformation and poor decision-making.
Dr. Amanda Townley, the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), spoke last week for the Evolutionary Studies Seminar at SUNY New Paltz. Her talk focused on the need for a better understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) to improve overall scientific literacy. Her full video about addressing the public skepticism of evolution can be found here. I would highly recommend it for all educators, regardless of what you teach.
So why am I talking about science and politics on a Substack where I usually write about evolutionarily informed teaching strategies? Well, the lack of understanding of science is due in large part to our modern education system. The goal of schooling is to prepare students with the knowledge and skills they will need to be successful adults. But as evidenced above, we are doing a poor job of this in regards to science. I don’t blame teachers, but the system is flawed. What follows is what doesn’t work in our current system and my hopes for better (and more evolutionarily informed) science instruction.
What is Science?
In this case, it is important to start by defining science. Sticking with the work of Dr. Townley and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), their definition is as follows:
“Science is a process for learning about the natural world, and also the knowledge generated through this process” (NCSE, 2010).
Children, due to our species’ evolved mechanisms for learning, are naturally curious (Bjorklund, 2022). Any parent or teacher can tell you kids ask millions of why questions. Why is the sky blue? Why do we have two legs? Why do dogs have fur? This questioning is science at its most fundamental core. If we view science as a process for learning about the world around us, we can see why kids so naturally love science! Childhood is evolved for meaning-making and that is exactly what science is.
Last week a third grader told me her favorite number was 4.6 billion because that is the age of the Earth. But that same day, another student told me they aren’t good at science because they can’t remember enough about extinct animals. What separates these two children is the type of science instruction we provide in schools.
Bad Science Education
Science in schools is often focused solely on memorization of scientific facts. We may tell kids they are scientists, but we don’t treat them as such. We do not teach science as a process, but rather we teach it as a body of pre-existing knowledge.
Much of this style of education is driven by high-stakes testing. Kids must memorize and recite facts to demonstrate mastery. Kids who can’t remember these facts are deemed “bad at science.” Below is a released question sample from the New York State 5th Grade Science Test. We ask ten- and eleven-year-old students to read hefty passages, recall content-specific vocabulary, and make them use writing skills to explain their thinking. All of this is done individually, on a computer, and in a high-stakes situation. No wonder kids hate science!
Work like the question above turns kids off science, creates serious and persisting misconceptions about what science is, and decreases the innate curiosity of our students. These problems don’t just happen at the upper grades either. Kindergarteners are being asked to look at weather graphs and identify an upward-trending or downward-trending data pattern for the temperature. Third graders are taught to create questions using a structured format, rather than their innate curiosity. At all levels, science is driven by rigor, facts, and testing rather than a desire to learn about the world.
Even worse, science is sometimes not even taught in elementary schools. We focus so much on reading and writing that science often gets put on the metaphorical back burner. Personally, I have about 30 minutes each day to teach either social studies or science. My experiences are unfortunately pretty typical across the country. The following statistic is from the 2012 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (Banilower et al., 2013, p. 53).
“In 2012, grade K–3 classes spent an average of 89 minutes per day on reading instruction and 54 minutes on mathematics instruction, compared to only 19 minutes on science and 16 minutes on social studies instruction. The pattern in grades 4–6 is similar, with 83 minutes per day devoted to reading, 61 minutes to mathematics, 24 minutes to science, and 21 minutes to social studies instruction.”
As I discussed with the idea of learned helplessness, the way we teach science sends an implicit message to our students. This message is that there is a right and wrong answer for all of science and everything worth knowing is already discovered. Students’ job is to memorize these facts, not construct new knowledge. By teaching science in this manner, we are creating a scientifically illiterate populous.
Science as the Most Evolutionarily Relevant Pedagogy
The above problems seem grim, and quite frankly, they are. As I said, we are in a science crisis and it begins in elementary school. The way we are teaching science has disastrous long-term consequences. If we want to address the issues we see in science funding, policy, etc., there is an immediate need to improve science education.
I would argue that fixing science education at the elementary level goes hand-in-hand with creating more evolutionarily informed classrooms. I’ve written about elements of this form of pedagogy in many other Substacks (i.e. here, here, and here). What follows is some basic principles of evolutionarily informed pedagogy that can be leveraged to improve elementary science education.
Self-directed Instruction- As I said above, kids are naturally interested in science as so much of it relates to the world around them. By giving kids time and space to ask and attempt to answer their own questions about the natural world, we are fostering scientific inquiry skills. Capitalizing on these questions and experiences then allows teachers to explicitly teach scientific facts in a way that relates to students’ newfound understandings and background knowledge.
Play-based Learning- Similar to self-directed instruction, giving kids time to explore concepts through play helps children guide their own learning and construct their own understandings. Importantly, play is something done without consequence (Gray, 2013). This means that allowing kids to explore, but requiring that they take notes that will be graded, is not play. Children need time for inquiry and exploration that is done without the added pressure of evaluation/testing.
Hands-on Opportunities- So much of science involves tools, natural materials, etc. By giving students the opportunity to handle these manipulatives, we allow them to create concrete connections between the facts they are learning and the real-world applications of these facts.
Collaborative Work- Children are all unique and bring different skills and background knowledge to our classrooms. All of the above examples (self-directed instruction, play-based learning, and hands-on opportunities) would be improved if children were afforded the opportunity to engage with their peers and discuss their ideas. This sharing of information helps even the playing field of different levels of background knowledge.
Don’t get me wrong—I am not arguing that we need to stop teaching the facts. Teachers do need to ensure that children have strong understandings of science that are free from misconceptions. However, a high-quality science education should emphasize both inquiry and facts. By beginning science instruction with a focus on the evolved learning mechanisms that drive our species’ educative instincts, we are able to vastly improve science education and give children ownership over their own learning. After all, science is about questioning and doing rather than memorizing. Shifting the focus of science at the elementary level will help children maintain an interest in science and, eventually, lead to a more scientifically literate public.
Takeaways
Science is critical to our success as individuals, success of our country, and the wellbeing all life on Earth. Science is how we create safer vehicles and infrastructures, understand and cure diseases, and take care of important ecosystems that we rely on. Yet we are living in a time where science is controversial, misunderstood, and undervalued. Tackling all these issues is way beyond the purview of this Substack. However, change can begin by improving science education at the earliest ages.
The way teachers currently are tasked with teaching science essentially turns off children’s innate curiosity. The emphasis on fact-based science teaches kids, albeit unintentionally, that science is essentially complete and everything worth knowing is already discovered. They are just in school to learn the facts and if they can’t learn the facts, science is not for them. However, when we see science as a way of understanding the world around us, we can take steps to improve elementary science education and scientific literacy. Here are the key points educators should keep in mind:
Science is more than just facts! Science is a process of learning that kids are naturally motivated towards. Science is about understanding the world, not just reciting facts on a test.
Science education is important. We need to be making more time to teach science. When possible, we can consider integrating science with reading, writing, and math to capitalize on the time we do have. However, science should also be given unique focus and attention when time allows.
Science should be conducted through self-directed, play-based, hands-on, collaborative experiences. Explicit instruction is necessary, but good science instruction should combine explicit instruction with inquiry-based methods.
I would argue that good science teaching needs to become one of our priorities at the elementary level. If we want to help students be successful in their adult lives, we need to help them develop a strong foundation for scientific understanding and critical thinking. The NCSE has tons of resources, linked here, that can help teachers improve their own practice and understanding of science. We find ourselves in a time where so many of us are asking what can we do to make the world better. Improving science education is one of the ways teachers can help create a better world for all of us.
References:
Banilower, E. R., Smith, P. S., Weiss, I. R., Malzahn, K. A., Campbell, K. M., & Weis, A. M. (2013). Report of the 2012 national survey of science and mathematics education. Chapel Hill, NC: Horizon Research, Inc
Bjorklund, D. (2022). Children’s Evolved Learning Abilities and Their Implications for Education. Educational Psychology Review, 34, 2243-2273.
Gray, P. (2013). Free to learn. New York, NY: Basic Books.
National Center for Science Education. (2025). National Center for Science Education. Retrieved [March 30, 2025], from https://ncsep.us/
Union of Concerned Scientists. (2025). Attacks on science. Retrieved [March 30, 2025], from https://www.ucs.org/resources/attacks-on-science.