McComas’ Myth 7: Science Is Procedural More Than Creative
The lecture portion of science has always been enjoyable for me. I haven’t had a science course yet in which there wasn’t at least some portion of the subject matter that I found thoroughly fascinating. However, for me science has also been a pleasure-pain experience. While I looked forward to the lectures, I dreaded the mandatory laboratory sessions. The worst part about being a science major was knowing that with most classes I would take, I would also have to take a co requisite laboratory.
The majority of the laboratory sessions I have had were as McComas described, verification activities. There were never any new scientific discoveries; instead the students were all expected to arrive at the same conclusions based on known scientific laws and theories. Arriving at any other conclusions meant that you did not properly follow the lab procedure and subsequently would receive a grade reduction. Laboratory sessions were often boring and very time consuming (they seemed to get longer and longer with more and more work to be done outside of class with each progressive course). They hardly seemed worth the credit they earned.
The laboratory classes that did seem worthwhile were those that seemed to supplement the co requisite lecture course by providing another way of understanding the material. Some material can be very difficult to understand without practical application or experimental evidence. For this reason, I see why these verification activities are important enough to be mandatory. As useful as they are, however, they are the main perpetrators of the idea that science is procedural more than creative.
Until just last semester, I admit that I had the view that science was in fact very procedural with little room for creativity. Ironically, it was during a procedural laboratory that I began to understand the creative element of science. Terri Hildebrand’s Plant Anatomy and Diversity Laboratory sessions mostly consisted of drawing microscope slides and labeling them. This was a necessary way to learn plant anatomy since it involved being able to correctly identify plant structures and cell types, but like other laboratory classes it was very procedural.
With each of these procedural labs included a section that would really bother McComas, it was called the scientific method section. In this section, the students were required to develop three questions based on observations from the laboratory session, select one of the questions and generate a hypothesis, and finally write a prediction of the expected outcome from an experiment testing the hypothesis. Even though I would put off doing the scientific method sections until the day before the laboratory journal was due, I began to enjoy doing them. As I thought of questions and how I would design experiments to test my hypotheses, I realized that there was in fact a very creative part of science and I really enjoyed that aspect.
On top of my newfound enjoyment of the creative possibilities of science, my professor praised me for my curiosity and imaginative experimental designs. Before this experience, I thought of myself as someone who enjoyed learning science but was a bad scientist. Since I didn’t enjoy my previous procedural laboratory sessions, I felt like I couldn’t have been a good scientist. Now, knowing that creativity is an important part of being a good scientist, I have gained an even greater appreciation for science and want to actively take part in better understanding the world around me.
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