Thursday, 17 September 2015

Week4 : internal and external virtues

R For this lesson,  I've learnt about the features of a scientific theory.  Each scientific theory has many features.  For example,  the theory might have the feature of being proposed by Einstein. In this lesson,  we focused on two features : they must be truth-conducive and accessible.  This means that the theory must be reliable indicators of truth and the information must be accessible for us to evaluate.  The features can be categorised into internal and external features.  Internal features mean that the theory can be evaluated logically and intuitively. The theory should be logically consistent and not logically contradictory.  External features must be evaluated in relation to the world.  This means that we require observation and information through experimentation. 

What I'm still unsure about is whether or not all features of a theory must be true virtues.  If a theory has internal virtues but no external virtues,  does that make it a failed theory?

The ways that this would help my learning and teaching is that I can encourage students to reason out ideas in their heads.  I would encourage them to point out logical inconsistencies.  I would also encourage them to test their ideas out in the real world and gather information to evaluate different theories.

https://youtu.be/ruRDBAmRuCc

Friday, 11 September 2015

Reflection blog week 3

During this lesson, we watched many presentations on the scientific laws, scientific theories, and the misconceptions of scientific theories. Jess, Divya, and I also presented our own video. Kim was unable to make it for the presentation as she was doing her placement at SK kampung Lindungan. I learnt from making this video that there are certain concepts about theories and laws that are slightly complicated. However, when simplified in a engaging and interesting way, the concepts are easy to grasp. Thus, creating the video and watching videos that were well presented and succinct helped us to understand better. I also learnt how to create hypotheses. We practiced how to make hypotheses using "if...then" clauses. For example, "if a person consumes excessive amounts of sugar daily, then the risk of them being diagnosed with diabetes increases". Another example is "if an object is pushed off table, then it will fall downwards. What I am unsure of is whether or not this is the best way of making a hypothesis . For example, in high school, the method that we learnt for making scientific hypotheses was using "the more....the more...". How I would use this in my teaching is by getting students to make hypotheses on their own and thinking critically about effective ways of testing these hypotheses.



Sunday, 6 September 2015

Scientific Theory vs Scientific Laws



I understood from the video is  that scientific theory has to be proven and supported by facts as it is supposed to be an educated guess and not just a random guess made baselessly. I learnt that science and laws have differing characteristics.A scientific theory is a coherent explanation for a large number of facts and observations about the natural world. One of the characteristics of a theory is that it is internally consistent and compatible with the evidence found as well as future evidence to be found. Theories are more certain than hypotheses, but less certain than laws. A scientific law is a description of a natural phenomenon or principle that invariably holds true under specific conditions and will occur under certain circumstances.

Knowing that scientific laws and theories are different, I would like to know how hypothesis also differ from the two. It would also be good to know what the procedures are to prove different hypothesis and theories.

I would be able to use different theories and laws so that my students are able to see an end objective. It would be good to show students how science can be made sense of through consistent experimentation and understanding of what scientists in the past have also discovered.





What is a scientific theory?


An example of a proven theory

A table of differences between theories and laws