The Surging News reporter Qin Yixiao
"I think the main thrust of science is to solve problems, and such problems involve multiple disciplines. I'm not talking about solving problems in textbooks, but solving problems in the real world. We need scientists to be good question solvers. ”
Carl Wieman, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared the methods of cultivating scientists' thinking in the form of a video at the "T Conference on World's Top Scientists and Science: Science Lesson I" held in Shanghai on October 30.
In his speech, Weiman repeatedly emphasized the importance of scientific thinking. He pointed out that human society is facing huge global challenges, including climate change and the new crown epidemic. This requires most people to be able to make informed decisions that are based on insight and scientific thinking.
Weiman introduces what true scientific thinking is and how to apply scientific thinking to solve problems. First of all, at the highest level, scientific thinking is a systematic way of judging whether something is true, which is superior to traditional methods, people's habitual thinking, and anyone's personal opinion. But the premise is to have a systems mindset on the basis of which decisions are made in a better way.
"That defines what a discipline is." "A group of people who solve problems together, a group of people who are responsible for making decisions in a related area, agree on what is the best way to make decisions, and then make more accurate predictions," Weiman said. This is based on the test of these decisions, the significance of the study. For example, in biology and medicine, how to use data to determine whether a drug is effective. If you ask scientists in the same field, they will give you a highly consistent answer. ”。
Cognitive psychologist Anderson Erikson argues that the degree of expertise people acquire in this discipline is largely determined by how much deliberate practice they do. Hard practice does change the brain, improve its ability, connect neurons in different ways, and give the brain new and stronger abilities.
Weiman believes that deliberate practice in the application of concepts does greatly improve students' ability to solve conceptual problems in their field, but it does not improve much in other aspects of classroom learning. Many students are very good at coursework, but it is difficult to actually do research in the laboratory.
Over the past seven years, Weyman's team has interviewed about 50 scientists and engineers in different fields and disciplines to gather their approaches to scientific challenges and problem-solving in their careers and jobs. Surprisingly, after testing the decisions made by respondents, the results found that their decision-making steps were the same and limited. In all 29 different decision-making processes, the same steps occur repeatedly.
"I want to emphasize that these are not processes, these are the decisions made by the experts. They need to make choices with limited information. If they have complete information, they just need to follow the process. Wieman added.
He believes that the choices that are really made to answer the question are actually "guesses" after systematic education, and experts have mastered very specific and excellent methods to make choices. While decisions need to be made in different fields, making decisions requires a great deal of deep knowledge within the discipline. "To really answer a question is to be aware of what information is relevant and to use that information correctly to solve the problem."
In addition, the knowledge presented by the experts is collated in a very clear way, which Weiman calls a predictable academic framework. This is really a mental model with all the key elements needed to solve the problem and how these elements relate to each other with the basic intrinsic mechanisms required by the discipline. This gives people an idea of how changing one variable affects all the other elements of the problem. There are some models that can predict such an outcome, and by applying knowledge to the model, decisions can be made in the process of solving the problem.
If one is to truly learn to solve practical problems, all one needs to do is to practice deliberately and make decisions based on the premise of the actual situation. The best way to teach is to let students do the research. Students are often very good at answering textbook questions, but in reality it doesn't require any decisions, because the textbook already gives all the information needed, and students only need to follow the process to answer.
"Students have a lot of information, they can follow a lot of processes, but they can't solve real problems at all, they can't make decisions in a scientific way, and that's often the most important thing." Weiman concluded. "It's clear that we need people to understand science and know how to make decisions based on science." And right now, our colleges and universities and education systems are not doing that. ”
Carl Weiman, an American condensed matter physicist, was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics with Wolfgang Ketterer and Eric Cornell for "his achievements in diluting gases in alkali metal atoms, as well as early basic research on the properties of condensation."
Since 2013, Carl Weiman has also been a professor of physics and a professor in the School of Education at Stanford University. He has conducted extensive research in atomic physics and both science and engineering education.
In addition to conducting research himself, Weyman is also an educator dedicated to training future scientists. He used the Nobel Prize to create PhET, a nonprofit educational project, and in 2017 won the WISE World Education Innovation Project Award, known as the "Nobel Prize of Education". At present, PhET has been translated into more than 90 languages, including Chinese, and is used in more than 200 countries and regions.
Editor-in-Charge: Li Yuequn