Teaching Science to Non-Science Students with Science Classics

Kai Ming KIANG^1, , Andy Ka-Leung NG¹ and Derek Hang-Cheong CHEUNG¹

¹Office of University General Education and Baldwin Cheng Research Centre for General Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

Cite this paper:
Kai Ming KIANG, Andy Ka-Leung NG and Derek Hang-Cheong CHEUNG. Teaching Science to Non-Science Students with Science Classics. American Journal of Educational Research. 2015; 3(10):1291-1297. doi: 10.12691/education-3-10-13

Abstract

In Dialogue with Nature is a compulsory course on reading science-related classic texts for all students in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The course aims to provide an opportunity for students to be familiar with the nature of science and develop their critical thinking skills. As the students are from diversified academic background, this situation has provided both positive and negative effects on the pedagogical strategies in this general education foundation course. For instance, while the course has provided a cross-disciplinary environment to stimulate the students to think beyond their own academic specialty, it has been speculated that students without prior scientific knowledge in high school could be disadvantaged in their academic performance. The intention of this paper is to report the current situation of this course and investigate the effectiveness of providing supplementary materials specifically to the non-science students. The preliminary analysis shows positive indicators on the effect.

Keywords:
science education general education classic texts assessments learning outcome

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