Principles of Science for the Practice of Life

As career scientists, teaching colleagues, and friends (one of us Christian, one of us not) at a major research university, we were intrigued by the invitation to consider “what do all university and college students need to learn about science?” We had, of course, developed our own, independent ideas over decades of experience. But would our ideas align with each other and with what we believe to be essential at this time in history? Several coffee chats and long walks proved that they would. After discussing the obvious — scientific concepts, technical skills, experimentation, data interpretation, and evidence-based reasoning — we arrived at a set of principles, really mindsets, that we feel are essential for all students, independent of career path, to learn about science and to practice for life. With a combined 60+ years of teaching experience and mentoring thousands of students over those years, we have endeavored to describe five principles important to student learning about science.

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