The Quantitative and Experimental Study of Human Nature

9455379 Galanter Undergraduate science education has two jobs. First it must prepare young scientists to continue their studies in one of the disciplines. But even more important, science education has a responsibility to the nation and its citizens to ensure scientific literacy among the electorate. If we regard all introductory students as recruits for advanced work as a major, we may fail to provide subject matter appropriate to the non-scientist. Alternatively, if the non major is a central obligation, we may not attend to the needs of the advanced instruction. We propose an alternative-a constructivist introductory program that lets students study quantitative and experimental aspects of human nature from the biological to the social at varying depths and breath. The program provides the infrastructure for a core curriculum in science. This new educational design consists of transportable but interdependent modules that require careful reading and analysis, occasionally of primary sources. There are also many opportunities for a variety of complementary projects, field trips, computerized experiments and simulations, and summer studies in research laboratories, that will let students extend their science skills. Student participation in the collection and analysis of data and concepts are central to this proposal, thus departing significantly from audio-visual and electronic augmentation of classical lecture methods. These separable, but cross-integrated units can be adapted to a variety of teaching contexts. We will demonstrate this portability by using them at neighboring institutions during or immediately following this grant.