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Stephen Ward, Executive Director of University Communications: Ian you're talking about April
10th the title is Defending Science Education tell us a little bit about what you're talking
about and your overall subject area here at UNC Charlotte as a professor in Science Education.
Ian Binns, Assistant Professor, Elementary Science Education: So my talk is going to
focus on the latest attempts to undermine science and science education throughout the
country with the more recent bills that have been introduced as a way that kind of how
it's taught in the classroom. So I will talk about that and how that relates to some things
that we have noticed in North Carolina historically and how some things are kind of cropping up
more lately. We will definitely be dealing with the politics of science but also with
communication as well. My research focus on this area especially with evolution education
and climate change education and then with films as well and part of that process as
we do the discussion on our films. Then what I do here is I am actually in elementary science
educator and I teach future elementary school teachers how to teach science and so I teach
methods every semester and absolutely love working with these students they are undergrads
and the way I like to look at it is that as you were saying we like to get the younger
population that I love the challenge of getting 25-30 students in there that most of them
are scared of science and then changing that attitude by the time they are done and then
they realize that this is a very good thing for them to teach and very exciting. I have
had many come up to me recently and said while student teaching this was their favorite subject
to teach and they hated it before they took my class and so what is important to me is
getting those people who are going to be our future elementary school teachers to enjoy
teaching again so we can get our younger population the children to actually start having it again
in the classroom and get excited about it and I think that's where something like the
Expo comes into play it's another way to show kids, people of all ages you know we do target
children with some of the tables but it is a great way to get them engaged and excited
about what we as a university has to offer but what science offers as well.
James Hathaway: To get back to Ian's lecture I have got to say that one thing we did this
year was a little but controversial. We discussed it somewhat was that we actually deliberately
decided that we would include some of these large discussions about science and where
science is becoming political. If you ask most scientists if science is a political
topic they would say no. Stephen: Right
James: It is nothing to do with politics we don't have biases but it has entered the political
sphere, we're having these large scale discussion about whether or not this is a hoax or this
is made up, whether this is evidence or that is evidence and this kind of thing, so we
can pretend this doesn't exist or we can actually look at it and I think the public is interested
in looking at these, we have two events, one is his talk and the other is Chasing Ice
film that we are showing which is a film about climate change. It's a documentary and we
don't expect everybody who is coming to this to agree with either his talk or what the
film is saying but we need to have a forum for discussing these things so we can bring
them out in the open and rather than shouting, communicating backward and forward. So those
events are really actually aimed to the adults if they are interested in those topics.
Stephen: Well that's certainly clearly central to our roll as the university in Charlotte
and to be convener of the discussion and it's exciting to see the many angles of UNC Charlotte's
role in leading the science discussion in this community kind of coming together and
again as I said the Early University High School is going to be a great way to get a
larger portion of our neighbors in Charlotte thinking about this institution about a place
to be for science. Ian: I like to my talk will focus on not just
with evolution education and climate change education but there are efforts actually that
redefine science in general and that's where my expertise comes in and so that's kind of
where I'll be going the discussion that have gone out throughout the country over the past
10-20 years and even longer but more recently but with the discussions about what is science
attempts to redefine what science is. My goal is to try to inform you know my students in
the classroom and then the public in general about what science is and what science can
and cannot do.