Into the Hot Seat

Over at Periodic Tabloid, Tom Tritton has a post about the importance of exposing students to research. "It is an article of faith, especially in higher education, that student participation in research is utterly required for shaping attitudes, appreciation, and understanding of the scientific enterprise," he begins. Tritton goes on to note a program started at Columbia University to have high-school teachers join the labs of university scientists over the summer. "The wonderful result is that the students whose teachers gained research experience do significantly better (10.1 percentage points) in a standardized test of science knowledge ... than the students of non-participating teachers," he writes.