Epidemiology and Education: Using Public Health for Teaching Mathematics and Science

Abstract

Donna F. Stroup, PhD, MSca Stephen B. Thacker, MD, MScb Scientific and technological advances of the modern world bring clear benefits to society, especially improvements in health. At the same time, creation of opportunities to enable all students to reach their full potential for education is a high priority.1 Indeed, in the 2006 State of the Union Address, the President of the United States emphasized the importance of education in mathematics and science.2 Nonetheless, recent critiques of K–12 education have noted that U.S. school systems produce students with inadequate skills and knowledge in science and mathematics. For example, many students perceive that the health and science courses they take are unrelated to decisions they make in their daily lives.3 Because teachers are often trained inadequately in math and science, they might be uncomfortable teaching these subjects.4 Less time is spent on science nationwide than on instruction in any other subject, and that time most often focuses on passive learning of facts rather than science as a way of asking questions or testing hypotheses.3 Perhaps, as a result, the majority of children elect to stop studying science as soon as they are allowed that option.5 To address this gap and motivate change, the Educational Testing Service (Princeton, New Jersey) is piloting an information literacy test geared toward high school seniors that provides colleges and universities with a tool for assessing the science and technology skills of entering freshmen.6 In addition, foreign advances in science now rival or exceed those of the United States.7 In 2000, Asian universities accounted for approximately 1.2 million of the world’s science and math degrees. European universities graduated 850,000 in science and math, but North American universities (in the U.S. and Canada) accounted for only 500,000.8 The European Union and Asia Pacific nations have steadily increased their world share of the journal literature in the physical sciences, now surpassing the United States in output of papers in physics, chemistry, and materials science.9 Although this imbalance might have resulted from an increase in the number of foreign journals since 1983, it is reasonable that the number of American scientists publishing exclusively in foreign journals is offset by the number of foreign scientists publishing in American journals, making this an underestimate of the imbalance. Clearly, the