I agree with all the above but would also suggest the following points:

The day of the lone scientist tinkering away in a basement lab is gone. Today every scientist must work in a highly collaborative and cooperative environment. Students need to clear how to be effective and respectful in these collaborative groups.

Students need to appreciate that science is not the answer to all problems. You may come up with a scientific solution to a problem but that solution has to function in a world of social, psychological and cultural pressures. Learning to interface with these other disciplines is very important.

Hi! A very thoughtful question! My contribution to the dilemma (that many educators face at one point or another) is that it is necessary to help students develop 1. listening skills, and 2. critical thinking skills. Listening, so that they may really understand questions being asked, and information being given. Critical thinking so that they can judge for themselves the quality and therefore the credibility of information. Best, Kathryn

Due to the nature of science, students need to be info-literate, to search independently for information, adapt their info to their 'big question/s', communicate/ share the info accurately and reflect/ review this whole process. Communication skills will include listening skills. The ability to reflect would need critical thinking skills and informed judgment.

Science students can do better if they are innovative and creative; to be able to think out of the box and come up with solutions in a world where we must deal with diminishing resources and environmental problems. We must have the desire to conserve and preserve.

I completely agree with what Kathryn said in her post. Additionally, I strongly believe that you (as a teacher) should try to increase level of motivation in your students. It is VERY important! By looking at students in many graduate classes, I can easily differentiate motivated and non-motivated people. Motivated scientists will go much further in their attempts to explain something and to reveal secrets of mother-nature! They will do it just because they have this "internal engine" that constantly pushes them forward. Motivated people are usually much more curious and possess required level of critical and analytic thinking.

Additionally, you should teach them some specific approaches that make you successful in research field like, maybe, persistence, diligence, some particular way of attacking problems. Although a bit later they will start to develop their own techniques, but at least at the very beginning they will try to copy you in many aspects. So, you should be just a great example for them in your every action and sentence.

Does it help? :)

Maintain a balance between creativity and criticality. How to treat everything as tentative. How to value being wrong in your ideas and learn from it.

Dear Pierre-Olivier,

I'd like to add two points: First there is a lot of relevant empirical research about your question (e.g. Adedokun et al. 2013, McLay 2013, or here is a list of journals which might be relevant: http://www.uww.edu/learn/journalsotl.php; or here is a conference about it: Teaching Academic Survival and Success: http://tassconference.org/about/sessions.php). I.e. although advice from peers or views expressed in this forum a good start to tackle this question, there may be more reliable and evidence-based information out there. As you say, you would need to apply some critical thinking to sift through this pile of literature to identify the high-quality work, but I think there is no way round that.

Second, I believe (i.e. this is not based on evidence) that there are so many different skills you need in research that it is generally difficult to say what is most important; i.e. no skill can be completely neglected. (This will not only depend on what skills are needed, but also to what degree skills are already present in each student).

The general problem is that there is a number of tradeoffs: e.g. between investing time in contents of the discipline vs. investing in transferrable skills (e.g. critical thinking, communication, networking & teamwork, problem solving, writing, statistics).

I think a the solution to these dilemmas lies in four points:

a) each student needs to be made aware of all the required skills and of these tradeoffs;

b) there is a minimum level for each skill that everyone should achieve;

c) that beyond that, tradeoffs will be solved individually by each student: in that, they should be supported by experienced academic staff;

d) if tradeoffs are solved individually, the diversity of solutions among students will (hopefully) mean that students as a group (i.e. the population of future researchers) will be able to solve real-world problems efficiently through collaboration.

References:

Adedokun et al. 2013: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.21102/pdf

McLay 2013: http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1297&context=jutlp

I agree with all the above but would also suggest the following points:

The day of the lone scientist tinkering away in a basement lab is gone. Today every scientist must work in a highly collaborative and cooperative environment. Students need to clear how to be effective and respectful in these collaborative groups.

Students need to appreciate that science is not the answer to all problems. You may come up with a scientific solution to a problem but that solution has to function in a world of social, psychological and cultural pressures. Learning to interface with these other disciplines is very important.

When talking about " scientific competence " refers to the ability to establish some type of relationship with the sciences. The relationship that scientists have with science profession is not the same as establishing with them who are not directly involved with the production of knowledge about the nature or society.

If you think about the relationship you establish with the scientists who build and teach science , science skills are the skills that allow them to perform productively in their field and be recognized by their colleagues. We are talking about the skills needed to do science , to solve problems and build elaborate representations of types of phenomena and events in the field of research which serves the scientific . These skills would be inferred from the analysis of the specific practice of knowledge production , although some of them would cut across various fields .

You could say that, in general , scientists must have knowledge of the theories , concepts and working methods appropriate for the type of problems they intend to solve , you must know the " rules" of their discipline and their specialty - in the event that perform as specialists, or they must have a sufficiently informed of the problems they study as members of an interdisciplinary team . Are required to have appropriate previously developed a certain set of knowledge and master the language in which it is formulated and solved problems or interpretations are constructed . Is required

knowledge of the rules of interaction between colleagues , forms own work and cooperation of the area, appropriate information sources , techniques and tools to be used and validation forms and interpretations exposure , the analysis and the results that have been adopted by the scientific community to which one belongs. Is required to follow certain ethical guidelines and establish some form of commitment to the task .

Thanks for answering so quickly!

I agree with Katrin and Pavel that motivation and listening skills seem pretty important ideas. While critical thinking has often been emphasized in my training, motivation and listiening has not. Of course, you can always teach these by being an example for students (a big challenge!), but how could you actually push them to find their own 'renewable' source of motivation? How do you 'teach' receptivity? This is an interesting problem!

Motivation, receptivity and critical thinking of course go pretty well with the ability to learn by oneself, and innovative thinking, as Miranda and Alessandro wrote. But again this call for a way to push students to develop their own tools as soon as possible, while giving them enough roots into the knowledge already available.

Paul also threw in the importance of being able to cooperate and work in teams, as well as to clearly understand the boundaries and limits of the scientific practice. I think this should be emphasized more in any discipline.

Yet, I agree with Thomas that none of these skills should be fully ignored and that we are facing a trade off (Thomas, thank you for providing all these references, I will go through them, shortly). Since all of the skills outlined above are associated with the capacity to learn, digest/use the knowldege avaiable in any discipline, should the training of a scientist vehiculate less information but train more skills? As a biologist, a lot of the technical information is now readily avaiable in databases, wikis etc anyways.

Just a few quick thoughts (I may return later with more):

So many great comments. One thing I am struck by is the focus among scientists about what constitutes "evidence" in our domains. When we are working on a project or reading an article, we spend our time assessing whether we buy the evidence for the interpretation that is being offered. In science education, we often emphasize teaching facts, especially at the younger ages. Perhaps we need to consider ways to start infusing early science curriculum with more examples of inquiry and evidence-building.

This "weighing of evidence" is clearly a critical thinking skill, so we would also want to consider its potential developmental trajectory, but I think creating an atmosphere of inquiry and curiosity from an early age is probably a start. It is less clear to me when we might want to introduce more formal notions of evidence, but I suspect that we could figure out some reasonable approaches with a little more research on this very worthy question.

Miranda and Amy raise interesting points of view about the subject. I add and suggest that the formation of critical thinking being revived strongly in the educational agendas, because it is closely related to some of the main goals of current educational reforms, such as the formation of civic and ethical responsibilities, the building capacity for lifelong learning and the development of scientific thought. The development of critical thinking is the basis of the preparation for subjects to learn to question and wonder why things, attitudes that lie behind the scientific and philosophical search for the world.

In knowledge societies, access to the discourse, knowledge and theories of different professions necessarily involves access to such knowledge related sciences. All professions today work by application of scientific knowledge. By making access to scientific thinking and processes to encourage it are essential for literacy issues and the provision of opportunities for the younger generation.

The training of critical thinking is linked to capacity building for lifelong learning, research, innovation and creativity. Generates active and scientific minds, accustomed to the students in the exercise of reasoning, logical thinking, detection of fallacies, intellectual curiosity and knowledge and troubleshooting. Shape capabilities doubt and constant questioning based on scientifically sound arguments and reasons.

Where are values here? Although this maybe out of the topic but values and scientific traits cannot be separated from scientific skills. It would be difficult to acquire the skills we mentioned above if a learner does not possess scientific traits and attitudes. So i suggest that aside from developing our students' scientific skills we must also integrate values and good scientist's traits. Developing scientific skills are necessary but a positive attitude and good values are prerequisites.

Hi Elmer and Kenya,

Elmer, thank you for bringing this new point. What values or what kind of attitude would see as necessary? I am not sure I understand what you have in mind exactly.

Kenya, I was implicitly thinking of undergraduate and graduate student (since my PhD will likely lead me to teach a these levels). But I am not sure that the necesary skills differ with the grade. I tend to see all the skills we discused so far as tightly linked so I would think one needs to adress most of these simultaneously through a cursus?

Hi Elmer and others. Elmer, thanks for reminding us about scientific values. Sometimes we get so busy that we forget the most basic and necessary things! In the science lab, I always emphasize honesty, integrity, responsibility, cooperation and cleanliness. (Of course there are other values that students must imbibe.)

Another RG member, Dr Tan, has also emphasized that without integrity in doing research and reporting it, our whole system of research might collapse. It's true, do you all agree?

Thanks Pierre-Oliver,

Scientific skills that were mentioned above such as to learn to think critically and others such as intellectual honesty, being creative, curiosity and perseverance - the most important attitudes or traits any successful scientist should possess- are equivalent to skills. In school we develop skills but these students already possess these traits. Traits are natural and they are necessary qualities for a successful scientist. For me, we should first look at the natural traits of our students and develop them. One researcher, Lounsbury (2011) in his paper also mentioned that "before a student can perform the scientific method, he/she must first possess certain attitudes and skills fundamental to it"...(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1949-8594.1937.tb11286.x/abstract)

All great answers! I would add that all the above could be captured by saying the most important thing to develop is an academic identity. This encapsulates all of the above, even though every scientific discipline is made up of slightly different skills, values, attitudes and such. Science is a community of practice and students need to be emerged in this community to get a grasp of what it takes to become a scientist. It's not self-evident to many students to identify with scientists in their field and all the skills (and values) which are part and parcel.

Inspired by this discussion I conducted an anonymous survey among a group of 3rd year agriculture students in Berlin. The number of respondents is very small (N=21), so "results" need to be treated with caution, i.e. there is no way to know how representative they are. Still, I'd like to share them here: The skills that the students saw as most important for their personal development were: above evertyhing elese, specific knowledge in their discipline, followed by critical thinking and the ability to solve complex problems. Other skills such as presentation, moderation, and team working were seen as very important by some, but not important at all by other students. In a way this confirms what I wrote here before, i.e. that there is a diversity of solutions to the inevitable trade-offs for developing different skills. Also, collectively, the group has made clear that they are, primarily, after the expert knowledge in their field, which I think is a very healthy attitude; without it, everything else would be of doubtful value in a science context.

Thanks for all your answers,

Thomas, thank you for conducting this survey!

Related to the three primary skills you mention, I fell upon an interesting approach to the problem in the dissertation of Julia Svoboda Gouvea (now at UCDavis). She pushes the use of modelling as a tool to give students a better grasp of the processes of scientific inquiry.

When answering a specific question through modelling, students would have to fetch the relevant information, and critically use it to build simplified models. Results from the modelling exercise would then allow them to answer the question, and provide ground for related (new) subjects of inquiry, etc... Such an iterative processe reflects a lot more the nature of science, compared to the rigid positivist staged lab experiments we usually use.

I also think that what 'locks' many people out of science in general (and that limits strongly the importance of science for society) is their inability to interact with models and understand what they really are. Hence, teaching science through modelling is probably a very good idea.

Modelling as a teaching approach integrates pretty much all the answers I have seen to my question (so far)!

here is the link:

http://ucdavis.academia.edu/JuliaSvoboda

hi

the word passing on knowledge indicates specific position about the nature of knowledge any ways other point of view is knowledge is not acquired rather it is constructed.

any ways I guess the most important skills for a science students are observation and raising good questions ( as you have done)

regards,

ijaz

We learn certain things too late but once the window opens, life changes. It so happens that my initiation of PhD was too late compared to the common traits. I got a few bright researchers as my friends. Once,while discussing attitudes of certain researchers, one of my friends commented very passionately, " If the frontier of science does not advance what is the use of my research?" This single utterance gyrated my inner being thoroughly. It takes a long time to differentiate between "Knowledge gathering' and "knowledge production". If this point is driven inside every science student from the very beginning, the approach changes. That it is not very difficult to become a scientist, in fact, we all are, only need is to identify the scientific self inside, this point must be driven into the minds of every science student. Once this is accomplished, rest of the journey becomes easier. Very often, I discourage students from searching "standard definitions". Rather, I encourage them to propose certain definitions and by group activity try to modify these and ultimately reach a working definition.

Please have a look at the following link:

Article A Science Education that Promotes the Characteristics of Sci...