Science education

Science education is the field concerned with sharing science content and process with individuals not traditionally considered part of the scientific community. The learners may be children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education includes work in science content, science process (the scientific method), some social science, and some teaching pedagogy. The standards for science education provide expectations for the development of understanding for students through the entire course of their K-12 education and beyond. The traditional subjects included in the standards are physical, life, earth, space, and human sciences.

Historical background

The first person credited with being employed as a Science teacher in a British public school was William Sharp who left the job at Rugby School in 1850 after establishing Science to the curriculum. Sharp is said to have established a model for Science to be taught throughout the British Public Schools.

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that creates, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

Contemporary science is typically subdivided into the natural sciences which study the material world, the social sciences which study people and societies, and the formal sciences like mathematics. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations. Disciplines which use science like engineering and medicine may also be considered to be applied sciences.

During the middle ages in the Middle East, foundations for the scientific method were laid by Alhazen. From classical antiquity through the 19th century, science as a type of knowledge was more closely linked to philosophy than it is now and, in fact, in the West the term "natural philosophy" encompassed fields of study that are today associated with science, such as physics, astronomy and medicine.

In the 17th and 18th centuries scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of laws of nature. Over the course of the 19th century, the word "science" became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself, as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was in the 19th century that scientific disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology reached their modern shapes. The same time period also included the origin of the terms "scientist" and "scientific community," the founding of scientific institutions, and increasing significance of the interactions with society and other aspects of culture.

List of life sciences

The life sciences comprise the fields of science that involve the scientific study of living organisms – such as microorganisms, plants, animals, and human beings – as well as related considerations like bioethics. While biology remains the centerpiece of the life sciences, technological advances in molecular biology and biotechnology have led to a burgeoning of specializations and interdisciplinary fields.

Some life sciences focus on a specific type of life. For example, zoology is the study of animals, while botany is the study of plants. Other life sciences focus on aspects common to all or many life forms, such as anatomy and genetics. Yet other fields are interested in technological advances involving living things, such as bio-engineering. Another major, though more specific, branch of life sciences involves understanding the mind – neuroscience.

The life sciences are helpful in improving the quality and standard of life. They have applications in health, agriculture, medicine, and the pharmaceutical and food science industries.

University of Manchester Faculty of Life Sciences

The Faculty of Life Sciences is one of the four faculties that comprise the University of Manchester. It was established in 2004 from the merger of its constituent departments: Biological Sciences and the Centre for the History of Science, Technology & Medicine in the Victoria University of Manchester and Biomolecular Sciences and Optometry & Neuroscience at UMIST. Uniquely for Manchester it is a faculty consisting of only one school. The term Life sciences is generally understood to be wider than biology, including for example interdisciplinary areas that lie between biology and medicine. The inclusion of Optmetry and Neuroscience in the Faculty reflects this intention while some other areas generally included in a definition of Life Sciences, such as Biomedical Imaging and Pharmacy, are located in the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences at Manchester.

As of 2008, the Faculty teaches 2200 undergraduate students, has 467 postgraduate students and 270 academic staff. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise the Faculty came 3rd in the UK on the basis of Grade Point Average for Biological Sciences with 107 staff submitted, and 2nd in the UK for Preclinical and Human Biological Sciences with 72 staff submitted.

University of Peradeniya

Coordinates: 7°15′15″N 80°35′48″E / 7.25417°N 80.59667°E / 7.25417; 80.59667

The University of Peradeniya (Sinhalese: පේරාදෙණිය විශ්ව විද්‍යාලය, Tamil: பேராதனைப் பல்கலைக்கழகம்) is a state university in Sri Lanka, funded by the University Grants Commission. It was established as the University of Ceylon in 1942.

The University of Peradeniya hosts nine faculties (including the newly added Management faculty), two postgraduate institutes, 10 centres, 73 departments, and teaches about 11,000 students in the fields of Medicine, Agriculture, Arts, Science, Engineering, Dental Sciences, Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, Management and Allied Health Science. It claims to have the largest government endowment by a higher education institution in Sri Lanka, based on its large staff and faculties/departments.

Ranking

In 2014 University of Peradeniya has been ranked by 1st place for excellence. In Sri Lanka University of Peradeniya has been ranked in 3rd place for total evaluated rank. Tis has been published by Webometrics in January 2014. In 2013 University of Peradeniya was ranked #1 in Sri Lanka in research by ResearchGate. In 2010, according to University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP), University of Peradeniya ranked 1426th in the world. It is the only Sri Lankan university ranked under URAP.