I just returned from the annual meeting of the Association for Science Teacher Education. Researchers from all over the world present work on how people learn science and particularly how we support and prepare teachers of science at all levels. It’s in a different city each year, but this time I was fortunate because it was right down the road in Salt Lake City.

I like this kind of assembly because it gives me a chance to see what other people are up to. That includes catching up with a few friends and seeing how classes, family, projects and everything else is going for them. And then there are lots of other people I don’t know, but I admire their work or how it relates to my own, and I go to see what they might be presenting that will inform my classes and research.

It’s not obvious, but meetings like this are common among research professions. From my own circles, I know that the astronomers were just gathering in Seattle earlier the same week as my conference. A big gathering of physicists convenes in Las Vegas in March, and a similarly large group of education researchers gathers in Chicago a month later this year. There are countless others throughout the calendar and the map, hundreds to tens of thousands of people convening in one location. It’s stunning to me that a migration the size of the town I grew up in takes place regularly.

This practice dates back to the 1600s with the Royal Society in England, the first research society in Western culture, and we widely attribute this to an explosion of scientific understanding that started around that same time. People were looking through microscopes and telescopes, understanding the nature of anatomy and of orbits, but the real progress was the bold idea to talk with one another.

This isn’t to say that the process is all agreeable. We have moments of argument over fundamental meanings, sometimes even how data are collected. Anyone who has presented at a research conference has run into “That Guy,” the one who has to make a point of picking out flaws in a piece of work. Sometimes it’s ego; sometimes it could be just a grumpy disposition and jet lag. And sometimes, all too often, it’s a good check on our work. This is progress.

At most conferences I’ve been to, most of the people attending are presenting in addition to hearing about the work of others. Over the course of a few days, they go from one session to the next, picking and choosing what set of presentations they could attend, three or four of these fitting into hourlong periods, or massive rooms filled with research posters to choose from. They’ll go to a few sessions with featured researchers presenting work to everyone in attendance. And then they also present their own work in one of these settings. There’s give and take. Everyone is vulnerable to being questioned, and everyone has an opportunity to not only learn from others but to also check their work, even at its early stages.

To give a presentation, you write a proposal that describes the work you’ll present, and “blind” reviewers — people who are anonymous and who typically do not know the identity of the authors — evaluate the work to see if it meets the standards of the organization. It’s a little bit of gatekeeping done in order to make sure all the work is high quality. Researchers’ jobs depend on acceptance and eventual publications, so they’re motivated to make sure they’ll meet reviewers’ expectations.

In a world in which we have social media, video conferencing and artificial intelligence, I really value this deep-rooted tradition. It keeps scientific knowledge in check, holding us accountable to one another as well as to the natural world. But most importantly, it reminds us that the purpose of doing science is not the simple act of some experiment in isolation, but the sharing of it with the greater world.

Adam Johnston is a professor of physics and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at Weber State University, where he helps prepare future teachers and supports educators throughout Utah.

Newsletter