ENCOUNTERING CREATIONISTS WITHOUT LOSING SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY

That uncomfortable feeling starts to churn as soon as you hear that a field trip from a church school with creationist views is coming on a field trip. When religious, political, or philosophical world views conflict with science, the traditional strategies are ignoring the subject, complaints to the like-minded, and fruitless argument. By all sides. Years of scientific training insist that we must present the evidence. Rather, our first line of defense is in understanding what is at stake. Our institutional missions include more than a 4.5 BY old Earth and explanations of evolution as we are all sharing resources on the same planet. Museum educators and board members can develop policies before situations become emotionally charged to foster respectful interactions by adapting techniques from the National Center for Science Education, the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, and others.