Making secondary education relevant for all: reflections on science education in an expanding sub-sector

Abstract

This think piece focuses on relevance in secondary science education to propose a research agenda for contexts in sub-Saharan Africa, where enrolments are expanding from a low base. The notion of sustainable work is used to consider what kind of science education is relevant for students who will continue to become science specialists and those who will apply their science knowledge in non-specialist paid and unpaid roles. Drawing on insights from the literature on science and indigenous knowledge, on education for sustainable development and sociolinguistic analysis of science classrooms, it is argued that making connections between informal and formal knowledge is essentially the work of secondary education. Understanding secondary education in these terms highlight its vital contribution to addressing sustainable development, which at its heart recognises the interconnectedness of human and natural systems.     

Bridging the Gap? A Comparative,Retrospective Analysis of Science Literacy and Interest in Science for Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Australian Students

Previous research has shown that indigenous students in Australia do not enjoy equal educational outcomes with other Australians. This secondary analysis of PISA 2006 confirmed that this continues to be the case in science literacy for secondary students. However, the analysis also revealed that indigenous Australian students held interest in science equal to that of their non‐indigenous peers, and that observed variations in science literacy performance were most strongly explained by variations in reading literacy. These findings hold important implications for teachers, teacher educators, policy‐makers, and researchers. Firstly, acknowledging and publicly valuing indigenous Australian science knowledge through rethinking school science curriculum seems an important approach to engaging indigenous students and improving their literacy in science. Secondly, appropriate professional learning for practising teachers and the incorporation of indigenous knowing in science methods training in teacher preparation seems warranted. Additionally, we offer a number of questions for further reflection and research that would benefit our understanding of ways forward in closing the science literacy gap for indigenous students. Whilst this research remains firmly situated within the Australian educational context, we at the same time believe that the findings and implications offered here hold value for science education practitioners and researchers in other countries with similar populations striving to achieve science literacy for all.     

INDIGENOUS STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES OF THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM IN SCIENCE EDUCATION: A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY IN NEW ZEALAND AND TAIWAN

The tacit messages transmitted to indigenous learners in the science classroom provide a lens through which indigenous disengagement with school science can be better understood. In this paper, the findings of a cross-national comparative study conducted with indigenous Maori students in New Zealand and Seediq/Atayal students in Taiwan are discussed from a sociological perspective. The purposes of the present study were to explore the ways in which indigenous elementary school students in two industrialized nations experience the science curriculum and to identify the socialization processes through which patterns of indigenous under-achievement in science are maintained and reproduced. The findings suggest that the peripheral positioning of indigenous culture and knowledge within the science curriculum in developed nations underpins a series of tacit pedagogical codes that contribute to indigenous student disengagement with the subject.     

Developing an instrument for assessing students’ concepts of the nature of technology

Background: In Bangladesh, a common science curriculum caters for all students at the junior secondary level. Since this curriculum is for all students, its aims are both to build a strong foundation in science while still providing students with the opportunities to use science in everyday life – an aim consistent with the notion of scientific literacy.

Purpose: This paper reports Bangladeshi science teachers’ perspectives and practices in regard to the promotion of scientific literacy.

Sample: Six science teachers representing a range of geographical locations, school types with different class sizes, lengths of teaching experience and educational qualifications.

Design and method: This study employed a case study approach. The six teachers and their associated science classes (including students) were considered as six cases. Data were gathered through observing the teachers’ science lessons, interviewing them twice – once before and once after the lesson observation, and interviewing their students in focus groups.

Results: This study reveals that participating teachers held a range of perspectives on scientific literacy, including some naïve perspectives. In addition, their perspectives were often not seen to be realised in the classroom as for teachers the emphasis of learning science was more traditional in nature. Many of their teaching practices promoted a culture of academic science that resulted in students’ difficulty in finding connections between the science they study in school and their everyday lives. This research also identified the tension which teachers encountered between their religious values and science values while they were teaching science in a culture with a religious tradition.

Conclusions: The professional development practice for science teachers in Bangladesh with its emphasis on developing science content knowledge may limit the scope for promoting the concepts of scientific literacy. Opportunities for developing pedagogic knowledge is also limited and consequently impacts on teachers’ ability to develop the concepts of scientific literacy and learn how to teach for its promotion.     

Analysing teachers' operations when teaching students: what constitutes scientific theories?

ABSTRACT

The aim of the study is to analyse teachers’ efforts to develop secondary school students’ knowledge and argumentation skills of what constitutes scientific theories. The analysis is based on Leontiev’s three-level structure of activity (activity, action, and operation), as these levels correspond to the questions why, what, and how content is taught. The unit of analysis was a school development project in science education, where design-based interventions were conducted. Data comprised notes and minutes from eight meetings, plans, and video recordings of the lessons, and a written teacher evaluation. The teachers’ (n = 7) learning actions were analysed to identify (a) concept formation in science education, (b) expressions of agency, (c) discursive manifestations of contradictions, and (d) patterns of interaction during the science interventions. Three lessons on what constitutes scientific theories were implemented in three different student groups (n = 24, 23, 24), framed by planning and evaluation meetings for each lesson. The results describe (1) the ways in which teachers became more skilled at ensuring instruction met their students’ needs and (2) the ways in which teachers’ operations during instruction changed as a result of their developed knowledge of how to express the content based on theoretical assumptions.     

Explanation and metaphor: Some empirical questions in science education

This paper examines how science education becomes institutionalized in Third World countries using Malaysia as a case study. The findings shows that the development of science education in Malaysia has been greatly influenced by international trends and the country's socio‐political development. Science gained a place in the school curriculum in the midst of British colonial rule. The strong colonial influence on school science continued throughout the early independence period but, in the 1980s, external influences on science education came from both Western and Islamic countries. In each of the historical periods, external world cultural forces interacted with internal socio‐political forces resulting in a national science curriculum which is in accord with world cultural rules but at the same time quite indigenous in character. This study also suggests that while each nation‐state aspires to develop an indigenous form of science education that would best suit the national context, the outcome tends to be more universalistic than particularistic due to global influences.     

Building an indigenous learning community through lesson study: challenges of secondary school science teachers

Universalists believe that indigenous knowledge should not be studied since it excludes non-indigenous people. A qualitative method was used to explore the impact of lesson study on a science teacher at a secondary school. The research indicated that lesson study has positive impacts on teachers professionally by improving their science content knowledge, developing their teaching strategy and skill, enhancing their interest in working collaboratively, and creating a sense of an indigenous paradigm. The four categories of impact are interrelated and mutually influential. Through a lesson study, a relationship of mutual trust is well established in an indigenous learning community.     

Integrating Western and Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The Basis for Effective Science Education in South Africa?

This article responds to a call for rethinking the science that we teach to school learners in South Africa. Much of the debate on the nature of science and science learning is reflected in a body of literature which analyses the tensions between disparate perspectives on science education. Post-colonialists, feminists, multiculturalists, sociologists of scientific knowledge and those who refer to themselves as indigenous researchers argue that science is not universal but locally and culturally produced. Universalists on the other hand, argue that modern Western science is superior to indigenous perspectives on the natural world because of the former’s advanced predictive and explanatory powers. The fact that indigenous knowledge has been included in South Africa’s recently developed National Curriculum Statements invites a fresh look at the kind of science that is taught to South African school learners. In this article the author argues for a (dis)position that moves the debate beyond the binary of Western science/indigenous knowledge. Ways in which Western science and indigenous knowledge might be integrated are explored.     

Emirates secondary school science teachers' perspectives on the nexus between modern science and arab culture

During the 1999/2000 school year, 286 secondary school science teachers, from the seven Emirates that constitute the UAE, participated in the study. Teachers responded to an instrument composed of 52 items. Results indicated that Emirates secondary school science teachers did not view modern science as only a sub-culture of the Western culture. They disagreed that Western beliefs, values and conventions are implicit aspects of science. Teachers indicated that there are no differences between modern science and Arab culture. It seems that teachers lacked an understanding of the social component of science. The study suggests that Emirates secondary school science teachers should be informed about the social component of science. It is argued that when discussing culturally critical scientific issues, Emirates science teachers should assume the role of cultural brokers to facilitate students' understanding of science.     

History and philosophy of science in physics education

Physics education in the Danish upper secondary school system has undergone a major reform, starting in August 1988. The earlier science‐centred physics curriculum has given way to a presentation of physics as a human activity, one way of obtaining this aim being through a compulsory introduction to elements of the history and philosophy of science. Following a brief presentation of the main reasons for including the historical‐philosophical dimension in physics teaching, this article describes how this dimension‐‐which was unfamiliar to most physics teachers‐‐was implemented in daily teaching practice. The implementation took place in three steps: (1) the development of a comprehensive teachers’ guide, (2) a nationwide in‐service teacher training programme, and (3) the publication of a number of students’ books written according to the guidelines of the committee responsible for all aspects of the implementation programme.     

Knowledge outside the box – sustainable development education in Swedish schools

Background: Sustainable development, as an area of knowledge, appears in several different places in the curriculum and does not fit neatly within the scope of traditional subject areas. In many countries, including Sweden, it has long been upheld as an important tool for increasing understanding of, and dealing with, environmental problems. It is not clear, however, what role education can actually have in the making of a more sustainable future. Even though there are several potential ways for sustainable development to be involved in education, the concept raises many questions when transferred to the school context.

Purpose: This paper investigates how teachers deal with the difficulty of defining and approaching sustainable development as an area of knowledge in Swedish schools.

Sample: This article is based on semi-structured interviews with 40 teachers, 13 of whom were lower secondary school teachers (pupil age 12–15) and 27 were upper secondary school teachers (pupil age 15–18). The study involves teachers in all subjects where sustainable development is a goal in the syllabus. The study is also based on participant observation in one upper secondary class. A total of 17 different schools were involved, from a wide range of locations in Sweden.

Design and methods: The paper builds on qualitative data and the analysis of transcribed interviews and group interviews with teachers in Swedish lower and upper secondary schools. Group interviews, involving three or more people, were conducted on eight occasions. The pupils at an upper secondary school were also observed while they were working on a course called ‘policy and sustainable development’. Data were transcribed and analysed thematically.

Findings: The analysis suggests that, according to the teachers’ experiences, the demands of equivalence and measurability in school have increased and that this affects how sustainable development is approached in teaching and learning. Three main categories of knowledge were identified. The study also presents two representations that model how teachers may approach knowledge about sustainable development – metaphorically termed ‘the Accountant’ and ‘the Adventurer’ – and their different effects on knowledge.

Conclusions: There is a tendency for complex knowledge areas such as sustainable development, which do not fit seamlessly into traditional curriculum subjects, to become oversimplified when translated into teaching situations. According to the representations that we described metaphorically, the teacher, as an accountant, is characterised by ‘knowledge instrumentalism’, which means that teachers administer knowledge and the pupils consume it. In this transactional model, the accountant is also very dependent on external governance and control. Alternatively, the teacher, as an adventurer, is characterised by authority, knowledge and self-control. In this model, knowledge sometimes grows in an unpredictable way in the meeting between people who share common experiences. For adventurers, sustainable development is a matter of commitment and awareness, and it involves an explicit stance. The metaphors can be placed on a continuum which describes how teachers manage the demands of the school system in relation to the knowledge area of sustainable development.     

CLASSROOMS AND CULTURE: THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN SHAPING MOTIVATION AND IDENTITY FOR SCIENCE LEARNING IN INDIGENOUS ADOLESCENTS

Many rural indigenous communities rely on science knowledge and innovation for survival and economic advancement, which requires community members to be motivated for learning science. Children in these communities have been viewed by some as unmotivated due to their low science achievement as they progress in school, particularly into majority secondary schools. Current theories of motivation, such as achievement goal theory, take classroom context into account when examining individual motivation. However, motivational climate can also be considered as tightly woven with the cultural and social practices of a community rather than individual perception. In this study, researchers spent time in two indigenous villages observing classrooms, participating in community events, and talking with community members. During those visits, Attayal/Sediq children in Taiwan (n?=?18) and Mopan Mayan children in Belize (n?=?18) participated in three semi-structured interviews about their experience learning science in school, home, and community. Results indicate that motivation for learning science is closely linked with their identity as science learners. Three themes emerged to illuminate how social practices may or may not support individual identity, and consequently motivation, for learning science—student/teacher relationships, support for learning, and motivational climate. Differences between children in Taiwan and Belize are explored. Implications for motivation theory, educational practice, and policy are discussed.     

A sociocultural perspective on mediated activity in third grade science

This ethnographic study of a third grade classroom examined elementary school science learning as a sociocultural accomplishment. The research focused on how a teacher helped his students acquire psychological tools for learning to think and engage in scientific practices as locally defined. Analyses of classroom discourse examined both how the teacher used mediational strategies to frame disciplinary knowledge in science as well as how students internalized and appropriated ways of knowing in science. The study documented and analyzed how students came to appropriate scientific knowledge as their own in an ongoing manner tied to their identities as student scientists. Implications for sociocultural theory in science education research are discussed. John Reveles is an assistant professor in the Elementary Education Department at California State University, Northridge. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. Before pursuing his Ph.D., he worked as a bilingual elementary school teacher for 3 years. His research focuses on the development of scientific literacy in elementary school settings; sociocultural influences on students' academic identity; equity of access issues in science education; qualitative and quantitative research methods. Within the Michael D. Eisner College of Education, he teaches elementary science curriculum methods courses, graduate science education seminars, and graduate research courses. Gregory Kelly is a professor of science education at Penn State University. He is a former Peace Corps Volunteer and physics teacher. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1994. His research focuses on classroom discourse, epistemology, and science learning. This work has been supported by grants from Spencer Foundation, National Science Foundation, and the National Academy of Education. He teaches courses concerning the uses of history, philosophy, sociology of science in science teaching and teaching and learning science in secondary schools. He is editor of the journal Science Education. Richard Durán is a Professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara. His research and publications have been in the areas of literacy and assessment of English Language Learners and Latino students. He has also conducted research on after school computer clubs, technology and learning as part of the international UC Links Network. With support from the Kellogg Foundation, he is implementing and investigating community and family-centered intervention programs serving the educational progress of Latino students in the middle and high school grades.     

The Impact of a Science Education Game on Students’ Learning and Perception of Inhalants as Body Pollutants

This study investigated the knowledge gains and attitude shifts attributable to a unique online science education game, Uncommon Scents. The game was developed to teach middle school students about the biological consequences of exposure to toxic chemicals in an environmental science context, as well as the risks associated with abusing these chemicals as inhalants. Middle school students (n = 444) grades six through eight participated in the study consisting of a pre-test, three game-play sessions, and a delayed post-test. After playing the game, students demonstrated significant gains in science content knowledge, with game usability ratings emerging as the strongest predictor of post-test content knowledge scores. The intervention also resulted in a shift to more negative attitudes toward inhalants, with the most negative shift occurring among eighth grade students and post-test knowledge gains as the strongest predictor of attitude change across all grade levels. These findings suggest that the environmental science approach used in Uncommon Scents is an efficacious strategy for delivering both basic science content and influencing perceived harm relating to the inhalation of toxic chemicals from common household products.     

Gender and physics

Unlike many other countries, physics is highly popular in secondary education in Scotland, with large numbers opting for study at the Higher Grade on which entry to higher education is based. This paper reports a project that explored the attitudes and perceptions of Scottish girls and boys towards physics over the age range of 10-18 years old. Towards the end of primary school, attitudes towards science are very positive and both boys and girls are looking forward to studying more science in secondary school, although there is no evidence that the introduction of primary science has been a factor. By the end of the second year of secondary school, these positive attitudes have declined quite markedly and a significant decline of girls' attitudes towards science relative to boys' attitudes was clearly observed. The success of the Standard Grade physics course (a 2-year course taken in third and fourth year, ages 14-16 approximately) is easy to observe in terms of the restoration of positive attitudes of boys and girls again as the pupils move through third and fourth year. This process is especially clearly marked among girls. Surprisingly, over 90 per cent of the observed fourth year pupils wanted to continue studies in physics but a marked decline in attitude is observed during the Higher Grade course (a 1-year course which follows Standard Grade), this being more marked for boys. If the number of girls in physics is an issue for concern within the structure of Scottish system, then the focus of attention should be the structure and nature of the science course in the early secondary school.     

Knowledge and attitudes of secondary school teachers regarding sexual health education in England

Objective To assess the sexual health knowledge of teachers who contribute to secondary school sexual health education in order to determine whether teachers are adequately prepared to implement present government education and public health policies.

Design Results were obtained from a questionnaire as part of a two‐phase intervention study.

Setting Nineteen mixed‐sex, state secondary schools in central England.

Participants One hundred and fifty‐five teachers (94 female, 61 male) participated.

Main outcome measures The questionnaires were distributed to teachers to assess their knowledge of sexual health, contraception and sexually transmitted infections. In addition, teachers' attitudes on the subject of sex and relationships education were evaluated.

Results The results suggest that teachers have insufficient sexual health knowledge to effectively teach sexually transmitted infections or emergency contraception, although their general sexual health knowledge was good. Therefore, at present teachers do not have adequate specialist knowledge in sexual health to contribute to current recommendations for sex and relationships education in secondary schools. There were no statistically significant differences in the results regarding location of school, area of residence, gender or age of the participant.

Conclusions Many teachers are being expected to contribute to secondary school sexual health education programmes at a time when they do not have sufficient knowledge to provide young people with adequate sexual health education and when they do not feel prepared to teach, and in many cases would prefer not to teach, these programmes.     

Socioscientific issues via controversy mapping: bringing actor-network theory into the science classroom with digital technology

ABSTRACT

What are the current challenges and opportunities for bringing actor-network theory (ANT) into issues-based science education? This article discusses experiences gained from introducing an educational version of ANT deploying digital technology into an upper secondary school science class. This teaching innovation, called controversy mapping, has been pioneered in different contexts of higher education before being adapted to school education. Experimenting with controversy mapping in a Swedish science class raised both conceptual and practical issues. These centre on: (1) how ANT-inspired controversy mapping redesigns the citizenship training enacted by institutionalized approaches to issues-based education as socioscientific issues (SSI); (2) how controversy mapping reconfigures the interdisciplinarity of issues-based science education; and (3) how controversy mapping displaces scientific literacy and knowledge of the nature of science as guiding concerns for teaching in favour of new preoccupations with digital literacy and digital tools and methods as contemporary infrastructures of free and open inquiry.     

Exploring the pedagogical features of integrating essential competencies of scientific inquiry in classroom teaching

ABSTRACT

Background: As inquiry-based instruction is not universally implemented in science classrooms, it is crucial to introduce instructional strategies through the use of contextualized learning activities to allow students with different background knowledge and abilities to learn the essential competencies of scientific inquiry and promote their emotional perception and engagement.

Purpose: This study explores how essential scientific competencies of inquiry can be integrated into classroom teaching practices and investigates both typical and gifted secondary students’ emotional perception and engagement in learning activities.

Sample: A case teacher along with 226 typical and 18 gifted students from a suburban secondary school at Taiwan participated in this study.

Design and methods: After attending twelve 3-hour professional development workshops that focused on scientific inquiry teaching, the case teacher voluntarily developed and elaborated her own teaching activities through the discussions and feedback that she received from workshop participants and science educators. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through activity worksheet, questionnaire, video camera, and tape recorders. Frequency distribution, Mann-Whitney U test, and discourse analysis were used for data analyses.

Results: Case teacher’s teaching activities provide contextual investigations that allow students to practice making hypotheses, planning investigations, and presenting and evaluating findings. Students’ learning outcomes reveal that typical students can engage in inquiry-based learning with positive emotional perception as well as gifted students regardless of their ability level. Both gifted and typical students’ positive emotional perception of and active engagement in learning provide fresh insight into feasible instructions for teachers who are interested in inquiry-based teaching but have little available time to implement such instructions into their classrooms.

Conclusions: The results of our work begin to address the critical issues of inquiry-based teaching by providing an exemplary teaching unit encompassing essential scientific competencies