Why Compulsory Science Education Should <Emphasis Type="Italic">Not</Emphasis> Include Philosophy of Science

Like many readers of this journal, I have long been an advocate of having science students introduced to philosophy of science. In particular, influenced by the Philosophy for Children movement founded by Matthew Lipman, I have advocated such an introduction as early as possible and have championed early secondary school as an appropriate place. Further, mainstream science curricula in a number of countries have, for some time now, supported such introductions (albeit of a more limited sort) under the banner of introducing students to the “Nature of Science”. In this paper, I explore a case against such introductions, partly in role as “Devil’s Advocate” and partly exploring genuine qualms that have come to disturb me. Generally speaking, my judgement is that no justification is available in terms of benefit to the individual or to society of sufficient weight to outweigh the loss of freedom of choice involved in such forced learning. One possible exception is a minimalist and intellectually passive “Nature of Science” introduction to some uncontroversial philosophical views about science. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Seventh International Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science and Science Teaching, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg and subsequently published in its proceedings (see my 2003). I am grateful to those who engaged in discussion of the paper upon its presentation. I am also grateful to the advice of this journal’s anonymous referees.     

Core Competencies in Food Science: Background Information on the Development of the IFT Education Standards

ABSTRACT: In recent years, many professional organizations have shifted their program standards and program review away from course content‐based criteria and towards outcome‐based learning measures. IFT has recently done the same with implementation of the new IFT Education Standards. These Standards, which replace the old “Minimum Standards for Food Science Programs”, were approved by the Executive Committee at their meeting in June, 2001, with implementation beginning in fall, 2001. All food science programs will now be reviewed for IFT approval against these new Standards. This article describes the process by which this change has occurred over the past few years.     

Pedagogical Content Knowledge and the 2003 Science Teacher Preparation Standards for NCATE Accreditation or State Approval

The 2003 National Science Teachers Association Standards for Science Teacher Preparation (NSTA-SSTP) were developed to provide guidelines and expectations for science teacher preparation programs. This article is the fourth in a special JSTE series on accreditation written to assist science teacher educators in meeting the NSTA-SSTP. In this article, the authors discuss pedagogical content knowledge and how this is expressed in the NSTA-SSTP. Included are competencies and examples needed for a science teacher preparation program to document developing pedagogical content knowledge in preservice science teachers.     

Approaches to the teaching of STS in science education

The Science, Technology and Society movement is a movement within higher and school education that seeks to bring the science education of students at these respective levels more closely to their needs as members of increasingly technological societies.

As far as school science education is concerned, two parallel developments have been occurring since the mid 1970s. The first is an evolving conception of the ways in which these interactions between Science, Technology and Society may be dealt with in science education. The other is the development of text and other curriculum materials that provide assistance for teachers wishing to teach science with these emphases. This paper outlines these two developments and brings them together by using an epistemological typology from the first to classify the varieties of curriculum materials now available.     

A Study of the Effects of a LSC Project on Scientists’ Teaching Practices and Beliefs

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of a local systemic change (LSC) project on scientists’ practices and beliefs about teaching and learning. A mixed-method design was implemented that consisted of a series of interviews and the administration of the Classroom Learning Environment Survey (paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Anaheim, CA, 1994). Results from this study suggest that collaborative opportunities afforded by this model program have positively influenced scientists’ beliefs about teaching elementary science and may be impacting some of the scientists’ pedagogical and curricular practices in their general education courses. Many scientists have developed new collaborative projects, all intended to improve science education at the graduate and undergraduate level, and are beginning to understand the complexity of science education reform.     

利用全景科学教学法进行主题教学的设计

作者在研究国内外的科学教学理论的同时 ,综合我国特殊儿童科学教育课程改革的现状 ,以“岩石”这一主题为例 ,阐述了利用全景科学教学法进行主题教学的设计过程 ,并提出了可操作的主题教学的方法。     

STEM导向的当代国际科学教育研究图景--基于NARST 2020年会的文本挖掘

科学教育是建设创新型国家以及呼应科教强国政策的根本,对于科技创新人才的培养至关重要。美国国家科学教学研究学会的年会代表了全球最高规格的科学教育研究盛典,基于NARST 2020年会报告题目和摘要,采用定性与定量相结合的文本分析法,依次进行了词频分析、主题建构和共现演化三个阶段的研究。研究发现:教师的教、学生的学、教师教育、课程评估、科学文化是本届科学教育年会五个研究领域,STEM是贯穿其中的核心议题。基于行为科学理论、活动理论和知识整合理论的管理学与教育学的跨学科研究框架和关键要素,可以把STEM研究划分为理论-实践、结构-功能,宏观-微观和心理-行动这八个维度构成的多元分析框架;无监督LDA主题模型的关系建模全面、清晰地确定了全球科学教育最新的六大研究主题的发展脉络与趋势;国际科学教育研究极为重视职前和职后教师教育,高质量的教师是科学教育改革的重要引擎和支撑,教师的教与学生的学是探究教学机制的关键。最后对西方思潮影响的中国科学教育改革提出了审思。     

Interactive learning and technology in the US science and mathematics reform movement

This article presents an overview of the science/mathematics reform movement in the secondary/elementary schools and higher education institutions of the United States. It describes the research and views of educational practitioners regarding the need for change, as well as the particular changes which appear to be required. Emphasis is placed on the roles of interactive learning and technology in meeting reform goals.
Details of a recently completed curricular innovation project in science and mathematics are provided. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project brought five faculty in the natural sciences together with a learning theorist at Florida Community College at Jacksonville, a large, multi-campus, public institution. The group developed and taught two basic integrated science/mathematics courses in which cooperative and discovery learning, supported by multimedia technology and distance learning, were major components. Details of results are provided as they relate to meeting the goals of the reform movement.     

Reconsidering the Character and Role of Inquiry in School Science: Analysis of a Conference

We summarize a conference on scientific inquiry bringing together science educators, cognitive scientists and philosophers of science with three goals:

Science education and teachers: A Karplus lecture

This speech is devoted to science education reform and the pivotal role of the science teacher in the process.This paper comprises a speech, the Karplus Lecture, given at the National Science Teachers Association annual meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, April 7 1990.     

How biology teachers can respond to Intelligent Design

Teachers of biology and related subjects are increasingly meeting objections from students and their parents to the teaching of evolution and the exclusion of what is called the theory of Intelligent Design. This paper attempts to draw together arguments and evidence which may be used by such teachers. Four lessons are drawn from the 1982 judgement against Creation Science in Arkansas for those opposing attempts to introduce the theory of Intelligent Design into school science programs: that a wide definition of science is the most useful; that religion is not the enemy; that science teachers should trust their own expertise; and that alternative theories should not be excluded.     

Status of science education in Illinois elementary schools, 1987

What is the status of science education in Illinois public elementary schools? A research survey of elementary teachers was conducted in 1987 to help answer this question. Among the areas of science teaching assessed were types of instructional programs utilized, preparation for science teaching, science in-service, obstacles to science teaching, and administrative and community support for science education. Results were compared with those gathered in a similar survey conducted ten years earlier and with other state and national surveys. Findings indicate that science instruction at the elementary level remains dependent on textbooks in spite of research that indicates the efficacy of hands-on science. Teachers are frustrated by lack of time, equipment, facilities and the low priority science has in their school districts. Many of the teachers fall short of meeting the minimum standards for science teacher preparation as suggested by the National Science Teachers Association. In spite of recent reform efforts, it is clear that science instruction has not yet become a priority. This report discusses the implications of these findings and makes suggestions for future studies.     

A method for analyzing the coherence of high school biology textbooks

Because textbooks have the potential to be powerful catalysts for improving science teaching and learning, having reliable methods for analyzing important textbook features, such as their coherence, is essential. This study reports on the development of a method in which trained reviewers, following a set of guidelines defining the ideas to be learned and connections among those ideas drawn from relevant maps published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the Atlas of Science Literacy (2001), were able to analyze the degree to which four widely used high school biology textbooks provided students and teachers with a coherent account of the important topic of matter and energy transformations in living systems. The study method was found to produce consistent results across reviewers and textbooks and can serve those who evaluate, design, and use science curriculum materials. This work represents an important first step in meeting the need for methods to measure, characterize, and, ultimately, to improve textbook coherence. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 47–70, 2010     

Tailoring National Standards to Early Science Teacher Identities: Building on Personal Histories to Support Beginning Practice

Individual recommendation plans (IRP) for student teaching practice were co-constructed with two methods students based on the select application of National Science Teachers Association’s National Standards for Science Teacher Preparation. Methods students completed a resume, an interview on pedagogical preferences, and a learning styles survey to determine the reform-based standards and pedagogical approaches that better fit their personal histories and identity formation as science teachers. Each case was unique with one student better meeting the Standards of “Issues” and “Science in the Community” and the other student better meeting the standards of “Inquiry” and the “Nature of Science”. Student teachers planned and taught lessons based on their IRP and were mostly successful in meeting their prescribed standards and utilizing their preferred pedagogies. However, their success in use of specific strategies supporting their approach was highly dependent upon classroom context. The use of the IRP process as a reflective tool strengthening identity formation and early practice is discussed.     

National innovation policy and public science in Australia

In this paper, I have positioned myself with Kean Birch and explored some of the political-economic actors/actants of policy suites implicated in the biotechnologies and bioeconomy. In particular, I have considered Australia’s recent National Innovation and Science Agenda and allied documents and entities (that is, Innovation and Science Australia, the National Science Statement and the 2016 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap) as one of the National Innovation Strategies in place now in OECD countries and beyond. In overview, these policy suites utilise the same high knowledge creation/low translation and commericalisation arguments as elsewhere to press for particular ideologically based ‘improvements’ to public science. Mapping the terrain of these entities has revealed the innovation, biotechnology and bioeconomy policy space to be inordinately complex and challenging to navigate. Reviewing Australia’s position enables the type of comparative work that contributes to a closer understanding of the largely neoliberal global economic imperatives shaping contemporaneity. Moreover, while these policy suites attempt to constitute and circulate particular visions of science education, their complex nature mitigates against science teachers/educators grappling with their implications.     

美国学习科学发展研究

学习科学最早起源于美国,它是在认知科学、计算机科学等学科基础上发展起来的关于学与教的交叉学科,目前全美已经设立了非正规与正规环境学习中心,视觉语言与视觉学习科学中心,匹兹堡学习科学中心,教育、科学与技术中的卓越学习中心,学习的时间动力学中心,认知与教育神经科学中心等七个学习科学研究中心,每个研究中心均有不同的研究重点,但都采用"基于设计的研究"范式,从不同的视角研究学习。其研究主题为如何学以及学什么,以进一步提高人类的学习绩效。美国学习科学的研究能为我国学习科学研究的深入发展提供新的研究思路,同时拓展教育技术学领域的研究视角和研究范畴。     

Planning Instruction to Meet the Intent of the Next Generation Science Standards

The National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States in Next Generation Science Standards: For states, by states. The National Academies Press, Washington, 2013) move teaching away from covering many isolated facts to a focus on a smaller number of disciplinary core ideas (DCIs) and crosscutting concepts that can be used to explain phenomena and solve problems by engaging in science and engineering practices. The NGSS present standards as knowledge-in-use by expressing them as performance expectations (PEs) that integrate all three dimensions from the Framework for K-12 Science Education. This integration of core ideas, practices, and crosscutting concepts is referred to as three-dimensional learning (NRC in Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. The National Academies Press, Washington, 2014). PEs state what students can be assessed on at the end of grade level for K-5 and at the end of grade band for 6–8 and 9–12. PEs do not specify how instruction should be developed nor do they serve as objectives for individual lessons. To support students in developing proficiency in the PEs, the elements of the DCIs will need to be blended with various practices and crosscutting concepts. In this paper, we examine how to design instruction to support students in meeting a cluster or “bundle” of PEs and how to blend the three dimensions to develop lesson level PEs that can be used for guiding instruction. We provide a ten-step process and an example of that process that teachers and curriculum designers can use to design lessons that meet the intent of the Next Generation of Science Standards.     

Modernizing science education

This article is focused on changes taking place in the teaching of science as part of general education. Over the past century a host of changes in the nature and practice of science have served to make outmoded the science curricula now found in school textbooks. Past and present reform efforts have been limited to updating traditional subject matter, which is not adequate for life and living in today's world. A new framework is required for a general education in science, one that is student centered and up‐to‐date on the nature of science technology. As stated in the Science Bulletin ( 2000 ), “Science and technology have become the driving force for mankind's quest for a better society” (p. 1). The new science curriculum also should be focused on the utilization of science technology for public welfare and human benefit. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 3–9, 2002     

From Science Studies to Scientific Literacy: A View from the Classroom

The prospective virtues of using history and philosophy of science in science teaching have been pronounced for decades. Recently, a role for nature of science in supporting scientific literacy has become widely institutionalized in curriculum standards internationally. This short review addresses these current needs, highlighting the concrete views of teachers in the classroom, eschewing ideological ideals and abstract theory. A practical perspective highlights further the roles of history and philosophy—and of sociology, too—and even broadens their importance. It also indicates the relevance of a wide range of topics and work in Science Studies now generally absent from science educational discourse. An extensive reference list is provided.