Impact of a Scientist–Teacher Collaborative Model on Students,Teachers, and Scientists

Collaborations between the K-12 teachers and higher education or professional scientists have become a widespread approach to science education reform. Educational funding and efforts have been invested to establish these cross-institutional collaborations in many countries. Since 2006, Taiwan initiated the High Scope Program, a high school science curriculum reform to promote scientific innovation and inquiry through an integration of advanced science and technology in high school science curricula through partnership between high school teachers and higher education scientists and science educators. This study, as part of this governmental effort, a scientist–teacher collaborative model (STCM) was constructed by 8 scientists and 4 teachers to drive an 18-week high school science curriculum reform on environmental education in a public high school. Partnerships between scientists and teachers offer opportunities to strengthen the elements of effective science teaching identified by Shulman and ultimately affect students’ learning. Mixed methods research was used for this study. Qualitative methods of interviews were used to understand the impact on the teachers’ and scientists’ science teaching. A quasi-experimental design was used to understand the impact on students’ scientific competency and scientific interest. The findings in this study suggest that the use of the STCM had a medium effect on students’ scientific competency and a large effect on students’ scientific individual and situational interests. In the interviews, the teachers indicated how the STCM allowed them to improve their content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and the scientists indicated an increased knowledge of learners, knowledge of curriculum, and PCK.     

One Brief,Shining Moment? The Impact of Neo‐liberalism on Science Curriculum in the Compulsory Years of Schooling

The past 20 years or so have seen ongoing concern for the nature of science education in the Anglophone developed world. A particular focus of this concern has been the need to find new ways to frame science curricula that will engage students, yet it is proving difficult to achieve this goal. In this article I argue that the impact on science curriculum of a societal shift to neo‐liberalism and an attendant policy shift to outcomes‐based education should be explicitly acknowledged; further, that the forms of curriculum that emerge from neo‐liberalism are unlikely to provide the engaging and inclusive science education needed today. To illustrate the impact of the neo‐liberal societal shift on science curriculum I compare an exemplary, inclusive and innovative science curriculum document from the 1980s with its outcomes‐based successor from the 1990s. I show that in this case the shift to the outcomes‐based form significantly restricted the possibilities for framing science education to respond to the local community, restricting a vision of science as a social institution; further, it framed each learner as an individual to the exclusion of community while reducing options for framing learning to meet individual needs. I argue that it is important for the future disciplinary well‐being of science, and for the well‐being of society on the whole, that both science and its scientists be seen as socially located. Science curriculum documents must initiate and support this perspective.     

Curriculum Change: the case of special education

Special education has been somewhat neglected in the sociological study of curriculum change, despite the value of sociological perspectives on policy and provision for special educational needs. This article considers the redefinition of special education over the last decade, in both mainstream and special schools, drawing on other sociological analyses of curriculum redefinition and realisation. Particular attention is given to the professional interests involved and the contexts within which change has taken place. The article concludes with a review of the implications of recent legislation for the redefinition of special education. It is suggested that the increasing convergence of policy and curriculum frameworks for both special and mainstream education requires an integrated approach to future research and analysis.     

Between the Hammer and the Anvil: lifestyles of Russian students in the years of permanent crisis

This article attempts to look at Russian students in the broader social, economic and political context as it has developed over the past 13 years. While society needs higher education to consolidate its identity that was deeply wounded by the shock of the political and economic collapse of the early 1990s, it still lacks the means to maintain it. As a result of a complex interplay of various actors and their short‐term interests, Russian youth is being literally stored as students in higher education institutions, barely able to survive physically, with little hope for improvement in a foreseeable future.     

Working Alongside Scientists

Current curriculum demands require primary teachers to teach about the Nature of Science; yet, few primary teachers have had opportunity to learn about science as a discipline. Prior schooling and vicarious experiences of science may shape their beliefs about science and, as a result, their science teaching. This qualitative study describes the impact on teacher beliefs about science and science education of a programme where 26 New Zealand primary (elementary) teachers worked fulltime for 6 months alongside scientists, experiencing the nature of work in scientific research institutes. During the 6 months, teachers were supported, through a series of targeted professional development days, to make connections between their experiences working with scientists, the curriculum and the classroom. Data for the study consisted of mid- and end-of-programme written teacher reports and open-ended questionnaires collected at three points, prior to and following 6 months with the science host and after 6 to 12 months back in school. A shift in many teachers’ beliefs was observed after the 6 months of working with scientists in combination with curriculum development days; for many, these changes were sustained 6 to 12 months after returning to school. Beliefs about the aims of science education became more closely aligned with the New Zealand curriculum and its goal of developing science for citizenship. Responses show greater appreciation of the value of scientific ways of thinking, deeper understanding about the nature of scientists’ work and the ways in which science and society influence each other.     

The influence of academic scientists and technologists on Alberta's secondary science curriculum policy and programme

In democratic societies, it is becoming increasingly common for the government to formulate science education policies and programmes to reform education. In Alberta, Canada, government policies on education, including science, have been formulated on the basis of unprecedented public consultation. However, in the implementation of these policies, the initially proposed senior high science programme ran counter to views on science education held by academic scientists, technologists and academic high school science teachers. By garnering public support and applying political pressure, these groups were successful in forcing the government to re‐examine its science education policies and draft programmes. This review resulted in changes in the programme design and, more significantly, in the processes used to develop the science curriculum. This paper examines the complexity of reforming science education, and the dynamic tension and conflict that can develop between curriculum experts and academic scientists in the development of science programmes that meet broad education goals.     

Portraying science in the classroom: The manifestation of scientists' beliefs in classroom practice

If the goals of science education reform are to be realized, science instruction must change across the academic spectrum, including at the collegiate level. This study examines the beliefs and teaching practices of three scientists as they designed and implemented an integrated science course for nonmajors that was designed to emphasize the nature of science. Our results indicated that, like public school teachers, scientists' beliefs about the nature of science are manifested in their enactment of curriculum—although this manifestation is clearly not a straightforward or simplistic one. Personal beliefs about the nature of science can differ from those of the course, thus resulting in an enactment that differs from original conceptions. Even when personal beliefs match those of the course, sophisticated understandings of the nature of science are not enough to ensure the straightforward translation of beliefs into practice. Mitigating factors included limited pedagogical content knowledge, difficulty in achieving integration of the scientific disciplines, and lack of opportunity and scaffolding to forge true consensus between the participating scientists. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 40: 669–691, 2003     

Educational reform and educational crisis

Even though the sciences may deserve an important and enhanced place in the curriculum, it is crucial that educators situate reforms in science education in the larger social context in which educational reforms are taking place. How and by whom reform is defined and carried out will have a significant impact on who benefits from the process. I argue that education in general has increasingly become dominated by economic interests that can lead not to enhancing equality but to its opposite. There are important ideological shifts that are occurring not only in what education is for, but in the content and control of curriculum and teaching. This has also been accompanied by an attempt to not only increase the influence of economic needs on schools, but to make education itself an economic product like all others. This will have a major impact on science education in particular, because both science and technology are seen as high-status in the transformation of education into solely an economic tool.     

Horizontal Mathematics

The paper presents a study of tradition and change in Sweden's education of elementary school teachers since its origin in 1842. The dynamics of the curriculum content is assigned an essential role and the concept 'social field' is used as an analytic device. Twosubstantial periods of change have been identified one in the 1860s, and the other around the turn of the 20th century. Both these transformation periods coincided with marked alterations in the context of the institution of teacher training: in the relations between community and state networks, the interplay between public and private institutions, and power relations of the state bureaucracy. New ideas of the individual, nature, the child, science, and morality broke through.     

Addressing Equity and Diversity with Teachers Though Informal Science Institutions and Teacher Professional Development

This study explores how activities developed by science experts in partnership with middle school teachers were employed and interpreted. The goals of this partnership were to (a) help the science teacher meet earth science content standards in new ways, (b) expose students to ‘real world’ experiences outside their school setting, and (c) positively impact teacher practice by providing a program to be used as a catalyst for future learning. Over 300 sixth graders mostly underrepresented science students attended activities at an aquarium serving an urban West Coast urban context. Science teachers, non-science teachers, scientists, and volunteers were all engaged in pre-trip instruction, professional development opportunities, and follow-up activities as this partnership effort explored ways to enhance local literacy initiatives across the curriculum. Results suggest that teacher beliefs about informal education impacted their view and participation in the program and the level of submersion of teachers in collaboration strongly affects the ability to serve underrepresented students on informal excursions. Implications for teacher education and outreach are discussed.     

When ‘we wish they knew’ meets ‘I want to know’

ABSTRACT

The tension between mandated curricula and students’ interests is evident throughout the history of science education. Societal expectations for student learning often lead to standards and curricula that leave little room for students to explore their own individual interests. Occasionally, however, an event can capture the interest of so many students that teachers feel compelled to respond. The Ebola outbreak of 2014 was such an event. This article discusses findings from a study of teacher decision-making; specifically, it explores how high school science teachers in the U.S. decided whether and how they should address Ebola during the 2014–2015 school year, when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was at its peak. Approximately 2500 teachers of science responded to an online questionnaire that addressed their Ebola-specific instruction. In comparing the decisions of those who taught about Ebola and those who did not, the study found that teachers weighed various factors, in particular student interest but also curriculum standards, time, and availability of resources for teaching about Ebola. The article concludes with implications for future urgent health-related issues.     

科学课程中的辉格史批判

科学史融入科学课程对提升学生的科学素养有重要的意义。科学史的本源价值是其元认知价值——展现科学的本质和科学技术与社会的关系。辉格式科学史给学生呈现出一副歪曲的科学发展图景,不利于学生理解科学的本质以及科学技术与社会的关系。其产生的根本原因是教育者价值观的错位,即教育哲学中的知识中心主义、科学哲学中的素朴经验论和历史哲学中的移时史观;直接原因在于科学家的一些"不当行为"与科学教育工作者对科学、科学家所持的刻板印象相冲突,他们按自己的刻板印象去重塑科学史。科学课程应变辉格式科学史为真实的科学发展历程。     

Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Nature of Science and Scientific Inquiry as Illustrated in the Scientific Research on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

Interviews with key scientists who had conducted research on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), together with analysis of media reports, documentaries and other literature published during and after the SARS epidemic, revealed many interesting aspects of the nature of science (NOS) and scientific inquiry in contemporary scientific research in the rapidly growing field of molecular biology. The story of SARS illustrates vividly some NOS features advocated in the school science curriculum, including the tentative nature of scientific knowledge, theory-laden observation and interpretation, multiplicity of approaches adopted in scientific inquiry, the inter-relationship between science and technology, and the nexus of science, politics, social and cultural practices. The story also provided some insights into a number of NOS features less emphasised in the school curriculum—for example, the need to combine and coordinate expertise in a number of scientific fields, the intense competition between research groups (suspended during the SARS crisis), the significance of affective issues relating to intellectual honesty and the courage to challenge authority, the pressure of funding issues on the conduct of research and the ‘peace of mind’ of researchers, These less emphasised elements provided empirical evidence that NOS knowledge, like scientific knowledge itself, changes over time. They reflected the need for teachers and curriculum planners to revisit and reconsider whether the features of NOS currently included in the school science curriculum are fully reflective of the practice of science in the 21st century. In this paper, we also report on how we made use of extracts from the news reports and documentaries on SARS, together with episodes from the scientists’ interviews, to develop a multimedia instructional package for explicitly teaching the prominent features of NOS and scientific inquiry identified in the SARS research.

School subjects,subject communities and curriculum change: the social construction of economics in the school curriculum

The place of economics in the curriculum in England and Wales provides a lens through which we may view the ways in which the curriculum as a whole is fought over and remains shifting terrain. Conceived of as social movements, school subject communities are made up of competing factions giving rise to contest and conflict both within themselves and with other subjects. A social constructionist perspective, such as Goodson's, would suggest that the form and content of the curriculum are outcomes of such ongoing struggle, involving the interplay of power and control that reflect deep‐rooted traditions. Bernstein's notions of school subjects imply complex interplay of official and pedagogic agents in determining their fates as singulars, regions or generic entities. The rise and fall of economics lay substantially outside the control of its subject community and the social movements within it. At post‐16, a search for new content and pedagogies seemed to take little heed of its curricular market position. During the compulsory phase, the emergence of sub‐factions interested in vocational rather than economics education ensured its consignment to cross‐curricular theme status and relative oblivion in the post‐1988 National Curriculum.     

科学家刻板印象:研究与启示

青少年学生群体是我国未来科学发展的储备力量,科学家是科学技术行业的精英形象代表。青少年学生心目中的科学家形象影响着他们科学学习的兴趣和与科学相关职业的认同。实证研究表明,青少年学生所认知的科学家形象总体上较为刻板。以社会建构主义的视角可以看到,这种刻板印象的认知受到其所处的社会文化情境的影响,也存在着文化的差异性。为了树立科学家在学生群体中的积极、正面和可及性形象,提供科学家的榜样角色和提供与科学职业有关的信息是两个重要的途径。针对我国科学教育现状,在向青少年学生传播和塑造科学家形象的过程中,应注意科学研究与科学传播、科普研究与科普实践、主流群体与边缘群体、自然科学与社会科学等的相互结合。     

Assessing conceptual change of teachers involved in STES education and curriculum devleopment - the STEMS project approach

Science-Technology-Environment-Society (STES) orientation in science education is currently being implemented in Israeli high schools within the framework of 'science for all' reform worldwide. This paper focuses on assessing the conceptual change of teachers who have been involved in the development, implementation, field-testing and evaluation of several modules. These modules constitute a grade 10-11 high school national curriculum titled STEMS - 'Science, Technology, Environment in Modern Society'. STEMS is aimed at developing an autonomous learner, capable of system thinking, decision making and problem solving within the real life STES context. We sensed that the intrinsic nature of STEMS curriculum requires that the teachers, who will teach it, will also be the developers of its modules. Involvement of this kind makes the teachers responsible for their own conceptual change, explanations and interpretations. Our formative evaluation indicates that the conceptual change of STEMS teachers was gradual. Participants differed with respect to what sort of 'treatment' or experience within the project actually affected who and when. It was apparent that the change occurred with respect to both their content knowledge and pedagogical views. A positive response towards teaching beyond the discipline boundaries was followed by teachers' active involvement and participation in the development process and team discussions. Thus, the STEMS project affected their teaching/learning perception towards interdisciplinarity. These findings are in accord with teachers' support of a life cycle approach for curriculum development as being suitable for achieving the STEMS objectives. The teachers emphasized the need to practice together with their students scientific inquiry and experiment design skills which, foster an autonomous learner. At the end of the first year of the curriculum development process, STEMS was finally conceptualized by the project teachers as a novel way of learning, rather than another sophisticated teaching technique. The major conceptual change was, the switch teachers made from the role of knowledge providers into that of learners. The interplay among action, participation and conceptualization turned out to be instrumental in our life cycle approach for developing the STEMS curriculum.     

利益相关者视角下的基础教育课程政策研究

课程政策表征为政府等政治实体出台的与课程领域相关的政策性文件,其实质是课程权力和利益的分配。它内在地赋予课程政策以价值关涉而非价值中立。鉴于此,要实现我国基础教育课程政策由实然性科学祛魅走向应然性价值返魅,就需要摒弃既往课程政策传统意识形态法理化、价值取向工具化、程序机制僵硬化的机械态势,构建具有全景敞视的思维意识、权力错位的自我衍射、马赛克流动的教育资源的生命之春。     

Sardonic science? The resistance to more humanistic forms of science education

Resistance to more humanistic forms of science education is an endemic and persistent feature of university scientists as well as school science teachers. This article argues that science education researchers should pay more attention to its origins and to the subtleties of its stubborn influence. The paper explores some of the imperatives which dominate the continuing practices of teachers; the linkages between school and university science; and re-considers the relationships between learning science, learning to do science and learning about science. It draws on recent, prominent publications, as well as neglected and rather more contentious material, to underline the unhelpfully narrow view of science held by those who defend the traditional disciplinary influences of biology, chemistry and physics. Suggestions are made as to where those of a more radical and determined disposition should direct their attention in the interests of improved education, vital scientific progress as well as human survival. It is argued that university science must change in order to ensure that teachers better help their students to learn, do and appreciate science.     

Toward citizenship science education: what students do to make the world a better place?

With increased focus on sustainability and socioscientific issues, dealing with issues related to citizenship is now seen as an important element of science education. However, in order to make the world a better place, mere understanding about socioscientific issues is not enough. Action must also be taken. In this study, 35 international gifted students—potential scientists—aged 15–19 were interviewed to investigate what they were doing to make the world a better place. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis with focus on students’ actions toward a better world, their rationalizations for such actions, and the role of science in the rationalizations. The analysis shows that students consciously take a wide range of actions, and that they see citizenship as a process of constant self-development. The three categories created to highlight the variation in the ways students take action were personally responsible actions, participatory actions, and preparing for future. Although many students saw that science and scientists play a big role in solving especially the environmental problems, most of them also discussed the structural causes for problems, as well as the interplay of social, economic, and political forces. The results indicate that citizenship science education should take the variety of students’ actions into consideration, give students the possibility to take individual and participatory action, as well as give students opportunities to get to know and discuss the ways a career in science or engineering can contribute to saving the world.     

Intuition and insight: two concepts that illuminate the tacit in science education

Tacit knowledge, that is knowledge not expressible in words, may play a role in learning science, yet it is difficult to study directly. Intuition and insight, two processes that link the tacit and the explicit, are proposed as a route to investigating tacit knowledge. Intuitions are defined as tacit hunches or feelings that influence thought with little conscious effort. This paper examines conceptualisations of intuition as embodied cognition, and as abstracted rules before examining reports of intuition in the work of scientists and in science education. Insight is described as an explicit awareness of novel relations between concepts that arrives with little conscious control. Insight is related to rapid conceptual change and the development of conceptual connections. Reports of insight in the work of scientists and in the science classroom are discussed. The manner in which insight and intuition may promote and hinder learning is considered and conditions that affect the use of both processes are suggested. Strategies that might encourage students’ use of intuition and insight in the classroom are proposed. The paper concludes with a call for a greater focus on the concept of tacit knowledge in science education and suggests areas for future research.