科学文化:儿童科学教育的灵魂

我国当前的科学教育严重地扼杀了儿童的好奇心,未能很好地培养儿童对科学文化的理解与接受。这一方面可以归因于我国传统文化本就缺乏科学文化的基因,而当初从西方引进科学教育时也忽视了科学文化的教育,另一方面受科学文化与人文文化对立观念的影响,我国科学教育一直重知识技能的传授而轻科学文化素养的培育。今后我国儿童科学教育应充分重视科学文化的宣传,才能真正促进国民科学素养的提高。     

The Nature of Scientific Practice and Science Education

There is, broadly speaking, an agreement within the international science education community that comprehension of the nature of science (NOS) should be a key element in the scientific literacy of citizens. During the last few decades, several didactic approaches have emerged concerning what and how to teach NOS. Also, one of the basic objectives of science education is for students to become familiar with the skills typical of scientific practice; however, there is little reference to their need to also acquire meta-knowledge about scientific practice (i.e., an understanding of the nature of scientific practice). Among other reasons, this may be due to NOS being essentially identified in most of the predominant proposals with the nature of scientific knowledge. But why not plan the teaching of science to be in tune with real scientific practice for students to learn about the nature of scientific practice at the same time as they are learning science? The answer to this question has given rise to a proposal grounded in ten essential pedagogical principles for the teaching and learning of science in secondary school. These are the principle of formulating questions, the principle of creativity and imagination, the principle of experimentation, the principle of procedural diversity, the principle of errors as opportunity, the principle of modeling, the principle of cooperation and teamwork, the principle of argumentation and discussion, the principle of communication, and the principle of evaluation. The purpose of this article is to present the justification and fundaments of these principles.     

论幼儿科学教育与艺术教育的整合

对幼儿的科学教育与艺术教育加以整合,可以使幼儿园课程符合幼儿"整体性"的学习特点。文章从目标、内容、实施、评价四个方面对如何整合幼儿科学教育与艺术教育进行了思考和探讨。在目标方面,以"探究""审美""创造"为"科艺整合课程"的总目标;在内容方面,"学科知识渗透"和"主题活动融合"为有效的课程内容整合路径;在实施方面,建议教师采用"科艺综合活动"的形式来呈现整合课程的新内容;在评价方面,教师应将目标取向评价与过程取向评价有机结合,形成综合全面的整合课程评价系统。     

Early Constraints on the Imagination: The Realism of Young Children

The imagination of young children has notable constraints. The outcomes and possibilities that they imagine rarely deviate from the everyday regularities they have observed and remembered. Their reality-based imagination is evident in a variety of contexts: early pretend play, envisioning the future, judgments about what is possible, the instructive role of thought experiments, tool making, and figurative drawing. Overall, the evidence shows that children’s imagination helps them to anticipate reality and its close alternatives. This perspective invites future research on the scope of children's thinking about counterfactual possibilities, their ability to make discoveries about reality on the basis of thought experiments, and the ways in which cultural input can expand the scope of the possibilities that they entertain.     

音乐教育中的想象与科学创造

人类的发展和科技的进步都是想象辩证运动的产物。而音乐教育对人大脑的想象能力的开发作用是其它艺术门类所达不到的，音乐教育中想象实际融入了一种思想、一种理念、培养了一种创造素质，它缩短了科学想象与现实创造之间的距离，同时也结出了丰硕的成果。     

放飞幼儿天性 让教育回归本真

近年来,幼儿园教育"小学化"倾向引起社会各界有识之士的广泛关注。如何放飞幼儿天性,让教育回归本真?一是要在游戏活动中放飞幼儿天性,二是在要生活活动中放飞幼儿天性。     

Scientific Communication and the Nature of Science

Communication is an important part of scientific practice and, arguably, may be seen as constitutive to scientific knowledge. Yet, often scientific communication gets cursory treatment in science studies as well as in science education. In Nature of Science (NOS), for example, communication is rarely mentioned explicitly, even though, as will be argued in this paper, scientific communication could be treated as a central component of NOS. Like other forms of communication, scientific communication is socially and symbolically differentiated. Among other things, it encompasses technical language and grammar, lab communications, and peer reviews, all of which will be treated in this paper in an attempt to engage on an empirical and theoretical level with science as communication. Seeing science as a form of communicative action supplements the epistemological view of science that is standard to both NOS and the philosophy of science. Additions to the seven NOS aspects on Lederman’s (Handbook of research on science education. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, pp. 831–879, 2007) list are put forward as well as preliminary thoughts on the inclusion of scientific communication into NOS instruction.     

Nature of Science and Science Content Learning

Besides viewing knowledge about the nature of science (NOS) as important for its own value with respect to scientific literacy, an adequate understanding of NOS is expected to improve science content learning by fostering the ability to interrelate scientific concepts and, thus, coherently acquire scientific content knowledge. However, there is a lack of systematic investigations, which clarify the relations between NOS and science content learning. In this paper, we present the results of a study, conducted to investigate how NOS understanding relates to students’ acquisition of a proper understanding of the concept of energy. A total of 82 sixth and seventh grade students received an instructional unit on energy, with 41 of them receiving generic NOS instruction beforehand. This NOS instruction, however, did not result in students having higher scores on the NOS instrument. Thus, correlational analyses were performed to investigate how students’ NOS understanding prior to the energy unit related to their learning about science content. Results show that a more adequate understanding of NOS might relate to students’ perspective on the concept of energy and might support them in understanding the nature of energy as a theoretical concept. Students with higher NOS understanding, for example, seemed to be more capable of learning how to relate the different energy forms to each other and to justify why they can be subsumed under the term of energy. Further, we found that NOS understanding may also be related to students’ approach toward energy degradation—a concept that can be difficult for students to master—while it does not seem to have a substantive impact on students’ learning gain regarding energy forms, transformation, or conservation.     

树立科学的儿童观和教育观,维护学前教育的庄严性——从幼儿"集体婚礼"说起

媒体报道河南郑州市一所幼儿园为幼儿举办“集体婚礼”.事实上,他们所依据的“幼儿处于婚姻敏感期”的理论是一个伪概念,是假借游戏之名对幼儿的“愚乐”.这起闹剧反映了我国学前教育界存在的许多深层次问题,例如,缺乏科学精神,缺少人文关怀等.学前教育界有必要树立科学的儿童观和教育观,弘扬人文关怀,坚持职业操守,建立专业调控机制,以维护学前教育的庄严性,从而真正促进幼儿健康发展.     

Understanding Our Youngest Scientific and Technological Thinkers: International Developments in Early Childhood Science Education

Research in Science Education -     

A Starting Point: Provide Children Opportunities to Engage with Scientific Inquiry and Nature of Science

Research in Science Education - This paper explores the effect teachers’ participation in a targeted inquiry-based/nature of science (NoS) continuing professional development programme had on...     

Science Education and the Nature of Nature: Bruno Latour's Ontological Politics

This article explores recent developments in the field of science and technology, and the work of Bruno Latour in particular, to problematize the nature of Nature in science education. Although science and technology studies, and the scholarship on science education alike, have become increasingly attentive to the antidemocratic habits of science as a way of knowing, less attention has been directed toward science's ontological commitments, and the politics that follow from a theory of Nature that is uniform, homogenous, and unchanging. Latour suggests that the Nature toward which scientific knowledge is directed serves as a transcendent authority with the potential to circumvent the democratic deliberations of a supposedly subjective social world. Rather than treating Nature as a social construct, Latour explores the methodological and political implications of a reality composed of plural worlds and multiple modes of being, and this article suggests that these theoretical tools offer exciting new possibilities in the field of educational case study research.     

运用情绪主题绘本开展幼儿情绪教育的理论基础与教学模式

绘本以其独特的性质与特点日益成为幼儿获得新知的载体.本研究采用行动研究范式,探索利用情绪主题绘本促进幼儿情绪能力发展的教学模式,发现采用绘本阅读与互动讨论、绘画、表演、阅读分享与情绪日记等不同教学形式相结合的感悟体验式教学能够充分发挥情绪主题绘本的情绪教育价值,促进幼儿情绪健康和谐发展.