Epistemological Foundations of School Science

Based on a synthesis of contributions from differentauthors, we present a theoreticalframework that provides some foundations for schoolscience, and we define someresearch problems. We start from what is already knownabout students' models andcognition in order to construct proposals of didacticalintervention. The cognitive modelof science, developed in the philosophy of science throughstudying scientists' activity,has allowed us to propose an analogous model for schoolscience in which experimentationand language play the key roles. We emphasise the relativeindependence of school scienceand scientists' science.