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Towards a Cultural View on Quality Science Teaching

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The Professional Knowledge Base of Science Teaching

Abstract

This chapter’s cultural view on quality science teaching affords perspectives on school science that represent a plurality of aims, allows a reconceptualization of school science content so it can engender quality science teaching rather than inhibit it, and, through the intricate, context-laden, interplay between relevance and students’ self-identities explicitly answers the question: “Why would students want to engage with school science in the first place?” In developing these perspectives and reconceptualizations the author offers nine indicators of what quality science teaching is, and six indicators of what it is not. These indicators relate to “evidence” that could reflect the extent to which quality science teaching may be occurring in a classroom, in a school, and in a school system. “Evidence” is used here in the sense of the conventional meaning of “evidence” in qualitative or quantitative social science research: trustworthy evidence—consequently, the suggested indicators of quality science teaching relate to evidence-based practice in the social science sense of trustworthy evidence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

    Glen Aikenhead

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  1. Glen Aikenhead
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fac. Education, Centre for Science, Mathematics &, Monash University, Clayton, 3800, Victoria, Australia

    Deborah Corrigan

  2. Dept. Education & Professional Studies, King's College London, Stamford Street 150, London, SE1 9NH, United Kingdom

    Justin Dillon

  3. Fac. Education, Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton, 3800, Victoria, Australia

    Richard Gunstone

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Aikenhead, G. (2011). Towards a Cultural View on Quality Science Teaching. In: Corrigan, D., Dillon, J., Gunstone, R. (eds) The Professional Knowledge Base of Science Teaching. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3927-9_7

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