Abstract
From the very beginning of formal science education in the schools, a fundamental dilemma has plagued the design of science curricula. As David Layton puts it, in his study of the origins of science teaching in the schools of nineteenth-century Britain, ‘The question of content or process, subject matter or method of inquiry, is a recurring and still unresolved issue in the relatively short history of science teaching’.1 In our own century the predominant approach prior to the 1960s was one which emphasized the content of science as a body of generally stable knowledge, of ‘patterns and structures that have been found by scientists to be useful ways of ordering the world’.2 In the last fifteen years, however, curriculum reform has led to the introduction of ‘discovery methods of learning’ which attempt to present science as ‘a system for helping people process new phenomena or events that may not be consistent with the patterns and structures they normally use or are not consistent with the accumulated body of science dogma’.3
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Notes
Layton, David (1973) Science for the People: The Origins of the School Science Curriculum in England, London: Allen and Unwin, p. 174.
Ramsey, G. A. (1975) `Science Teaching as an Instructional System’, in P. L. Gardner (ed.), The Structure of Science Education, Hawthorn: Longman Australia, p. 96.
Ibid.,p. 97.
Layton, op. cit.,p. 176.
Butler, J. E. (1977) `Radical Philosophy and History of Science’, Australian Science Teachers Journal 23(2), 40. It should be noted that Butler is critical of the view represented by this quotation and the one which immediately follows.
Ibid.
Layton, op. cit.,p. 175.
Ibid.
Cf. the criticism of one `extreme example’ of a process curriculum by Myron Atkin, quoted in Layton, op. cit.,p. 174. While the curriculum in question may be an extreme example, the problem of the students’ conceptual starting point must be faced in designing any process curriculum.
Ramsey, op. cit.,p. 97.
Lucas, Arthur M. (1977) ‘Should “Science” be Studied in Science Courses?’ Australian Science Teachers Journal 23 (2), 31–37.
Kuhn, T. S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cf. Biggins, David R., and Ian Henderson (1978) `What is Science Teaching For?’ Physics Education 13, 438–441; and Butler, loc. cit.
Butler, loc. cit.
Layton, op. cit.,p. 176.
Cf. Chalmers, Alan F. (1976) What Is This Thing Called Science? St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, pp. 130–131.
Cf. Berger, Peter, and Thomas Luckmann (1966) The Social Construction of Reality, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Since different forms of society (and within a given society, different classes) have different criteria for what counts as `effective practical activity’, it is clear that the content of commonsense knowledge will be specific to each form of society (and class).
Chalmers, loc. cit.; cf. pp. 113–115.
For example, Fourier’s analytical theory of heat is consistent with either a kinetic model or a fluid model of heat; cf. Friedman, Robert M. (1977) `The Creation of a New Science: Joseph Fourier’s Analytical Theory of Heat’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 8, 73–99.
For example, the quantum theory of light cannot be interpreted consistently by either a wave model or a particle model.
Cf. Roqueplo, Philippe (1974) Le partage du savoir, Paris: Seuil, pp. 100–103.
Roqueplo refers to this process as the `overmodelling’ (surmodélisation) of the scientific model (op. cit.,pp. 109, 141). While Roqueplo’s principal concern is the popularization of science in the mass media, nevertheless many of his observations are equally applicable to the context of school science teaching.
The presentation of science to non-Western children `as a “second culture,” valid in its own right and taught in much the same spirit as a second language is taught’, was suggested by Francis E. Dart (1972) `Science and the Worldview’, Physics Today 25(6), 54 (cf. idem. (1973) `The Cultural Context of Science Teaching’, Search 4, 326). The present proposal extends this suggestion to the teaching of Western children, whose `native culture’ is the everyday experience of industrial society.
Feyerabend, Paul K. (1975) Against Method,London: New Left Books.
Ibid.
I say `in a formal way’ because commonsense knowledge is already incorporated throughout the school curriculum in an informal way, as an unanalyzed component. The proposal advanced here is that commonsense knowledge itself should formally become an object of study within the curriculum, to be analyzed critically together with scientific knowledge.
Chalmers, op. cit.,pp. 129–134.
Chalmers also describes his view as `pluralistic realism’, for the following reason: `The radical instrumentalist or pluralistic realist wishes to emphasize the distinction between our conceptual systems, whether they be scientific theories or those presupposed in everyday language and which are human products that are subject to change, and the real world to which those real conceptual systems bear some relation. Both scientific theories and the external world are real, but they are not to be identified.… Scientific theories are constantly produced and modified as a result of scientific practice. The reasons behind my wishing to call this version of realism “pluralistic” should now be evident. The external world and the world of theories are both real, but they are distinct. They are linked by a third real, scientific practice.’ (Op. cit.,pp. 129–130.)
e.g., Lucas, op. cit.
Bernstein, Basil (1971) ‘On the Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge’, in M. F. D. Young (ed.), Knowledge and Control, London: Collier Macmillan, pp. 47–69; also reprinted in E. Hopper (ed.) (1971) Readings in the Theory of Educational Systems, London: Hutchinson, pp. 184–211.
Cf. the comments of Michel Foucault on `Theory as a Tool-Box’ in Meaghan Morris and Paul Patton (eds.) (1979) Michel Foucault: Power, Truth, Strategy,Sydney: Feral Publications, p. 57.
The theory of epistemological obstacles is presented, together with historical illustrations, in Bachelard, Gaston (1938) La formation de l’esprit scientifique, Paris: Vrin.
There are also other ways, not directly dependent upon ontological commitments, by which science education produces convictions about reality in the minds of students. I have outlined a number of these processes in `Some Social Effects of Science Teaching’, in David R. Oldroyd (ed.) (1978) Historical, Philosophical and Social Perspectives of Science in Secondary Education, Kensington: University of New South Wales Press, pp. 36–40.
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Albury, R. (1983). Science Teaching or Science Preaching? Critical Reflections on School Science. In: Home, R.W. (eds) Science under Scrutiny. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7672-7_9
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