The Curriculum of School Science
Peter J Fensham
Abstract
In the 1960s school curriculum development took on a quite new form.
Particularly for science education, many large projects were established to
produce what usually turned out to be a 'package' of curriculum to be
implemented by teachers in the classroom. There is currently another reform
of science curriculum in progress internationally. The notions of how to effect
curriculum change have altered substantially and less emphasis is now being
given to the production of 'packages'. Five sources of influence concerned
science teachers, academic scientists, political and economic comparisons,
theories of teaching and learning and philosophical ideas about science and
science education are obvious in both periods although their concerns and
directions for reform have changed.
Introduction
Science education and particularly the way its curriculum was conceived underwent
a very major reformation in the period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The
early initiatives of what was to become an unprecedented concentration of human
and other resources on curriculum development began in the U.S., largely under
sponsorship of the National Science Foundation, and in Britain where the Nuffield
Foundation played a similar role.
Many other countries followed these leads, sometimes slavishly, by simply
importing these curricula under a new form of educational imperialism. In
most cases they have, some years later, developed indigenous responses to
their own particular national demands for up-to-date and better science
education in school.
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The 1970s was a quiescent period as far as curriculum development in science
was concerned, and indeed increasingly became a decade of malaise and
disappointment as evidence accumulated that many or most of the hopes and
good intentions of the reformers were not being achieved in schools. Begin-
ning in New Zealand in 1979 and spreading to more and more countries as the
1980s proceeded, there is now a new wave of science curriculum reform.
While not on quite the same profligate scale as the previous reforms, the
resources being put into the current interest in school science are sufficiently
large for it to be compared with the earlier efforts.
Sources of Curriculum Influence
Five sources of influence on the curriculum reforms of the 1960s have been
identified. All of these have reappeared in the current situation although they
now present quite new messages and exert different pressures. In addition, at
least six new sources of influence are now discernible. These influences are :
1960s and Present Present
Concerned Science Teachers Science educator and their re-
search
Academic scientists
Evaluation of the 1950s/60s
curricula
Political and economic
Historical and sociological
comparisons
analyses of curriculum
Theories of teaching
New groups of learners
and learning
Philosophical ideas
Measurements of
about science and
educational achievement
science education
Community and internal
movements
This paper considers the five common sources and identifies the nature of their
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influence on the curriculum of school science.
In the 1950/60s the five influences were generally seen to be co-operative.
This spirit of partnership can be summarised in a somewhat simplistic way as
follows. The concern of science teachers for the state of the school curriculum
gained support from the political and economic comparisons so that decisions
for serious reform were made. Academic scientists provided prestige and
interest to the curriculum projects and worked with science teachers (usually
the more academically well-qualified) to produce new curriculum materials.
The nature of science and its contemporary forms of expression in academic
disciplinary science became the intended learning content of these new
materials, and it was presented in ways that tried to be faithful to ideas about
how learning occurs.
Slowly, as contradictions and disappointments about the implementation of
the 1960s sciences mounted, a new view of these influences has developed
among informed science educators. If there are, as has just been indicated, a
number of different societal interests about the science education that schools
provide, it would be surprising if all will be equally well met. Indeed the
probability is that the curriculum of a science education that meets one or
several of these interests will not serve the others. Recognition of this
probability, unfortunately, is still quite rare in the official reports and public
policies of the 1980s as it was in the 1960s. Without it, some critical
implications for science curriculum are likely to be missed in decision-making
for the current reforms in science education, just as they so largely were in the
development and implementations of the 1960s reforms. Hodson (1987) has
suggested that each proposal should be subjected to a scrutiny that reveals the
underlying socio-political motivation of the interest groups. Whose views of
science, whose interests, and whose view of society are being advanced?
Concerned Science Teachers
In the earlier reforms the leaders in the science teaching profession and those
teachers who had been more recently trained in universities were very
conscious of how 'out-of-date' school science curricula were. In the current
case it is not so much the 'out-of-dateness' of today's science curricula that
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concerns leaders in the science teaching profession (science teachers associa-
tions). Rather their concern is the inappropriateness of these curricula if
science at school is to be a worthwhile educational experience for all students
(Science for All) and not just an education that serves a minority of students
only. Many science teachers do, however, take a more conservative view of
their subjects and are comfortable with the existing curricula and their elite
groups of students in the upper secondary levels. These curricula are
essentially still of the 1960s type with some very minor changes that recognise
applications of science. They are consistent with the conceptual sciences
these teachers studied in higher education.
Academic Scientists
Prominent university scientists played a leading and encouraging role in the
1960s projects. They exerted a crucial influence on the sort of science content
that was included as worthy of learning. They were important legitimators of
what topics and what sort of account of them were appropriate for school
science. Their exercise of this role did vary in relation to different sciences
(Fensham 1980) and was more constraining in the physical science than in the
biological and earth sciences. In all cases, however, it turned out that the
school curricula were brought more up to date with the conceptual emphases
of post war first year teaching in universities than they were with the frontier
topics and questions of the sciences in the 1960s.
Although they were more directly concerned with the curriculum for the later
years of secondary schooling, the strong sequential assumptions about
scientific knowledge and the preparatory role, which one year of schooling
plays for the next, ensured that this influence had effect at all levels of science
curriculum.
The most general concerns expressed by university scientists in the 1980s
have been quantitative ones. There is concern that not enough students are
coming forth from schools to continue advanced studies in scientific and
technological fields. There is concern that fewer of the high achievers in
school science are choosing to continue studies in science. There is concern
that the proposals to reshape and redefine the science curricula in schools in
ways that suit Science for All will mean that less time is devoted to traditional
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topics in chemistry and physics. These sorts of concerns, on the whole, have
acted as brakes on reform of science curricula rather than spurs for it.
Some academic voices have been critical of the content of school chemistry
and physics. Gillespie (1976) in Canada and Bucat and Cole (1988) in
Australia are typical of one set of these voices. However, they are not calling
for the inclusion of the many exciting new sorts of substances chemists have
made and discovered in recent years. They are concerned about the emphasis
the 1960s reforms put on general concepts and abstract principles to the
exclusion of familiarity with chemical reactions, and with field and laboratory
experiences. They do encourage knowledge and experience of the role of
chemicals in applied areas like foods, building materials, and consumer
products, but on the whole they seem to conceive of these applications in terms
of simple and basic chemicals that have long been part of school chemistry
rather than in terms of newer substances with quite novel properties.
A few exceptions can be noted to the claim above that there are examples in
the current reforms of the scientific community of a coherent voice calling for
new approaches to science education. The Royal Society (1985) in Britain
produced a short and startling manifesto, Science is for Everybody, in a report
on the public understanding of science. A proper science education at school,
it states, must provide the basis for an adequate understanding of science
which is then to be added to throughout life. This understanding includes not
just facts but the methods of science and its limitations as well as an
appreciation of the practical and social implications. The manifesto claims
that some understanding of statistics including ideas of risk, uncertainty, ratios
and variability are so intrinsic to the method of science and to understanding
many personal and public issues, that they should be goals of all science
curricula. This manifesto calls for a very different sort of curriculum for the
whole of the school population. It thus gives strong support for Science for
All.
Political and Economic Comparisons
The onset of the reforms of the 1950/60s in the U.S. and in Britain is often
ascribed to the cold war and the launching of the first Sputnik by the U.S.S.R.
in 1957. In fact, the significant lobbying for the reforms had already occurred,
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so that it was more general aspects of international comparisons that were
influential in the decision to reform. Nevertheless, the belief by politicians,
military leaders, business and other societal leaders that scientific progress
and technological development, in some senses, was ahead in other competing
countries (politically and economically) contributed to the level of support
that these reforms enjoyed. Inter-country comparisons at these same levels
of political and economic leadership have likewise fueled the current reforms.
In country after country, the 1980s have been punctuated by statements by
prominent societal spokespersons and by reports on the state of the nation that
urge for more and better science education. These reports almost always now
refer to some research findings that present new comparative data or a
reworking of existing data on science participation and achievement. In this
sense they differ from the more polemical comparative statements in the 1950/
60s. The research the reports present or represent are, however, constrained
by the terms of reference of the review and or the biases of those responsible.
To command attention these reports often make use of sweeping rhetoric:
"Our children could be stragglers in a world of technology in which techno-
logical skills and sophistication are the basic capital of tomorrow's society"
(National Science Board 1983), is a typical example.
The two broad aims that were referred to in the curriculum reforms of the 1950/
60s - a scientifically based work force and a scientifically literate citizenry,
are both now regular targets for these reports. The former tends to be assessed
as having been met with varying degrees of quantitative success. The quantity
of the technological work force is now, however, seen as a necessary but not
sufficient condition for a healthy society. Equally important and not being
achieved is the quality of this work force's ability to address problems of
national significance, and to incorporate science and technology into the life
of society without destroying its culture. The second target is assessed as
having been addressed only incidentally thus far and accordingly, these
reports now give it a much greater priority than it had in the 1960s.
Psychological Theories of Teaching and Learning
Conceptions of teaching and learning as psychological processes have been
recurrent influences on curriculum reforms. They were certainly prominent
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in the projects of the 1950/60s. Piaget's name can be associated with a number
of the British projects and with some elementary school projects in the U.S.
Gagne's more behaviorist views were overtly influential in other American
elementary and junior high school projects, and in Britain's School Council
Integrated Science Project, while Bruner's ideas of discovery learning,
generalising concepts, and readiness to learn were espoused by a number of
senior secondary projects.
It is interesting to note that the translation of such general theories of teaching and
learning into curriculum materials for the teaching of science always resulted in
considerable slippage. Between the theory and the preparation of materials for
learning there were many opportunities for the influence to weaken, and even more
between the materials and classroom practice. These theories were also developed
largely from experimental studies in psychology that were divorced both from social
contexts like classrooms and from the content of science.
Of the theories that were influential in the 1950/60s only that of Piaget still
has much explicit currency. In the sense of the association between thinking
and experience, the idea of emphasizing concrete, hands-on experiences with
younger learners has widespread recognition in science curricula and in its
practice. In the sense of how these experiences can be used to develop logical
thinking about natural phenomena, only a few curricula are consistently
maintaining and exploiting this emphasis.
The most conspicious psychological influence on curriculum thinking in
science since 1980 has been the constructivist view of learning. In the 1970s,
research studies in science education began from several different directions
to explore how students at school conceived of various scientific phenomena
and of concepts such as force, life, electric current and solution, that science
uses to describe and explain them. Studies of how students viewed science
teaching and learning followed and now there is great interest in teaching
approaches that (a) take seriously the conceptions students already hold about
the phenomena and concepts of school science topics and (b) encourage the
construction via a reconstruction by the students themselves of new meaning
via reorganisation and linkage to what they already know. Interest in these
and other metacognitive processes are now also finding expression in science
classrooms along with many novel constructivist pedagogies.
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Philosophical Ideas of Science and Science Education
Philosophical influences were prominent in the 1960s. In Britain the heuristic
ideas of Armstrong at the turn of the century were often referred to in the
Nuffield projects (Jenkins 1979). Dewey's ideas of "learning by doing" had
a parallel historical influence in North America. Especially in relation to the
successful biology projects, Schwab (1962) provided a direct and powerful
input from the philosophy of science to the project teams of the Biological
Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS). He argued that the nature of science itself
is a process of enquiry - a search for cause and effect. To teach science as
inquiry, he suggested that two changes were needed in the role of the
laboratory. Firstly, a substantial part of the laboratory work should be made
to lead rather than lag the classroom phase of science teaching. Secondly, the
demonstration function of the laboratory should be subordinated to two other
functions, namely, to provide a tangible experience of some of the problems
of acquiring data dealt with in science, and to provide occasions for an
invitation to conduct miniature but exemplary programs of enquiry.
A different influence from the philosophy of science, was the definition of a
set of science processes as objectives for learning (i.e. as the things to be learnt)
in school science. The so-called, "process approach to science", with its
atomised components of the investigative methods scientists employ, became
very strongly associated with elementary or primary education. Initially, and
in Bruner's (1965) recommendations in The Process of Education, they had
been advocated as essential components of the content of science to comple-
ment and to give a dynamic thrust to the otherwise potentially sterile body of
facts and conceptual knowledge that was now being seen as appropriate for
school learners. Bruner also advocated that engagement in these processes
was a good way to learn science.
In the struggle, however, to apportion the new ideas about what the content
of school science might be between its traditional place in secondary
education, and the pressure for it also to be part of the curriculum of the earlier
years, a quite unphilosophical dissection occurred. Stated a little crudely but
without much exaggeration, the elementary or primary curriculum got the
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processes and the secondary curriculum retained the content of science which
was now much more conceptual and less factual and descriptive.
Different philosophical perspectives are now challenging the way these
earlier ideas should influence the science curriculum. For example, Hodson
(1988) has refined Schwab's earlier work on Science as Enquiry by pointing
out differences among the enquiries in science. Each one arises in relation to
specific subject matter and the essence lies in the sorts of concepts, data and
questions that are employed. Millar and Driver (1987) have also pointed to
this interweaving of phenomenon, concept and process. Lybeck (1981), in
his study of the teaching and learning of Archimedes principle, has provided
a splendid example of the point Hodson is making. In an earlier paper Hodson
(1985) used a philosophical basis to identify a number of distinct learnings in
science education. If these distinctions are not to be blurred or lost, he argues
that each needs a definite "space" in the curriculum so that students recognise
it for what it is and have enough practice with it. Horwood (1982) uses
Robert's (1982) idea of curriculum emphasis, to argue for a similar approach,
if coherent messages are to be received by students about the nature of science
that many curricula do intend to be taught. Jenkins et al. (1988) in their STSC
Chemistry set out to provide this sort of curriculum space for each of their
emphases: "science, technology, society and communication".
Millar and Driver argue that current understandings of the philosophy of
science deny a special connection between the primary science processes and
science. They are concerned about the predominant place many junior science
curricula have given to science processes compared with science knowledge
content. They also point out that the process view does not correspond with
the way science knowledge is learned and stored in the minds of students or
of scientists.
In a subsequent paper I would like to discuss the new influences on science
curricula and how these interact with the ones that have been described here.
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