Before getting into a discussion about the place of science in the national curriculum, it is important to explore the place of science in a wider context. If we define science as a method of systematic investigation to explain natural and physical phenomena, then this has existed for a very long time. But the distinction of ‘modern’ science came about at a time when medicine and technology was developing rapidly. Some argue that this was mainly due to the shift from a previously popular philosophical way of thinking towards a more scientific approach. For example Hippocrates was a famous philosopher but he was also labeled as ‘the father of medicine’ because he was one of the first people to use scientific methodology which involved systematic trials, recording observations and rejecting treatments that lacked supporting evidence (Ziman, 2000). Such methodology is the basis of attainment target one (investigations) in the science national curriculum, and it plays an important part in science education from key stage one through to higher education. Hippocrates also taught groups of students what he knew, as he recognized the need to train and teach future generations the importance of carrying out scientific methodology and the value of sharing and recording existing knowledge (even with its flaws!), if there was to be any future scientific development (Ziman, 2000).
There is an on-going debate based on a range of views about the importance of science in society, and consequently science in the education system. These views affect the existence of science in the national curriculum, as well as the aims, content and structure of science education. The position held by teachers in such debates also affects the kind of teaching they practice. By carrying out an audit created by Wellington (2000) has helped me to recognize where my beliefs lie. As I expected, I generally fall in the centre of all the categories, a criticism for this audit is that there were certain areas that I had strong opinions about but this was not reflected in the overall evaluation. However, I did lean slightly towards relativism, where I believed that scientific truth is not absolute; it is affected by experimental techniques and can vary from one individual to another. However, the fact that I am also a decontextualist shows that I do believe that scientific knowledge should be independent of its cultural location, even though it is rarely achieved (Wellington, 2000). Most of the time scientific theories are instruments that we can use but are not statements that indicate the truth about the world (instrumentalist). However, I do support Thomas Kuhn’s school of thinking, where science education has very important tools in interrogating nature and working out underlying laws and theories, as apposed to Karl Popper’s perception of science being a process of deducting a list of possible hypothesizes to get to the truth (Stevenson & Byerly, 1995).
Over the past century, the position of science education has constantly shifted, from a subject being taught to a minority of higher ability males to a compulsory subject from key stage one to four (Alsop & Hicks, 2001). There has been much debate over why and how science is taught, and this is very much depended on how science is viewed. For example, if the aims of the national curriculum are based on a contextual view, then the content will be based around solving problems in society such as global warming or making advancement in medicine and technology. This consequently may lead to an emphasis on scientific enquiry and scientific process. However, if the aims of the science curriculum are based on a decontextual viewpoint, then the emphasis on science teaching will on content and passing on previous knowledge (‘knowledge for knowledge sake’), which consequently questions the need for science to be compulsory (Ross, Keith et. al, 2000). Recently, this has been a major topic of discussion in the education sector, and currently pilot schemes are being carried out to test the idea of making science an optional choice to some extent. The recent highlight of this issue may be partly due to the fact that the public is shifting from a realist’s view of science to a more instrumental view of science, because of the decreasing faith of science in society, which may be a counter effect of issues relating to drug resistance, GM food, and nuclear wars and so on.
Previously however, there was a demand to emphasis scientific process, as science was seen as a tool to discover the truth about things and develop new ideas and techniques in areas such as medicine, technology, astronomy etc. This was why when the national curriculum was updated from the 1989 version, scientific enquiry (attainment target one) made up one quarter of the content, which was equal to the individual science specializations (DfEE, 1999). And, this was the case from as early as key stage one to all the way through to key stage four, stating in the progamme of study that at key stage one it will help them ‘to explore and investigate the world of science and develop fuller understanding of science phenomena’ (DfEE, 1999). The criteria stated that at level one, this was through the means of observing familiar materials and events.
Science education can have a wider application in teaching pupils to obtain critical thinking skills and how to apply such thinking to problem solving situations. This idea is reflected in the recent emphasis on including cross-curricular themes such as looking at literacy, numeracy and ICT skills in science teaching. This move may also be a response to the pressure of making science non-compulsory, as well as dealing with the issues relating to the ‘hidden curriculum’. The ‘hidden curriculum’ is about the difficulties experienced by certain students to access the science education provided to them. And, if the national curriculum was to fulfill ones of its main aims ‘to make education available to all’, this problem had to be addressed (Alsop & Hicks, 2001).
The content of the science curriculum is another major on-going debate. For example, having an education system that categorizes learning into subjects has shown that pupils find it hard to link material across the curriculum. When I was teaching my year 9 class about using the speed and pressure equation, they found it difficult to rearrange the formulas even though they have been taught how to do it in mathematics. Even though attempts have been made in the 1970s, to create an education that draws in knowledge form various fields, for example teaching brain activity with knowledge from biology, chemistry and psychology, the attempt has proven to be successful. This may have been for various reasons such as difficulty in structuring the content and finding teachers with such broad knowledge. And, even though the national curriculum has attempted to put the science content under different headings instead of biology, chemistry and physics (to indicate sharing of content), most schools teach the topics with clear differentiation between the sciences (Ross, Keith et. al, 2000).
There is also an issue about whether areas such as geology, psychology and archeology are ‘real’ sciences and if they should be included in the science curriculum or whether they should be taught under a different subject such as PSE or citizenship. However, Ofsted inspection (1998) has indicated that subjects such as PSE or citizenship that have been introduced recently, were the ‘poor relations of the curriculum in many schools’, as links were not made well between the various subjects and they were usually regarded as the non-important subjects in the school system (Wellington, 2000). By moving moral and social analysis of scientific topics to other subject areas such as citizenship, and presenting scientific content as facts without evaluating the values it has, can lead to negative misinterputations (especially when majority of the scientific information is taught as ‘nothing but the truth’). For example when I observed a year 10 class being taught the chemistry behind nuclear fission, the teacher felt it was relevant to teach the biological, economical and historical consequence of a nuclear bomb even though there was no mention of this in the scheme of work. He believed that it was important to indicate that science can create negative moral and social dilemmas (e.g. Cloning and GM food). Therefore, science in the national curriculum may be failing to meet one of its aims which are to ‘contribute to the pupil’s spiritual, social and cultural development’ (Ross, Keith et. al, 2000).
However, one may argue that the concept of making discoveries and theorizing possible reasons and mechanisms for natural and physical happenings does encourage creative thinking in science. And, what science does and other subject might fail to do, is to put this creativity and lateral thinking into to a practical form so that the ‘truth’ can be discovered or a conclusion can be reached (Wellington, 2000). This may in itself encourage different groups with different ideas to work together and come to an agreed outcome, rather than having continuous debates. Therefore, science can provide a form of prove and evidence that other subject can not. Recent adaptation of scientific methods in psychology (and other subjects) has shown that even quite abstract concepts can be operationalisied and investigated using scientific methodology (i.e. in psychology). However, others may argue that this encourages the idea that there is only two possible outcomes to any concept (either right or wrong) which is not the case in most life processes. So, from another viewpoint science can actually reduce creative thinking and encourage pupils to accept that, all scientific knowledge is ‘mutually exclusive’ and it is nothing but the truth (Driver, Leech, Millar & Scott, 1996). Even though in the world of research science there are constantly new discoveries that contradict old ideas, this fact is not usually reflected in the classroom teaching. I observed a class where the big bang theory was taught. Even though the big bang theory is only a theory, the content was taught in such a manner that the big bang theory was put forward as the ‘absolute truth’ (look at appendix 2). So later, when I inquired on the students’ views they indicated that the big bang theory is correct because it is scientific and because the science teacher said so! However, in actual fact just like in religious education no-one can actually prove that God created life on earth; science can never actually prove the big bang theory.
There are a lot of concepts in science that are based on things we cannot see, for examples forces, energy, electrons and protons, but it is the backbone of most scientific theory, which was concluded by the deduction of other theories (deductivist method). Similar to science, varies religions have also brought forward supporting evidence in a similar way, however many students have the belief that evidence from a scientist is more reliable just because it’s coming from a scientist (Driver, Leech, Millar & Scott, 1996). Another point to consider is that a lot of pupils do not also know that, majority of scientific knowledge and the outcomes of new discoveries is based on ‘statistically significant’ research (inductivist approach).
Scientist may argue that attainment one emphasizes the need to have evidence to support a hypothesis; however a lot of students see investigations and content related work as separate, and they do not usually transfer the skills form either component very well. And, doing practicals in a 50 minute science lesson may give the wrong perception of how scientific discoveries are actually made, for example in reality it took decades to discover vaccination (Parkinson, 2004). So, in most cases pupils use practicals as a kinesthetic method to help them understand concepts or to confirm a theory rather than as a creative method of scientific discovery. So, where science may teach pupils to believe the content they are taught without much questioning, other subjects may teach them to look for supporting evidence and arguments to a theory. So, by adopting methods used in other subjects such as having debates may actually help pupils develop evaluative skills in content related work which they can transfer to practical work. It may also teach them that it is acceptable to have different viewpoints and theories parallel to each other (Reiss, 1993).
In conclusion, science education not only encourages the invention of new things but shows the need for using certain methodology to enable this gain, such as systematically going though previous knowledge (secondary sources), trying out different variables using controls, recognizing cause and effect relationships and the effect of confounding variables. Such skills are essential for the future generation, if they are to for example continue to develop things like new drugs with accuracy. However improvement in the science curriculum may also teach them how to analyze the consequences of developing such drugs (Parkinson, 2004). On an individual level there are other benefits too, for example using scientific approaches to solve problems teaches students to use rigorous trial and error methods to accept or reject solutions (that might be unrelated to science) as well as how to use knowledge (positive or negative) to move forward and articulate new ideas (Reiss, 1993). As we have seen the value of such methodology has been recognized and adopted by other fields such as psychology, politics and sports.
The national curriculum has made a very good attempt to standardize science education and make it more accessible to all, however it has not adequately addressed all the issues nor has it provided a clear guidance into how to go about achieving the list of optimistic instructions it has lays out. Therefore, a doubt is created into whether the aims have been carefully thought out using real life classroom situations in mind. So a suggestion for improvement may be, to test the practicalities of the individual aims and make detailed changes and suggestions accordingly. Currently as it stands, the national curriculum has highlighted a lot of major issues, but how much of it is actually addressed is left to the individual teacher’s judgments; which may not be a lot, due to the ambiguous nature of the curriculum aims.
Bibliography
Alsop,S.,Hicks, K (2001) Teaching Science, Kogan Page: London
DfEE (1999) Science in the national Curriculum, QCA: London
Driver, R., Leech, J., Millar,R and Scott, P (1996) Young People’s Images of Science. Buckingham Open University Press.
Parkinson, J (2004) Improving Secondary Science Teaching, Routledge Falmer: London
Reiss, M (1993) Science Education for a Pluralist Society. Open University: Buckingham
Ross, Keith et. al (2000) Teaching Secondary Science, David Fulton Publishers: London
Sevenson, L.,Byerly, H (1995) The Many Faces of Science: An Introduction to Scientists, Values and Society. Westview: Oxford
Wellington, J (2000) Teaching and Learning Secondary Science: contemporary issues and practical approaches. Routledge: London.
Ziman, J (2000) Real Science, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
