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Leaving the Ivory Tower: Strategic Innovations in Science Education

Posted on: Sunday, 9 November 2003, 06:00 CST

LEAVING THE IVORY TOWER: STRATEGIC INNOVATIONS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION Science education as/for sociopolitical action. Wolff- Michael Roth and Jacques Desautels (eds), Peter Lang, New York, 2002, ISBN 0-8204-5696-9

Reforms in science education have a long history (Atkin & Black, 2003). Scientific literacy has become a policy aim of top priority because of the important role of the sciences for economic development. International comparative studies such as TIMSS and PISA have further stimulated research and development of new approaches to science teaching and learning (at least in countries where comparatively bad results have stirred up educational policy makers). One of the major developments in the last decades are the disappointment with behaviourist interpretations of teaching and learning and the integration of constructivist concepts into curricula and teaching practice (Jones & Brader-Araje, 2002; Jenkins, 2000). However, reforms appear to have only marginal effects on the established traditions of science education. This diagnosis is the starting point for this book. The collection of 12 articles comprise a broad spectrum of issues ranging from science education to epistemological issues of scientific research, from science education for primary school children, high school students, and minority children to the role of scientific knowledge in the public discussion of controversial issues (such as abortion). Most of them are based on constructivist assumptions. But there is practically no reference to this theoretical basis.

The book presents a harsh and multifaceted critique of mainstream concepts of science education which are considered unable to promote scientific literacy for all. Its main focus, however is on (partly) radical but well documented suggestions for reform. Their common focus is expressed in the introductory essay by Wolff-Michael Roth & Jacques Desautels ('Science education as/for sociopolitical action: charting the landscape'): the aim of science education today is the empowerment of citizens to become critical actors in society (p.4). The book provides a spectrum of interpretations of this general aim and of its consequences for science education. Central problems of science education are described by Edgar Jenkins in 'Linking school science education with action'.

(1) Science education has not yet taken account of recent changes in the differentiation of science:

* Basic or fundamental science (concerned with understanding natural phenomena and explaining relationships) is a relatively small part of the scientific research endeavour.

* Strategic science is concerned with the exploit-ability of scientific knowledge; the research agenda depends on investment priorities by private industry and by governments.

* Mandated science is concerned with the construction of expert advice or risk assessment (e.g. regarding hazardous materials) and the establishing of standards that can be enshrined in legislation or codes of practice.

According to Jenkins, issues of this last type of science and their context of uncertainty and complexity are encountered by most pupils outside school. It is with respect to such issues (such as the risk of living near an atomic power plant or taking drugs) that many pupils are likely to see science as both useful and relevant to their everyday lives.

(2) The quest for relevance in school science has stopped short of an acknowledgement that real-life problems are much more complicated than problems encountered in conventional school science courses. These problems in general are not directed towards action and tend to provide vicarious experience. For Jenkins it is not enough to choose problems that the students find appealing and satisfying if the goal is primarily that of understanding the relevant scientific knowledge and not the solution of the problems.

He concludes that 'most teachers are likely to lack the "knowledge in action" needed to help students to connect everyday experiences with what goes on in their science lessons' (27). His thought-provoking as well as provocative article maps the territory of most other papers in this book.

Stuart Lee & Wolff-Michael Roth follow up on this line and describe two indications that school science is not geared toward generating a scientifically literate populace:

* The 'main narratives of science' are divided into decontextualised facts, dissociated from other subjects, couched in time slots which are not consistent with those experienced while practicing science.

* School science devalues the life-worlds of students and encourages the production of a submissive populace mainly interested in getting 'things right' rather than being driven by their needs and interest to explore an issue.

In both of their two contributions to the book ('Learning science in the community' and 'Breaking the spell: science education for a free society') the authors argue for a concept of scientific literacy in which 'people make sense of and act appropriately toward their physical surroundings' (38). They illustrate their concept of scientific literacy by two examples in which knowledge production goes hand in hand with participation in a community: the building of a riffle in a brook and the studying of water quality in a river. In both examples the authors claim that 'students learn science not for its own sake, but because they are interested in the goal of making the community a better (ecological) place to live...' (77). Both contributions are quite radical examples of initiatives to develop schools into community centres, open to the outside world in the sense of both: making use of its wealth of resources for meaningful learning and exerting constructive influence by the production of local knowledge and hands on activities to improve conditions for life (see e.g. Posch, 2002).

Most other articles in the book do not go that far but rather try to reconceptualise the role of the teacher in science education. Roger Cross and Ronald Price, in particular, take this position in 'Teaching controversial science for social responsibility: the case of food production.' Considering the major objections against teaching controversial issues (unsystematic, superficial, biased, too difficult) their approach involves learning fundamental concepts of the sciences. For them one of the biggest inhibitors of a mature relationship to science is the assumed authority of science to speak 'truth statements'. Dealing with controversial issues should promote the ability to question and weigh evidence and develop an understanding of the social nature of science (103). The authors propose six processes of project teaching (defining the project, sorting out the questions, considering the concepts, investigations, modelling public debate, and decision-making in the classroom). This last element receives particular attention to help future citizens to handle evidence and make judgements in complex situations. They describe several examples of controversial curricular topics and provide a detailed curriculum proposal for the topic 'sustainable agriculture'.

A different conceptualisation of the role of the teacher is attempted by Kenneth Tobin in his case study 'Beyond the bold rhetoric of reform: (re)learning to teach science appropriately'. He provides both a refreshing and a depressing account of his attempts to apply the principles of 'street science' in a class of 35 students with a history of failure at high school. His intention to make science relevant for these students by focusing on inquiry of their neighbourhood was totally rejected by the students. Tobin provides a detailed analysis of this experience: he believes that it was the 'inadvertent use of a deficit model for the students and general ignorance of the social and cultural attributes of the students...Whereas I regarded the currency of this classroom community as knowledge, the students regarded the essential currency as respect' (135ff.). This is a moving and rare essay, because it is a credible account of educational lowlands without any embellishment. Nevertheless, the author is so much concerned with his personal role in his class that he ignores a structural explanation of his failure, that is the concentration of difficult and disadvantaged students ('so that others can learn') in one class.

Glen Aikenhead's concern ('Whose scientific knowledge? The colonizer and the colonized') is science education for Aboriginal students. In spite of this narrow focus his essay could convey an important general message: he starts from the assumption that 'for the vast majority of students, attempts to enculturate them into Western science are experienced as assimilation into a foreign culture' and that these attempts have had disastrous consequences for Aboriginal people' (152). For them, learning Western science is a cross-cultural event, a border crossing. In order to be able to assist them the teacher has to take the role of a 'culture broker'. His or her task is to make 'border crossings explicit for Aboriginal students by acknowledging students' personal preconceptions and Aboriginal worldviews that have a purpose in students' everyday culture' (155). The author describes the rationale of a curriculum for cross cultural science and technology units for teachers wishing to become culture brokers for grade 6 to 7 Aborigi\nal students. His main ideas are illustrated by a science unit on 'Healing'. In his view instruction should first establish an Aboriginal view of healing with special emphasis on the reflection on indigenous values (such as 'harmony with nature'), because of their role in orienting the students. He expects that dealing with such values would prepare the ground for understanding corresponding values that underlie Western science (e.g. 'power over nature', a value informing only the physical aspect of the Aboriginal framework which includes also emotional, mental and spiritual aspects). When values are made explicit, he expects students to experience foreignness of Western science as less threatening and their school science courses to become a natural part of their lives. Aikenhead's emphasis on the role of values could be a key to better understand the wide-spread disaffectedness of students with science education which tends to disregard both, their personal preconceptions as well as their values.

This idea is further elaborated in 'Science education as an exercise in disciplining versus a practice of/for social empowerment'. Marie Larochelle claims that 'students are deprived of the possibility of learning to engage in a reflexive process of testing and negotiating their particular practice of classifying versus that of scientists. They are thus confined to thinking according to plan - at the expense of developing their own expertise and achieving some grasp of various ways of standardising the world' (211). She presents several examples to substantiate her claim. One of them is a teaching scene in a primary school. In the scene the teacher wants students to categorise living things in animals and plants: A small excerpt shows more than explanations what she means (212):

Lucy: People aren't animals; they're humans

Teacher: People are animals, the same as dogs and cats and so on.

(...)

Jimmy: But people talk, and have two legs and arms, and move and can think. Animals aren't like that.

(Laughter)

Teacher: (...) That's enough. People are animals.

Larochelle wants to advance a type of science education that fosters social empowerment rather than discipline and docility. One of the approaches to achieve this is illustrated by a quote from Aikenhead: 'This is done by moving back and forth between the life- worlds and the science world switching language conventions explicitly, switching epistemologies explicitly' (215). If the conceptual framework of students is not taken seriously and if the difference between experience-based and scientific knowledge are not deliberated the result for many students will be irritation, resistance, and plain incomprehension. Nonetheless they will have learned something: they will have 'learned their place' and that the knowledge that counts is not their knowledge (224).

In 'The enactment of epistemological practice as subversive social action, the provocation of power, and anti-modernism' Jacques Desautels, Stephen Fleury and Jim Garrison follow up on this line: 'If students cannot bring all they know, including their ways of knowing, their epistemologies to the use and evaluation of scientific knowledge, than they will develop an inhibitory and disempowering relationship to knowledge' (240). One of their main arguments is that epistemology (the discourse about the conditions of the production and circulation of knowledge) 'is conceived as the product of practices and not as a theoretically driven mental process' (241). They show that even young children (given a few questions to a photograph of a reconstructed Viking dwelling) are able to classify answers as certain or uncertain and thereby to specify conditions of the production of knowledge. If scientific practices instead of theory and 'facts' are an object of inquiry students would learn to question the myth of infallible knowledge and make steps in transforming their relationship to knowledge. The authors do not want to diminish students' faith in science or scientific theories but rather to help them begin to develop an understanding that all knowledge, including science, is within a cultural and historical context.

In their concluding article 'From science to epistemology and back' Wolff-Michael Roth and G. Michael Bowen refer to an 'almost truism' that descriptions of scientific facts cannot be grounded in an appeal to nature because of the theory-laden character of observation, but are framed 'softer' or 'harder 'depending on the discursive support available. The authors want to provide similar experiences also to pupils. They involved 8-graders in an ecology class in self-defined projects and asked them to provide rationales for their work (such as 'Why should my research question be of general interest? Why did I operationalize the variables in this way?' etc.) and required them to convince their peers of their rationales. In a grade 12 physics class they added an epistemological component to the formal physics curriculum and involved the students 'not only in learning science but also in reflecting on the form that scientific (and common sense!) claims and evidence are constructed' (288). They found that these students began to interrogate not only scientific knowledge but also their everyday common sense perceptions and understandings (293). The authors claim that experiences of this kind would promote democratisation in society: 'As a society we can only become free from indoctrination if a sufficient number of members are enabled to interrogate all forms of knowledge and knowledge construction...we, as science educators, must allow students to learn not only how to use the various discourses as resources, but ways of critically questioning these discourses' (296).

This book is an bold and important step forward in the discourse on innovations in science education. Most of its recommendations are quite realistic and provide excellent food for thought and further experimentation. They are in line with the ongoing discussion within OECD on the future of schooling (Project 'Schooling for Tomorrow'). In a recent OECD document (2001) scenarios of possible futures of schools have been presented, grouped in status quo, re-schooling and de-schooling scenarios. The two re-schooling scenarios are particularly relevant to this book: 'Schools as Core Social Centres' and 'Schools as Focused Learning Organisations'. Both scenarios receive increasing international attention but are not easily compatible with each other. The title Science education as/for sociopolitical action expresses the tension between them, and the book provides well founded educational suggestions for both scenarios but leaves open what their integration would mean for the structure of schooling and for the role of schools in society. Nonetheless, the case studies of this book provide science teachers and teacher educators with good arguments to explore the educational potential outside the ivory tower of traditional science education.

REFERENCES

ATKIN, J.M. & BLACK, P. (Eds.) (2003). Inside science education reform: a history of curricular and policy change, New York: Teachers College Press.

JENKINS, E.W. (2000). Constructivism in school science education: Powerful model or the most dangerous intellectual tendency? Science & Education, 9, 599-610.

JONES, G. & BRADER-ARAJE, L. (2002).The impact of constructivism on education: language, discourse and meaning, American Communication Journal 5(3) no page numbers, ( w ww.acjournal.org/ holdings/vol5/iss3/spccial/jones.htm).

OECD (2001). What schools for the future? Paris: OECD (a modified version of this book is announced for 2003).

POSCH, P. (2002). Changes in the culture of teaching and learning and implications for action research. In C. Day, J. Elliott, B. Somekh & R. Winter (Eds.): Theory and practice in action research: some international perspectives (pp.178-188). Oxford: Symposium Books.

PETER POSCH

University of Klagenfurt, Austria

Contact details

Austrian Center for Interdisciplinary Studies

Dept. for Schools and Societal Learning,

Sterneckstrasse 15,

A-9020 Klagenfurt

Austria

E-mail: Peter.Posch@uni-klu.ac.at

Copyright University of Leeds, Centre for Studies in Science and Mathematics Education 2003

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