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SCIENCE TEACHING: A View From the Classroom

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 October 2005, 06:00 CDT

By Evans, Owen

Debate over the nature and quality of science teaching at high schools is building with strong claims being made concerning the quality of science teachers and a looming shortage of suitable graduates to meet the demands of industry. Owen Evans questions some of the assumptions that are at the heart of this debate.

The June 2005 issue of Australasian Science carried two articles as well as editorial comment highlighting concern among industry groups and academics that there is a crisis in science education in Australia (AS, June 2005, p. 1,13,44). Similar articles appeared in the major metropolitan newspapers in response to a Melbourne University report entilied Who's Teaching Science? The recurring theme is that poor science teaching in Australian schools is failing to inspire the more able students to go on to further studies, and that an overall dumbing down of the curriculum is reducing the quality of those who do make this choice.

As a high school science teacher with experience spanning 30 years, I feel compelled to apply scrutiny to these allegations.

Has there been a significant decline in the number of students studying science? This is a complex issue and has no simple answer. Science generally forms part of the compulsory curriculum until the end of Year 10, reflecting the widely held belief that scientific literacy is a prerequisite for an informed community that can democratically debate the major issues facing society today. It also means that junior science teaching requires an approach that can engage students who otherwise have little aptitude for or desire to learn the formal structures of scientific thought - no easy task among the competing noise of sport, puberty and all the other distractions of preadolescence.

Even so, a major study in 2001 by the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs found that 24% of students surveyed are "often, very often or always excited about what they do", which means that around 250.000 students were stimulated by their experiences in the classroom that year.

There is a big drop-out, however, when students choose their subjects in senior high school, and the proportion studying science has fallen in recent years. It is assumed by the critics that the numbers of science students should have grown in concert with increasing retention rates overall, but this assertion fails to take into account the growth in vocational and technical courses. The academically oriented enabling sciences are now a much smaller component of the overall subject mix, so it is not surprising that numbers in traditional courses have become diluted.

A similar pattern exists at tertiary level. Greg Simpson, President of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI), is concerned at a 0.9% drop in the proportion of students studying chemistry in universities between 1989 and 2003 (AS, June 2005, p.44). Likewise a report published in May by Kerri-Lee Krause from the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne shows a decline of around 5000 students studying science over the period 1996-2003. Should these figures set the alarm bells ringing?

Perhaps not! Over the same period there was an increase of around 17,000 studying Information Technology (IT). This growth area may well have attracted students away from the physical sciences with its promise of highly rewarding employment during the techboom.

Krause reported that future job prospects are a significant factor determining the choice of university courses. That probably explains why in 2003-04 there was a strong swing back to science as employment prospects in IT all but disappeared.

But Australia faces a massive shortfall of future scientists - doesn't it? Queensland's Chief Scientist, Prof Peter Andrews, has predicted that we will need an extra 75,000 scientists and engineers by 2010 to fuel the growth of new technologies. If correct, this demand will ensure a rosy career for anyone who contemplates studying science for years to come.

So should I be rounding up every science nerd at school and encouraging them to invest the next 9 years of their lives in gaining a PhD in nanotechnology or genomics? Emphatically no! This claim is patent hyperbole.

Andrews arrives at his prediction by assuming that Australia will undergo a massive culture shift away from extractive industries to high-tech. In his own words: "So what if we fix the investment problem? What if we actually make the cultural change that sees Australians investing in knowledgebased industries rather than horseraces, real estate and holes in the ground. What would happen then?"

He answers his rhetorical question by extrapolating the amount of investment and employment levels from countries already heavily involved in these industries to estimate the effect on Australia. In this process he multiplies an existing workforce of 5700 in biotechnology into a total of 30,000 in 5 years and then applies the same factor across all of Australia's science and technology-based industries. Andrews concludes his justification with the statement: "So there's the headline. Wanted: 75,000 additional scientists, preferably with PhDs in the enabling sciences, by 2010. How will we get there?"

Sadly, there is no likelihood that his dream will be realised. Growth in science-based jobs will most likely continue its historic trend of at best only a few hundred new jobs per year - hardly an attractive area in which to forge a vocation.

This is not a sound basis for decision-making by 15-year-olds as they select their senior courses at high school. A PhD is 9 years away, an MSc 7 years and an Honours degree 4 years. Students need some confidence that there will be a pay-off for their investment when they reach the end of their studies.

Tertiary entrance into science requires high grades at the end of Year 12, and physics and chemistry - while generally weighted highly in university selection indices - carry a significant risk of poor results in the final exams. Students are no fools. When they make their choices they weigh up the commitment of time and intellectual effort required to achieve the goals they want. They need some surety that their choice of the enabling sciences is a wise one. They deserve more than slogans to guide them.

There is no denying that contemporary science education is in crisis. The conflicting demands of teaching science literacy and of preparing students for future tertiary studies create a tension in classroom practice that must be resolved An ongoing argument between those academics who see learning as a process of personal inquiry and those who believe it to be the means of disseminating a body of knowledge features in the pages of science teaching journals as well as in mainstream media. Value-laden terms such as "dumbing down" and "soft science" are loosely thrown around by commentators who probably learned their own science in simpler and far less contentious times.

Those days have gone. Science curricula now have to address such complex phenomena as climate change, genetically modified foods and the origins of the universe in terms that a scientifically nave teenager can comprehend.

This demands a significant rethink of how our science community approaches education. The conversation will be complex and will take us into areas that are foreign to traditionalists.

My plea is that all the stakeholders in this debate apply the same rigour and analysis to their arguments that we demand from our science students, and that those in industry and academia recognise the changed realities facing their colleagues in the classroom.

It is somewhat demoralising to be continually regarded as a component of the problem rather than part of the solution. We need to enter into an inclusive dialogue if we are to achieve a lasting resolution of this pressing issue.

Owen Evans teaches science and biology at Blayney High School in the central-west of NSW, and is currently studying towards a doctorate in Education.

Copyright Control Publications Pty Ltd Sep 2005

Source: Australasian Science

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