Science Education Reform: Motivations & Goals

• Scientific literacy influences decisions about personal and societal problems by students
• Educators influence students' ability to view science through a holistic lens
• Examining the philosophy, history, and sociology of science helps perceptions of science in a broader context
• Integrating explicit, reflective instruction regarding the nature of science (NOS) and scientific inquiry (SI) in science content can foster scientific literacy

Introduction

• Models of curriculum and instruction have been designed to improve the quality of science teaching and learning
• Models are related to the construct of scientific literacy
• The Six Domains for Teaching and Assessing Science Learning model shows skills related to the construct of scientific literacy
• Reasons for concern about quality differ across nations
• Rallying point for science education reform is the perceived level of scientific literacy among a nation's populace
• Reforms emphasize change for scientific literacy but it is not the first time science education has done so
• Concerns have typically focused on “scientific literacy" and the relevance of subject matter included in K-12 science curriculum
• Examining philosophy, history, and sociology of science can impact the lens through which students view the world
• The goal of science education remains scientific literacy, which impacts an individual's worldview
• Science standards have developed in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Australia, the U.S., South Africa, Germany, and Chile
• Reform efforts stress conceptual understanding of overarching science ideas (cause and effect, equilibrium, structure and function, cycles, scale)
• Such ideas go beyond individual disciplines within science
• "Less is more” communicates giving instructional time to in-depth understanding of unifying scientific concepts

Worldviews and Scientific Epistemology

• Focus on the dimension of the Six Domains for Teaching and Assessing Science model related to worldviews
• The dimension informs the teaching and learning of science and the achievement of scientific literacy
• A worldview focuses on individuals' perceptions of their role in the world, human relationship to the environment, and epistemology
• Views of science are a sub-set of one's overall worldview
• How scientific knowledge is developed is related to one's worldview
• The nature of scientific knowledge is "nature of science"
• How scientific knowledge is developed is specifically related to scientific inquiry
• Epistemological constructs color the lenses through which individuals view science, its implications, and lives
• Values and beliefs that shape groups of individuals' frames of reference constitute a worldview
• Understandings about epistemology do not singularly determine a frame of reference, they have a decided influence
• Helping students develop adequate conceptions of nature of science (NOS) and scientific inquiry (SI) has been an ongoing objective in science education
• For the past 100 years most scientists and science educators have agreed upon this objective
• Despite varying pedagogical or curricular emphases, there is strong agreement among the major reform efforts in science education about enhancing students' conceptions of NOS and scientific inquiry
• Students’ are unable to articulate the meaning of the phrase 'nature of science,' or delineate the associated characteristics of science
• Students have inadequate understandings of aspects of NOS and scientific inquiry
• Reform documents' emphasis on NOS and scientific inquiry are likely to have as little impact as earlier efforts
• Two critical and interrelated omissions have typified previous efforts as opposed to cognitive outcomes
• There is not a concerted professional development effort to communicate “NOS” and scientific inquiry
• There is a misunderstanding that NOS and scientific inquiry fall within the realm of affect and process
• They are just as much science content as reactions of photosynthesis or pH
• NOS and scientific inquiry provide the context for the subject matter specified in Standards and other reform documents
• NOS permeates all areas of the discipline-specific standards
• A teacher lacking conceptions of NOS and scientific inquiry, and a functional understanding of how to teach these aspects of science cannot orchestrate said instruction
• A functional understanding of NOS and scientific inquiry by teachers is prerequisite to achieving the vision of science teaching and learning
• These terms are used with little precision and high variability within educational circles
• Several misconceptions promoted by existing reform efforts are explored
• Without instructional attention to NOS and scientific inquiry, students will learn science subject matter in a context-free environment

What is NOS?

• "Nature of science" typically refers to the epistemology of science, science as a way of knowing, or the values and beliefs inherent to the development of scientific knowledge
• No consensus exists among philosophers of science, historians of science, scientists, and science educators on a specific definition for NOS
• The existence of an objective reality as compared to phenomenal realities is a case in point
• Scientific knowledge is tentative, empirically-based, subjective, necessarily involves human inference, imagination, and creativity, and is socially and culturally embedded
• Two aspects of science are the distinction between observations and inferences, and the functions of, and relationships between scientific theories and laws
• Students should be aware of observation and inference
• Observations are descriptive statements about natural phenomena that are accessible to the senses and which several observers can reach consensus with relative ease
• An example is that objects released above ground level tend to fall and hit the ground
• Inferences are statements about phenomena that are not directly accessible to the senses
• An example is that objects tend to fall to the ground because of “gravity.”
• Distinction between scientific laws and theories must be made
• Individuals hold a simplistic, hierarchical view of the relationship between theories and laws whereby theories become laws depending on the availability of supporting evidence
• Scientific laws have more importance than scientific theories, but this is wrong
• Theories and laws are different kinds of knowledge and one cannot turn into the other
• Laws are statements about the relationships among observable phenomena
• Boyle's law relates the pressure of a gas to its volume at a constant temperature
• Theories are inferred explanations about observable phenomena
• The kinetic molecular theory explains Boyle's law
• Theories are as legitimate a product of science as laws
• Scientists do not formulate theories in the hope that one day they will become laws
• Scientific theories serve important roles, such as guiding investigations and new research problems and explaining sets of seemingly unrelated observations in more than one field of investigation
• The kinetic molecular theory explains phenomena that relate to changes in the physical states of matter, others that relate to the rates of chemical reactions, and still other phenomena that relate to heat and its transfer
• Scientific knowledge is partially based on observations of the natural world, it involves human imagination and creativity
• Science involves the invention of explanations and this requires creativity by scientists
• Scientific concepts, such as atoms, black holes, and species, are functional theoretical models rather than faithful copies of reality
• Scientific knowledge is subjective or theory-laden
• Scientists' theoretical commitments, beliefs, previous knowledge, training, experiences, affect their work
• Background factors affect problems scientists investigate, how they conduct investigations, what they observe, and how they make sense of their observations
• Science never starts with neutral observations
• Observations are always motivated and guided by, and acquire meaning in reference to questions or problems
• Problems are derived from within theoretical perspectives
• Science is practiced in culture
• Scientists are a product of that culture
• Science affects and is affected by the elements/spheres of the culture in which it is embedded
• Elements include social fabric, power structures, politics, socioeconomic factors, philosophy, and religion
• Until recently, one dominant story about hominid evolution centered about “the man-hunter” and his role
• The story was consistent with the white-male culture that dominated scientific circles
• Later, the feminist story is centered about “the female-gatherer" and her central role
• Scientific knowledge is never absolute or certain
• Scientific claims change as new evidence is brought to bear on existing theories or laws, or as old evidence is reinterpreted
• It should be emphasized that tentativeness in science arises from scientific knowledge that is inferential, creative, and socially and culturally embedded
• Hypotheses, theories, and laws can never be proven
• It is important to note that individuals often conflate NOS with science processes
• Scientific processes are activities related to collecting and analyzing data, and drawing conclusions
• Observing and inferring are scientific processes
• NOS refers to the epistemological underpinnings of the activities of science
• Observations are necessarily theory-laden and are constrained by perceptual apparatus which belongs within the realm of NOS
• Teachers must have an in-depth understanding of what they are expected to teach
• Professional development efforts must also emphasize how teachers can facilitate the development of students' understandings of NOS

What is Scientific Inquiry?

• Scientific inquiry extends beyond the development of process skills such as observing, inferring, classifying, predicting, measuring, questioning, interpreting and analyzing data
• Scientific inquiry includes the traditional science processes, and combining of these processes with scientific knowledge, scientific reasoning and critical thinking to develop scientific knowledge
• Students are expected to develop scientific questions and then design and conduct investigations that will yield the data necessary for arriving at conclusions for the stated questions
• Not all students be able to design and conduct investigations
• All students at least be able to understand the rationale of an investigation and be able to critically analyze the claims made from the data collected
• Pre-college students believe a distorted view of scientific inquiry that has resulted from schooling, the media, and the format of most scientific reports
• That is, a fixed set and sequence of steps that all scientists follow when attempting to answer scientific questions is an “algorithm”
• Visions of reform, however, are quick that there is no fixed steps, but that question dictate the methods
• Scientific inquiry can be seen to take several forms: descriptive, correlational, and experimental
• Descriptive research is the form of research that often characterizes the beginning of a line of research. This research derives the variables and factors important to a particular situation of interest
• For example, most research in anatomy and taxonomy are descriptive in nature
• Initial research concerning the cardiovascular system was descriptive in nature: concerning the circulation of blood through the vessels
• Correlational from experimental research, the former explicates relationships among variables identified in descriptive research, the latter is a manipulation of variables attempt to derive causal relationships
• A single scientific method exists owes can to classical experimental design
• Experimental can be seen by designs THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD and most of the scientific investigations presented in science textbooks most often are experimental and distorted

Communicating Functional Understandings of NOS

• Reforms in science education have mishandled NOS and scientific inquiry
• Teachers understand aspects of science and little professional development, and little provided regarding scientific inquiry and NOS has been given from teachers
• There is a critical flaw in the various reforms' approach to the teaching of NOS and scientific inquiry, which has existed since the beginning
• Two general approaches have been advocated by reform documents and the science education literature to enhance students' and teachers' understandings of NOS and/or scientific inquiry
• One approach, an implicit approach, suggests that by “doing science” students will understand NOS and scientific inquiry
• That approach was adopted by curricula which emphasized hands-on, inquiry-based activities and/or process-skills instruction
• Research indicated that implicit approach was not effective in enhancing understand of NOS or scientific inquiry
• The implicit approach has two interrelated that compromise's effective, the assumption is understand of NOS and/or scientific Inquiry
• The second is the assumption assumes learning that NOS and scientific inquiry result from learning of "doing science"
• Second is the historical approach suggests that incorporating the history of science (HOS) in science teaching can serve to enhance of NOS
• Reviews which assess that including the HOS in science teaching states that the evidence is at most
• Studies has stated that specified courses in the history and/or philosophy of science impact of students' NOS scientific inquiry
• Goal of improving students' views of the scientific endeavor "should be planned for instead of being anticipated as a side effect of varying approaches to science teaching
• Explicit approach uses instruction that is geared and which utilizes elements from the history to imporve learners of views to learners
• Relative to previous explicit approaches, the research has provided
• A functional understanding of NOS and/or scientific inquiry facilitated explicit reflective approach
• Teachers must discuss the implication from NOS and scientific inquiry to encourage reflection from students
• Emphasize that no one can come to conclude of NOS and scientific inquiry that it is a by product of “doing” science-based activity NOS and scientific inquiry should be thought of as "" instruction from students
• K-12 should have good conceptions that scientific inquiry and NOS there objective should be planned

Concluding Remarks

• Discussion distinguished current reform efforts in science education from ones to the past, its scientific inquiry and NQS it is believed that is to develop with understanding of in what information states
• Science believe from understand scientific NQS there be equal to be given to their societal and personal
• It can be argue, with the knowledge of this in a goal it can is it to believe knowledge where it is is
• One can use an atom which is just the behavior of matter
• There scientific is it to be testing and validity from not point will has
• Can to to can understanding the NOS and scientific science needs there