Science: Process Skills & Knowledge

• Science encompasses process skills, scientific attitudes/values, and scientific content.
• Body of knowledge serves as a source of information to understand the world.
• The body of knowledge has four branches: factual, conceptual, theories, and laws/principles.
• Conceptual knowledge entails interrelationships among basic elements.
• Theories are explanations that appear to be true.
• Laws and principles are explanations that are proven true.
• Process skills involve activities that engage students in the use of scientific processes and realize concepts embedded in science topics.

Categories of Scientific Process Skills

• Basic process skills include observing and communicating.
• Observing involves using the five senses.
• Communicating involves transmitting information.
• Experimental process skills include controlling variables and forming hypotheses.
• Controlling variables involves the manipulation of variables.

Process Skills

• Observing uses five senses.
• Classifying involves sorting, classification, and hierarchical classification.
• Communicating transmits information.
• Using numbers includes counting, computing and using number relationships.
• Measuring involves making quantitative observations.
• Predicting forecasts future events.
• Inferring explains why events happened.
• Using space-time relationships identifies relative positions and motion of objects/changes over time.
• Defining operationally finds an equivalent way of measuring something indirectly.
• Interpreting data looks for patterns and uses them to formulate conclusions.
• Formulating hypotheses involves making an educated guess.
• Identifying and controlling variables includes manipulation of variables.
• Experimenting investigates the effects of variables.
• Model-building involves making concrete representations.

Science as Values

• Teachers should help students develop proper habits of mind and attitudes.

Scientific Attitudes (Wolfinger, 2000)

• Scientific attitudes include curiosity, honesty, willingness to suspend judgement, open-mindedness, skepticism and objectivity.
• Scientific attitudes also include a positive approach to failure, respect for the environment, and lack of superstition.

Scientific Values (National Research Council, 1996)

• Scientific values encompass longing to know/understand, questioning everything and searching for data/meaning.
• They also demand verification, respect logic, consider premises/consequences.

Teaching Science

• School science education is important for linkage to technology/industry, systematic learning, and prevention of cultural identity.

Challenges in Science Education

• Challenges include poor performance in international/national assessment studies.

Factors Affecting Low Performance of Filipino Students in Science (UP NISMED, 2005)

• Factors include the quality of teachers, teaching-learning processes, school curriculum, instructional materials and administrative support.

Findings

• Existing science curriculum at the basic education level needs to meet the expectations of the industry, university, and society.
• The present curriculum is overloaded, discipline-based and caters to college-bound students.

Project Team Vision

• Development of Grades 1-10 curriculum scientifically, technologically, and environmentally to create literate and productive members of society.

Project Team Core Group

• Consists of science educators, heads of professional science teachers' organizations, scientists/engineers, and senior specialists/researchers of DOST-SEI

The project team considers

• Core science concepts
• Learning how to learn
• Expectations for citizens in a technologically driven world
• Emerging social/global issues/concerns
• Curriculum planning/design.

Project Team For Whom

• Curriculum developers
• Faculty of Teacher Education institutions
• Teachers
• School Administrators
• Policy makers
• Instructional material developers

Guiding Principles of Science Curriculum Framework

• Science is for everyone and is both content and process.
• School science should be relevant and useful
• School science should nurture interest in learning and demonstrate commitment to develop a culture of science.