In the past century, school science has been dominated by the educational ... scientific and technological issues are increasingly dominating the political ...
Evidence-based Practice in Science Education (EPSE) Research Network
What should we teach about science? A Delphi study
Jonathan Osborne, Mary Ratcliffe, Sue Collins, Robin Millar and Rick Duschl
Contents
Executive Summary
1
Introduction
4
Teaching the Nature of Science: Difficulties and Dilemmas
7
Methodologies and Findings
19
Conclusions and Implications
75
Executive Summary Rationale In the past century, school science has been dominated by the educational requirements of our future scientists. That is, it has become and remained fundamentally an education in science for those who wish to pursue scientific and technically related careers. However, during the past two decades, the growing concern about the relationship between science and society has led to a concern to improve the quality of formal education about science – in short, to ask what kind of school science education is required for citizenship in a participatory democracy? For the separation of scientific knowledge from the political, cultural and historical context of its production endows it with status as exact, ‘true’ and absolute – leaving the public without the skills to understand science in a variety of public contexts where scientific knowledge is often contingent and tentative. And, given that scientific and technological issues are increasingly dominating the political agendas confronting society, the meagre public education about science undermines societies’ commitment to democratic pluralism. For the lack of any understanding of how scientific knowledge is produced, how it is evaluated or the motives for its production leaves its citizens too dependent on the knowledge of experts for critical decision making. Yet, part of the difficulty of determining what should be taught about science is the failure to agree an acceptable account of science within the scientific community, or amongst philosophers and sociologists, let alone between the various communities. Hence, the lack of any consensus makes the task of defining that aspect of the formal science curriculum which might portray ‘ideas about science’ problematic for policy makers – the more so as there is, in contrast, a well-established consensus about the content aspect of science curricula. This study sought, therefore, to make a contribution towards clarifying this debate and dilemma by seeking to establish empirically the extent of consensus within the relevant communities about a simplified or ‘vulgarised’ account of science. That is it sought to determine the characteristics of scientific enquiry and those aspects of the nature of scientific knowledge that should form an essential component of the school science curriculum.
Methods The study reported here sought to explore this issue by undertaking a Delphi study with a group consisting of 23 individuals drawn from 5 groups – scientists, philosophers, sociologists of science, science educators, and science teachers. Members of the first four groups were recruited on the basis that they held an international reputation in the field, or were Fellows of the Royal Society. Science teachers were selected on the basis that they had either received awards for the quality of their teaching, or had published notable textbooks in the field. As is standard in all such Delphi studies, none of the participants were aware of who the other participants were.
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Executive Summary
The study consisted of three rounds. In the first, the participants were asked to answer three open-ended questions about science education up to the age of 16. These were: 1. 2. 3.
What, if anything, do you think should be taught about the methods of science? What, if anything, do you think should be taught about the nature of scientific knowledge? What, if anything, do you think should be taught about the institutions and social practices of science?
The data from this first round was systematically coded and 30 broad themes emerged in three major categories: - The Methods of Science, The Nature of Scientific Knowledge, and The Institutions and Social Practices of Science. In the second round, a summary descriptor was generated for each theme and returned to the participants together with a selection of supporting comments. Participants were asked to rank the importance of the theme and justify their ranking with written comments. This process led to a reduction in the number of themes to 18 which were again returned to participants for ranking and comment in the third and final round. From this final round emerged 9 themes which were ranked 4 or above (on a 5 point scale) by at least two thirds of the participants, and whose average rating changed by less than 33% between round 2 and round 3.
Conclusions and Findings Two major findings emerge from this study: 1. There exists support and broad agreement for nine themes dealing with aspects of the nature of science that school students should encounter by the end of compulsory schooling. The evidence supporting this conclusion is the high degree of consensus concerning these themes and the high stability in the positive ratings of their importance, both within and between groups. 2.
Many of the aspects of the nature of science represented by the themes have features that are interrelated and cannot be taught independently of each other.
This second conclusion emerges from the copious comments made by many of the participants about the emerging themes. These participants recognised both that the account of science represented by the 9 themes may be limited, and that is difficult to specify such aspects of science clearly and unambiguously. Indeed, from an analysis of the comments of the participants, it is clear that many felt that some of the ideas presented in the theme summaries were intertwined and not resolvable into separate propositions. This finding suggests, therefore, that, whilst the research process has required the separation and resolution of these components in order to weight their significance and import, it should not be taken to imply a consensus that they should be represented and communicated in that manner.
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Executive Summary In addition, four of the themes failed to meet our criteria for inclusion by only a few percentage points. As any criteria for consensus are to some extent arbitrary, we see the data presented in this report not as indicating that some ideas are essential to the curriculum and others are not, but as indicating a gradation of consensus about the significance of various components to an account of science rather than any singular definitive account.
Implications To our knowledge, no other similar empirical study has been undertaken. The evidence of the level of consensus we have found within the wider science and science education community about the account of science that should be communicated through formal science education removes one of the major impediments to teaching about science. As several of the components of this account are either absent from existing curricula, or given minimal treatment, the findings lend support to the argument that school science needs to devote more time to teaching about science and less time to details of the content of the scientific canon. This research, therefore, provides a significant body of empirical evidence to buttress the case for placing the nature of science and its processes of enquiry at the core rather than the margins of science education.
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Introduction This report presents the findings of an empirical study conducted, using a Delphi technique, to answer the question ‘What should be taught to school students about the nature of science?’ The study was one of four projects of a funded research network involving the University of York, the University of Leeds, the University of Southampton and King’s College London. The principal aim was to develop and improve evidence-based practice in science education (EPSE) 1 . This work was funded by the UK Economic and Social Science Research Council as part of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme. As such, the study sought to provide empirical evidence of what the ‘expert’ community engaged with communicating and teaching science thought was important for the average citizen to understand about science (as opposed to a knowledge of its content) by the end of their formal education. The need for such a study was perceived to lie in the growing arguments for science education to provide a more effective preparation for citizenship (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993; National Academy of Science, 1995; American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1998; Millar & Osborne, 1998). For, whilst there has been almost global acceptance that formal science education is an essential component of every young person’s education, there has been little attempt to develop a curriculum that is commensurate with such systemic reforms. Rather, too often, science courses have been adapted from curricula whose roots lie in programmes that were essentially conceived as foundational studies for those who were to become the next generation of scientists. However, the core status of science can be justified only if it offers something of universal value to all, and not solely to the minority who will become the next generation of scientists (AAAS, 1998, Millar and Osborne, 1998; Fensham, 2000). Traditionally, school science has often given scant and largely tacit treatment to the nature, practices and processes of science with the consequence that most pupils leave school with naïve or limited conceptions of science (Driver, Leach, Millar, & Scott, 1996). Yet, it is knowledge about science which many have argued is essential for the education of the future citizen (Fuller, 1997; Irwin, 1995; Jenkins, 1997; Millar, 1996). This aspiration is problematic, however, as contemporary academic scholarship would suggest that the nature of science is a contested domain with little consensus or agreement about a view of science that might be communicated in school science (Alters, 1997; Laudan, 1990; Taylor, 1996). This study sought, therefore, to test whether it was possible to find any consensus amongst the community engaged with science communication about those aspects of the nature of science that might be communicated successfully to school students. The report is in three parts: The first section considers and reviews the many issues in the burgeoning body of academic literature that surrounds the nature of science and its teaching in school science; the second, and major part, presents the methodology of this study and its findings; the third discusses the conclusions that can be drawn from this work and their implications for the teaching of science.. 1
Further details of the other work of this project can be found on the web site www.york.ac.uk/depts/educ/projs/EPSE
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Teaching the Nature of Science
Part 1: Teaching the Nature of Science: Difficulties and dilemmas 1.1 Why teach the nature of science? Science education attempts to wrestle with three conflicting requirements – what Collins (2000) terms the horns of a trilemma. On the one hand (Collins’ first horn) science education wants to demonstrate the tremendous liberatory power that science offers – a combination of the excitement and thrill that comes from the ability to discover and create new knowledge, the liberation from the shackles of received wisdom, and the tremendous insights and understanding of the material world that it offers. This emphasis is apparent in the arguments of the advocates of the Nuffield courses of the 1960s where school science was to offer pupils the opportunity ‘to be a scientist for a day’. More recently, it is can be seen in the aspirations of the American educational reforms where it is explicitly stated that students at all grade levels ‘should have the opportunity to use scientific inquiry and develop the ability to think and act in the ways associated with [scientific] inquiry’ (National Academy of Science, 1995). Yet its mechanism for achieving such an aim is to offer a dogmatic, authoritarian and extended science education where students must accept much of what they are told as unequivocal, uncontested and unquestioned (Claxton, 1991) – Collins’ second horn. And it is only when they finally begin practising as scientists that the workings of science will become more transparent. Moreover, the emphasis of science education on foundational aspects such as the definition of current, the parts of the body or the names of the planets and their order, rather than the major themes or explanatory theories, such as the origin and evolution of the Universe or the evolution of the species, means that any sense of the cultural achievement that science represents is belittled. As the report Beyond 2000 states: We have lost sight of the major ideas that science has to tell. To borrow an architectural metaphor, it is impossible to see the whole building if we focus too closely on the individual bricks. Yet, without a change of focus, it is impossible to see whether you are looking at St Paul’s Cathedral or a pile of bricks, or to appreciate what it is that makes St Paul’s one the world’s great churches. In the same way, an over concentration on the detailed content of science may prevent students appreciating why Dalton’s ideas about atoms, or Darwin’s ideas about natural selection, are among the most powerful and significant pieces of knowledge we possess. (Millar & Osborne, 1998:13)
The outcome is that science education may, in a non-trivial sense, be science’s worst enemy, leaving far too many pupils with a confused sense of the significance of what they have learnt and, more seriously, a potentially enduring negative attitude to the subject itself (Osborne & Collins, 2000; Osborne, Driver, & Simon, 1996). Such an outcome, whilst regrettable, does little harm to the traditional education of the future scientist – which demands a lot of routine and rote learning to acquire the basics of the domain. In fact, much of traditional science education can be seen as a test of an individual’s ability to sustain endeavour when confronted by the weight and authority of scientific knowledge and its difficulty and complexity – a quality which is an essential requirement for the professional scientist. 7
Teaching the Nature of Science
An inevitable outcome, however, is that such an education ignores or neglects the third horn of Collins’ trilemma, the requirement to provide its students with some picture of the inner workings of science – knowledge, that is, of science-in-themaking (Latour, 1985). Such knowledge is essential for the future citizen who must make judgements about reports about new scientific discoveries and applications of scientific knowledge. Contemporary society, it is argued (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989; Jenkins, 1997; Jenkins, 1998; Millar, 1996; Millar & Osborne, 1998), requires a populace who have a better understanding of the workings of science that enables them to engage in a critical dialogue about the political and moral dilemmas posed by science and technology, and arrive at considered decisions. Informed use by citizens and society of new developments in science will, for instance, require the ability to judge whether an argument is sound, and to differentiate evidence from hypotheses, conclusions from observations and correlations from causes. Another imperative driving the need to teach more about science is the growing influence of science and technology on our society. For science and technology pose questions which seem to require complex and specialised knowledge that only an elite possess. Yet a core commitment of democratic Western societies is the principle that all people should be able to contribute to the making of significant decisions (Nelkin, 1975) – essentially that the plurality of voices matters regardless of expertise. As the European White Paper on Education and Training (1995) argued: ..this does not mean turning everyone into a scientific expert, but enabling them to fulfil an enlightened role in making choices which affect their environment and to understand in broad terms the social implications of debates between experts. There is similarly a need to make everyone capable of making considered decisions as consumers. (p28)
Within science education, the response has been to argue for a curriculum that recognises the need to prepare pupils to engage critically with such issues, recognising both the strengths and the limitations of science. Millar, for instance, sees one of the major purposes of science education as ‘equipping students to respond to socio-scientific issues’ and that ‘this requires an understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge’ (Millar, 1997:101). In the same volume, both Millar and Jenkins (1997) suggest that pupils should be provided with some insight into the difficulty of generating reliable and consensual understanding of the natural world. Likewise, Driver et al. (1996) argue that: Some explicit reflection on the nature of scientific knowledge, the role of observation and experiment, the nature of theory, and the relationship between evidence and theory, is an essential component of this aspect of understanding of science. (Driver et al., 1996:14)
Further doubt is cast on the appropriateness of the traditional emphasis on content knowledge in science education for the majority of young people by evidence that the knowledge acquired has an evanescent quality. A number of well-funded surveys have been conducted in the UK (Durant, Evans, & Thomas, 1989), Europe (Miller, Pardo, & Niwa, 1997) and the United States (Miller, 1995). These surveys used a mix of closed questions, true-false quizzes containing items such as ‘Is it true that:– ‘lasers work by focussing sound waves?’, ‘All radioactivity is man made?’, ‘Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria’, and open questions. A few of the results from one such
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Teaching the Nature of Science survey are shown in Table 1. Whilst such findings might be similarly true for the public understanding of great literature, they suggest that such knowledge, if it ever existed, is simply lost through lack of reinforcement or use. Furthermore, such data invite the question of what is the function of science education if so much of its product, for most people, has such an ephemeral quality? Europe 1992
United States 1995
%
%
Disagree that “Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria”
27
40
Indicate that the Earth goes around the Sun through a pair of closed questions
51
47
Disagree that “radioactive milk can be made safe by boiling it”
66
61
Agree that “electrons are smaller than atoms
41
44
Table 1: Percentage of individuals giving specific responses to questions used to determine the public knowledge of scientific concepts (Miller, 1998).
Durant, Evans and Thomas’ (1989) work also examined the public’s understanding of the process of scientific enquiry. Whilst more than 50% could identify basic methodological processes necessary for testing new drugs, and interpret the implications of probabilistic statements about inheritance, less than 50% were able to identify the theory of relativity or Darwin’s theory as ‘well-established explanations’, choosing instead ‘a proven fact’ as the best description. In this case at least, the lack of understanding can possibly be ascribed to a failure of traditional science education to teach the meta-language of science. Coupled with the changing nature of contemporary society, the outcome of such findings has led to a consideration of what other forms of knowledge and understanding, in addition to content knowledge, science education should seek to develop. Foremost in the literature have been arguments for a greater emphasis on the nature of science and its social practices, and evaluative criteria for judging both its practice and its products.
1.2. Arguments for Teaching about the Nature of Science Whilst knowledge of science entails knowledge of the scientific facts, laws, theories – all of which can be seen as the products of canonical science – it also entails knowledge of the processes of science and its epistemic base. Matthews (1994) points elegantly to the latter as the missing dimension of science education arguing that: To teach Boyle’s Law without reflection on what “law” means in science, without considering what constitutes evidence for a law in science, and without attention to who Boyle was, when he lived and what he did, is to teach in a truncated way. (Matthews, 1994:p3)
Likewise, Ogborn (1988) has argued that science education should consider questions of what is (the ontological question), how we know (the epistemological question),
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Teaching the Nature of Science why it happens (the causal question), what we can do with it (the technological question), and the communicative question (how we should talk about science). The overemphasis on the first of these questions at the expense of the others, particularly the issue of ‘how we know what we know’, results in a science education which too often leaves students only able to justify their beliefs by reference to the teacher or textbook as an authority. Horton (1971) makes the telling point that such practice made the child of the developed Western World no different from the young child in the developing world as, in both cases, their teachers were deferred to as the accredited agents of tradition. Any science education which focuses predominantly on the intellectual products of scientific labour – the ‘facts’ of science – offers, therefore, only a partial view of science. Moreover, it leaves students, when confronted by new scientific claims, without a functional understanding of the processes and practices necessary to evaluate the claim. And, if science and scientists, as some would wish to claim, are epistemically privileged, it is at best ironic, and at worst an act of ‘bad faith’ that the science education we offer does little to justify or explain why science is considered the epitome of rationality (Osborne, 2001). Rather, the failure to teach about science ‘runs the risk of producing students who do not even perceive science as rational’ (Duschl, 1990). The contemporary significance of socio-scientific issues has also led to arguments that school science is an appropriate context for the consideration of issues of an ethical nature (Newton, 1988; Reiss, 1993; Reiss, 2000). For, whilst school science education often seeks to marginalise and keep technology at a distance (Hughes, 2000), such a separation is not one that either the public or students recognise (Irwin, 1995). And, since the funding, application and use of science all involve ethical and value-based decisions, ethics are ‘inevitably and inexorably conflated with science in most cases’ (Reiss, 2000). Fuller (1997:9) would go further, arguing that ‘most of what non-scientists need to know in order to make informed public judgements about science falls under the rubric of history, philosophy, and sociology of science, rather than the technical content of scientific subjects.’ Whilst such views are contested by those who would argue that the fundamental character of science is reductionist, value-free and non-reflexive (Donnelly, 2000), evidence would suggest that divorcing the teaching of science from the social and technological context of its application is simply, for must pupils, an unreal and false dichotomy diminishing its relevance and appeal to pupils (Osborne & Collins, 2000). Another imperative driving the arguments for greater attention to the nature of science is the major structural reforms that have occurred in science education globally. The growing reliance of contemporary societies on science has led to a near universal acceptance of the argument that science education should be ‘for all’ and compulsory (Fensham, 2000), as it is in the UK from age 5 to 16. Yet, as Millar and Osborne (2000:195) argue, the only way that the core and compulsory status of science education can be justified is ‘if the form of science taught can seen to be, providing something of universal value that every young person needs in later life.’ Faced, however, with the task of centrally defining a curriculum for all, policy makers have predominantly retained the traditional approach to science education and added marginal elements about the nature of science without much ‘sense of coherence and underlying educational purpose’ (Donnelly, 2001). The outcome has been curricula which are still dominated by content with only scant attention paid to teaching about
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Teaching the Nature of Science science and its history, philosophy and practices. Consequently, as Monk and Osborne (1997) have argued, the history and philosophy of science will continue to remain more talked about than taught as long as the assessment of science continues to focus on the its content rather than the methods and practices of science. The marginalization or non-existence of the nature of science in science education does not mean, however, that children will emerge with no conceptions about the nature of science (Nadeau & Desautels, 1984). For the sin of omission – ‘giving insufficient thought and attention to the nature of scientific knowledge and the conditions under which it has been developed’ – simply reinforces a scientistic ideology which Nadeau and Desautels see as a blind faith in the cognitive and moral value of science. Science teachers do not serve simply as purveyors of a store of theoretical knowledge but as a means through which scientific activity is legitimised and given value. Thus, whilst they may think that they are only teaching the content of science, they are implicitly communicating ideas about the nature of science and scientists which may be fallacious. The consequence is that too often science comes to be seen as a ‘final-form’ product with immutable and definitive qualities (Duschl, 1990; Driver et al., 1996) when, in reality, scientific knowledge is often modified, adapted, or even at times, abandoned. School science, residing solely in the context of justification rather than the context of discovery, simply fails to convey that controversy or argumentation are a normal feature of science (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000; Gross, 1996). Consequently pupils and the future public are perplexed by the failure of scientists to agree on issues raised by science-in-themaking such as the existence of global warming, the transmission of BSE or the effect of genetically modified organisms on the environment. Even the manner in which science is reported and communicated to other scientists, let alone the public, is a misrepresentation of its practice. For scientific writing excises the confusion, doubt, and blind alleys – presenting its findings as the linear and formulaic application of a standard method which lead inexorably to its inevitable conclusions (Gross, 1996; Medawar, 1979). Many would argue that the current form of science education is sustained by a set of arcane cultural norms – ‘values that emanate from practice and become sanctified with time’ and that ‘the more they recede into the background, the more taken for granted they become’ (Willard, 1985). Such cultural norms are distinguished from other rules, not by reference to any lack of authority, but rather by the unconscious force they exert over human actions. Milne and Taylor (1999) characterise such norms as myths – narrative accounts of collective experience – where the ‘historical and contingent quality of established patterns and beliefs and practices is replaced by an unwarranted sense of naturalness and inevitability.’ One consequence of this is that the knowledge becomes tacit and the supporting evidence ‘invisible’ (Barthes, 1972). Hence, the standard view or collective myth within science teaching, is that explicit consideration of the nature of science is not required because it is implicitly incorporated and diffused throughout all contexts. Abd-el-Khalik and Lederman (2000) make the important point that such approaches to teaching the nature of science that assume it can be acquired implicitly, through a process akin to osmosis, is naïve. For the various images of science that have been constructed by the historians, philosophers and sociologists of science are the product
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Teaching the Nature of Science of considerable collective and reflective endeavour. Just as nobody would expect a student to rediscover Newton’s laws by observing moving objects, neither should we expect students to come to an understanding of science’s nature simply by engaging in scientific practice. The nature of science, therefore, must be explicitly taught as much at its content. Moreover, research would suggest that implicit approaches to teaching the nature of science develop notions that scientific facts or laws are derived unambiguously from empirical evidence; that scientific ideas are unequivocal and absolute; and that scientists predominantly work in isolation in laboratories ‘discovering’ new knowledge (Mead & Métraux, 1957; Driver et al., 1996). And, as McComas (1998) points out, there is substantive evidence that such a science education generates, or fails to confront, the following ‘myths’ about science – each of which has been challenged by contemporary scholarship 2 . 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Hypotheses become theories that in turn become laws Scientific Laws are absolute A Hypothesis is an educated guess A general scientific method exists which is applied universally Evidence accumulated carefully will result in sure knowledge Science and its methods provide absolute proof Science requires the procedural application of standard routines rather than creative thought Science and its methods can answer all questions Scientists are particularly objective Experiments are the sole routes to scientific knowledge All scientific data are reviewed for accuracy Acceptance of new scientific knowledge is straightforward Science models correspond accurately with reality Science and technology are identical Science is a solitary pursuit
McComas’ analysis leads him to conclude that ‘it is vital that the science education community provide an accurate view of how science operates to students and by inference to their teachers.’ The corollary of this statement is the necessity for the scholarly community to define what an ‘accurate view of how science operates’ is and, furthermore, how should it be taught? Both of which are questions central to the concerns of this research. There are, nevertheless, caveats about expecting too much of the science curriculum or science teachers. Harding and Hare (2000) argue that the arguments of McComas and others ask science teachers to wrestle both with teaching well-established consensually agreed knowledge and, in addition, showing that some scientific knowledge, especially when it is first produced, can be tentative. Science teachers commonly use the notion of ‘truth’ to describe knowledge that is uncontested and widely accepted. Their intent is not an assertions about any correspondence with 2
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The strongest challenge to these ideas is to be found in the work of the sociologists of science – see for instance the work of: (Collins & Pinch, 1993; Fuller, 1997; Latour & Woolgar, 1986) and in the work of those engaged in the study of science from a rhetorical perspective: (Gross, 1996; Taylor, 1996).
Teaching the Nature of Science reality but merely a statement about a reliable and consistent interpretation of the material world. To ask, then, that they also suggest that scientific knowledge is tentative will undermine the world-view in which the science teacher resides. Osborne (2001), from a rhetorical perspective, goes further, arguing that teachers are engaged in a process of persuading pupils of the validity of the scientific world-view. Asking them to suggest that not all knowledge is certain and unequivocal will damage their primary rhetorical task. And, if, as Kuhn (1999) argues, most children are absolutists believing that all assertions can be checked and shown to be either false or true until adolescence, they may be psychologically ill-prepared to deal with a subject that does not offer certain knowledge. Nevertheless, the underlying fallacy of Harding and Hare’s arguments is that they are based in a broad acceptance of science education as it is and not as it might be. If science education is to be solely a preparation for future scientists (a view with which we do not concur) then there may be little place for exploring the distinction between tentative and well-established knowledge, how such distinctions are drawn, how evidence is evaluated, or the meta-language that is used to describe science. Moreover, we ourselves, also feel that the formal education of scientists and their work would benefit from a more systematic exploration of the nature of the work that they are engaged in and its historical development. However, sixty years after Haywood (1927) developed a strong case for teaching the nature of science, secondary science education is still in much the same position as it was then, as evidenced by the need for Matthews’ (1989; 1994). Duschl’s (1990) and Hodson’s (1993) careful cases for the place of history and philosophy of science (HPS) in science teaching. What then are the pitfalls and obstacles that have blocked the inclusion of the nature of science in the curriculum?
1.3. Why has incorporating NOS in the school curriculum been a failed project? 1.3.1
The history of science in school science
Given the considerable attention devoted to exploring the significance and relevance of the history, philosophy and nature of science, it remains somewhat of a puzzle, therefore, that its consideration has remained such a marginal feature of most mainstream science education courses. Perhaps the simplest and most telling explanation is Kuhn’s (1970) observation that the history of the subject is of no import to the education of the future scientist. For the potential scientist must acquire an understanding of the basic concepts and foundations of the discipline as it is not as it was. His or her concern is investigating the questions about nature that remain extant, not exploring how others have answered their own questions – answers which are now well understood and consensual knowledge within the scientific community. Taking from the past, therefore, is only of value if it offers something which is of significance to the present. Even the epistemological question of how such knowledge was unearthed is of little value, as the concerns of today are rarely the concerns of yesteryear, and contemporary methodological tools and procedures have made earlier techniques
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Teaching the Nature of Science irrelevant. For the interdependent relationship between science and technology leads to new technologies which open new windows and approaches to enquiry. Thus the chemical determination of composition by assaying and weighing is replaced by the techniques offered by infrared, Raman and mass spectrometry. Visible wavelength telescopes become just one of a plethora of different means of observing the universe, from long baseline radio interferometry to X-ray satellites. Whereas biology was a science concerned with the study of living organisms and their classification, it has, instead, become a science dominated by molecular biology and genetic determinism. Even a small field of enquiry devoted to the search for gravitational waves has moved on from the use of large aluminium bars to long base line interferometers. Given such substantive methodological changes, the history of science offers few insights, if any, into how the scientist of today should proceed. The glittering prizes that science offers will not be won by redeploying yesterday’s technology but through the invention of innovative approaches to questions that emerge from a good understanding of the discipline as it is, not as it was. A different argument is advanced by Brush (1969) in a seminal article entitled ‘Should the History of Science be rated X?’ Brush’s thesis is that much conventional teaching about the history of science is neither good science nor good history. It is not good science, as taking from the past is only of value if it offers something which is of significance to the present – which it rarely does. Moreover, it is not good history, as the myths and anecdotes that feature in science textbooks commonly reinforce a ‘Whig’ interpretation of the history of science which presents the past in terms of present ideas and values, elevating in significance all incidents and work that have contributed to our current understanding, rather than attempting to understand the social context and the contingent factors which were significant to its production. For example, very crudely the Whig view would portray Fleming’s discovery of penicillin as the brilliant perception of an exceptional scientist of a fortuitous event. A more realistic account would demonstrate that it was contingent on (a) problems of current interest in medical research and Fleming’s existing bacteriological research interests, (b) the weather at the end of July in 1928 which happened to be sufficiently cool to allow the mould to grow, and (c) the presence of a laboratory beneath which was investigating moulds – and that even then, its beneficial application was delayed for ten years before other researchers explored ways of producing the mould in commercial quantities. Practically without exception, science texts are simply not written with the intent to convey any of the latter type of information on the context of discovery which the professional historian of science would consider essential. Brush argues that the failure to teach history appropriately may inhibit the development of a critical mind by presenting ‘the present as the inevitable, triumphant product of the past.’ Since science education is an attempt to cultivate scepticism towards all dogmatic and singular interpretations of events, such a simplistic approach to the teaching of its own history would run counter to one of its essential aims.
1.3.2. The context of science education Reichenbach’s (1938) distinction between the context of historical discovery and the context of epistemological justification offers some insight into why HPS is often ignored in school science. In the context of discovery, ideas are tentative, if not speculative, and presented in language which is interpretative and figurative (Sutton, 1995), often using new metaphors (Eger, 1993). The central concern of most science
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Teaching the Nature of Science teachers, in contrast, is the transmission of the products of ‘the context of epistemological justification’ - that is a narrow focus of ‘what we know’ rather than ‘how we know’. Gallagher (1991), in looking at prospective and practising secondary school science teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about the philosophy of science, provides a recent reminder that, for its teachers, science is perceived as an established body of knowledge and techniques which require minimal justification. Such teachers often work from weak evidence, use inductive generalisations (Harris & Taylor, 1983), and renegotiate classroom observations and events to achieve a social consensus (Atkinson & Delamont, 1977), persuading their pupils of the validity of the scientific world-view (Ogborn, Kress, Martins, & McGillicuddy, 1996). Gallagher comments that, even if science teachers consider the history of science for inclusion in the curriculum, it is generally only in terms of humanising science for the purpose of fostering positive attitudes to science, rather than for the purpose of understanding the nature of science. For many teachers of science, only the development of an understanding of science concepts and the nature and methods of science are essential to an education in science. The rest lies beyond the boundary of ‘what we now know’, which, as Haywood recognised in 1927, is the criteria that curtails science teachers’ incorporation of HPS into their schemes of work.
1.3.3. The nature of science teachers Another fundamental difficulty identified by a variety of authors is that many science teachers, themselves the products of such an archetypal education, are invariably left with a range of misconceptions or naïve understandings of the nature of science. Various authors have argued, with respect to content knowledge, that one of the necessary conditions of effective teaching is a good knowledge and understanding of the content to be communicated (Shulman, 1986; Osborne & Simon, 1996; TurnerBissett, 1999). Likewise, it follows that teaching about the history, philosophy and nature of science requires a good knowledge and understanding of the body of scholarship that exists about these subjects. Consequently, during the past 15 years there have been several attempts to ascertain the extent, depth and nature of science teachers’ knowledge and understanding about the nature of science (Brickhouse, 1991; Hodson, 1993; King, 1991; Kouladis & Ogborn, 1989; Lederman & Zielder, 1987; Mellado, 1998). The main picture to emerge from this research is that science teachers have no consistent view about the nature of science and that, in the light of contemporary scholarship, most of views they hold could be termed ‘inadequate’ (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000). A significant proportion of teachers, for instance, have no recognition of the tentative nature of some scientific knowledge and others hold positivist or empiricist views of the nature of science. Koulaidis and Ogborn (1989) also found distinctions between teachers from the separate scientific disciplines and that student teachers hold somewhat different views from those of experienced teachers. Moreover, several studies have now consistently shown that there is little relationship between teachers’ declared conceptions of the nature of science and the manner in which they present the subject in the classroom (Brickhouse, 1991; Duschl & Wright, 1989; Hodson, 1993; Lederman & Zielder, 1987). The best explanation for this finding would appear to be that teachers’ actions are dominated by the exigencies and imperatives of managing classroom learning and not their own philosophical stance towards science. Coupled with the eclectic and heterogeneous nature of teachers’ views, it is perhaps
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Teaching the Nature of Science not surprising that incorporating more of the nature of science into the curriculum is seen as a substantial task. For the findings of these studies invite the questions of whether a) it is possible to establish amongst the science education community some common consensual understanding about the salient and significant features of the nature of science that should be communicated to students, and b) whether it is then possible to teach this understanding effectively.
1.3.4. The contested nature of science Abd-el-Khalick and Lederman (2000) argue that the body of work on teachers’ conceptions of the nature of science simply shows a failure of science teachers’ own education to develop a ‘valid understanding of NOS’. But what would such a valid understanding be? The one feature that emerges from an examination of the scholarship in the field of history and philosophy of science is that, if its intent was to establish a consensual understanding of the foundations of the practice of science, then it might be best characterised as a ‘failed project’ (Taylor, 1996). Baconian notions of science as a process of empirical observation and inductive generalisation have always been open to the criticism that no singular set, or sets of data, can establish that any generalisation is universally true. The logical positivists attempted to take this further by demanding that all statements were either logically deducible or verifiable by observation, anything else being mere speculation, thereby offering a means of proving the truth of scientific statements. However, the weakness of this position was perhaps best illustrated by Mach’s use of it to deny the atomic hypothesis. Popper’s work on conjecture and refutation shifted the emphasis from verification to falsification, and was a significant change in focus in developing our understanding of how science proceeds by arguing that scientists are engaged in the endeavour of trying to refute rather than prove theories. However, this view, in turn, is subject to the criticism that the historical record shows that scientific theories are not abandoned simply because of one observation which does not fit and, furthermore, that scientists do not strive to falsify their theories. Lakatos offered a significant development of Popper’s ideas by suggesting that scientists work with an inner core of basic assumptions or theories, and that these are surrounded by a ‘protective belt’ of auxiliary hypotheses or assumptions. Only data that directly contradicts the theoretical and empirical assumption that contribute to the hard core of working theories are capable of challenging well-established ideas. However, it is perhaps to Thomas Kuhn (1962), and his interest in what the historical record had to say about the practice of science, that we owe the greatest revolution in our understanding of the nature of science. Kuhn’s work distinguished between periods of normal science, in which there is a set of basic commonly-agreed assumptions about theory and methods, and scientific revolutions when all the fundamental assumptions of a given field were questioned, precipitating a crisis. Kuhn’s incidental achievement was to shift the focus from the nature of the knowledge itself to the means by which it was produced as a social community. One result was an explosion and growth of work in the field of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) (Bloor, 1976; Feyerabend, 1975; Gross, 1996; Latour, 1993; Latour & Woolgar, 1986; Taylor, 1996; Traweek, 1988). This programme of work was notable for its interest in the causes of beliefs, that is the means by which the scientific community were persuaded of the validity of a scientific argument, rather than the belief itself, and in addition, its strongly relativist view of the nature of
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Teaching the Nature of Science scientific knowledge. Arguably, its major achievements were to establish that there is no such thing as a singular scientific method and that scientists are engaged in a process of rhetorical argumentation within a social community. And, like all social communities, science has well-established codes of conduct and norms of practice by which the status of individuals and their work is judged. The other major achievement of SSK has been to problematise the nature of science even further, leading to the conclusion asserted by Laudan et al. (1986:142) that: the fact of the matter is that we have no well-confirmed general picture of how science works, no theory of science worthy of general assent.
Further evidence for a lack of consensus comes from the work of Alters (1997) who surveyed the views of 210 members of the U.S. Philosophy of Science Association. Using a questionnaire containing 15 basic tenets about the nature of science drawn from the literature, and which the initial pilot had suggested were controversial, Alters was forced to conclude from the 187 responses that: A minimum of 11 fundamental philosophy of science positions are held by philosophers of science today……The implication for the science education research community and its formal organisation is that we should acknowledge that no one agreed-on NOS exists. (p 48)
Faced with a lack of consensus within the discipline, Alters argues that the only legitimate position for the science education community is to adopt a pluralistic approach to teaching about the nature of science. However, Smith et al. (1997) make the not unreasonable point that these findings are hardly surprising, given that the statements were selected on the basis that they would be likely to produce controversy. Even then, 75% of the respondents agreed with 6 or more of the statements, even though as philosophers they are professionally trained to argue. A different response might have been obtained from a broader community – something which this present study attempts to do. More significantly, an analysis of eight curriculum standards documents such as the Benchmarks for Scientific Literacy, National Science Standards, the California State Standards, and National Curricula in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and England and Wales have shown that there does exist some consensus within science education community about the elements of the nature of science that should be taught (McComas & Olson, 1998). McComas and Olson summarise these as: a. Scientific knowledge while durable, has a tentative character. b. Scientific knowledge relies heavily, but not entirely, on observation experimental evidence, rational arguments, and scepticism. c. There is no one way to do science (therefore there is no universal step-by-step scientific method. d. Science is an attempt to explain natural phenomena. e. Laws and theories serve different roles in science, therefore students should note that theories do not become laws even with additional evidence. f. People from all cultures contribute to science. g. New knowledge must be reported clearly and openly. h. Scientists require accurate record keeping, peer review and replicability i. Observations are theory-laden. j. Scientists are creative.
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Teaching the Nature of Science k. The history of science reveals both an evolutionary and a revolutionary character. l. Science is part of social and cultural traditions. m. Science and technology impact on each other. n. Scientific ideas are affected by their social and cultural milieu. Insofar as some or all of these tenets might be contentious within the philosophical community, it is possible to argue that they represent a partial or simplified view of the nature of science. However, in that they represent elements that the community considers important aspects of people’s ideas about science, they represent legitimate aspirations for the curriculum. Science education has, after all, commonly relied on vulgarised or simplified accounts of its content as pedagogical heuristics for communicating a basic scientific understanding. Thus the Bohr model of the atom is still taught although it has been superceded by quantum models within the scientific community. Likewise, initial encounters with the explanations for energy, the transistor or glycolis metabolic pathways are three examples amongst the many of the vastly simplified accounts of our full understanding that science education offers its students. They are used simply because they offer a vital first step and preliminary introduction to a fuller understanding. Alters’ position, however, in common with that of Rudolph, is to argue that science education should avoid such simplifications and, rather, to offer plural accounts of its varied nature grounded in particular examples. Our basic premise in this work has been to question such a position. For, if we are to ask science teachers to teach explicit aspects of the epistemic nature of science, then as a community, we must come to some agreement about what those aspects might be (Duschl, Hamilton, & Grandy, 1990). Our approach, then, in this research, has been to seek to establish empirically whether there is significant support within the expert community for an account of the nature of science that might be offered to school students.
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Part 2: Methodology and Findings 2.1. Methodology This project sought to determine what might constitute the learning targets for the processes and practices of science for pupils aged 5-16 and, in addition, what might be the justifications for such targets. In approaching this task, our decision was to adopt the Delphi method (Dalkey & Helmer, 1963). Essentially this is a research tool for establishing consensus among experts in any given field and, whilst widely used in the social sciences, it has been relatively underused in education. This qualitative research approach facilitates the systematic elicitation and analysis of the judgements of a panel of experts within a common field. Issues are explored through multiple iterations or rounds of questionnaires which provide summarised statistical information and written responses from previous rounds – all of which encourages feedback and comment by the participants on the panel (Delbecq et al., 1975; Cochran, 1983; Dailey & Holmberg, 1990). Whilst the Delphi method has long been utilised for forecasting future trends by government and industry, the technique has proved so successful in producing consensus that it has outgrown its use solely in forecasting. It is now adopted in a range of situations, including social science research, where convergence of opinion is desirable (Murry & Hammons, 1995). The evolution of the Delphi method has resulted in the development of three distinct forms. First, the ‘exploratory Delphi’ – most closely associated with that developed by the Rand Corporation in the 1960s as a forecasting methodology – which elicits expert opinion about the probability, desirability, and impact of future events. Second, the ‘focus Delphi’, seeks the views of disparate groups that are likely to be affected by a projected programme or policy. The third form, the ‘normative Delphi’, gathers the opinions and views of a defined group of experts on clearly specified issues, with the aim of achieving consensus (Dailey& Holmberg, 1990). In education the normative Delphi has been utilised effectively for issues pertaining to the generation of educational goals and objectives (Helmer, 1966; Adelson, 1967), and curriculum planning and development (Judd, 1971; Häussler et al., 1980; Martorella, 1991; Petrina, 1992; Smith and Simpson, 1995). The strength of the Delphi method in addressing such issues lies in the principle that ‘several heads are better than one’ (Weaver, 1971) in the decision making process. Thus the outcomes have greater validity than those propounded by an individual. The anonymity of participants in a Delphi study alleviates the drawbacks commonly associated with group interviews in reducing specious persuasion, deference to authority, impact of oral facility, reluctance to modify publicised opinions, and the bandwagon effect of majority views (Helmer & Rescher, 1960; Martorella, 1991). The Delphi method also makes it possible to elicit opinions from a group of experts who are geographically dispersed (Murry & Hammons, 1995). The value of the normative Delphi in encouraging agreement by experts on a range of issues made it a potentially useful tool for identifying and prioritising key ‘ideas-about-science’ to be included in the school science curriculum for pupils up to age 16 – an area in which any consensus is not well established (Part 1).
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Methodology and Findings Each successive round of a normative Delphi study is designed to move participants towards consensus. The Delphi procedure typically ends after either consensus or stability of responses has been achieved. Brooks (1979) identified consensus as ‘a gathering of individual evaluations around a median response, with minimal divergence’. Stability or convergence were said to be reached when ‘it becomes apparent that little, if any, further shifting of positions will occur’ (ibid). The number of rounds for a Delphi study will be determined by how expeditiously the panel attains consensus and/or stability. However, for pragmatic reasons, many Delphi studies restrict themselves to three rounds and, as in this case, examine what, if any, is the emergent consensus at the end of the third round. Hence, for such reasons of cost and time, a three-round Delphi inquiry was chosen to ascertain the extent to which consensus exists among experts within the science community about the learning targets for the processes and practices of science.
2.1.1. Procedures for the Study The number of participants in any Delphi study is determined by the nature and scope of the issue to be addressed. Typically, panels comprise a minimum of ten individuals, although reliability improves and error is reduced in direct relation to an increase in the number of participants (Cochran, 1983). However, Delbecq et al (1975) maintained that few new ideas are generated within a homogeneous group once the number exceeds thirty well-chosen individuals. For this study members of the Delphi panel of experts were selected to represent a community engaged in the practice, articulation and/or communication of science. Individuals from five areas within this community were recruited to the study: • • • • •
Research scientists, eminent in their field; Prominent philosophers and sociologists of science renowned by their work and publications; Leading individuals engaged in science communication in the UK Leading science educators who have played a significant role in developing or implementing existing curricula; Science teachers recognised as experts through teaching awards or recognition as ‘advanced skills’ teacher.
An additional criterion for the first three groups was that individuals had a recognised interest in science education. For the last two groups, we also attempted to ensure that individuals had a spread of expertise between primary and secondary phases of school science education. A letter was sent to prospective members of the panel, summarising the aims and purposes of the project, and outlining the tasks, procedures and approximate time commitment for the three rounds of the Delphi study. A total of 25 individuals was selected and 23 of these completed all three rounds of the study.
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Methodology and Findings
2.1.2. Conduct of the study This section gives an overview of the conduct of the Delphi study as a whole. Details of the analysis of each round are given in later sections.
Round 1 The first stage of the study, which began in January 2000, was an open-ended ‘brainstorming’questionnaire. Participants were asked to list the ideas about science they thought should be part of the compulsory school science curriculum (Appendix 1) under three separate headings: 1. The nature of scientific knowledge; 2. The institutions and social practices of the scientific community; 3. The methods of science. Participants were reminded that the Delphi study did not seek their views on what should be included in the content of the school science curriculum – that is the specific facts and theories that are part of the scientific canon. Rather, participants were urged to write, in as much detail as time allowed, a list of essential ideas about science that they thought should be included in the school science curriculum under the headings listed above. For each component listed, participants were requested to expand their thinking so as to: a. give as clear a description of each idea as possible; b. indicate a particular context (or contexts) where they thought a person might find the idea useful; and c. state why such knowledge would be important for an individual to know i.e. how it might help them to act, think or form an opinion. The data from this round were analysed and summarised in 30 themes which were used as the basis for returning the panel’s views to participants in round 2.
Round 2 The second round of the Delphi study, undertaken in March 2000, required participants to undertake the following: • • • •
rate the importance of each theme emerging from round 1 and justify their rating; prioritise the theme as ‘essential’, ‘desirable’ or ‘optional’ for inclusion in the science curriculum; comment on the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the summary of each theme; make any comments for merging similar or related themes.
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Methodology and Findings The latter two tasks were important in ensuring that the interpretation of participants’ suggestions by the research team were checked and evaluated and that the themes in Round 2 offered a valid reflection of participants’ ideas. The Round 2 questionnaire presented the titles and summaries of the 30 themes, together with representative anonymised comments from individuals in Round 1 to clarify the nature of the theme. This was the first opportunity for participants to compare their own initial suggestions with those of the rest of the panel. They were encouraged to consider, comment upon and, most importantly, build upon the ideas of others, secure in the knowledge that their responses would be anonymous. Participants were requested to rate the importance of each theme, as represented by the summary, on a 5 point Likert scale with a score of 5 representing the highest degree of importance and 1 being the lowest. They were asked to indicate a justification for their rating and to comment on the title of the theme, the accuracy of the summary in reflecting participants’ meaning, and the representative statements provided to justify its inclusion and importance. Whilst there were considerable advantages in an open-ended first round of the Delphi study, particularly in the freedom afforded to participants to express their own ideas, this process resulted in a large and diverse set of statements. This round aimed to identify themes for which there was a significant degree of support within the panel and to eliminate overlap and repetition between themes. To aid this process, participants were also asked to decide whether the inclusion of each theme in the school science curriculum was in their view ‘essential’, ‘desirable’, or ‘optional’ and to limit the number of themes that they chose as ‘essential’ to 10 choices. In addition, their views were sought about the possible merging of individual themes, judged to articulate similar ideas, across the major categories of the Nature of Science, the Institutions and Social Practices of Science and the Methods of Science. Merging recommended themes and splitting one theme into two resulted in a total of 28 ‘ideasabout-science’ at the end of Round 2.
Criteria for Selection of Round Three Themes For the third and final round, it was decided to reduce the number of themes for consideration by the panel to only the most highly rated themes from Round 2. This action was taken because research literature on the Delphi method suggests that in studies where participants were required to complete lengthy and detailed questionnaires, responses to questions towards the end of the questionnaire tend to be less fulsome and informative (Judd, 1971). There was, therefore, concern among the research team that ‘participant fatigue’ would result if the complete set of 28 ‘ideas-about-science’ were included in Round 3 of the study, affecting the level of detail in responses towards the end of the questionnaire. Thus only the themes with a mean rating of >3.6 and/or mode of 5 were used for third round – reducing the number of themes in this round to 18.
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Methodology and Findings
Round 3 The final questionnaire of the Delphi study, undertaken in May 2000, presented the titles, revised summaries and representative anonymised supporting statements from participants for the top rated 18 themes from Round 2, together with the mean and standard deviation for each theme. Participants were requested to indicate the priority they would give to the theme based on the premise that it should be explicitly taught to school students and to justify their rating. In addition, comments were sought on ways in which the wording of the summary might be improved to reflect the essence of each ‘idea-about-science’.
2.2. Results This section outlines the analysis and outcomes of each round of the Delphi study, providing a full report of the data obtained, the methods by which it was analysed and the results of the study.
2.2.1. Analysis of Round 1 data The first round of the Delphi study produced 23 responses with a set of extensive comments and divergent ideas. The study required that these ideas be analysed, coded and summarised into a set of themes which could then be returned for the second round of the process.
Development of the initial themes The initial process of grouping the responses was undertaken through the creation of major categories Nature of Science, Institutions and Social Practices of Science and Methods of Science. Within each major category a number of sub-categories or themes were created, each representing different ‘ideas-about-science’ expressed by participants within the relevant major category. Such coding allowed similar ideas, together with the relevant text, to be grouped within the same sub-category. All suggestions made by the panel were recorded. For ease of reference and data retrieval, each sub-category was given a title that reflected the substance of the idea contained within it. At this early stage of analysis, emergent themes (sub-categories) were placed within the major category identified by the respondent, even where similar ideas were repeated in another major category. For example, several participants made comments that were coded as peer review, but different aspects of this were identified under the major categories. When related to the Nature of Science, peer review statements included references to the ‘checking’ of scientific ideas, results of experiments or observations by other scientists for the purposes of confirmation or rejection. Within the category of Institutions and Practices of Science, the emphasis was upon the role and importance of the scientific community in engaging in peer review where knowledge claims are communally criticised and maybe validated. In the category Methods of Science the focus was the presentation of results of experiments and observations and the ways in which scientific ideas are disseminated to convey information to other scientists.
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Methodology and Findings
Construction of theme summaries A reliability check, involving three members the research team, was undertaken using the codes developed. Initial independent analysis of the responses led to the development of a set of codes which were then used by the principal researcher to code the participants replies. Checks of the data and its coding were then conducted by co-researchers until all disagreements were resolved. Such a process was possible because of the limited size of the data set. The process reduced the initial set of themes from 37 to 30 (Table 2), by a process of merging related statements under new themes when consistent agreement was obtained between the researchers. Table 2 Major categories and sub-categories from Round 1 of the Delphi study
Theme 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Nature of Scientific Knowledge Types of knowledge Features of scientific knowledge Scientific knowledge and values Historical development of scientific knowledge The language of science Science as a human, collaborative activity The distinctions between science and technology The tentative nature of scientific knowledge The cumulative and revisionary nature of scientific knowledge Common conceptions of science and risk
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Institutions and Social Practices of Science Contextual nature of science Constraints on the development of scientific knowledge Developments in scientific knowledge are subject to peer review Accountability and regulation of scientific practices Cooperation and collaboration in the development of scientific knowledge Moral and ethical dimensions in the development of scientific knowledge Range of fields in which scientific knowledge is developed
18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Methods of Science Analysis and interpretation of data Specific methods of science Cause and correlation Creativity Diversity of scientific method Experimental methods and critical testing Hypothesis and prediction Observation and measurement Reporting scientific findings Science and questioning Science and technology The role of ICT No general ideas
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Methodology and Findings The second stage of data analysis in this first round of the Delphi study was to compose a summary for each emergent theme, capturing the essence of participants’ statements. Discussion among four members of the research team resulted in an agreed categorisation of the responses and the wording of theme summaries. This process established the 30 themes, their titles, and summary statements, which were composed to capture the ‘ideas-about-science’ using key terms articulated by the Delphi panel. The numbering of the themes was an administrative convenience and had no significance for the level of support for any theme.
2.2.2. Round 1 Themes In this section, each of the themes in the major categories is presented, together with a selection of the arguments advanced by the participants for its inclusion.
2.2.2.1
The Nature of Scientific Knowledge
Theme 1: Types of knowledge Summary: Pupils should be taught that there are different types of scientific knowledge, particularly the difference between representations in school texts and that at the frontiers of science research.
Grouped under this theme were participants’ concerns that the current school science curriculum provided limited scope to develop in pupils the thinking skills required to discriminate between ‘well-tested scientific knowledge, frontier science and pseudoscience’ (T04) 3 . Pupils needed to understand the differences between textbook science, where ‘the answers to problems are given at the back of the book’ and contemporary investigations, where ‘the available scientific knowledge is rarely adequate to resolve scientific controversies in the public eye’ (PU01). It was also important for pupils to be taught that scientific knowledge is a subset of all knowledge, that is, ‘avoid the arrogance of scientism which supposes that only knowledge produced by science is knowledge’ (PU05).
3
Codings refer to individuals in each subgroup in the Delphi Study. T – Teachers, S0 – Scientists, SE – Science Educators, PS – Philosophers and Sociologists, PU – Science Communicators
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Methodology and Findings
Theme 2: Features of scientific knowledge Summary: Pupils should be taught that scientific knowledge produces reliable knowledge of the physical world and has a number of attributes. Scientific knowledge aims to be general and universal, it can be reductionist and counter-intuitive, and it has intrinsic cultural value. Scientific explanations are based on models and representations of reality.
It was argued that it was important for pupils to be taught that scientific knowledge, derived from proper application of scientific methods, ‘is the most reliable knowledge we have of the natural world’ (PU03). One characteristic of scientific knowledge was said to be that it is ‘universal’ and should therefore ‘apply in any place at any time’ (PU04). A consequence of this was that scientific knowledge tended to be expressed in general, rather than specific terms and pupils needed to understand that many scientific explanations and ideas were ‘simplifications on a gross scale of what is happening at a quantum level’ (S03). A further important feature of scientific knowledge was that it ‘goes against one’s natural day to day expectations…the world is not built on a common sense basis’ (S05). The point was made that scientific knowledge tends to be reductionist – scientists analyse, they ‘break down their object of study into smaller and smaller constituent parts’ (PU04). Scientific knowledge had cultural value in that it was ‘intrinsic to all parts of human life’ (T02), and was an essential part of the school curriculum as it ‘can help you look afresh at everyday objects and phenomena and stimulate curiosity and an enquiring mind’ (SE03).
Theme 3: Scientific knowledge and values Summary: Pupils should be taught that scientists perceive and claim their work to be value free and objective. This assumption is open to challenge.
The key point, summarised in this theme, was that scientific knowledge is often perceived by scientists as value free, making no assumptions about what is right or wrong in the world and ‘does not necessarily imply any application or action’ (PU04). Science was said to take an objective view of the world: …its ideas have no intrinsic moral value – it is how the world is. If we are not at the centre of the universe, or if DNA affects our behaviour…… it is neither good or bad, but the way the world is (S05).
However, the panel did not universally accept the assumption of a value free and objective view of the work of scientists. Within the same general theme, but on a different point, there were said to be ‘established standards of behaviour and an ethical code’ (T01) within which the majority of scientists worked, enabling a distinction 26
Methodology and Findings between ‘what can be done and what ought to be done’ (SE01) in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Theme 4: Historical development of scientific knowledge Summary: Pupils should be taught some of the historical background and development of scientific knowledge. Science has a long and complex history.
Participants stated that, through the study of historical developments in science, pupils would come to understand ‘how the world works’. It was important that pupils were encouraged to perceive science as a human activity, to counteract the prevalent view of science as a ‘dry body of knowledge that has to be learned by rote’ (PS05). Through a study of historical developments pupils would gain a sense of ‘how this knowledge came to be generated’ and an understanding of ‘how we got to where we are and to illustrate how science progresses’ (S05).
Theme 5: The language of science Summary: Pupils should be taught that science has a distinctive but common language. Scientific language evolves with use. Terminology needs to be used with care, with meanings clearly explained.
An important aspect of pupils’ learning in school science was appreciation that the need for scientists across the world to communicate had led to the use of a global scientific language, e.g. the periodic table and hazard signs (T01). However, the point was made that: The language used to describe the status of scientific information and ideas has not developed consistently in historical time (PU05).
The language of science was said to evolve, with terms such as ‘theory’, ‘hypothesis’ and ‘law’ used as examples to highlight variations in meaning over time. One participant made the point that ‘new science is often hard to explain and so seems obscure and difficult’ (SE01). For this reason it was important for teachers to ‘use words carefully when describing scientific ideas and evidence’ (SE03) and to discuss with pupils the meaning of scientific terms and statements.
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Methodology and Findings Theme 6: Science as a human, collaborative activity Summary: Pupils should be taught that the production of scientific knowledge is a human activity undertaken both by individuals and groups. Any new knowledge produced is generally shared and subject to peer review. Although scientists may work as individuals they contribute to the communal generation of a common, reliable body of knowledge.
The basic point articulated here by the participants was that developments in scientific knowledge are the result of both individual and collaborative group activity. A number of participants referred to the development of scientific knowledge as ‘an individual, creative act’ (PU05), but stressed that science differed markedly from the arts in that ‘the individual scientist is ultimately irrelevant’, as he/she contributes to ‘a common body of knowledge’ (S07). Even though the development of scientific knowledge may be ‘individualistic’ in some respects, for example in ‘imagining an explanation and devising a means of testing that explanation’ (PU05), the consolidation of that knowledge was fundamentally a social activity subject to group agreement through the process of peer review. Another response highlighted the importance of collaboration in the development of scientific knowledge. Scientists working in institutions ‘will be voicing a consensus achieved by a group of scientists’ (PU04). Scientific knowledge was usually reliable because it was ‘produced…by teams of scientists and assessed by wider groups of other scientists’ (PU04).
Theme 7: The distinctions between science and technology Summary: Pupils should be taught that there is a distinction between science and technology.
The importance for school science in this theme was the need to make clear distinctions between scientific knowledge and its applications, or as one participant put it ‘science versus technology and engineering’ (S02). The point was also made that whilst scientific understanding contributes to the development of new technologies: …practical problem solving in technology calls on other skills and is influenced by other factors such as economics, environmental impact and the social/cultural context. (SE01)
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Methodology and Findings Theme 8: The tentative nature of scientific knowledge Summary: Pupils should recognise that scientific knowledge is provisional. Current scientific knowledge is the best we have but may be subject to further change given new evidence.
Participants’ statements for this theme highlighted the ‘provisional’, ‘tentative’ and ‘evolutionary’ nature of scientific knowledge. It was said to be provisional in the sense that science ‘needs to go beyond the facts’ (PS02), for example, ‘if a prediction fails an appropriate scientific test, then the underlying rationale needs modification’ (PU05). Scientific knowledge is tentative in that ‘it is not fixed for all time’ (SE03), but is in a state of continuous change and, therefore, ‘theories are the best we can do with the current state of knowledge’ (S02). Pupils needed to recognise that scientific knowledge is ‘the best kind of knowledge we have when it comes to understanding the natural world’ (PS01), but theories may be ‘falsified if wrong’ (S06), modified, extended and revised in the light of new evidence. Whilst scientific knowledge has evolved with improvements in techniques and technology, there remained ‘patterns and laws that govern what happens in the universe’ (T02). Theories were therefore ‘open to debate, e.g. the earth exists – fact; but did the universe really start with the Big Bang?’(S03) and there continued to be ‘mystery and beauty about fundamental scientific principles, e.g. periodic table, DNA, thermodynamics etc.’ (T02)
Theme 9: The cumulative and revisionary nature of scientific knowledge Summary: Pupils should be taught that scientific knowledge is cumulative, building on and developing that which is already known. Good scientific theories have explanatory and predictive power.
The focus for this theme was upon the cumulative nature of scientific knowledge and its ‘revisability’ (PS04). Participants maintained that the ‘body of knowledge produced by scientists is continually growing as new discoveries and theories are made’ (PU04). Thus new work draws on and develops previous work and, even though earlier ideas may be superseded, they were a necessary part in arriving at current understanding (SE05). However, it was thought important for pupils to appreciate that new ideas which contradict what is already known tend to be resisted by scientists and the wider community, though ‘on the rare occasions when they are accepted, the shake-up is so dramatic that it tends to be called a ‘scientific revolution’ (PU04). Beginning from the premise that scientific knowledge is based upon the need to explain phenomena, pupils should be taught that ‘most scientific accounts are based on ideas and concepts which are related to complex webs of other ideas’ (PU01). This was said to be one reason why scientists are sceptical about certain claims which contradict the scientific consensus.
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Methodology and Findings Theme 10: Common conceptions of science and risk Summary: Pupils need to be taught that common public perceptions of science perpetuate a number of myths which give erroneous impressions of the methods and nature of science. Pupils need to develop an understanding of the basic concepts associated with risk and uncertainty.
It was considered important for pupils to understand the variety of purposes served by science in society which, contrary to the impression given by school science, are not generally concerned with establishing ‘scientific truth’ (PU02). Pupils needed to appreciate the ‘power and limitations of science’ (S03), to understand that science will rarely be exact, though this might be the perception of the public at large. This was said to be particularly true in matters related to health, where there exists a prevalent expectation that scientists are able to provide exact answers (PS02). Pupils needed to have a basic understanding of the nature of risk – ‘there is no such thing as a risk free activity’ (T01). It was also important for pupils to be aware of conflicting and uncertain scientific claims reported in the media to avoid being ‘taken in by talk of breakthroughs’ (SE01).
2.2.2.2
Institutions and Social Practices of Science
Theme 11: Contextual nature of science Summary: Pupils should know that developments in scientific knowledge are not undertaken in isolation, but may be shaped by particular contexts.
This theme focuses on the contexts in which science is undertaken. Science ‘operates in society’ (PS05) and this ‘cultural context affects the images, models and metaphors which scientists use to explain their ideas’ (S06). Whilst it was said by participants that science had ‘marked out its own sphere of influence’ (PU04) and does not ‘interact easily with other competing authorities, such as politics and religion’ (SE01), scientific knowledge was nevertheless developed in particular social, political, economic and personal contexts, which shape both the knowledge itself and its uses (PS02).
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Methodology and Findings Theme 12: Constraints on the development of scientific knowledge Summary: Pupils should know that scientific knowledge is developed within the context of a range of constraints that may shape it and its uses.
In this theme the emphasis is upon the constraints inherent in the development of scientific knowledge, exerted as a result of ‘the interests of those who fund the work, whether the funders are governments, industry or private individuals’(S07). The constraints were said to operate on two levels; first, financial and commercial interest ‘may well affect the nature of research’ (S02), and second, the ‘published views of scientists may well be affected by the interests of those who fund the work’ (S07). The implications of such constraints, especially in cases where the findings of scientific research might impinge on the interests or policies of external agencies, were said to be that sometimes ‘decisions have to be taken on very imperfect findings, i.e. very prematurely, without consensus’ (PU03).
Theme 13: Developments in scientific knowledge are subject to peer review Summary: Pupils should be taught that developments in scientific knowledge are critically reviewed and may be authenticated and validated by members of the wider community.
Comments under this theme showed the perceived importance of trying to counteract a widespread view of science among pupils as the ‘dull accumulation of facts’ (PS04). On the contrary, ‘science at the coal-face research level is more like a courtroom than a knowledge factory’ (S06). Through the process of peer review, findings and knowledge claims are made open to the scrutiny of other scientists (PS01). Prior to publication, new findings and theories will be subjected to critical review, further testing, and possible authentication and validation by others (PU02; SE01). In this the scientific community is ‘predominantly self-regulating’ (PS01). It was important for pupils to appreciate that: … scientific claims can be given appropriate confidence and that unpublished/unmoderated claims of a single scientist are distinguished from more established and tested views. (PS01)
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Methodology and Findings Theme 14: Accountability and regulation of scientific practices Summary: Pupils should be taught that issues of accountability and the regulatory procedures that relate to the development of scientific knowledge.
Participants highlighted the point that whilst there is no single professional or regulatory body representing or regulating the work of scientists in the UK, different disciplines have their own professional institute or society (PU01). In the main, where science is regulated, it is by law rather than internal regulation of professional practice, and ‘this often requires knowledge that serves the purposes of those frameworks rather than any fundamental purpose’ (PS02). This is said to be an important idea for pupils to grasp ‘because the compromise between regulation and academic freedom is the challenge in any democratic society (PS03). Since much scientific research is funded by taxpayers’ money, the issue of accountability to the public is raised in this theme, as ‘these same tax payers have the right to understand what they are paying for and why’ (SE03). However, the point was made that the scientific community received funding with ‘relatively little accountability’ (S03). Therefore, it was important for the public to appreciate ‘the arguments which have been proposed for this degree of self-management, and to learn of recent attempts by the political system to increase the amount of accountability’ (S02).
Theme 15: Cooperation and collaboration in the development of scientific knowledge Summary: Pupils should be taught that developments in science are not the result of individual endeavour. They arise from group activity and collaboration, often of a multidisciplinary and international nature.
This theme countered the stereotypical view of the development of scientific knowledge as the ‘lonely pursuit’ (SE02) of the ‘mad individualist in a white coat’ (PS03). Scientific knowledge generally advances as a result of ‘collective endeavour’ (PU01) and ‘team work’ (S03) by groups of people ‘often spread around the world’ (S03), therefore despite global divisions on lines of race and nation, science remained an international activity (S03).
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Methodology and Findings Theme 16: Moral and ethical dimensions in the development of scientific knowledge Summary: Pupils should be taught that developments in scientific knowledge are not value free, and that they are subject to moral and ethical limitations.
This theme addressed issues of morality and ethics in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Whilst the point was made that ‘science will always progress – sometimes faster than the ethical/moral issues it raises’ (PS01), it was seen as important for pupils to understand that advances in scientific knowledge were likely to be constrained by that which is acceptable to society in terms of moral, ethical and religious values (PS02). The ethical and moral dimensions of science were said to be ‘great areas of worry among the general public’ (PU04). Science was often viewed as the ‘tool of big business or government and therefore is partisan rather than acting for the common good’ (S06), for example, ‘issues like GM foods have – rightly – raised public awareness and also suspicion of science’ (S06). For this reason it was important to include the public in discussions about the morality and ethics of using new scientific knowledge (SE03).
Theme 17: Range of fields in which scientific knowledge is developed Summary: Pupils should be taught that scientific research is undertaken in a variety of institutions by individuals who have differing social status within the scientific community. Scientists generally have expertise only in one specific sub-discipline of science.
This theme embraced the view that ‘science is for all’ (T04) i.e. that a wide range of people with different qualifications, aptitudes and abilities can engage in science in a range of different contexts. Whilst scientists tend to belong to one discipline, scientific research is carried out in a wide variety of institutions and, as a result, ‘contributes in many ways to the functioning of contemporary society’ (S02). Pupils should also learn that science encompasses a ‘remarkable range of personalities’ (S05) who have differing status within the science community, or as one participant put it ‘science’s equivalent of the foot soldier, sergeant, field marshal and general’ (PS01). In essence science should be seen as accessible to pupils and not an activity which is the reserve of the specially chosen few and always requiring specialist facilities.
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Methodology and Findings
2.2.2.3
Methods of Science
Theme 18: Analysis and Interpretation of Data Summary: Pupils should be taught that the practice of science is reliant on a set of skills required to analyse and interpret data. Ideas in science do not emerge simply from the data but are reliant on a process of measurement and interpretation which often requires sophisticated skills. It is possible, therefore, for scientists to come to different interpretations of the same data.
In this theme the panel highlighted the inherent difficulties and sophisticated skills required in the interpretation of observations and measurements in science (SE04), and the relationship between data and explanation offered to account for them (SE04). Establishing scientific knowledge was thought to involve ‘subjective decisions which will shape the problem and influence the data that can be or are obtained’ (S02). Whilst there was said to be a logical relationship between the problem under investigation, the methods deployed to investigate that problem, and the solution proposed to the problem, any experiment was ‘in principle capable of sustaining an infinite variety of explanations’ (SE03). Though science was methodical, involving a number of skills ‘ranging from manual dexterity in constructing and setting up apparatus to the ability to use appropriate statistical methods in analysing results’ (T01), it was possible for skilled scientists to ‘reasonably come to different views about the same evidence.’ (T01).
Theme 19: Specific methods of science Summary: Pupils should be taught a range of methods that show how the analysis of data is a central activity to the practice of science. This knowledge would assist their understanding of scientific reports.
This theme reflected comments by the panel about the specific methods of science. For instance, mathematical skills were viewed as central to developments in pupils’ scientific understanding (SE05;T01). One participant made the point that: …whilst science does not seem to need to be mathematical, it has been strongly mathematical and this factor has influenced both the ways scientists communicate and the kinds of standard of evidence which they customarily set (SE01).
Considerable importance was assigned to the development of pupils’ skills in the use of methods for data analysis in science and in applying basic statistical methods to observations (SE01). Examples were given of meteorological events, or testing of drugs, where pupils first needed to understand what is meant when statistical data are quoted (T01). Such skills were important if pupils were to make a critical analysis of results and to ‘understand the need for verification, even if they cannot do it’ (T02).
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Methodology and Findings
Theme 20: Cause and correlation Summary: Pupils should be taught that there are two types of distinctive relationship in science – causal where there is a known mechanism relating an effect to a cause; and a correlation where identified variables are associated statistically but for which there is no well-established causal link.
The focus of this theme was on distinctions between cause and effect, and correlation. It was stated that, whilst scientists frequently utilised statistical methods to explore correlation between factors, correlation did not necessarily imply cause and effect (S02; SE01; T02). An understanding of these two types of relationship in science was said to be important for pupils in the face of media reports and articles in newspapers where cause and effect is implied by correlation, for example, it may be claimed that: …there is a correlation between hours spent watching TV and incidence of lung cancer, so the article may imply that watching TV causes lung cancer’ (S07).
Theme 21: Creativity Summary: Pupils should be taught that science is an activity that involves creativity and imagination as much as any other human activity. That scientists are passionate and involved humans that rely on inspiration and imagination and that this is an essential dimension of scientific work.
This theme summarised the view that the foundations of science were said to be rooted in ‘creative ways of thinking about natural phenomena and creative ways of investigating those phenomena’ (PU03). Imagination was ‘vital in making connections and scientists can be passionate about their ideas’ (S06). Pupils should come to recognise that: …anyone can develop theories and testable hypotheses within the limits of their own capabilities and area of study…the process relies on personal reflection, imagination and creativity (SE01).
Whilst there was general agreement about the importance of creativity and imagination in science, one participant made the point that developments in science required not only ‘imagination of a particular kind’, but also the ‘baseline knowledge needed to make a contribution is high compared with other pursuits’ (T02). A particular argument for this theme was the need to counter the prevalent view of science among pupils, of a subject where there is little room for personal creativity and imagination.
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Methodology and Findings Theme 22: Diversity of scientific method Summary: Pupils should be taught that science consists of a range of diverse methods and approaches and there is no singular scientific method. Students need to be introduced to some of the diversity.
Comments under this theme countered the conventional view of science ‘as portrayed in textbooks and teaching as a one dimensional scientific method’ (SE01) described in the following terms as: …a process of hypothesis leading to experiment, leading by stages to theory. dehumanises science and scientists and misrepresents them. (SE01)
This
Whilst it was agreed that pupils learned a great deal from experiments, in order to be ‘literate’ in experimental design they needed to understand that ‘different scientific problems require different kinds of investigation’ (SE03) and that it was vital for pupils to be able select an appropriate method. A number of problems in science were said to be capable of being solved by ‘coming up with a theory, which is then tested by experiment and this process tends to be referred to erroneously as ‘the’ scientific method’ (S06). It was important for pupils to appreciate some of the alternative methods used by scientists, for instance: In many cases such as archaeology or cosmology it is not possible to do experiments. Then the scientific method may consist of constructing a theory to make predictions, and then seeing how well the predictions match up to the real world – e.g. cosmology. In such cases the scientists rely much more on their theory than on the quality of their data. (S03)
Theme 23: Experimental methods and critical testing Summary: Pupils should be taught that the experimental method permits the testing of ideas; that it requires, in addition to imagination and ingenuity, a range of approaches; and that there are certain basic techniques such as the use of controls which students should understand.
The comments of the panel here sought to encourage an awareness that ‘a scientific experiment is not just a demonstration of a phenomenon, but is a critical test of an idea or theory’ (S02). As the ‘key of the scientific method is to try to understand how things work and to test the ideas to see if they are true’ (PS02), the importance of empirical testing was emphasised, for example: Hypotheses are tested by a variety of ways including by an experimental method in which variables are controlled and the effects of changing each one individually can be measured (PS02).
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Methodology and Findings Since multiple explanations are often available for phenomena, appropriate experimental methods must be used ‘to eliminate as many explanations as possible, e.g. controls, precise measurements, sampling frames, statistical tests and testing qualitative predictions – if x then y’ (PU04). Pupils needed to understand that whilst novel science required ‘imagining new techniques and procedures to test imagined explanations’ (S03), scientific testing – or the ‘application of well established ideas/principles/theories’ (SE1) such as the utilisation of standardised instruments and procedures, including the use of ‘control experiments or fair tests’.
Theme 24: Hypothesis and prediction Summary: Pupils should be taught that scientists are engaged in developing hypotheses about the nature of the world and testing those ideas. That this process is essential to the development of scientific knowledge.
This theme reflected the importance of scientists’ efforts to ‘make hypotheses for explaining phenomena’ (S02) from which predictions may be made. It was said to be important for pupils to understand that, in seeking explanations for new phenomena ‘links are made with existing experience and ideas that explain it’ (SE05). This process was seen to be a ‘creative and imaginative activity in which the pupil begins the first stage of constructing a mental model’ (SE05). Emergent ideas provided ‘possible explanations, which are used to make a prediction and then evidence is collected to see whether it corresponds with observations’ (SE01). However, the process was dependent upon pupils being encouraged to: …formulate the question about an investigation; to make a prediction and think about what is happening. Careful observation; ability to rethink if results do not match the prediction; precision, organisation and care with measurement are needed (SE01).
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Methodology and Findings Theme 25: Observation and measurement Summary: Pupils should be taught that observation and measurement are core activities undertaken by scientists; that there is a limit to the accuracy of any measurement but there are ways of limiting the uncertainty and increasing the confidence in the measurement.
Building on the previous theme, the focus here was on the importance of ‘extensive systematic observation and measurement’ (PS02), which was said to ‘play an important part in science, especially those observations and measurements which can be checked and confirmed by repetition’ (S03). Observation may be ‘the starting point of enquiry, or may be designed to test ideas’ (SE01). Pupils needed to understand that there is likely to be ‘uncertainty associated with any measurement and that scientists have ways of estimating the uncertainty and minimising it’ (PU01). Whilst it is thought that precision and accuracy in recording data were required in science, the point is qualified by the statement that ‘hyper-accuracy can be a bar to good succinct communication’ (T02).
Theme 26: Reporting scientific findings Summary: Pupils should be taught that scientists use distinctive forms of communication for reporting results which are reliant on a range of different genres and semiotic modes.
This theme emphasised the need for pupils to consider how best to convey the results and findings of experiments and observations to others in order that they may independently examine and possibly verify the results (S06). Such reporting required ‘clarity of thought, organisation of ideas and good basic English’ (PS03). However, it is stressed that for pupils the reporting of scientific findings: …should not be an exercise in the very formal passive tense science reporting used previously – the aim should be clarity and brevity and to convey excitement if it is there. (SE01)
Participants stated that the work of scientists was reported in distinctive forms which, ‘tend to present science as rather straightforward, uncontentious and unarguable’ (S02). Whilst scientists acknowledged that uncertainties and misunderstandings may have played a part in their work, ‘these tend not to be recorded’ (PS01). This was said to be partly for reasons of economy and partly ‘because meanderings do not fit in with scientists’ idealised view of science as being a sure route to certain knowledge’ (PS01).
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Methodology and Findings Theme 27: Science and questioning Summary: Science is a process of asking questions of the natural world and this is an important aspect of the work of a scientist.
The pursuit of scientific knowledge was described in participants’ statements as a cyclic process in that it is ‘about asking questions, with new answers leading to the next round of questions’ (SE04). Pupils needed to develop the strategies, methods and confidence to ask questions capable of producing answers (T01), and to understand that the strategies adopted ‘may not reveal the ‘correct’ answer, but may prompt further questions and that there may be more than one answer’ (T01). An argument for this theme was that it would counteract the widespread view among pupils of science as the acquisition of a set of facts (S06; SE02).
Theme 28: Science and technology Summary: Pupils should be taught that science and technology are interdependent. New technology permits new measurements and new science develops new technology.
The focus of this theme was the development of pupils’ understanding of the interdependence of science and technology, which is ‘not readily divisible in practice’ (PU02). Advances in science may depend on developments in technology, for instance, ‘the Hubble space telescope is a current example of new technology opening up opportunities for scientists’ (S06). Whilst scientific understanding was said to contribute to the development of new technologies, the point was made that ‘practical problem solving in technology calls on other skills and is influenced by other factors such as economics, environmental impact and the social/cultural context’ (PU03).
Theme 29: The role of ICT Summary: Pupils should be taught that Information and Communication Technology is now a fundamental tool which is integral to the practice of science.
Participants felt it is important for pupils to appreciate the role of ICT and imaging techniques used across all fields of science today. Members of the panel suggested that pupils would benefit from more frequent visits to industrial, medical and research laboratories to more fully appreciate the ubiquity of ICT in the scientific workplace (S03). Another argument for its inclusion is that it might counter current perceptions of
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Methodology and Findings ICT in school science as ‘an add-on’ , due to a lack of availability in schools of ‘state-ofthe-art devices testing and analysis’, rather than a technology which is integral to science itself.
Theme 30: No general ideas Summary: Pupils should be taught that there are no general ideas to be taught in science. Nothing can be taught about science independent of its content, and knowledge of the methods, institutions, and practices varies between the sciences.
This theme reflected the view expressed by some participants of the difficulties of attempting to articulate generalisations about the processes and practices of science. For instance, it was pointed out that whilst there might be ‘interesting things to say about the nature of knowledge, and about methods and institutions in specific areas of science’ (SE03), what is said ‘will be different things for different areas’ (SE03). The point was further explained by the following statement: We could tell the story of the US cancellation of the super-accelerator to show how a lack of expensive resources constrains research, but this scarcely carries any morals for classificatory botany, say. (PU04)
Examples were provided by one participant to show that within the major categories of Nature of Knowledge, Institutions and Social Practices and Methods of Science, a range of ‘ideas-about-science’ might be relevant, dependent on the specific aspect of study in question, for instance: …biochemistry versus cosmology, not to mention palaeoanthroplogy versus quantum mechanics, or cognitive science versus meteorology. (PU04)
It was suggested that, on the one hand, teachers might ‘cite the frequent changes in theories in palaeoanthroplogy to show it is full of speculation’ (S03), but on the other hand, ‘it would be bad if pupils were invited to infer from this that atomic chemistry is all speculation’ (S03). If pupils were to understand why each area of science operates in the way that it does, they would require at least some understanding of ‘what each kind of science is studying, why it is of interest and to whom’ (PU02). Pupils also needed an appreciation of the theoretical problems associated with different kinds of science, the available evidence and the variety of experiments that might be undertaken, as well as the types of institutions that develop as a result (PS02). In summary, many may feel that this list of aims for aspects of ideas-about-science that should be an integral part of the science curriculum is absurdly aspirational. However, such a list is, in many senses, an inevitable product of any attempt to delineate what
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Methodology and Findings might be considered important. The function of the ensuing rounds was to see if the list of themes could be reduced to a more limited list of essential concepts.
2.2.3. Analysis of Round 2 data These thirty round 1 themes, along with typical supporting statements, were presented to participants in round 2. Participants were asked to rate each theme on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 – very important, 1 not important at all); to comment on the summary of each theme and the reason for their rating; and then to rank the themes as ‘essential’, ‘desirable’ or ‘optional’ limiting their ‘essential’ themes to only 10. For all of the participants’ responses the following were then conducted: a. a statistical analysis of the rating of each theme and consideration of justifications; b. an analysis of the ranking of essential themes; c. a summary of the suggestions for merging of themes; d. a summary of the comments on the wording of theme summary.
(a) A statistical analysis of the rating of each theme and consideration of justifications For each theme, the mean and standard deviation of the ratings given on the five-point scale were calculated (Table 3). Where individuals had failed to respond to specific themes, these were assigned no numeric value and were not included in the computation of means and standard deviations. From such an analysis two issues emerge: whether the theme is considered important by a large number of the group which was indicated by a high mean rating for the theme; and whether there was consensus around the rating of the theme indicated by a low standard deviation of less than 1.0. A total of 8 themes had a mean of 4 or higher, indicating at this early stage that they were viewed by the panel as very important or important. Of these 8 themes, three showed standard deviations of
