Integration: An approach to Science in primary schooling

Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 2, Issue 1, Article 10 (Jun., 2001)
Peter J FENSHAM
Integration: An approach to Science in primary schooling

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INTEGRATION WITH LANGUAGE
- Integration with Number
I mentioned earlier that Measurement, an integral notion in many aspects of Science, is a topic that primary teachers very readily also see as a mathematical topic within their responsibility. I have a suspicion that in primary mathematics, Measurement is seen essentially as skills to be learnt that involve the standard units and measures of length, mass, and time, and number operations on the number values associated with these measures. In Science, Measurement certainly has similar skill aspects, but it also has a strong conceptual aspect since any natural phenomenon must be observed and quite specifically addressed in order to decide what may be an appropriate way to measure it. For example, counting, not usually regarded, I think, as a means of measuring in primary mathematics, is commonly used as the appropriate means that science uses to measure its phenomena when the something to be counted is sufficiently well defined.
I hope someone with more knowledge of primary mathematics, and of the current thinking of its curriculum developers, will be able to point out that my suspicions are ill-founded. If the conceptual aspect of measurement in primary science is also part of primary mathematics, the prospects for effective integrated teaching and mutual learning are much enhanced.
Whatever is the case, Science in primary schooling can, at the skill level, provide motivatingly real and intellectually concrete contexts for young students to measure, and hence to practise counting, standard measuring, and number operating. At the conceptual level (if this too is shared) Science in combination with Mathematics facilitate classroom discussions of interesting contexts to be measured, that can lay strong foundations of the meaning and limitations of measurement in the minds of these young learners. Such critical appraisal of the meaning and worth of measures, will stand them in good stead when they encounter the quantitative measurements, so often of dubious validity, that advertisers, lobby groups and politicians so regularly use to persuade citizens of their worth.