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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 7, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2006) Philip ADEY Thinking in Science - Thinking in General?
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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 7, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2006) Philip ADEY Thinking in Science - Thinking in General?
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One may reasonably ask, if we are interested in the development of general intelligence, why go through science rather than any other subject domain? Are we making claims for some special status of science as a vehicle for the development of thinking, as used to be claimed for Latin? No, not really. The reason we went through science initially was simply that Michael Shayer, Carolyn Yates and myself were all science teachers and we thought we knew a little more about that domain than any other. But also the schemata of formal operations described by Inhelder & Piaget (1958) (control and exclusion of variables, proportionality, classification systems, equilibrium, and the others) have a very science-y look to them. Nevertheless, there are now Cognitive Acceleration materials set in mathematics, technology, and the arts, and at primary level also. In principle there is no reason why such an approach should not be taken through any subject domain.
But this is a Forum for Science Learning, and in this journal I make no apology for promoting the idea that science teaching can teach much more than science; science in schools provides a rich environment for encouraging our students to develop their general thinking power, which can then be applied across all of their learning. I believe this to be a wonderful opportunity for all science teachers, provided they are prepared to ‘raise their game’ to meet the new challenges of teaching for cognitive acceleration. Apart from anything else, it is a lot of fun!
Copyright (C) 2006 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 7, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2006). All Rights Reserved.
