Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 9, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2008)
Robin MILLAR
 Taking scientific literacy seriously as a curriculum aim
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Rethinking the educational role of science

The challenge facing science educators and those who make and influence science education policy at local, regional and national levels is nothing less than to re-think the educational role of science as a subject in the curriculum of all young people – to ‘re-imagine science education’, as the title of one recent report puts it (Tytler, 2007).  To justify teaching science to all young people, we need to go beyond rather bland statements about science being all around us and a major material influence on all our lives – and ask what, as a result, ordinary people need to know about science, both as a body of established knowledge and as an approach to enquiry, that will be functionally useful in their present and future lives, and will seem valuable and interesting to them as new insights about their situation as human beings.

Many of the current problems of science education have their origins in history.  Half a century ago, in most developed countries, introductory science courses of the kind that can lead on to more advanced study of the natural sciences were offered at secondary school level only to the most academically able 20-25% of the age cohort.  Gradually, in many countries, we have sought to broaden access to science, sometimes through moves towards more comprehensive forms of school organisation, sometimes by modifications to the content and depth of treatment of topics in the science courses.  This has not, however, led to significant change in the kind of science courses we offer. Most school science curricula are still organised around the same major topics as the curricula of the mid-20th century or earlier.  The dominant influence on curriculum content is the perceived structure of the scientific disciplines. Most science curricula are watered-down versions of curricula originally designed to prepare a relatively small section of the age group to progress towards more advanced study of science and perhaps to careers in science, or requiring a good knowledge of science. 

The problem with this, which is too frequently overlooked or treated less seriously than it should be, lies in the nature of a ‘training in science’ – the kind of science course that is effective for developing the knowledge and skills that future scientists require.  Kuhn (1962) argued that science is taught and learned through ‘paradigms’: ‘accepted examples of actual scientific practice – examples which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together’ (p. 10).  These shape and define a field of enquiry.  Learning science for professional-level practice requires that students become immersed in these paradigms, to the point where they become second nature.  The aim is not to help students develop their own personal understanding of the natural world, but to help them make one particular understanding of it their own.  Learning science is an induction into a particular view of the world.  A consequence, in the words of the leading sociologist of science, Harry Collins (2000), is that ‘it is romantic nonsense to imagine that potential science specialists can learn all the science they need without a lot of routine learning and practice along with indoctrination into traditional ways of thinking’ (p. 171).

These, however, are the very features of science education that many students find off-putting.  Osborne and Collins (2000), for example, report the following comments from a study, using interviews and focus group discussions, of students’ views of school science:

P1:   With science it’s solid information and you’ve got to take it down.
P2:   … so when they teach you science you know that this is it, okay?  There is nothing, you can’t prove it wrong.
P3:   I mean you just have to accept the facts don’t you? (p. 25)

In English they mark you on … expressing your own knowledge, not only reading a story and answering questions. .. But in science it’s more strict, ‘cause you have to learn and just write it down. Everything’s like, ordered, you learn about photosynthesis and write about photosynthesis, whereas in English if you want to write about a flower you can write a poem or something, like that, something creative.  It’s just not as creative as English. (pp. 28-9)

To address such views seriously involves asking questions about the purpose of school science, and hence about its content and emphasis.  And it involves recognising that the school science curriculum has different purposes for different groups of learners, and finding ways to accommodate these.  For all students (since future scientists are also citizens, and will become ‘expert’ in only a narrow domain of science), we need to develop courses that foster ‘scientific literacy’.

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