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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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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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Scientific literacy as a curriculum aim
Much of the recent discussion of the school science curriculum has centred around the idea of ‘scientific literacy’ as a curriculum aim. Although, as Roberts (2007) points out, there is no clear consensus among science educators about the meaning of the term ‘scientific literacy’, it is generally taken to signal a shift of emphasis, away from science courses designed to teach the kind of understanding of science that only future scientists really need, towards those that seek to develop the kind of understanding of science that all citizens require.
One reason why this shift of emphasis matters is simply a matter of numbers:
“A central fact about science is that it is actually done by a very small fraction of the population. The total of all scientists and engineers with graduate level qualifications is only a few percent of the whole population of an industrialised country. Thus the primary goal of a general science education cannot be to train this minority who will actually do science.” (Ogborn, 2004: 69)
Very few of us will ever be producers of new scientific knowledge. But we are all consumers of scientific knowledge and information – as we read or hear about science-based knowledge claims or use artefacts and processes that are based on scientific knowledge. The aim of basic science education should therefore be to help young people become more astute and better informed consumers of scientific information, in the forms in which they encounter it in everyday life. And to try to give them a sense of the pleasure that can come from understanding, at a basic level, some of the powerful ideas that science has produced to help us explain events in the natural world. Yet in many countries, the school science programme, and the choices of curriculum content and depth of treatment that are implicit in it, are based largely on the needs of the small minority who may go on to become professional scientists or to work in a job that requires an understanding of more advanced science.
The needs of that minority are, of course, important, both at the level of the individual and of society. We need a steady supply of people choosing to follow science-based careers. In many countries there is strong support for this purpose of science education, from government ministers and from the often powerful and influential scientists’ lobby. Trying to achieve both these aims, however, introduces a fundamental tension into the design and planning of the school science curriculum. It is aiming to do two jobs: to foster the scientific literacy of all students and to provide a sound foundation for more advanced study of science for some students. The problem is that these call for rather different approaches: different choices of content and different emphases in teaching. If we provide a single science course to achieve both purposes, it is likely to achieve neither well. Addressing the perceived ‘crisis’ in science education today requires first and foremost that we recognise and address this tension.
Copyright (C) 2008 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 9, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2008). All Rights Reserved.
