Taking scientific literacy seriously as a curriculum aim

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

Previous Contents Next

Responding to this challenge

Rather than discuss these issues in the abstract, I want, in the remainder of this paper, to base the discussion around a curriculum development project in England that has been trying to address this challenge.

In 2000, the official curriculum regulator in England, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), invited tenders to develop a more flexible curriculum model for science for 15-16 year olds, and to consult widely on ways of making the science programme better suited to the needs of a wider range of students. The work was awarded to the University of York Science Education Group, who reported to QCA in February 2001 (UYSEG, 2001). On the basis of this report, QCA commissioned further work to develop the preferred model in more detail (completed in March 2002), and then decided to conduct a national pilot trial from September 2003.

The model proposed drew on ideas sketched out in the Beyond 2000 report (Millar and Osborne, 1998), which in turn had been influenced by an earlier paper by Millar (1996). As a fundamental principle, Beyond 2000 argued that “The science curriculum from 5 to 16 should be seen primarily as a course to enhance general ‘scientific literacy’” (p. 9) – but noted the need to achieve this whilst also catering for the needs of students who may choose to take further, more advanced science courses.

For students up to the age of 16, the science programme on offer in England in 2002 was based on the national curriculum (QCA, 1999). This set out a programme of study and attainment targets for science, on the assumption that students would study science for 10% of their time in primary school (5-11), 15% in lower secondary (12-14), and 20% in the final two years of compulsory schooling (15-16). The course was designed to be ‘broad and balanced’, meaning that it contained roughly equal amounts of three main sciences, plus smaller amounts of Earth science and astronomy, and included scientific enquiry processes as well as science knowledge content. The science courses taken by most students aged 15-16 (over 80% of the cohort) were called Double Award General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) Science, as they were equivalent to two normal GCSE subjects.

The new curriculum model for the pilot trial divided the 20% of curriculum time given to Double Award GCSE Science into two equal components (Figure 1). One half would be a core Science course, equal in size to a normal GCSE in most subjects, taking 10% of students’ class time. This would have a ‘scientific literacy’ emphasis. Alongside this, two optional courses would be provided: Additional Science with a ‘pure science’ flavour, and Additional Applied Science. Students who thought they might wish to pursue science beyond age 16 would take one of these. The suite of courses based on this model became known as Twenty First Century Science.

Figure 1. The Twenty First Century Science curriculum model

GCSE Science
10% curriculum time

Emphasis on scientific literacy
(science for citizenship)

GCSE Additional Science
10% curriculum time

or

GCSE Additional Applied Science
10% curriculum time

ALL students do this

SOME students also do one of these

Separating the two aims of the science curriculum in this way allowed each of the component courses – the core course and the two additional courses – to be designed for its specific purpose.

It is, of course, one thing to say that a course will have a ‘scientific literacy’ emphasis and will try to develop the kind of understanding of science that all young people, future scientists and non-scientists alike, need as citizens of a modern, technological democracy. It is quite another to design and construct such a course. The great advantage of the curriculum model outlined above is that the separation of the two purposes of the science curriculum makes it possible to focus entirely on ‘scientific literacy’ as the aim when developing the GCSE Science course and teaching materials, without having to make the compromises that would be necessary if it were a hybrid course with multiple aims. But this still leaves open the question of how to design a course to foster scientific literacy, and how it might differ from the familiar and more ‘traditional’ form of science course for this school level. The next section of this paper will discuss how these issues were tackled in the Twenty First Century Science project, and outline the design of the core Science course that was developed.

Copyright (C) 2008 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 9, Issue 2, Foreword (Dec., 2008). All Rights Reserved.