Ideas about science portrayed in the existing and proposed science curricula of grades IX-X in Bangladesh

Secondary schools in Bangladesh have been following a differentiated science curriculum in grades IX-X. There are three streams at this level. Science stream students are expected to build a solid base of science for further study, and hence, they study three separate science units - physics, chemistry and biology. The Humanities and Business Studies students are not required to study science any further. They are expected to understand a general idea about science and its application; therefore, they study one general science unit. A new uni-track or single-track curriculum which was proposed to commence in 2006 when all students would study a common science. This new curriculum is designed for all students in order to prepare both a scientifically literate citizenry and a group of future scientists (Siddique, 2007). The enactment of the proposed curriculum has been deferred because of a movement against it. The protest has been led by a group of university science professors who have been arguing that future science students will have a weaker foundation of science as a result of studying this new curriculum. The debate on the enactment of the new curriculum led me to conduct a study on this issue in 2006-2007 as part of my Master of Education study. The study was aimed at comparing the existing and proposed curricula in order to examine whether the reform process was in the desired direction (Siddique, 2007). In this article, I report part of the findings of that study, which is focused on how ideas about science are portrayed in these curricula.

Science education reform movements have suggested what ideas or knowledge about science should be included in the curricula. For example, the Science, Technology and Society (STS) movement expects that students will have “a grasp of the epistemology and sociology of science required for understanding the dynamics at play in STS issues; for example: scientific observations are theory-laden” (Waks and Prakash, 1985, pp. 108-114, quoted in Aikenhead, 1994, p. 50). Among the recommended science content for a Science for All curriculum, two ideas - ‘the evolution of scientific knowledge’ and ‘boundaries and limitations of science’ (Fensham, 1985, p. 427) are considered important. The Scientific Literacy movement, as exemplified in the PISA study, considers knowledge about science as an important component of scientific literacy because “people often encounter situations that require some understanding of science as a process that produces knowledge and proposes explanations about the natural world” (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2006, p. 21). There are a number of arguments found in the literature for inclusion of studies on ideas about science in science curriculum. For example, Driver, Leach, Millar and Scott (1996 ) and McComas, Almazroa and Clough (1998) argued that acquiring aspects of the Nature of Science (NOS) enhances the learning of traditional science content. They also asserted that NOS knowledge enhances the understanding of science; it builds up a coherent picture of science and humanizes the sciences, and thus, enhances interest in science (McComas et al., 1998). Accurate views on how science works is also vital for future citizens’ political and educational decision making on socio-scientific issues (Driver et al., 1996 ; McComas et al., 1998). More recently, the science education community has articulated three main themes that are considered important for all students studying science. These three themes - the nature of scientific knowledge, methods of science (scientific inquiry) and practice of science (the scientific enterprise) - are often encompassed in one broader term like ‘knowledge about science’ (OECD, 2006) or ‘ideas about science’ (Osborne, Collins, Ratcliffe, Millar, & Duschl, 2003). Ideas About Science (IAS) will be used in this paper to refer the above-mentioned three themes about science.

Research evidence suggests that the way science is portrayed in school has a strong influence in shaping students’ views of science (Driver et al., 1996 ). Curriculum materials and curricular activities play an important role along with teachers in communicating ideas about science to students (McComas et al., 1998; Wieder, 2006). Hence, this paper attempts to analyze the existing and proposed science curricula of grades IX-X in Bangladesh to explore how and what ideas about science have been portrayed in these curricula. This attempt has been made to see whether the proposed science curriculum reform in Bangladesh is heading towards the desired direction.