Fall 1998 CONFCHEM Switching Students on to Science

The State of Science Education: Subject Matter Without Context
Norman G. Lederman
Dept. of Science and Math Education, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-6508, USA

Abstract:
The quality of pre-college and undergraduate level science education is currently being questioned. Although the reasons for concern about quality differ from nation to nation, the situation is not new. One can easily point to "critical" concerns voiced about science teaching and learning, and their associated reforms, for well over a century. Perhaps the most recent reform visions of note have been the National Science Education Standards and Project 2061 (AAAS) of the U.S. As was the case with most of their predecessors in the U.S. and elsewhere, these reform efforts stress the importance of conceptual understanding of the overarching ideas in science (e.g., cause and effect, equilibrium, structure and function, etc.) as opposed to the mere memorization of foundational subject matter. The phrase "less is more" has often been invoked to communicate the desire that instructional time focus on in-depth understanding of a reduced set of unifying scientific concepts. Although the words are different, the message remains familiar.

There is an increased emphasis, however, in two areas that make the current reform visions significantly different from previous efforts: nature of science and scientific inquiry. Although explicit concern for students' understanding of the nature of science and scientific inquiry can be traced backed to 1907, currently advocated emphasis appears to be at an all time high. The "nature of science" has been defined in a variety of ways over the years, but it most commonly refers to the values and assumptions inherent to scientific knowledge and its development. There is no general consensus about the list of values and assumptions, but most would agree that the following aspects of scientific knowledge are critically important and accessible to pre-college and undergraduate levels: tentative, involves human creativity and subjectivity, empirically-based, necessarily involves both observation and inference, and is socially and culturally embedded. In addition, the relationship between scientific theory and law is often included under the rubric of the "nature of science." With respect to scientific inquiry, current reform efforts have placed a renewed emphasis on what students should be able to do and what they should know about inquiry. Of particular note is the emphasis on students' understanding of inquiry. Previously, most science educators focused their attention almost exclusively on performance of inquiry.

Unfortunately, the best visions of reform efforts often remain within pages of text of reform documents. Classroom implementation is an entirely different matter. As with previous efforts to improve students' understandings of the nature of science and scientific inquiry, it has been assumed that students will implicitly learn about science and scientific inquiry by doing science. For example, it is assumed that by performing experiments involving control groups that students will understand the logic of classic experimental design. Furthermore, for example, it is assumed that students will come to understand that scientific knowledge is tentative simply by participating in authentic scientific inquiry. Research results indicate otherwise, as students most likely come to understand only what is made explicit during instruction.

The purpose of this presentation will be to discuss the importance of providing explicit instructional attention to the nature of science and scientific inquiry as well as to delineate several misconceptions about inquiry and nature of science promoted by recent reforms in science education. Above all, the argument will be made that without appropriate attention to nature of science and scientific inquiry students will once again learn science subject matter in a context-free environment. Such an environment does not permit the in-depth conceptual understanding of science subject matter specified in the visions of reform.