Paradoxically, one of the significant events in the history of American science education was the launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957. From that moment on the American public, but especially the U.S. Congress began to ask questions about the state of science education in the United States. Why were the Soviets the first to launch a satellite? Was American science and technology education inferior to Soviet science and technology education? Was the nature of secondary science education in jeopardy? The response of the U.S. Congress was to increase the funding amounts available to the National Science Foundation which lead to a plethora of science curriculum projects in the late 50s, 60s and 70s. During this period of science education reform, scientists and science educators began a quest to find ways to improve science learning.
Science learning has at least two dimensions, namely learning about science and how to do science. Champagne and Hornig outline the main elements in these categories and point out that these two views of science learning are quite different. These two views and the subset of science learnings are outlined in Figure 2.1. As you can see from Figure 2.1, students can learn about the products of scientific inquiry, which includes facts, concepts, principles and theories. The major emphasis in contemporary science programs is on this form of science learning. When newspapers report the proficiency of students in science, they are reporting what students know about this type of science learning. Yet there are many other things that students can learn about. They can learn about the nature of the scientific enterprise, values and attitudes, applications and the risks of science and technology, and science careers.
They
can learn about: They
can learn how to: Processes
they undergo: • Knowledge
Products of Scientific Inquiry (Facts, concepts, Principles,
Theories) • Nature of the
Scientific Enterprise (World view, Methods, Habits of
Thought, Approaches to Problems) • Values and
Attitudes (Of the Scientific Community, Society at Large,
Local Community, One's Racial or Cultural Group, One's
Family • Applications
and Risks of Science and Technology (Societal Context,
Personal Context) • Science
Careers (What Scientists Do, Who Scientists are, How
Scientists Get Educated) • Themselves
(Interest in Science, Capacity to Do Science) • Act Upon or
Apply Information (Evaluate, Manipulate, Solve
Problems) • Learn
(Strategies to Seek and Acquire New Information, and to Seek
and Acquire New Skills • Produce
Knowledge (Question, Test, Evaluate) • Internalize
Values (About the Utility and Risks of Science and
Technology, Habits of Thought and Conceptual Skills, and Who
Does Science • Assess Self
(Interest in Science, Capacity to Do Science) • Make Choices
(About Studying Science, Science Careers, and Applying
Science Knowledge and Skills to Daily Life)
Student learning also includes learning how to do science---to apply the process skills and inquiry skills that are typical of scientific thinking. One of the directions that science education took after Sputnik was to pay attention to the process of science and emphasize inquiry in the development of science teaching materials. The "how to" aspect of science learning is the complement of the "learning about" side of science. Yet, even with the emphasis on process and inquiry within the science education community, student learning in science showed disappointing results.
During the last thirty years a numbers of theories of learning have influenced the way science educators have looked at student learning in science. The early years of science education reform were dominated by the behavioral and developmental theories of learning. The behavioral psychologists, in particular, B.F. Skinner, have influenced science education enormously as evidenced by the use of behavioral objectives to define student learning and in the classroom managements systems that dominate contemporary science teaching. Developmental psychology, led by the work of Jean Piaget, influenced research in science education, especially during the 60s and 70s. The impact of Piaget can be seen in the recommendations of science educators to encourage direct experience with learning materials, and to be aware of the student's level of cognitive development.
Recently, however, science education has come under the influence of two other groups of psychological theorists, namely from social psychology and cognitive psychology. In the section that follows, I will examine each of these areas of psychology, how they explain learning, and the implication for science teaching.