The Australian Science Curriculum: A house or a heap of stones?
In 1908, Jules Henri Poincaré, French mathematician, theoretical physicist, and philosopher of science wrote that “Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house.” Now, a hundred or so years later, the Australian Government has just released a new National Science Curriculum and the major concern that is emerging is that it is just ‘a heap of stones’. A National Curriculum is a big step for science education in Australia and it is essential that we get it right. There are many reasons why.
Australia is deservedly proud of the prosperity of its economy. Its vitality provides us with a high quality of living and a positive outlook for the future. To carry us into a technology-driven future, the country needs its skilled workers to be engaged in knowledge-intensive enterprises that result in innovative research and development. But our capacity to accomplish this is under attack from the invasive effects of global competition and our shrinking pool of home-grown expertise, the latter due to a diminishing proportion of students both in secondary school and the post-compulsory years who are undertaking science-related studies (Tytler, 2007). Given that Australia’s future prosperity relies heavily on the productivity and innovation of well-trained science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) personnel, it is of great concern that science education in Australia, as in other post-industrial countries, is in a state of crisis.
Most commentators see the decline in uptake in Science as directly linked to inadequacies of school science, and its failure to excite student interest and engagement (Masters, 2006; Thomson, 2006). Tytler (2007) identified four main elements to the crisis in science education. He found that students develop increasingly negative attitudes to science over the secondary school years perceiving it to be uninteresting, simply a matter of learning given facts, unimportant and irrelevant to their lives (Masters 2006). Enduring detrimental attitudes result in a decreasing participation in post-compulsory science and mathematics subjects. There is a shortage of science-qualified people in the skilled workforce and there is shortage of qualified science teachers. It is clear that one begets the other.
But science education is not simply about creating scientists, technologists and engineers. The idea that science knowledge has value beyond practice has its roots way back around 400BC when Plato held informal gatherings at the Academy in Athens (Wright, 2005); consequently, since it became part of the school curriculum in the 19th Century, science education has also been about instilling a comprehension of scientific inquiry skills in those who will never step foot in a laboratory or onto a project site with the aim of “giving them a full appreciation of the transformative role of science and technology in daily life” (Tilghman, 2010).
Both the nation’s productivity and the community’s well-being are reliant on scientifically-literate policymakers and a discerning public. Every so often scientists and non-scientists, often politicians, appear at cross-purposes over important issues that impact on our daily lives. Discord arises largely because the general public has failed to acquire a basic understanding of and respect for the fundamental principles of scientific research, but such insight makes it much harder to “discount, distort, and otherwise politicise” important issues such as climate change (Tilghman, 2010). Climate change sceptics claim that we have all been hoodwinked by the climate scientists. They argue that there’s no consensus among scientists, models are not foolproof, there’s no evidence of human influence and that scientists can’t even predict today’s weather let alone future climate, all of these arguments clearly betraying a lack of understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. Science is never one hundred percent certain; rather it is about reducing the uncertainty. For many non-scientists it comes down to their understanding of the meaning of the word ‘theory’. To scientists, a theory is a tried and tested explanation of what is currently known about how the world works, yet they use deliberately nuanced language to acknowledge that a new discovery might necessitate some modification. But to many members of the general public a theory is just a guess that can be easily dismissed if one holds an alternative view. For many non-scientists, human–caused climate-change theory is just a possibility, with no more credibility than any other hypothesis. As a result, proponents of alternative ‘theories’ have found receptive audiences, regardless of any scientific credibility (Tilghman, 2010). That is probably why, while most Australians accept that the climate is changing, just over half attribute the cause to human activities (McCrindle, nd). For scientists on the other hand, climate change models are tested and retested and undergo intense scrutiny in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals. They become increasingly predictive and less conjectural with time and, at any given moment, constitute the most refined and scientifically-verifiable explanation for what has been observed. Thompson (2008) claims that anti-science crusaders “have figured out that language is the ammunition of culture wars” and have no compunction in firing at will. He contends that to win these wars, science needs to change the way it talks about knowledge.
It’s time to realise that we’re simply never going to school enough of the public in the precise scientific meaning of particular words. We’re never going to fully communicate what’s beautiful and noble about scientific caution and rigour. Public discourse is inevitably political, so we need to talk about science in a way that wins the political battle — in no uncertain terms. (Thompson, 2008)
At least, that’s Thompson’s theory. But it’s not yet time to concede on this issue or to accept that nothing can be done about the declining interest of Australian students in science-related fields because the new national curriculum in Science brings with it the chance for curriculum renewal. But will the new Australian Science Curriculum be able to achieve the twin goals of science education and avert the global crisis in STEM uptake? That is, will its graduates be scientifically literate and satisfy the increasing demand for professional STEM specialists? Will it make science more meaningful and accessible to students?
The stated aims of the Australian Science Curriculum are to provide students with a solid foundation in scientific knowledge, understanding, skills and values on which further learning and adult life can be built and to foster an interest in science and a curiosity and willingness to speculate about and explore the world (National Curriculum Board, 2009). As it stands, the Australian Science Curriculum is offered in two parts, K-10 Science and the senior sciences, comprised of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Earth and Environmental Science. All disciplines are organised around three content strands – science inquiry skills (e.g., investigation methods, analysing results), science as a human endeavour (e.g., nature of science, science careers), and science understanding (e.g., cells, rocks, forces), each supposedly of equal importance. A detailed examination of all of the Science Curricula, however, reveals that there are far too many science understanding descriptors, making the division between the stated goals and the written Science Curriculum quite confounding.
If you were to ask a science teacher what they hope that their students will have learned by the end of their course, they would rarely specify a list of content. Wright (2005) likened a content-centric syllabus to Poincaré’s “stones” and commented that, while all knowledge has value and content is not irrelevant because it is what we manipulate to develop important cognitive skills, it would be hard to stipulate one piece of scientific knowledge that should be essential for all citizens to know. Most people live worthwhile, fulfilled lives without knowing the majority of content descriptions that form the Australian Science Curriculum. What science teachers would say is that they would hope that their students would be scientifically literate. Wright suggests that rather than mastery of content, literacy also requires the development of intellectual skills, so teachers would like their students to be able to make connections between what they learn in class and their everyday lives, to be able, in their future adult lives, to evaluate information on important issues like climate change with a critical eye. These are the sorts of cognitive skills – the science inquiry skills addressed in the curriculum document – that discriminating, responsible citizens need, to make informed decisions about their future and that of their society. An overabundance of science understanding descriptors diverts precious time from the development of these vital skills. Again Wright notes that when streamlining gives way to overloading and there is too much content to cover, “we don’t have time to help our students learn to use the content we teach with any sophistication or understanding”; we have to hope that students will gain these intellectual skills on their own, simply as a result of learning the content, and we are often disappointed when they do not. “Unconstructed, disconnected knowledge is the antithesis of literacy” (Wright, 2005). And yet again, students will perceive that science is all about learning innumerable facts that are irrelevant to their lives.
But perhaps the biggest problem for science educators is that the national curriculum is not a curriculum at all. Print (1993, p. 9) defines curriculum as “all the planned learning opportunities offered by the organisation to learners and the experiences learners encounter when the curriculum is implemented.” So the National Curriculum is more like a syllabus. Print (1993, p. 7) distinguishes between syllabus and curriculum thus:
Curriculum as a term is often confused with syllabus. A syllabus is typically a list of content areas which are to be assessed. By comparison a curriculum includes not only content and a detailed statement of curriculum intent (aims, goals, and objectives), but also the other curriculum elements including detailed learning activities and evaluation procedures. Similarly, the term instruction refers to the set of activities employed by teachers to enhance student learning. Clearly this term is also subsumed within the broader context of curriculum.
It is teachers who devise and implement learning and assessment activities; they are the designers of the curriculum and together with their students they enact it. So, is the Australian Science Curriculum a house or a heap of stones? There is no doubt that curriculum writers have given the science teachers of Australia a large heap of stones, considerably more than are required to build a house. And, with its attempt to foreground inquiry skills, it can be argued that the new science curriculum has also provided a quantity of the ‘mortar’ teachers need to construct their curriculum. Still, science educators are faced with the huge task of creating the capacity to build the “house”. At Brisbane Girls Grammar School we are not content to create something that is merely functional, we owe it to our future decision-makers to manipulate these raw materials with vision and creativity to construct a metaphorical house that will satisfy Vitruvius’s three conditions of architecture – Firmitatis, Utilitatis, Venustatis – which roughly translates as durability, utility and beauty. That will take some doing but Australia’s prosperity depends on it.
Dr S Stephens
References
Masters, G. (2006). Boosting Science Learning – What will it take? Retrieved June, 26, 2010 from http://research.acer.edu.au/research_conference_2006/4
McCrindle, M. (nd). Australians on Climate Change: Attitudes and Behaviours. Retrieved June, 26, 2010 from http://www.markmccrindle.com/resources.htm
National Curriculum Board (2009). Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Science. Retrieved August 1, 2010 from http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Australian_Curriculum_-_Science.pdf
Print, M. (1993). Curriculum Development and Design. 2nd ed. Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Thompson, C. (October, 2008). The certainty principle. Cosmos, 23. Retrieved June, 26, 2010 from http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/issues/2008/23/
Thomson, S. (2006). Science achievement in Australia: Evidence from national and international surveys. Retrieved June, 26, 2010 from http://works.bepress.com/sue_thomson/13/
Tilghman, S.M. (2010). The Future of Science Education in the Liberal Arts College. Retrieved June, 26, 2010 from http://www.princeton.edu/president/speeches/20100105/index.xml
Tytler, R. (2007). Re-Imagining Science Education: Engaging Students in Science for Australia’s Future. Australian Education Review. Retrieved June, 26, 2010 from http://research.acer.edu.au/aer/3
Wright, R.L., (Fall, 2005). Undergraduate Courses for Nonscientists: Towards a Lived Curriculum. Cell Biology Education, 4(3), p189-198. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1201698/