Towards a Science Education for All

Jonathan Osborne Towards a

Science Education

for All: The Role of Ideas,

Evidence and Argument

Take up of Science: Post-16

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

1980 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

1990 91 92 93

Humanities

Mixed

Science

& Maths only

Trends in A-Level Numbers

4

20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000

1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Number

Physics Chemistry Biology Maths

2 per. Mov. Avg.

(Physics)

Physics could be in "terminal decline" - FT p4

The death of physics - Mail p47

Physics in downward spiral as pupils think it is too difficult

Teaching of physics in steep decline - T

elegraph p8

‘Australia’s ability to prosper in this environment

depends on high levels of R&D. These in turn require that more young people achieve scientific and

technical qualifications with a strong base in the

physical and biological sciences and mathematics. By itself, this will not be enough. Policies and strategies are required to ensure a broad base of scientific,

mathematical and technological literacy for all

students. This means that science, technology and mathematics education must be given high priority nationally, in all education systems and every school.’

Australia’s Teachers, Australia’s Future

S&E occupation share of total civilian

employment: 1983, 1993, and 2002 (USA)

RISING ABOVE

THE GATHERING STORM

RISING ABOVE

THE GATHERING STORM

Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

✦ Last year, more than 600,000 engineers graduated from institutions of higher education in China,

compared to 350,000 in India and 70,000 in the United States.

✦ Recently, American 12th graders performed below the international average for 21 countries on

general knowledge in math and science.

✦ The cost of employing one chemist or engineer in the United States is equal to about five chemists in China and 11 engineers in India.

✦ Chemical companies last year shut 70 facilities in

the United States and marked 40 for closure. Of 120 large chemical plants under construction globally, one is in the United States and 50 are in China.

PISA Results 2000

English Students’ Attitudes to Science

13

Disagree

%

DisagreeLow

%

Low Agree

%

Agree

% I would like to become a

scientist 58 21 13 8

I like school science better than other subjects

43 25 20 11

School science is

interesting ^{16 23 38 23}

Jenkins, E., & Nelson, N. W. (2005). Important but not for me: students' attitudes toward

secondary school science in England. Research in Science & Technological Education, 23(1), 41-57.

I like school science

better than most other school

subjects _{In many}

industrialized countries, science

is less popular than other

subjects In many

countries, girls seem

to dislike school science

What would you like to learn about?

•

^{108 Items}

•

No less than 80 generated statistically significant differences between girls and boys

15

Boys

1. Explosive Chemicals

2. How it feels to be weightless in space

3. How the atomic bomb functions 4. Biological and Chemical

Weapons and what they do to the human body

5. Black holes, supernovae and other spectacular objects in space

Girls

1. Why we dream when we are

sleeping and what the dreams may mean

2. Cancer, what we know and how we can treat it

3. How best to perform first-aid and use basic medical equipment

4. How to exercise to keep the body fit and strong

5. Sexually transmitted diseases and how to be protected against them.

Overview

•

What change necessary?

•

What should be the goals of a science education for all?

•

What contribution can the exploration of ideas, evidence and argument make?

16

History of Reform

•

Armstrong - the Heuristic Method

•

Dewey - learning a student-centred process of enquiry

•

Schwab - taught as ‘enquiry into enquiry’

•

Nuffield Reforms in the UK

•

Science as a Process

17

More Recent Developments

•

UK - National Curriculum

 4 Versions since 1989!

•

USA - National Science Education Standards

•

UK - How Science Works

School Science: The Essential Tension

•

Science Education as an Education

 Science as a Way of Knowing

 Conceptual Coherence

 Preparation for Citizenship

 Science as a Cultural Achievement

Versus

•

Science Education as a Pre-Professional Training

 Authoritarian

 Foundationalist

 Atomised

19

The Problem of Learning Science

To borrow an architectural metaphor, it is impossible to see the whole building if we focus too closely on the individual bricks. Yet, without a change of focus, it is impossible to see whether you are looking at St Paul's Cathedral or a pile of bricks, or to appreciate what it is that makes St Paul's one the world's great churches. In the same way, an over concentration on the detailed content of science may prevent students appreciating why Dalton's ideas about atoms, or Darwin's ideas about natural selection, are among the most powerful and significant pieces of knowledge we possess.

(Millar & Osborne, 1998:13) ²⁰

Science – The Whole Story

But if all these examples of our cosmic connectedness fail to impress you, hold up your hand. You are looking at stardust

made flesh. The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, the oxygen that fills your lungs each time you take a breath-all were baked in the fiery ovens deep within stars and blown into space when those stars grew old and perished. Every one of us was, quite literally, made in heaven.

Chown, M. (1998, 7.11.98). The cosmic connection. New Scientist, 62.

Liberal Vision of Science Education

 Freed us from the shackles of received wisdom

 Knowledge derived from evidence and rational thinking

 Offers a defense against mere assertion

 A route to intellectual autonomy

 Distinctive way of knowing

22

Science for Citizenship

• Any education in science must attempt to communicate not only what is worth knowing but how such knowledge relates to other events, why it is important and how it

came to be.

• Most of what non-scientists need to know in order to

make informed public judgements about science fall under the rubric of history, philosophy, and sociology of science, rather than the technical content of scientific subjects.

• Ryder: most of the science within contemporary scientific controversies is not addressed by school science.

23

How Science Works

• Scientific Methods and Critical Testing

• The Role of Creativity in Science

• Historical Development of Scientific Knowledge

• Science and Questioning

• The Diversity of Scientific Thinking

• The Relationship between Science and Certainty

• The Role of Hypothesis and Prediction

• The Role of Competition and Collaboration

24

Osborne, J. F., Ratcliffe, M., Collins, S., Millar, R., & Duschl, R. (2003). What 'ideas-

about-science' should be taught in school science? A Delphi Study of the 'Expert' Community. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40(7), 692-720.

Enabling Democratic Participation

Democracy functions by majority decision on major issues which, because of their complexity, require an increasing amount of background knowledge. For

example, environmental and ethical issues cannot be the subject of informed debate unless young people possess a certain scientific awareness. At the moment, decisions in this area are all too often based on subjective and

emotional criteria, the majority lacking the general

knowledge to make an informed choice. Clearly this

does not mean turning everyone into a scientific expert, but enabling them to fulfill an enlightened role in making choices which affect their environment and to

understand in broad terms the social implications of

debates between experts.' ²⁵

Deaths from Infectious & Respiratory Diseases 1920-2000 (UK)

2,036 3,341 1930 ^{2,667 2,591 4,219}

2,043 3,513 1931 ^{2,669 3,322 4,255}

2,020 3,450 1932 ^{2,492 2,860 4,259}

2,039 3,493 1933 ^{2,478 3,460 4,213}

2,039 3,442 1934 ^{2,349 2,432 4,257}

2,005 3,430 1935 ^{2,211 2,371 4,232}

2,005 3,611 1936 ^{2,112 2,385 4,230}

1,970 3,545 1937 ^{2,097 3,041 4,198}

1,981 3,378 1938 ^{1,930 1,978 4,205}

1,947 3,549 1939 ^{1,930 2,048 4,123}

1,907 3,636 1940 ^{2,247 4,139 4,104}

1,871 3,204 1941 ^{2,342 2,986 4,082}

1,875 3,025 1942 ^{2,133 2,374 4,108}

1,864 3,007 1943 ^{2,174 2,988 4,111}

1,829 2,976 1944 ^{2,063 2,314 4,061}

1,821 2,995 1945 ^{2,046 2,309 4,118}

1,834 3,016 1946 ^{1,665 2,260 4,079}

1,808 3,064 1947 ^{1,632 2,311 4,103}

1,791 2,863 1948 ^{1,491 1,838 4,119}

1,774 3,092 1949 ^{1,391 2,324 4,104}

1,767 3,185 1950 ^{1,123 2,063 4,129}

1,719 3,230 1951 ^{977 2,966 4,142}

1,720 3,003 1952 ^{775 1,939 4,148}

1,686 2,898 1953 ^{663 2,220 4,130}

1,701 2,914 1954 ^{596 1,824 4,188}

0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500

1920 1940 1960 1980 2000

Year

Deaths/million

How do we Know?

•

That Day and Night are caused by a spinning Earth

•

Arguments Against:

1. The Sun moves

2. If you jumped up you would not land in the same spot

3. If the Earth was spinning at that rate, the speed at the equator is over a 1000 mph and you

should be flung off.

4. There should be an enormous wind as the atmosphere lags behind.

30

The Elements of a Science Education

•

^Conceptual

 Developing Knowledge is an Interactive Process

•

The Epistemic and Social Practices of Science

•

^Cognitive

 Goal of developing intellectual autonomy

 Value as a pedagogic heuristic

•

The Affective and the Social

The Conceptual Value of Argumentation

•

Past decade a body of work has emerged

exploring the teaching of ideas, evidence and argument.

•

Leads to enhanced conceptual understanding

 Alverman and Hynd

 Zohar and Nemet

• ‘integrating explicit teaching of argumentation into the teaching of dilemmas in human genetics enhances

performance in both biological knowledge and argumentation’

37

The Conceptual Value of Argumentation

Participants who were asked to argue in favour of an alternative explanation of a

physics problem (the scientific explanation) were more likely to show improved

reasoning on the problem than control

participants who were asked to solve the problem without argumentation.

Nussbaum, M. and G. Sinatra (2003). "Argument and conceptual engagement." Contemporary Educational Psychology 28: 384-395.

Jonathan Osborne

What Evidence?

• Mercer, N., Dawes, L., Wegerif, R., & Sams, C. (2004). Reasoning as a scientist: Ways of helping children to use language to learn science.

British Educational Research Journal, 30(3), 359-377.

 Seven Classes of Children in Year 5

 12 Detailed Lessons

• Teacher led introduction

• Group Discussion Activity

• Final plenary session

• Set of control classes

39

Jonathan Osborne

Data from Performance on SATS (Age 11)

40

Numbers Pre-

Intervention Mean Scores

Post

Intervention Mean Scores

Target Classes 119 3.97 5.70

Control Classes 129 4.22 5.04

(F (1,245) =10.305; two tailed p-0.002. Effect Size = 0.29

Observation/Experiment

REAL WORLD

CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE

Driver, R., Leach, J., Millar, R., & Scott, P. (1996). Young people's Images of Science.

Buckingham: Open University Press.

REAL WORLD MODEL

PREDICTION

DATA Agree/Disagree

Observation/

Experiment

Model fits/Doesn’t Fit

Negative Evidence

Positive

Evidence Reasoning/

Calculation

Giere, R. (1991). Understanding Scientific Reasoning (3rd ed.). Fort Worth, TX:

Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Research on the Cognitive Outcomes of Engaging in Argument and Dialogue

• Kuhn

❖ Kuhn, D. (1992). Thinking as Argument. Harvard Educational Review, 62(2), 155-178.

❖ Kuhn, D., Shaw, V., & Felton, M. (1997). Effects of dyadic interaction on argumentative reasoning. Cognition and Instruction, 15(3), 287-315.

• Zohar

❖ Zohar, A. (2004). Higher order thinking in science classrooms. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

❖ Zohar, A., & Namet, F. (1998, Nov, 1998). Fostering argumentation skills through bio-ethical dilemmas in genetics. Paper presented at the Second Conference of European

Researchers in Didatik of Biology, University of Göteborg, Sweden

• Howe

❖ Howe, C., Tolmie, A., Duchak-Tanner, V., & Rattray, C. (2000). Hypothesis testing in science:

group consensus and the acquistion of conceptual and procedural knowledge. Learning and Instruction, 10(361-391)

• Osborne, Erduran & Simon

❖ Osborne, J. F., Erduran, S., & Simon, S. (2004). Enhancing the Quality of Argument in School Science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41(10), 994-1020.

43

Results: Osborne, Simon & Erduran

44

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

1 2

3 4

5

Pre Post

Levels of Argument

Improved Satisfaction with Learning

• Nolen, S. B. (2003). Learning Environment, Motivation and Achievement in High School Science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching(40), 4.

‘it is clear from these data in these classrooms

where students perceive their science teacher as interested in student understanding and

independent thinking, rather than in the speedy recitation of correct answers, students are more likely to have productive and satisfying learning experiences.’

%

Enjoyable 62

Interesting 74

Easy 47

Different 65

Science for Public Understanding:

Students’ Perceptions of the Course

Osborne, J. F., Duschl, R., & Fairbrother, R. (2002). Breaking the Mould:

Teaching Science for Public Understanding. London: Nuffield Foundation.

KS4 Science structure

Science (core)

10% curriculum time

Emphasis on scientific literacy (science for citizenship)

Additional Science Ge ‘General’

10% curriculum time

Additional Science Ap ‘Applied’

10% curriculum time

ALL students do this (1 GCSE) SOME students also do Ge or Ap (1 GCSE)

Encouraging Further Study

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

1 2 3 4 5

Ranking

Encouraging Further Study

21 Cent Science Standard GCSEs

Mean

21st Cen Sci = 2.94

Stan GCSE = 3.02