Science Curriculum

I've been reading Science Teaching: The Role of History and Philosophy of Science by Michael Matthews. In an early chapter of that book he gives a brief history of the large-scale science education curricula that have been developed in the last hundred years or so. Reading that has gotten me thinking about the problem of all-encompassing curricular movements and I thought I go ahead and jot down my half-formed thoughts. I am certainly no expert on educational theory, and I can't even claim to be much of an expert on science teaching. So take all this with a grain of salt.

It seems to me that all the big curricular movements assume that there is a single "best" way to teach science to all students at all stages of development. This basic idea seem flawed to me. There are at least two groups of students for whom we have very different goals in science teaching: those who will become scientists and those who will not. Of course, we don't know which are which until very late i the game. But the ideal science education for someone who will never become a professional scientist is likely quite different from what is needed to train a future scientific professional. Furthermore, it seems ridiculous to think that one approach will be ideally suited to all ages of students. Student capabilities change significantly as students age and it may be that what is best for an elementary school student is radically different from what is best for a high school student. At the same time, though, the education of elementary school students and high school students cannot exist entirely independent of each other. High school education must build upon what has been learned in elementary school, while elementary school education should supply students with the background they need for their high school studies.

It might seem like the development of a unified curriculum for both types of students at all grade levels is a hopeless task. Maybe it is. But I think there might be some hope. To begin with, my impression is that at the early grade levels there really is no difference between what is best for the future scientists and what is best for others. This is fortunate since it is precisely at these grade levels that one has no chance of distinguishing the members of the two groups. At the elementary school level science teaching should focus on teaching about science, rather than teaching scientific theory. Content is not critical at this stage. Students should probably be given some exposure to the various scientific disciplines, but that exposure should be focused on particular topics that illustrate the nature of scientific inquiry. Teaching should be very hands-on, should be clearly relevant to the real world (in a directly perceivable way - so teaching kids about quantum mechanics and saying that it relates to grocery store scanners and computers doesn't cut it), and should be infused with history. Matthews argues for a history-based approach to science teaching that I think would be very well suited to teaching students at this level (his specific example of the history of the study of pendulum motion is excellent).

At the elementary, and probably the middle school. level students should not be burdened with the abstract theories that constitute the grand achievements of modern science. Instead, students should be given an opportunity to explore but also to experience the interplay between ideas and facts. They should be led to see that ideas do not spring forth from facts, but that rather ideas often transform the meaning of previously known facts. They should come to see that science deals not directly with the real world but only indirectly, with the idealized world of ideas serving as an intermediary which is not a direct representation of the world but rather a lens through which aspects of the real world can be understood. As a physicist I would be perfectly happy if students at this level were Aristotelian, as long as they were thoughtfully Aristotelian. I am convinced that this approach, although it would not get students to an understanding of modern science, would do a great deal to pave the way for future instruction. After all, college physics professors are now well aware that we must assume that many (if not most) of our students enter our introductory college physics courses with an essentially Aristotelian view of motion (if they have any coherent view at all). So it is hard to see that this approach would do any harm.

At the high school level and beyond it become more important to distinguish separate tracks for future scientists and others. For future scientists, scientific education must include a significant amount of training as well as education. Future scientists must learn how to use the theoretical and experimental tools of modern science and to do this they must be exposed to the abstract formulations of modern scientific disciplines. However, I think even for these students that the transition from learning about science to learning the edifice of modern science should be gradual. Teaching should progress from a purely historical, hands-on, real-world approach to a more discipline-structured, mathematical, abstract approach. At no point should the historical or hands-on elements disappear entirely, but they will need to be less prominent to make room for the more professional elements. Ideally the history and the abstract formulation would be closely tied together. Students could be shown how the abstract ideas were developed historically, but then could go on to make use of these ideas in problem-solving, etc.

For students not interested in careers in science will probably still need some exposure to the abstract style of thinking that characterizes modern science, but they need less exposure than the future scientists. What they probably need at this level is a chance to see the connections between science and major social, political, and economic issues. Students at this level have enough awareness of these other areas that it makes sense to connect science to them. This is basically where we want most citizens to end up: they should have some understanding of what science is all about and the role that science plays in today's world. This kind of educations would hopefully make them more informed to participate in the social, political, and economic life of modern civilization and also provide them with the thinking tools they need to resist pseudoscientific claptrap.

Perhaps the biggest difference in the two educational tracks will come at the college level. Here the goal is to go beyond the basics and dig deeper. For future scientists this means becoming increasingly expert at using the formalisms of modern science. For non-scientists this means engaging in a more sophisticated inquiry into the history and philosophy of science and the relation of science to society. History and philosophy may become add-on components to courses for scientists, as may the hands-on elements (which will typically be separated into lab sessions) while for the non-science major these elements should be infused throughout the course. Breadth of content now becomes important in courses for scientists, while the content of non-science major courses can be narrowly focused and suited to the expertise of the instructor or the interests of students. Graduate education in the sciences would likely continue as it is now, an almost entirely formal training in the concepts and techniques of the modern discipline.

I think this approach would be of tremendous benefit to the vast majority of students who have no intention of becoming professional scientists. It would be particularly beneficial for future elementary school teachers who are currently harmed by the formal science education which they receive and then (since it is what they have been taught) pass on to their students who simply aren't ready for it and don't need it. This system does have some disadvantages, mainly for future scientists. It is possible that reducing the amount of formal, abstract science they engage in at an early age will hamper their ability to master this material later in their education. But I'm not convinced that young students gain much from exposure to abstract scientific theory. I think that material is probably not developmentally appropriate for these young students. And in any case it is not clear that current teaching which utilizes a more professional approach in early grades does all that much to help prepare students for coursework at the college level.

Perhaps the more significant disadvantage for future scientists is that they would miss out on the more sophisticated history and philosophy of science that would be presented to non-science majors at the college level. This really is unfortunate, but again I think my ideas would be better than the status quo in which future scientists receive almost no instruction that involves history and philosophy of science. Perhaps science majors could be encouraged to take general education science courses as electives. I think this is particularly important for future high school science teachers (who will presumably be science majors, but won't become professional scientists and will need to understand the historical and philosophical approaches to teaching science if they are to utilize these approaches as teachers).

Again, I'm not expert. I'm not seriously proposing this as a model for a new national curriculum or anything remotely like that. This just represents the state of my current thinking on the subject. I'll continue to read more and probably find out the flaws in my thinking (I've already read more and found out that Ernst Mach came up with much the same line of thinking that I've been bouncing around in my head for the last week or so - and I feel encouraged by that!).