Science Education Project
In October 2006, the Institute of Ideas, in association with Pfizer, published What is science education for? The book, edited by Tony Gilland and featuring a lead article by David Perks, followed several seminars and debates on the issue. The controversial book attempts to question contemporary thinking about science education, in particular the 'scientific literacy' approach. Its publication generated much public discussion and media coverage. Here you will find updates and commentary on developments in the field.
31 August 07
Now Science Works?
A response to the National Science Learning Centre conference report: Now Science Works – A new approach to Key Stage 3 Science
By David Perks, Head of Physics, Graveney School, London and lead author of What is Science Education For?, Institute of Ideas, 2006
Following hot on the heels of the introduction of the new science GCSE specifications last year, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) announced a new secondary science curriculum for 11-14 years olds this summer. This is part of a much wider review of key stage 3 (KS3) education. Hailed as the introduction of 'personalised learning' and an end to the 'one size fits all' education of the twentieth century, the latest changes have already managed to provoke the wrath of traditionalists with their focus on child-centred learning and skills rather than content. The introduction of the new science GCSEs last year also attracted significant voices of dissent. Most famously Baroness Warnock claimed the new GCSE was 'fit for the pub'(1) in The Times. Entirely separately a young physics teacher’s blog provoked significant media interest and attracted over 1600 signatures to his petition on the 10 Downing Street website which demanded the government 'bring back mathematical rigour into secondary physics education'(2).
The QCA has adopted a defensive tone from the outset, dismissing any criticisms of its programme of reform as irrelevant at the same time as reinforcing the urgency with which reforms must be adopted. As Mark Orrow-Whiting of the QCA put it at a recent event hosted by the National Science Learning Centre, six hundred thousand pupils are about to enter education who have no idea about the twentieth century.(3) The implication is that we have no time to reflect on the wholesale changes being imposed on school education. To do so would be an obstacle to progress.
But despite the urgency, the QCA is careful to at least pay lip service to the concerns of the so called 'traditionalists'. According to Ken Boston, Chief Executive of the QCA:
"The new curriculum builds on the best of the past by maintaining subject disciplines but at the same time providing greater opportunities for personalised learning, addressing the major challenges that face society and equipping young with skills for life and work in the 21st century."(4)
His twofold approach claims to defend the integrity of subject disciplines and demand thorough going changes in the delivery of the curriculum, but it reveals the defensiveness of the QCA. Constantly on the back foot against accusations of the dilution of secondary school education, they are at the same time forcing reforms through with little heed to those criticisms. In fact, the whole tenor of the launch of the new curriculum is reminiscent of a Stalinist purge. Boston made a great deal of warning against the critics in his speech launching the new curriculum.
"There are some who will condemn this curriculum... Such critics see education as a winnowing device to sort the wheat from the chaff – a game of winners and losers."(5)
The National Science Learning Centre report Now Science Works reflected on the need
"...to embrace and upskill the harder to reach teachers to change their pedagogies."(6)
In other words, the conception of the science teacher must change dramatically with the onset of the new curriculum. There is no room for die-hards in the new regime.
An examination of the new science programme of study published by the QCA to be introduced in 2008 makes it clear that, despite Boston’s protestations to the contrary, the secondary science curriculum will be nothing like its predecessor. The main change in the new curriculum has been to remove the prescriptive nature of content and free up the curriculum so that teachers can write their own schemes of work with only minimal guidance on the content to be included. This has been hailed by the QCA as victory for teachers who have been clamouring for a move away from the prescriptive nature of the national curriculum.
But the impetus behind the removal of the strictures of prescribed subject content is far more to do with reducing the burden of too much content on pupils who are supposedly put off by academic science lessons than it is about allowing teachers the freedom to explore their subjects in innovative ways. In a direct copy of the arguments used to justify the introduction of the new science GCSE courses last year, we are told the move away from an academic science education is about creating a more relevant education capable of creating scientifically aware citizens.
Alongside the dilution of the content of science, there is a new emphasis on 'How science works' or a processed based understanding of science. The change in approach is designed to radically alter how science is taught and learnt in secondary schools. Taken almost straight from the 21st century science GCSE introduced last year, 'How science works' prioritises a study of scientific methodology over scientific knowledge. By emphasising process over content, the new curriculum is meant to give pupils a practical critique of science and its use in different contexts. The idea is that each individual will then have the ability to fathom out the sense of scientific information in unfamiliar contexts and become able to make rational choices about the use of science and technology in their own lives. Whilst the aspiration to develop the critical facilities of young people is a laudable aim and one we all share, is it really sensible to make it the focus on secondary science lessons for 11-14 year olds? Even the proponents of the new curriculum themselves feel that this might be asking a lot of pupils, "who are more likely to be operating within concrete models of cognition and who will therefore require greater support than their Key Stage 4 colleagues."(7) In fact, if anything this approach will lead to rote learning statements about scientific methodology which have little relevance or use to young people and do little to explain how science has fathomed out the workings of nature.
But despite the acknowledgment of the potential difficulties in achieving what amounts to a sophisticated critique of the relationship between science and society, the drive to introduce these changes is seen as urgent. The rationale for reform is now well rehearsed, if unconvincing. As Professor John Holman, director of the National Science Learning Centre and one of the architects of the 21st century science GCSE puts it, the alleged link between MMR and autism lead to an increase in cases of mumps from 119 in 1998 to 43000 in 2005. The implication is that a better understanding of the process of science would lead to more responsible and informed citizens who would presumably not reject the MMR jab and so reduce the likelihood of further increases in the incidence of diseases like mumps, measles and rubella.
As I have argued elsewhere in – What is science education for?(8) – the attempt to deal with what amount to complex political problems about the relationship between science and society in the classroom is unlikely to succeed. The reaction to the MMR scare is not a question of ignorance. Nor is it clarified by an understanding of the nature of peer review or a basic account of epidemiology. The reaction against the MMR jab was prominent amongst well educated middle class professionals. It was a rejection of the advice of government scientists and politicians on grounds of a lack of trust. That is not an issue open to discussion with 11-14 year olds.
Fuelled by a desire to tackle social issues head on, the proponents of the new curriculum express their own fears about their inability to convey the importance of science to young people in the curriculum they propose. Education is to be sidelined in favour of a list of issues that need to be addressed.
But evacuating the content of KS3 science in order to make space for what amounts to scientific citizenship studies is just prostituting the science curriculum to the concerns of politicians and the media. A reading of the programme of study makes this all too clear.
The science content outlined in the new programme of study focuses on four areas of study; roughly, physics, chemistry, biology and big ideas like the environment and space. For example in 'Organisms, behaviour and health' the nominal biological unit there is a section covering:
"conconception, growth, development, behaviour and health can be affected by diet, drugs and disease"(9)
The associated explanatory notes outline this should include, "the importance of healthy eating complemented by regular exercise and the effect of drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and cannabis on mental and physical health." It is hard to see how this differs from government public health campaigns. It is also difficult to see how it can add to a scientific understanding of human biology given the weak conceptual framework within which these issues will be 'discussed'. This topic amounts to little more than hectoring adolescents about their behaviour and using their respect for science as a means of giving the message some degree of authenticity. The same is true of the environment and sustainability etc.
But these ideas are hardly unfamiliar to the average teenager. The new curriculum is a meagre diet of the wearisome concerns of politicians and those social pessimists who believe that we are in dire need of new ways of socialising young people into society. Boston made this all too clear on the launch of the new secondary curriculum. According to him the proponents of the new curriculum share the following views of the purpose of education:
- to give every young person the very best preparation for life
- to maximise and recognise the potential and achievement of each individual
- to bridge the divisions within our society – ethnic, religious, cultural, social, economic, regional and those divisions that arise from disability
- to support social mobility and the long-term economic security of the nation and its citizens.
Can we really ask education to fix all these social ills? Is it right the education should be driven by concerns well outside the remit of the classroom? This is more akin to a political manifesto than a mandate for school education. Underlying it is a view of a society in trouble with its relationship to the young. But the ambitious scope of Boston’s outlook seems out of place within the secondary school classroom. Is he not asking too much of education?
Placing all of these burdens on to the 11-14 school curriculum leaves little room for education. The paradox is that despite having such a big agenda for education Boston doesn’t believe that we can teach subjects. As Boston himself makes clear, "the rate of improvement in educational attainment has slowed down in the past decade; in some countries it has reached a glass ceiling, through which it cannot break." This means for Boston that the "traditional approach to covering the syllabus has been exhausted; it has delivered all it can; it will work no more."
This is a dramatic admission from the leading architect of the school curriculum in the England. It is a straightforward admission that the educational establishment has given up on trying to educate the mass of children who enter our schools. Academic education has failed in our schools according to the political and educational class. This explains the willingness to drop the prescribed content of the national curriculum for one which focuses on process and skills rather than content. In the drive to make the curriculum accessible the major obstacle of learning the subject disciplines is to be replaced with an education focused on the individual pupil. The nature of the education will be tailored to the individual rather than the demands of mastering the subject. Personalised learning means that we don’t have to ask a class to try to master the basics of electricity in science. Instead, we are supposed to teach or at least guide pupils to acquire skills which will make them able to critically appraise the validity of the scientific approach. This according to the proponents of the new curriculum will make them better able to deal with the choices they will face in using science or dealing with the issues science throws up in the lives.
From another perspective the evacuation of the content of the secondary school curriculum makes it susceptible to the political concerns of the government and those involved in constructing the curriculum. The politicisation of the curriculum is a trend that has already been commented on in the recently – see The corruption of the curriculum(10). But the overt nature of the claims made by Boston for the new curriculum surely leave no room for doubt that it is the political concerns of the educational and political class that are foremost in their minds when they look at education. The corollary of personalised learning is the creation of the responsible citizen. What the new curriculum achieves is the subordination of subjects to the socialisation of the individual. Science as a subject only has any relevance in relation to its utility in providing opportunities to shape the responsible citizen of the future.
There is another choice. We could develop an academic science education to be proud of. One that would challenge the best minds and lead all pupils to a better understanding of what science has achieved and what it could achieve in the future. But to do this we need to be honest and admit that it is a task that requires effort on the part of the child, the teacher and a commitment from schools and the government. We have an opportunity to put the science education back on track. Let’s not waste it.
(1) Scientific elite rejects new GCSE as ‘fit for the pub’, The Times, 11 October 2006
(2) 10 Downing Street E-Petitions
(3) Now Science Works, A new approach to Key Stage 3 Science, National Science Learning Centre, 2 May 2007
(4) News release: QCA launches the new secondary national curriculum, QCA, 12 July 2007
(5) Speech at the launch of the new secondary curriculum, Ken Boston: Curriculum for the 21st century, 12 July 2007
(6) Now Science Works, A new approach to Key Stage 3 Science, National Science Learning Centre, 2 May 2007
(7) ibid.
(8) What is science education for?, Tony Gilland (ed.), Institute of Ideas, 2006
(9) Programme of study: Key Stage 3, Science
(10) The Corruption of the Curriculum, Frank Furedi et al, Civitas, 2007
11 June 07
A new book published by CIVITAS, The Corruption of the Curriculum, examines recent developments in education and features a reproduction of David Perks' essay, What is science education for?. David is cited in a Daily Telegraph story about developments in science education. The paper carried a summary of the entire publication, here, while The Daily Mail covered the book on 11 and 12 June.
21 May 07
David Perks, author of the lead essay in the recent IoI publication What is science education for?, gave evidence to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee inquiry, ‘Science Education for the 21st Century’, alongside Professor Robin Millar, Co-Director of the 21st Century Science Project, Department of Educational Studies, University of York, and Derek Bell, Chief Executive of the Association for Science Education.
01 March 07
New science GCSE: A failed experiment?
Six months after the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) introduced its new compulsory curriculum for GCSE science, the independent evaluations of Twenty First Century Science, a pilot course commissioned by the QCA as part of its process of shaping the new curriculum, have been published. The results of these evaluations indicate that the QCA’s rapid overhaul of science education in schools from September 2006 – specifically aimed at encouraging more students to pursue science at A level and beyond – was both premature and based on shaky foundations.
In October 2006 the Institute of Ideas published What is Science Education For?, a strident critique of modern trends in science education, by David Perks, Head of Physics at a South London comprehensive school. The book included thoughtful responses to Perks’ essay from representatives of all sides in the debate, including Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College London; the philosopher Mary Warnock; Andrew Hunt, a director of the Twenty First Century Science project; and Professor Michael Reiss, director of Education at the Royal Society, generating much discussion in the print and broadcast media (click here to read about it).
The focus of Perks’ critique was the compulsory teaching of ‘scientific literacy’ to all students studying the new curriculum, including discussion of how science works and the limitations of scientific knowledge within the context of contemporary issues such as climate change, genetics and obesity. A key aim of promoting ‘scientific literacy’ was to make science more ‘relevant’ to students’ everyday lives, and therefore more interesting to them. Perks argued that the pursuit of relevance represented a dumbing down of the science education, which would not engage more students and would sell short those students interested in serious science.
Perks also criticised the way that the QCA had pushed through the changes without allowing for proper debate of the pilot courses it had commissioned. Indeed, one of Twenty First Century Science’s own directors, Andrew Hunt, told the Guardian in September 2006: "Really, we should have waited another year so that we could have learned from and acted on the reports."
Now the results of these evaluation reports have been published – see http://www.21stcenturyscience.org/ – what do they tell us? Two results in particular stand out as demanding further attention and discussion.
First, compared to students studying conventional science courses, the evaluation team found that ‘Fewer Twenty First Century Science students indicated agreement with the statement “I would trust something a scientist said (statement B05).”’ The promotion of scientific literacy is often justified on the grounds that people today display a worrying lack of trust in scientists, and that this situation can be improved by making the public more ‘scientifically literate’. As the Twenty First Century Science evaluation indicates, it cannot be assumed that ‘scientific literacy’ will lead to greater trust: indeed, the promotion in the classroom of debates and controversies over science could well undermine students’ trust in science and scientists still further.
Second, more students agreed with the following two statements before taking the course Twenty First Century Science course than after:
‘Statement A04: The things we do in science make me more interested in science.’
‘Statement A05: When I have a choice after GCSE, I will choose at least one science subject.’
Given that a key government objective for science education is to reverse the decline in the number of students taking A level physics and chemistry, and that this was the justification for the new science curriculum introduced last September, the lack of increased interest in science cited by students of the new course are highly concerning.
Commenting on the evaluation results, David Perks said:
“When we are encouraged to look at science from the point of view of the ethical and social problems it raises it is no surprise fewer young people are interested in pursuing science further. Being fed on a diet of debates about the dangers of global warming, GM crops and nuclear power is hardly likely to inspire anyone. It is no surprise to me that the evidence from the research raises questions about the effectiveness of this approach in encouraging young people to take up science.”
It should be noted that the evaluation has found some positive results arising from the new approach to science GCSEs. For example, the evaluation found that students studying Twenty First Century Science ‘were significantly more likely than students following conventional courses to find news items on science interesting (statement B03), to report liking reading a science books other than school science text books (statement B04), to believe that the Government should spend more money on scientific research (statement B12) and to feel that it is important to promote this country as a scientific nation (statement B14)’. Such positive results, however, do not address either the apparent failure of the new-style GCSE to live up the QCA’s aims of making science more popular amongst students, or the concerns raised by David Perks and others in What is Science Education For? about the impact of attempts to make science more popular on the academic content of science education.
The Twenty First Century Science project team conclude the report with the statement that ‘many of the findings of the evaluation studies on the pilot are inconclusive about its effects, and that they invite, indeed demand, replication and development during the years after the completion of the pilot’. Maybe so, but before that what we desperately need is further debate about what we want from science education.
The teaching of 'scientific literacy' might sound attractive, but many are concerned about the extent to which it opens up science education to politicisation. For example, the specification for the ‘Ideas about Science’ section of the Twenty First Century Science course given by OCR, the exam board for the course, focuses almost solely on the potential limitations to scientific knowledge, and seems to embody a good deal of scepticism about scientific knowledge. This is one perspective on science, but is it one we want to promote through the national curriculum?
Indeed, Professor Jim Donnelly, a science educationalist from the University of Leeds who was commissioned as independent academic to oversee the evaluation project, commented critically on the focus of the ‘Ideas about Science’ aspects of the course:
"I note particularly the theme of Risk, as it is taken up in the specification. Analysis of Risk is important in much contemporary controversy. It is also prominent in the account of Ideas about science given in the Core specification. But in what sense can Risk properly be called an Idea about science, and what might be the consequence of identifying it as such? Much more distinctive of science, in my view, is its materialistic account of the universe, and its capacity to generate agreement and a measure of confidence beyond most, arguably all, other forms of human knowledge creation. I do not see these key characteristics of science reflected strongly, or perhaps at all, in the list of Ideas about Science."
It is hardly surprising, in this context, if the new science GCSE turns out merely to reinforce widely-held prejudices in today’s society about the untrustworthy nature of science and scientists. For those scientists, teachers and science teachers keen to pass on to the next generation the huge strides in human knowledge and associated technological advance that science has delivered, the new experiments in school science education deserve greater critical scrutiny than they have attracted to date.
What is needed is honest debate. Do we really want to turn our science classrooms into a political battleground, with students used as the foot-soldiers?
See also The Guardian for an article on the new science GSCEs.