New trends in physics teaching, v.4; The ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Japan
not teach energy concept directly. Instead, children are shown various natural phenomena, and
tacitly made aware of the relationship between the change and energy. It is obvious that the
teaching of energy concepts in elementary science also relates directly to domains (A) and (C),
yet the explanation of these points is omitted here,
From this brief description, it wil be understood that children are very busy learning lots of
things. Some people insist that content in elementary science should be selected more carefully,
and that the most important thing in science teaching is to give children the chance to investigate
natural phenomena freely, with an inquiring mind.
The process of inquiry which involves observing, classifying, measuring, inferring, and so on is
very important in science teaching. Recently many teachers in primary schools have recognized
this, but they usually have to struggle against a lack of teaching time. There are many problems
to be solved for elementary science teaching.
TEACHING ABOUT ENERGY IN LOWER SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Science is taught for 105 periods per year for the seventh and eighth grades and for 140 periods
for the ninth grade (one period is 50 minutes). Although the objectives of lower secondary
science which are described in the revised course of study are almost the same as those for
elementary school science, the following three points are particularly emphasized [3 1 .
1. The formation of basic scientific concepts and learning by inquiry must be stressed as
before. But special care must be taken to teach in accordance with the mental and physical
development of a child.
2. The content of the subject matter must be selected carefully to be basic and fundamental.
3. Learning about the relationship between nature and human beings must be included in
.science teaching. This means that basic knowledge about protecting the environment and natural
resources and about energy problems in the world must be taught in the appropriate way.
The spirit of revolution in science education which was engendered in the United States and
in the United Kingdom in the 1960s was quickly introduced into Japan. The course of study of
science for lower secondary schools which was proclaimed in 1969 emphasized that the process
of inquiry and basic scientific concepts such as ‘matter and energy’ must be stressed in science
teaching. As the result, such teaching was carried out earnestly by not a few progressive teachers.
But it was also true that many others were perplexed by it. The problems were in much of the
content studied, and in the formalization of the process approach. It is nonsense, for example,
to make children memorize the patterns of inquiry! Since then, the revised course of study has
come out.
The science curriculum for lower secondary schools had originally the character of combined
science, and consisted of two main domains (1) matter and energy, (2) living things, the Earth
and the universe.
The introduction to and the teaching of the energy concept are, needless to say, treated mainly
in the first domain. In the previous science course of study, the concept of energy and its forms
were introduced in the seventh grade, and the transformation of energy, and the concept of
energy conservation in the ninth. But many teachers were critical for it is difficult, in general, to
make children at the seventh grade understand such very abstract concepts as energy. This
criticism had to be listened to. Energy is frequently defined as ‘the capacity to do work’. But
the proper meaning of this neatly packaged definition is not simple to appreciate; moreover, this
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