Science education policy-making: eleven emerging issues; 2008 - OEI

Pre-requisites
Many science teachers will require professional development help to appreciate and
respect this indigenous knowledge. Their teaching and learning strategies will also
need to be extended in order to optimise the benefi t with indigenous students.
ISSUE C: INTEREST IN, AND ABOUT SCIENCE
Background
Since 2000, study after study has made very clear that there is an alarming crisis in
relation to students’ interest in science, either as a possible future career, or as an
intrinsic interest that will continue after school. The list of countries that have recorded
concern about this matter is now very long, especially among the more developed ones.
This lack of interest is due to a complex of factors including societal ones that are
beyond schooling. For example, ignorance about employment prospects in science
and technology, and their unfamiliarity as areas to many parents, play a role as does
the positive and negative images of science promoted by the media. Within education
itself, there is mounting evidence that the experience of school science is, by itself,
contributing to this malaise among students (internationally: ROSE project, TIMSS, PISA;
and numerous national studies). It is urgent that educational policy makers address the
lack of engagement that so many students experience in school science and technology
education. It is this aspect of the larger issue that science educators have some hope
of remedying.
The international studies report a confusing lack of correlation between students’
achievement in school science and their interest in the subject. A large national study
found students from Years 6 to 9 registering a decline in interest in most subjects, but
only science and mathematics were seen to lack intrinsic worth.
The following are common features of being in science classes, that directly contribute
to low interest, when students of 15 compare science with other subjects.
• Science teaching is predominantly transmissive.
As a student, learning science is simply a matter of being like a sponge, and soaking up this
knowledge as it comes from the teacher or from the textbook.
Science knowledge is dogmatic and correct. There are no shades of grey about science.
• The content of school science has an abstractness that makes it irrelevant.
So much what is taught in science is uninteresting because it is not related to our everyday
lives. Science in fi lms and in the media is often exciting, but that is not an aspect of the
science we hear about do in school. There are science topics that would be interesting but
these are not in our school curriculum.
• Learning science is relatively difficult, for both successful and unsuccessful
students.
20