international trends in science education research

International Trends in Science Education

ResearchDavid F. Treagust

Discussant: BENJAMIN M. DEBISME

– Programme for International Student Assessment

– Organization for Economic Co- operation Development – Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study

OECD

TIMSS

PISA

Diversity in Research in Science Education


Science education research is not conducted within one paradigm because there are too many fundamental differences about the nature of science education.

Indeed, science education research is not quite a research paradigm there is too much disagreement at a fundamental level.

Science education research is characterized by the issues it addresses and these include:


Learning Teaching Educational Technology Curriculum Learning Environments Teacher Education Assessment and Evaluation Equity History and Philosophy of Science


During the past 30 years, there has developed a great diversity of types of research being conducted in science education and there is a growing acceptance of these different research genres, often borrowed from other disciplines.

Olson, 2004 These studies have resulted in a huge number of publications, specifically international and national reports, theses and dissertations and edited books. Few of these publications are published in or conferences and somehow these studies do not have the necessary impact on the science education community.


Large-scale Assessment Programs

Small-scale Studies


Research on the Status of Science Teaching

NON-WESTERN COUNTRIESScience

teachers have high status but the remuneration is very poor.

WESTERN NATIONS

Status of science teaching is declining.

Science teaching is no longer a career of first choice.

This scenario is a problem because of the ageing workforce of science teachers and there would be appear to be a lack of well-qualified people wishing to enter the science teaching profession.

Research shows that the results so far are mixed at best.

There is concerted action in some countries to address this problem by encouraging scientist to teach after a very short period of induction into profession. There are problems with replacing current teachers and concerns about the viability of subjects like physics in many schools.

Research on the Impact of Technology on Teaching

Linn (2003)Research on the impact of

technology on teaching is of key importance in terms of science texts and lectures, science discussion and collaboration, data collection and representation, science visualization and science simulation, and modeling.


As the reviewed showed, there is an increasing use of computers in schools but more research is still needed to investigate how students learn science with computers? Similarly there is an increasing use of on-line resources but how beneficial are these to learning science and is it better to learn science in a synchronous and asynchronous manner with on-line resources? Similarly, there is an increasing use of on-line resources but how beneficial are these to learning science and is it better to learn science in a synchronous and asynchronous manner with on-line resources?


Concerns about Scientific Literacy

Hand, Prain and Yore (2001)

Science education reforms in a number of countries promote a standards-based definition of scientific literacy for all people such that they can understand science and apply the big ideas to realistic problems and issues involving science, technology, society and environment.

Yore, Bisanz and Hand (2003)

Researchers are examining the specific roles of reading and writing in science education.

PISA is aimed at reading, scientific, and mathematics literacy and the testing is in terms of mastery skills deemed essential for daily life.

The result from TIMSS and PISA studies have provided a very strong incentive for each nation’s government to look at the status of science education.

As indicated in the Scientific American article, it is not all obvious that revision of science curricula in an attempt to increase scores as measured by TIMSS is an optimum way to direct our energies in science education.

In almost every nation, there is a desire to ensure that high levels of scientific literacy among school-aged youth and TIMSS data do not necessarily provide this evidence.

Research interest in Science Education

Most research in science education is on the practice of teaching and learning, together with assessment, evaluation and teacher education; there is less on philosophical issues.

Research interest in Science Education

Children’s understanding and learning of scientific phenomena (Miller, Leach and Osborne, 2000; Wandersee, Mintze and Novak, 1994)

Conceptual change research ( Duit and Treagust, 2003, Hewson, 1996)

Constructivist views of learning/teaching (Fensham, Gunstone and White, 1994)

Nature of science (McCommas, 1998)

Perception studies – classroom environment, attitude (Fraser, 1994)

Assessment/Evaluation (Tamir, 1998)

Scientific literacy (Yore, Bisanz and Hand, 2003)

Equity and gender issues in science (Baker, 1998, Rennie, Parker and Fraser, 1996)

Science teacher education (Abell, 2000; Anderson and Mitchener, 1994)

History and Philosophy of science (Duschl, 1994)

Science Education Influencing Policy and Practice

We must ask ourselves what lasting and significant influences are we having in related academic domains?

As a domain, science

education research grows by its own activities and also by being open to outside influences.

Influencing Policy and Practice

Certainly, they produced a lot of good research in a range of high quality journals that are recognized by the science education international community.

One way that this research in science education can have more influence is by writing not only for ourselves, but also in groups for other domain.

“A desired outcome is to influence the political process in education by our research, but my experience tells me that this is rarely the case or at least not in the short term. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge most researchers in science education do not write for journals outside science education involved with educational policy…”

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