Programs for the reform of K-12 science teaching today usually insist that science teachers must introduce their students to the nature of science, as well as to scientific content. The academic field of science studies, however, evinces no consensus about what the nature of science really is. This article examines how science educators and educational researchers have drawn on the fragmented teachings of science studies about the nature of science, and how they have used those teachings as a resource in (...) their own projects. It identifies three competing movements for the reform of science teaching that owe a particular debt to science studies: history and philosophy of science, science, technology, and society, and constructivist pedagogy. The article analyzes some of the deep assumptions about the relationships between research science, school science, and children’s learning that pervade the educational literature. (shrink)

A visible role in the theoretical discourses on education has been played in the last couple of decades by the constructivist epistemologies, which have questioned the basic assumptions of realist epistemologies. The increased popularity of interpretative approaches especially has put the realist epistemologies on the defensive. Basing itself on critical realism, this article discusses the ontological and epistemological commitments of educational research and its consequences for text interpretation. The article defends ontological realism and the semantic conception of truth against radical (...) constructivist ontology and the epistemic conceptions of truth. (shrink)

Although postmodernist thought has become prominent in some educational circles, its influence on science education has until recently been rather minor. This paper examines the proposal of Michalinos Zembylas, published earlier in this journal, that Lyotardian postmodernism should be applied to science educational reform in order to achieve the much sought after positive transformation. As a preliminary to this examination several critical points are raised about Lyotard's philosophy of education and philosophy of science which serve to challenge and undermine Zembylas’ (...) project. Subsequently, the three main theses of Lyotard that Zembylas considers beneficial and wishes to transpose onto science classrooms and pedagogy are scrutinized and found to be more of a hindrance than a help to curriculum reformers. (shrink)

This commentary is a critical appraisal of Gil-Pérez et al.'s (2002) conceptualization of constructivism. It is argued that the following aspects of their presentation are problematic: (a) Although the role of controversy is recognized, the authors implicitly subscribe to a Kuhnian perspective of `normal' science; (b) Authors fail to recognize the importance of von Glasersfeld's contribution to the understanding of constructivism in science education; (c) The fact that it is not possible to implement a constructivist pedagogy without a constructivist epistemology (...) has been ignored; and (d) Failure to recognize that the metaphor of the `student as a developing scientist' facilitates teaching strategies as students are confronted with alternative/rival/conflicting ideas. Finally, we have shown that constructivism in science education is going through a process of continual critical appraisals. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce Robert Brandom’s inferentialism as an alternative to common representational interpretations of constructivism in science education. By turning our attention away from the representational role of conceptual contents and toward the norms governing their use in inferences, we may interpret knowledge as a capacity to engage in a particular form of social activity, the game of giving and asking for reasons. This capacity is not readily reduced to a diagrammatic structure defining the knowledge to be acquired. (...) By considering the application of these ideas to the concept of electrical current and the use of analogies in science education, I hope to illustrate how they may be given practical employment as the child comes to explore within the concepts derived from historical scientific endeavours and not merely meander through her individual experiences of scientific phenomena themselves. In moving away from the representational role of analogy, our focus shifts from the quality of the analogy itself toward the quality of the discourse utilising the analogy. (shrink)

Constructivism rejects the metaphysical position that “truth”, and thus knowledge in science, can represent an “objective” reality, independent of the knower. It modifies the role of knowledge from “true” representation to functional viability. In this interview, Ernst von Glasersfeld, the leading proponent of Radical Constructivism underlines the inaccessibility of reality, and proposes his view that the function of cognition is adaptive, in the biological sense: the adaptation is the result of the elimination of all that is not adapted. There is (...) no rational way of knowing anything outside the domain of our experience and we construct our world of experiences. In addition to these philosophical claims, the interviewee provides some personal insights; he also gives some suggestions about better teaching and problem solving. These are the aspects of constructivism that have had a major impact on instruction and have modified the manner many of us teach. The process of teaching as linguistic communication, he says, needs to change in a way to involve actively the students in the construction of their knowledge. Because knowledge is not a transferable commodity, learning is mainly identified with the activity of the construction of personal meaning. This interview also provides glimpses on von Glasersfeld’s life. (shrink)