''THE proposed national science curriculum risks sending science education backwards, with the nation's deans warning the course is beyond the skills of most teachers and fails to provide a grounding in "real science".
In a submission to the National Curriculum Board, the Australian Council of Deans of Science, representing almost all the nation's universities, says the curriculum needs to have the traditional disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics at its centre.
The national curriculum proposes teaching science through to Year 10 by focusing on big issues, such as climate change, in order to teach scientific thinking and processes and reveal the underlying disciplines. Separate subjects in physics, chemistry and biology would not appear until Years 11 and 12.
The council says the approach "requires far greater discipline expertise" than the current model, and "runs a very high risk of failure" given the shortage of science and maths teachers and the drafting of other teachers into these subjects.
The deans instead propose organising the science curriculum around the key phenomena in the universe. ACDS executive director John Rice said science was the exploration of a range of phenomena that occurred in our world.
"Within the myriad phenomena that you see ... there are a few that give you insight in how to understand all the rest," Professor Rice said.
"It might be good to get students to look at what are the basic phenomena of all science and how they work. That would be a good underlying, organising principle for the curriculum."
The ACDS submission says exploring issues such as climate change are important for engaging students but not sufficient in giving them a grounding in the traditional disciplines.
"(They) may provide greater motivation towards science," it says. "However, the measure of a science education still remains the scope and depth of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc, that students have learned and are able to apply.
"The science disciplines represent the distillation of human thought about particular natural phenomena and how best to understand them."
The national curriculum also proposes a significant shift in the way science is taught, away from the traditional "transmission" method where a teacher imparts knowledge. The new curriculum is centred on students, involving them in choosing the scientific concept or topic to be studied.
The teacher then provides activities to explore the ideas, and, using that experience as a basis, introduces the scientific terms and concepts that students can then apply to new situations.
The ACDS says this model for teaching "requires far greater discipline expertise than the transmission model".
"In theory, such an approach to curriculum should deliver superior educational outcomes," it says.
"In practice, in an education system not prepared for it, it may well deliver poorer outcomes, with real science, as embodied in physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology, downgraded."
Professor Rice said the deans supported the concept of taking a broader approach to the teaching of science, moving it away from learning formulas.
"We don't want a return to the transmission model where you have a catechism that people can memorise and transmit to the student," he said. "But if that's all you have, at least that can be done. What this new curriculum is asking for is a genuine understanding of some scientific phenomena that requires a much more sophisticated understanding than a lot of teachers have."
He said teachers with such understanding were in the minority, particularly given so many science teachers had been drafted from other areas.
"It's like saying we want people who can fly the latest FA-18 and then saying we'll put in people who can fly Tiger Moths. There's bound to be a lot of crashes," he said.''
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read more
Australian Council of Deans of Science
Publications
- The IT Education Bubble: An analysis of university student statistics 2002-2005
Ian R Dobson. - Sustaining Science - University Science in the Twenty-First Century
Ian R Dobson.
Newspaper articles and media releases
- A National Science Curriculum: ACDS Press Release October 29th, 2008
- Deans of Science Tackle the Issues: ACDS Annual General Meeting October 29th, 2008
- Now is the Time to Choose a Science Degree: ACDS Press Release October 29th, 2008
- Australia's ICT Capability Crash: ACDS Press Release September 16th, 2007
- The Dobson Report: ACDS Press Release July 7th, 2007
