Data processing and science investigation in schools

Abstract

Ideas about data processing seem to inhabit a no‐man's‐land between the territory of science and the territory of mathematics. In the former they appear out of nowhere as from a conjurer's hat to do particular tasks such as to shed light on reaction kinetics. In the latter they often are given a context in science such as accounting for the motions of uniformly accelerated bodies where their performance is seen at its most elegant, and then the mathematician moves swiftly away before the dirtiness of reality diverts the pupil too much from the mathematical principles involved. In this paper, I intend to raid the world of social science for notions of data processing which are there commonplace on behalf of the pupils learning science in schools, and from psychology to import a style of thinking about the process of thinking which may be of use to their teachers as they develop new curricular approaches in the Secondary Science Curriculum Review.

Essentially the paper starts with the assumption that the best way to study something (the relationship of science learning to cognitive development) is to try to change it. But this leads one to realize (scales and models) that the same words are at one farther level of abstraction in use by the psychologist than the scientist. In the case of the fashionable ‘process skills’ the distinction which needs to be made is between their use to promote intellectual development, and their use to widen the pupil's spectrum of approaches to the world at his own level of thinking. After this (widening and deepening) things begin to get difficult: scientists are not used to treating as problematical the very tools they habitually use to conceptualize reality. The question is asked ‐ again for the purpose of changingthe phenomena ‐ What is the underlying agenda of science? And does this show some light on current science teaching practice? Probability is then looked at on behalf of the average pupil, and finally the result of a brief search for the useful meaning of ‘problem solving’ is reported.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Shayer

Michael Shayer is Lecturer in Inservice Training at the Centre for Educational Studies, King's College, University of London and Director of the ESRC CASE project.