Discourse and the new didactics of scientific literacy

Abstract

Increasingly, there are calls for the school curriculum to reflect the real‐world needs of students, such as the need to make difficult choices as citizens. The science curriculum is not exempt from these reappraisals of the relevance of what occurs in schools. Approaches to science involving social contexts are increasingly common, and with them demands for teachers to exercise new skills in curriculum‐making. What are those skills and what is required to develop them? We argue that discourse among teachers is centrally involved in the process of re‐invigourating the curriculum.

Keywords:

• integrated curriculum
• philosophy
• science curriculum
• teacher leadership

Notes

1. Materials developed in the PING project are now being used for teaching and teacher education in various German states. However, the requirement for discipline‐based assessment has imposed a barrier to the adoption of this approach in the upper‐school grades.

2. Details of how this worked can be found in Riquarts and Hansen (1998).

3. All participants need to accept the basic rule that they are equal partners of equal value with equal rights in the discourse. The methods of the workshop are based on theories of curriculum justification (Frey 1983), formal or procedural ethics (Oser 1992, Löwisch 2000) and structured argumentation in problem‐solving (Toulmin 1958, Jonassen and Remidez 2002).

4. The waste audit produces information of some complexity; students and teachers are typically surprised at just how much waste was in the school.

5. This was a surprise, since students spent less actual time studying school science in this approach.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Manfred Lang

His research interests centre on teacher education, networking, integrated science teaching, and discourse in collaborative curriculum development. He is currently co‐ordinator of the project EUDIST, about innovation in European science‐teacher education.

Susan Drake

Her research interests revolve around educational reform, innovative educational practices (integrated curriculum, instructional strategies, assessment, collaborative planning), narrative research, action research, and self‐study.

John Olson

He is interested in the role of the teacher in change. He is author of Understanding Teaching: Beyond Expertise (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1992).