document resume ed 371 953 author title science and ... · the way a scientist or engineer works...

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Solomon, JoanTeaching Science, Technology and Society. DevelopingScience and Technology Series.ISBN-0-335-09952-193

82p.; For other documents in this series, see SE 054626-630.Taylor and Francis, 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101,Bristol, PA 19007.Guides Nt-Classroom Use (055)

MF01/PC04 Plus Postage.*Citizenship; *Educational Strategies; *GroupDiscussion; *Role Playing; *Science and Society;*Science Curriculum; Science Education; Se-tondaryEducation; Simulation; Teaching Methods

Science and technology are often presented and taughtas two separate essences. When this is done, students as well asteachers are forced to attempt to develop the appropriate linkages.This book is one a series designed to help teachers develop theirscience and technological education in ways that are both satisfyingto themselves and stimulating to their students. This book partitionsinto seven chapters. Chapter one, "What and why is STS?," discussesthe features and importance of Science, Technology and Society (STS)in education. Chapter two, "Our youngest pupils," focuses on thesocial worlds of the young child and images of science which derivefrom these. Chapter three, "Getting going on STS in the secondaryschool," discusses some of the different ways in which teachers havedeveloped an innovation which led them towards STS. Chapter four,"Teaching strategies in the secondary school," provides teachingstrategies based on personal experiences. Chapter five, "Theexamination classes," looks at citizenship as a goal in education.Chapter six, "Games, simulation, and role-play," presents anassortment of evidence concerning simulations. Chapter seven, "Groupdiscussion of issues-the DISS project," provides insights on thesubject of group discussion of science-based social issues in theclassroom. (ZWH)

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DEVELOPING SCIENCE ANDTECHNOLOGY EDUCATION

TEACHING

U & DEPAIIITMENT OF EDUCATION°Nice ol Educational Rsetuch and Improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)

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TECHNOLOGYAND SOCIETYJOAN SOLOMON

9EST COPY MAE2

Tel; ching Science,Technology and Society

A


Series Editor: Brian Woo lnoi- hDepartment of Educational ,udies, University of Oxford

Current titles:

John Eggleston: Teaching Design and TechnologyKeith Postlethwaite: Differentiated Science TeachingJon Scaife and Jerry Wellington: Information Technoh.'gy in Science and Technology EducationJoan Solomon: Teaching Science, Technology and SodetyClive Sutton: Words, Science and Learning

Titles in preparation:

David Lr.vton: Technology's Challenge to Science EducationMichael Reiss: Science Education for a Pluralist Society

4

Teaching Science,Technology and Society

JOAN SOLOMON

Open University PressBuckingham Philadelphia

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46, 0 4

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11.

Open University PressCeltic Court22 BallmoorBuckinghamMK18 1XW

and1900 Frost Road, Suite 101Bristol, PA 19007, USA

First Published 1993

Copyright ©Joan Solomon 1993

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted inany form or by any means, without written permission from thepublisher.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Solomon, Joan, 1932Teaching science, technology, and society/Joan Solomon.

p. cm. (Developing science and technology education)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-335-09953X ISBN 0-335-09952-1 (pbk .)1. Science Study and teaching Great Britain. 2. Science Social

aspects Study and teaching Great Britain. 3. Technology Socialaspects Study and teaching Great Britain. I. Title. II. Series.Q183.4.G7S65 1992303.48'3'071041 dc20

Typeset by Type Study, ScarboroughPrinted in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press,Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

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92-8255CIP

fir

Contents

Series editor's preface

Preface

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

What and why is STS?

Our youngest pupils

Getting going on STS in the secondary school

Teaching strategies in the secondary school

The examination classes

Games, simulation, and role-play

Group discussion of issues the DISS Project

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37

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65

References 77

Index 79

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Series editor's preface

It may seem surprising that after three decades ofcurriculum innovation, and with the increasingprovision of centralised National Curriculum, it isfelt necessary to produce a series of books whichencourage teachers and curriculum developers tocontinue to rethink how science and technologyshould be taught in schools. But teaching cannever be merely the 'delivery' of someone else's'given' curriculum. It is essential:y a personal andprofessional business in which lively, thinking,enthusiastic teachers continue to analyse their ownactivities and mediate the curriculum frameworkto their students. If teachers ever cease to becritical of what they are doing then their teaching,and their students' learning, will become sterile.

There are still important questions which needto be addressed, questions which remain funda-mental but the answers to which may vary accord-ing to the social conditions and educationalpriorities at a particular time.

What is the justification for teaching Science andTechnology in our schools? For educational orvocational reasons? Providing Science and Tech-nology for all, for future educated citizens, or toprovide adequately prepared and motivated stu-dents to fulfil the industrial needs of the country?Will the same type of curriculum satisfactorilymeet both needs or do we need a differentiatedcurriculum? In the past it has too readily beenassumed that one type of science will meet allneeds.

What should be the nature of Science and

Technology in schools'? It will need to developboth the methods and the content of the subject,the way a scientist or engineer works and theappropriate knowledge and understanding, butwhat is the relationship between the two? Howdoes the student's explicit knowledge relate toinvestigational skill, how important is the student'stacit knowledge? In the past the holistic nature ofscientific activity and the importance of affectivefactors such as commitment and enjoyment havebeen seriously undervalued in relation to thestudent's success.

And, of particular concern to this series, what isthe relationship between Science and Technology?In some countries the scientific nature of tech-nology and the technological aspects of sciencemake the subjects a natural continuum. In othersthe curriculum structures have separated the twoleaving the teachers to develop appropriate links.Underlying this series is the belief that Science andTechnology have an important interdependenceand thus many of the books will be appropriate toteachers of both Science and Technology.

Joan Solomon has been active and influential inthe STS world since its conception. Having de-veloped the seminal SiSCon in Schools course, shehas continued to be one of its most stimulatingadvocates through her teaching, lecturing, exam-ining and her research and development work. Inthis aspect of science teaching, she insists, the waythat a teacher teaches, the way that a studentlearns, is of more fundamental importance than

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what is taught or learnt. Thus, in this book, shegives us insights into the processes whereby stu-dents develop their own thinking. STS teaching isnot about knowing the applications of science insociety, but about developing students' attitudesand about ways of looking at problems and deriv-ing personally significant solutions to them. And itis about understanding the way that science worksin its social context. This sensitive, perceptive

TEACHING SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY ANT) SOCIETY

insight into the way that STS works makes anotherimportant contribution to this developing field.

We hope that this book, and the series as awhole, will he!p many teachers to develop theirscience and teconological education in ways thatare both satisfying to themselves and stimulatingto their students.

9

Brian E. Woolnough

Preface

Courses in tertiary level Science Technology andSociety (STS) began to be taught systematically inBrita4i sometime between 1967 and 1970. By1971, a group calling itself SISCON (Science In aSocial CONtext) had been set up by Dr BillWilliams frGm Leeds University and was fundedby the Nuffield Foundation . Like the school STSprojects which started some years later, the foun-ders of this movement never paused to defineexactly what they meant by STS; they just designedcourse materials and got on with teaching it. Thistopsyturvy beginning did not seem to inhibitargument and discussion: indeed the caucus ofuniversity and polytechnic teachers who wereinvolved met regularly to debate the issues, and fora while, the subject grew steadily. It was at theseminal SISCON Summer Schools in Coleg Har-lech that I first learnt about STS and met itsadvocates. Clearly the 'subject' was being taught indifferent ways and for different purposes, so that alack of formal definition seemed, for a while, to bealmost more of an advantage than a hindrance.

In lo80 John Ziman's landmark book Teachingand Learning about Science and Society was pub-lished. Here he explored tertiary level STS, defin-ing six different models ,1 the role of science withrespect to society. He listed, and largely rejected, anumber of simplistic approaches to teaching STSwhich ranged from the narrow academicism ofhistory and philosophy of science to a single-minded concentration on a particular issue theproblematique approach. It has proved an invalua-ble analysis by means of which the variety of

pcssible purposes and approaches, but not anycut-and-dried definition, has gradually filled in theoutlines of this elusive cross-disciplinary area.

Although the organisation of the present book,which is about school STS, is quite different fromthat of its predecessor, it does resemble it in oneimportant respect. It too describes different ap-proaches to STS in order to explore its nature.Once again the publication of teaching resourceshas run well ahead of any analysis of uie subject.This sort of situation can continue for a while, butit is a sure sign of the growing maturity of a subjectthat its overgrowth begins to demand the construc-tion of some clearer pathways. The enormouslypopular SATIS resources have given a higher thanever profile to STS, arid the publication of somebook about its teaching began to seem more andmore of a necessity. This book may be just onepossible answer to that pressure. It has proved agreat help and advantage that, by the time ofwriting, some results Of the recent research pro-jects into the Public Understanding of Sciencewere available, particularly those concerning thefamilies of the youngest pupils and the discussiongroups of much older students. This meant that thedescription of classroom teaching strategies couldbe filled out with some more analysis of theirvaried purposes at different stages in the learningand schooling of a child.

Three out of the seven chapters of this bookdescribe aspects of STS in the normal fashion of anauthor from the outside. Chapter 1 recordssomething of the history of this approach both

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within the scientific movement and within edu-cation. This is valuable because it sets the scene bylisting the areas of interest and the general aimsthat have been suggested for STS. Chapter 2discusses what primary school STS might be like,and Chapter 7 records some results from researchinto how groups of adolescents talk about thesocial issues involved in STS. The whole of Chap-ter 4 is given over to descriptions of middle schoolclassrooms where different types of STS lessonswere going on.

However, it did not seem to me that this kind ofwriting could ever catch enough of the specialflavour of this very committed type of teaching,nor of its variety. To do justice to that the actualwords of teachers were required. So I wrote to,visited, and telephoned some of the most interest-ing STS teachers that I knew. With great patienceand generosity they spent time explaining to mehow they had introduced STS into their schools,why they had donc so, what they found easy toteach and what was hard, and why they valued theenterprise. This material is to be found in thechapters about implementing STS in sche ol, itsspecial advantages for sixth-form teaching, and itsuse in examinations.

It is a pleasure to acknowledge my debt to thethree main contributors. The first of these is TonyHamaker whom I have known for many years andwhose views and enthusiasm have had a great

TEACHING SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

influence upon my own thinking and action. Theother two, Sue Howes and Barbara Guy, I came toknow later through their collaboration in the DISSproject. Their special strengths and commitmentto their students are explicit, different and enor-mously valuable. At two places in the text we alsohear the voices of STS students whom I regret thatI cannot thank by name. Further, acknoW-ledgement is made to the Joint MatriculationBoard for allowing access to confidential materialfrom their Science Technology and Society exam-ination scripts, presented in Chapter 5. The JointMatriculation Board however, does not necess-arily E cce pt the views expressed in this chapter.

Finally. I commend this text to my colleagues,the science teachers for whom it was written. Itrust very much that they will see within the text,despite its many drawbacks for which I take fullresponsibility, some particular items which theymay find useful and even a small element whichmay inspire them to some new act oi teaching orlearning. They will know, as I do, that one'steaching can never stay the same, nor mark time. Itis bound to change because our concern w ithscience, with education, and with the students whopass through our classes, continually demand freshanswers to fresh questions, and that through thestruggle to provide these our own understanding ofscience, and of people, goes on growing.

1 1

[CHAPTER 11

What and why is STS?

How it all started

A neat way to begin this book would be to definejust what STS (Science, Technology and Society)education is, or what it should be. In either casethis would not be as easy a task as it might seem,since STS means different things to differentpeople. This is largely because it has developed fora range of important but historically disconnectedreasons. That makes one good reason for begin-ning with a brief look at its history. In the course ofthis we may begin to find answers to three ques-tions:

What have been the main themes in STS?Why should it be included in science education'?Why does STS sometimes seem to be separatefrom, even antagonistic to, 'mainstream' scienceeducation?

There is some antagonism. Its severest critics seeSTS as a disreputable rival to 'valid' science. STS,they say, is concerned with the opinions of laypeople, the arguments of politicians, the econ-omics of profit-making, and the emotions of thosewho know little about science. It seems deliber-ately to search out the controversial and the topicaland speaks about them in terms of passion ratherthan logic. On the other hand our traditionalscience, so they say, seeks quietly for eternal truthsabout Nature, using Nature's own incorruptiblemethods disinterested experiment and incon-trovertible mathematics. STS is in danger ofcorrupting the 'pure' science we have inheritedfrom great scientists of the past.

Of course that description is no more truthfulthan any other caricature, but it does indicate thecomplexity of STS, which is concerned with laypeople's troubles and views as well as with thetheories and applications of science, and so doeschallenge its position. Caricatures sometimesmake useful jumping-off points, but they shrug offany analysis of reasons and causes so that theymake little contribution to our understanding.This one completely ignores the history of the STSmovement, its purpose, and just why it includes somuch which seems unscientific because it is relatedto the problems and politics of society.

In the first place it is clear that scientiststhemselves could never have been immune fromsuch social influences in their own lives. Ad kindsand conditions of people have been scientiststhose who were vain and self-seeking, and thosewho were intellectual re6uses, those who werereligious and caring, and those who struggled tomake profit out of industrial innovations. And foreach one of these, their science must have taken ona little of the flavour of the scientist involvedbecause it is a human activity. In that sense at leastscience did not and could not stand aloof fromthe life of its times. That point always needs to bemade to counteract the worst excesses of theludicrous cartoon images of scientists that chil-dren's comics portray (see Chapter 2). But in thecase of STS the whole rationale for its existenceand study exists in the wider world which liesoutside the laboratory.

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S.

12 TEACHING SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

Contemplation and action'

When the foundations of British science were')eing laid down in the seventeenth century, therewas a vigorous attempt to make science a part ofthe instrumentation of the state. In effect, sciencewas going to be politicised. The originator of thismovement was the illustrious Francis Bacon, LordChancellor of England and founding spirit of theRoyal Society. In his book on The Advancement ofLearning Bacon wrote with scorn about the kind ofacademic education he had received, common atthat time, as 'no more than a conducted tourthrough the portrait gallery of the Ancients'.Bacon dedicated this book (perhaps the earliestever to be written on the virtues of one kind of STSeducation) to King James I, and was astute enoughto commend science as being useful to the state.The preface and much of the text is too ;'ulsome fora modern taste, but there is no mistaking the tenorof the argument. He scoffs at the idea that learnedmen (scientists) should live a life of remote con-templation unsullied with civic matters 'learnedmen forgotten in states and not living in the eyes ofmen are like images of Cassius and Brutus . .

But the greatest error of all the rest is the mistak-ing or misplacing of the farthest cnd of knowledge. . . [which is] sincerely to give a true account oftheir gift of reason to the benefit and gift of men.This is that which will indeed dignify and exultknowledge, if contemplation and action be morenearly and straitly conjoined and united together.(p. 35, emphases added)

There was nothing new in recommending theapplications of science to the rulers of states, andnot least among the motives for doing this were theincentives of patronage and funding. These veryhuman trts and needs are timeless, as many whoare struggling to get grants for research know tothis day. Galileo had offered his newly constructedtelescope to the ruler of Venice as a valuablemilitary device for observing enemy warships at adistance. He had an extended family to supportand needed a rise in salary which he duly got fromhis delighted employer. But Galileo was alsocommitted to free contemplation, and he was laterto argue fiercely against those of the cardinals who

were attempting to channel his intellectual obser-vation and speculation, that the evidence for-^ientific contemplation was there to be seen and..;ad in 'the open book of the heavens'.

In Bacon's programme for science, the perspec-tive was broad. He was claiming that there was anunfilled place waiting for the scientific enterprise ,and for education in it, within policy and action onbehalf of the state. Some time later when ThomasSpratt, Historian of the Royal Society, wrote toJames II on the same subject he brought up thePlague and the Great Fire of London as the sort ofpublic disasters which action based upon sciencemight have been able to avert. This kind ofagonised response to immediate disaster, or topi-cal problems, is very familiar to us all. It calls forscientific action, and the call comes from laypeople in need, not from scientists.

Bacon had been shrewd enough to argue forboth contemplation and action, or, as we might putit now, for pure science and applied. The balancebetween these two was to characterise the swingsfrom so-called 'valid' science, to STS, and viceversa, in the centuries that followed, and soeventually, to the educational curricula of thepresent age.

Even in the newly founded Royal Socty,Bacon's practical and political aims for sciencewere not embraced by the majority of the Fellows.The outstanding British genius of the seventeenthcentury was by nature more of a contemplativethan a man of ac,ion or politics. When IsaacNewton's great work Principia Mathematica waspresented to James H, probably one of thecleverest and best educated of all our monarchs,the King is said to have remarked about thededicated volume that ' . . . like the Peace of Godit passeth all understanding!' And that remark didNewton's reputation no harm at all in most circles.It was considered then, as it is today, stereotypi-cally correct to be quite unfathomably clever if youare a scientist! Valid science still seems to some tobe all about intellectual contemplation.

The knowledgeable and the workers

Royal or governmental patronage on the grounds

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WHAT AND WHY IS STS?

of utility did not link very well with contemplativescience, even if the argument was that there mightbe useful spin-off for the state. While scienceremained an aristocratic pursuit, which it mostlywas for the next three centuries, it did not need tochase economic return. This class system of sci-ence was a reflection of the contemporary culture,but it was to do considerable harm to the scientificenterprise in several ways. Robert Hooke, forexample, was from lower class origins and spentmuch of his early scientific career making airpumps and other mechanical devices for moreupper crust scientists, like Robert Boyle. This hadunfortunate psychological effects on Hooke, butits effect on science had longer-term conse-quences. It divided the making of instruments andmachinery from the thinking about them, just as itdivided the population into those who mightadvance scientific thought, and those who would'only' make technical devices.

Srience suffered from the separation betweenmaking and thinking between technology andabstraction. In the eighteenth century the inspiredengineers of steam power were at a great removefrom education in science, or indeed from anyeducation at all. Some of the innovative engineers,like the Cornishman Richard Trevithic, could noteven sign their names to patent forms. The ab-stract theory of thermodynamics arose out of thecontemplations of a French savant, Sadi Carnot,more than a century after the clanking engines hadbeen set to work. If it had been a class system thathad divorced contemplation from action, then ithad clearly been responsible for holding up theprogress of science itself.

The separation also held back other kinds ofprogress. The Industrial Revolution producedpollution on a scale we can hardly imagine today,and there was no one to use scientific knowledgefor combating it. By the middle of the nineteenthcentury the life expectancy in Manchester was amere 28 years! There was almost no comment onsocial issues from the learned scientists, most ofwhom had not contributed to the new mechanicaladvances, and no recourse for those ignorant ofscience who had to operate the machines throughthe dangerous processes of trial and error.

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By the end of the nineteenth century, therewould be universal education, but even then therewas precious little science in what was beingtaught. The question that the early twentiethcentury had to address was whether the publicsociety as a whole had any role to play in science,and whether science as system of thinking wassufficient in itself to give the ordinary citizen, whohad no intention of becoming an academic scien-tist, something of peculiar or personal value whichshould be included in their education.

Science for the people

The 1930s were a time when it began to seem thatscience might be reaching out to offer the citizen,and especially the poor and oppressed citizen, aprize of great value. J. D. Bernal, for example,claimed that he had come to realise by the age often, that science might be the saviour of hissuffering countrymen in Ireland. He wrote in hisautobiography (quoted by Werskey, p. 71) that:

. . . the relief of the sufferings of the country andthe possibilities of science, could in some sense beunited. Science offer, d the means, perhaps theonly means, by which the people of Ireland couldliberate themselves. I saw it narrowly in a purelynationalistic sense, but it led me to an interest inscience which grew to bc a dominating intcrcst inmy life.

Lancelot Hogben, another member of this groupof radical scientists, also tried to 'bring science tothe people'. Like Bernal, Hogben had no doubtsabout the validity of what he offered. In theintroduction to his book Science for the Citizen,Hogben wrote that it was intended 'for the largeand growing number of intelligent adults whorealise that the Impact of Science on Society is nowthe focus of a genuinely constructive social effort'.

So one STS educational objective was to delivernot the Baconian goods of science, but personaland social liberation through science. It was sci-ence for ,:te people but, at this time, the science onoffer had not been changed at all. Indeed for thisillustrious group of scientists, science could takeon this role precisely because of its high validitystatus. In ethical terms, as well as utopian and

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intellectual ones, they firmly believed that sciencehad a morality which put it on the side of theoppressed.

Science does not flatter our self-importance.

. . . science makes stringent demands on ourwillingness to face uncomfortable views about theuniverse.

Privilege is repelled by the [scientific] outlookbecause of its ethical impartiality.

For scientific humanists like these who were op-posed to religion, it looked as if 'high science'served as a substitute morality. But this all hap-pened before the Second World War which was tochange the face of STS yet again.

The arguments of the humanists had seemed toopolitical and avant-garde for most scientists in the1930s. Although its new aims involved the publicin science as never before, and for purposes ofsocial betterment rather than wealth-creation,there was an essential ingredient of STS which wasstill missing. The radical scientists of the 1930s didnot challenge scientific knowledge. So it is possibleto see them as not so much the harbingers of a newapproach to science and technology as a faction ofthe older unchanged 'valid' science order, despitetheir socialist ardour.

War and scientific responsibility

It is common to refer to the First World War as the'Chemists' War and to the Second Vorld War asthe 'Physicists' War', but the repercussions onscience of the second were different in kind, as wellas in discipline, from those of the first. In 1918 ithad seemed enough to fix the blame for gaswarfare in the trenches on the German chemicalindustry. The giant Krupps chemical complex wasdismantled in 1919 by the victorious allies. Thescientists who had originally developed thosemurderous gases which left thousands of ex-soldiers with damaged lungs to die slowly in thedecade after the war ended, were not blamed.Scientists, it could be said, had identified mustardgas and other new gases without having anywarlike intenticn. Those who should bear theblame were the ones who put the outcomes of what


was still called 'disinterested valid science' to workagainst Allied troops. That was how LancelotHogben could still write, in the 1930s, about thesuperb neutrality of science.

After the Second World War, the situation wascompletely different, for at least two reasons. Inthe first place the best scientists from all overEurope had flocked to Los Alamos to work, quiteknowingly, on what they called 'our bomb'. Theeffects of actually dropping the Atomic bomb onJapan shocked them. In the aftermath they real-ised that it had not been just duty or patriotismwhich had made them work so hard at constructingthis new and devastating weapon , but the basicscientific challenge itself. 'Whenever a problemlooks technically sweet', said Robert Oppen-heimer who led the team making the Atomicbomb, 'there will always be scientists ready towork on it.' This suggested that the scientificenterprise itself might be to blame: had it beencarried away by intellectual problem solving andignored morality? In a phrase which has madescientists cringe for half a century, Oppenheimersaid 'The physicists have known sin.' It could havebeen better put, but the basic idea was clearscience, not just its products but the scientificattitude of its practitioners was responsible.

After the war there were new organisations ofscientists. One was the international PugwashConference which commented publicly on thoseaspects of science relating to world affairs, andmanaged to keep a membership of top scientistsfrom the East as well as the West through even thechilliest phases of the Cold War. In Britain therewas a less elitist association called simply theBritish Society for Social Responsibility in Sci-ence. Its members were all scientists (as opposedto modern committees on, for example, MedicalEthics) but the notion of responsibility to thepublic was now a minority, but growing, concept.

Philosophical and sociological attack

The other incidents which have affected the imageof science are harder to pin-point. There was theNazi insistence on a distinction between Ayrianscience and Jewish science, and the Lysenko affair

15


in Communist Russia which looked as if thescience of genetics could similarly be branded asbeing of one political complexion or another(Medvedev, 1969).

These incidents might have been rejected asmere aberrations, if it were not for a growinginterest in the ways of thinking of other cultures.Up to this time the West had drawn a line betweenwhat they dignified as 'science', and other 'un-scientific' lines of thought. They believed that thepure thought of contemplative science could tran-scend all racial and national boundaries oncondition that it was carried out in their agreedfashion. Thus Astronomy was science, butAstrology was not; Western medicines were scien-tific, herbal treatments were not. Clearly the folksciences of other peoples stood as examples oftheir world views, just as Western science exempli-fied our own preferred world view. This posed apuzzling challenge to the old certainties. Sinceworld views differed, could there not also be avariety of sciences?

The last blow to valid science came from thephilosophy of science itself. After centuries ofreflection on the nature of logical th ught philos-ophy had begun to look inwards, iather in themanner of a social anthropologist looking at analien culture. It studied what the community ofscientists did and how they agreed upon theories;and from that the new philosophy began to see theknowledge of science as an agreed outcome pro-duced by a group of communicating scientists.

Four strands made up the argument for a ncwapproach to science:

1 The capacity of science to provide wealth andhealth for society (from the top down).

2 The will to bring craftsmen, and thcn thegeneral public, towards an understanding ofscience.

3 The shock of science in warfare, and later in theenvironment, and so the need for values andresponsibility within science.

4 A rc-evaluation of the neutrality of scientificevidence and knowledge-making (scientificepistemology).

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Most contemporary philosophers view the con-struction of scientific knowledge as a much morefallible and human affair than one of strict relianceon the 'verdict of /17,1ure' through disinterestedexperiment or logical argument. That was not tosay that experiment and deduction ceased to figurein science. But the design of experiments, as wellas the results from them, luld now be viewedthrough culturally tinted spectacles.

Reasons for STS in science education

In the post-war years, before the new STS coursesbegan in schools, two very substantial areas ofneed for 'citizen science' emerged in education.One of these was a public awakening to theenvironmental effects of new technologies whichfirst made itself felt strongly in the United States.In the 1950s and 1960s, the extent of pollution hadbegun to shock the whole nation. Books likeRachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), which drewattent:on to the quiet slaughter of birds andbutterflies, horrified many. The Great Lakes hadbeen badly polluted by industry with the result thatone had become completely lifeless. Environ-mental groups demanded to know more about theactivities of science, and this was reflected in a newFreedom of Information Act in 1967 which is stilltougher than any comparable legislation in theUK.

But is extra information enough? Don't peopleneed real understanding of science too if they areto express - opinion on the quality of theenvironment? By the 1970s there was expressionof a new reason and function for science edu-cation.

All people need some science education so that theycan think, speak and act on those tnatters, related toscience, which may affect their quality of living.

Another push towards a new kind of scienceeducation came indirectly from an influentialreport by a group of the world's top intellectuals,economists and businessmen in The Club of

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Rome. This commissioned a report about futureglobal developments which would produce 'moreunderstanding of the world's predicament', and'stimulate new attitudes and policies' to addressthem. The report, The Limits to Growth (Mea-dows et al. , 1972), started a debate which includeditems such as the exponential growth in fuel use(then), and the finite nature of the fossil fuelreserve, the world population explosion and itslimited production of food. The report was widelyread and discussed. Shortly afterwards the EnergyCrisis of 1973-4 raised the agreed price of pet-roleum so that the cost of petrol at the pumpquadrupled in a single year. These events stimu-lated pessimistic television programmes in a veinwhich became known as the 'Doomsday Syn-drome'.

Science was keen to bring its knowledge to bearon world problems. In the 1960s a group ofAmerican plant breeders working in Mexico haddeveloped strains of new 'miracle grains' wheatand rice which launched the Green Revolution.This was designed tc -:nable the Third World tofeed itself and seemed to be scoring a remarkablesuccess. Some scientists were optimistic aboutsolving other problems too. They focused atten-tion on the new technologies of alternative andnuclear power; they placed the problems of thedeveloping world on the agenda of science. Ifscience and its technology were to be the savioursof the world by solving these problems, as someseemed to believe, then this might be a new area ofresponsibility for science. At the very least itprovided a new goal for scientific applications.

At first the 'Limits to Growth' debate in schoolwas confined to questions on Advanced levelGeneral Studies, or Oxford and Cambridgescholarship papers. It is not surprising therefore,to find that the first school scheme in Britain to beentirely devoted to STS Science in Society wasgenerated in public schools, for the sixth-form agegroup, and was particularly influenced by thisreport. (Problem-solving in a Third World contextsoon became a popular activity in the sciencelessons of some British schools largely, perhaps,because of the moral implications of 'doing good'for the unfortunate in other countries.)


Science education should address global problems,including those in the developing world.

STS education begins

In general education there have always beendifferent aims for students, and different perspec-tives on the purposes and problems of education.Somewhere among these STS, as it arrived on theschool scene would have to claim a place. In the1970s this was not hard to do. Michael Young(1971), for example, examined the educationaldebate about 'equality of opportunity', and movedits focus from selection by ability (grammar schoolversus secondary modern), to the construction ofcurriculum itself. In science it was particularly easyto the force of this argument: both traditionaland Nuffield courses were about science for theintellectually elite. Later Malcolm Skilbeck (1984)wrote about the general purposes of education for'social reconstruction' as well as for 'culturaltransmission'. This new phrase implied that everygeneration has a right to act, within the constraintsof the democratic process, in order to re-shapesociety. If an absence of scientific knowledgeprevented people from thinking and acting onissues they cared about, then science educationhad seriously failed them. Both these educationalarguments about equality of opportunity withinthe curriculum, and about citizen empowermentwere tantamount to a new invitation. STS, with itsemphasis on social responsibility, was neededinside the curriculum to complement the moretraditional approach to science education.

Many educationalists thought then, and prob-ably still do now, that just more and better scienceeducation of the same kind as before validscience was all that was needed. In Britain wehad seen new schemes of the same kind in theNuffield courses of the 1960s and 1970s. Thefounders of these talked about science as being'clever thinking', and it was indeed in .he traditionof contemplation and logic.

The first mainstream school science course totake up the challenge to include a strong STS

17

iEducation must teach science for technical exper-tise.

N


component was SCISP (School Council IntegratedScience Project, 1973). It satisfied several of thestrands in STS which were set out in the previoussection: it taught directly about economics andindustry, as well as other STS themes. It achievedonly a small following in the schools but arguablyquite a large subsequent influence.

STS needs to teach about economics and industry.

Educational progress rarely comes about in alogical progression, especially not in the old styleBritish education system which had been (at leastup until the Education Reform Act 1988) one ofthe most free in all the world. It was lightly drivenby an examination system applied only at age 16.By the 1960s it had even become possible forindividual school teachers to construct their ownsyllabus and examination for this age-group theCertificate of Secondary Education.

One of the first school STS courses, SISCON-in-Schools, chose this simple way of breaking intoschools and their examination structure, in 1981.The original SISCON (Science In a Social CON-text) project I, Ad been started in 1970 to promoteSTS teaching in universities and polytechnics. Itproduced teaching materials which linked sciencewith economics in both the developed and de-veloping countries, and others which taught thenew studies of philosophy and sociology of sci-ence, or studied the connection between scienceand warfare. However while it still remainedconfined tc degree courses, at least one strand ofSTS the intention of bringing science to a wideraudience so that the public could be empowered totake part in public and political issues could notbe realised. For that it needed to go into main-stream schools. In 1978, SISCON-in-Schools wasbegun by the few school teachers who had at-tended the parent organisation's summer schools.Likc the earlier Science in Society thi.; scheme wasfor sixth-formers, but it differed from that coursein the strands of STS it chose to take up. Where theearlier course was strong on economics and indus-try, SISCON focused more on the human and

17

fallible nature of scientific theories, quality of lifein the first and third worlds, and the social effectsof new technologies including armaments.

STS should show pupils about the fallible nature ofscience.STS education includes discussion of democraticaction.

STS in other ccuntries

Because societies differ, the complexion of theirSTS education will always have features peculiarto the educational system and the economic situ-ation of the society concerned. There is no room inthis chapter for more than a brief 'Cook's Tour' ofexamples pointing to those features which distin-guish their use of STS from that in Britain.

Nations like the USA, which have always exer-ted more political influence on school scienceteaching, make their motives for change quiteexplicit. During the 1960s there were severalreports on the nation's science education. TheNational Science Foundation wanted to increasethe quality of science education so that therewould be more scientists.

Education must transmit more scientific knowledgeso that more of the new generation will want tobecome scientists.

The government wanted more trained scientists todo scientific jobs so that the nation could match theRussians in new nuclear arms (or later to match theJapanese in industrial technology).

These two objectives were exactly what a laterBritish government would also claim as reasons forbetter science education and it is noticeable thatthey nowhere mention any strong reasons for STS,

18


nor, in general, did the new science coursesinclude any.

Twenty years later, reports highlighted generalconfusion about educational goals for scienceeducation and linked this with public apathytowards science (Yager, 1980). From this time onSTS began to figure prominently in discussion andin curricula (see McConnell, 1982). Historicallythe USA has always charged education in general,and social studies in particular, with developingthe knowledge, attitudes and values conducive to'good citizenship'. This was the most obvious nichefor STS, and even today it is noticeable that topicslike nuclear power and pollution are more oftentreated in social studies than in high-school sciencelessons.

One STS course notable for its advanced think-ing appeared in Canada as early as 1971. Whereprovincial autonomy over education is so highlyprized, gifted individuals can sometimes makegreat innovations. In Science A way of Knowing,Glen Aikenhead produced a series of classroommaterials for teach; ig the philosophical and socialaspects of science within high schools which werein advance of those from any other country.

Holland had a special national need for STS inthe 1970s which ensured that their new schoolcourses had a matching objective. Several Euro-pean countries had previously tried to solve thedilemma of whether or not to use nuclear power bymeans of a national referendum. Holland wentfurther by setting aside a period of eight years forpublic education and consultation about nuclearpower. It was during this time, and on the premiseof public participation in decision-making, that theearly Dutch STS courses such as PLON (Boeker,1979) were begun.

Finally, the call for STS began to make itself feltin the developing countries. In almost all theex-colonial nations there was an initial attempt tomodel school science on traditional and inappro-priate Western courses. This was both becausecurricula materials were usually centrally designedand disseminated, and because the education of

the more eminent scientists and educationalists ineach country had been in Western universities.But borrowed educational themes and resourceswere often quite grossly at odds with local naturalexamples ('cows in the Oman'!), local culture('British domestic plumbing in Africa'!), and localneeds. No discussion of meaningful STS issuescould flourish within such imported syllabuses.

Already new courses are emerging from theThird World which take STS issues in their owncontext (e.g. Health education in Child to Child,Bonati and Hawes, 1992) and teach school sci-ence around them. This movement may indeedproduce personal and national liberation in some-thing of the sense that the British scientific human-ists had argued for, back in the 1930s, but of adifferent kind. Recently, a few Third World edu-cationalists have also begun to consider the effectsof cultural attitudes towards the environment inrelation to school science courses (e.g. Jegede,1991). Progress along these lines may begin toinvolve whole communities in a new kind ofpopular science which is deeply rooted in their ownculture.

Summary

STS has, alas, proved too elusive to define, as wasexpected. However the origins and force of itsvaried purposes may have become a little clearer.

Special STS features within science educationinclude:

An understanding of the environmentalthreats, including global ones, to the quality oflife.The economic and industrial aspects of tech-nology.Some understanding of the fallible nature ofscience.Discussion of personal opinion and values, aswell as democratic action.A multi-cultural dimension.

.19

CHAPTER 2

Our youngest pupils

The social world of small children itself starts verysmall, and then it grows. But it does not only dothis in the gradual way that children themselvesgrow, by the addition of other individuals who areintroduced one by one to the child. Their socialworld also expands by sudden giant increases asthe child enters whole new environments. One ofthese is the world of school; another is a vaguerentity, the world of television. Both of these playvery important roles in the child's science edu-cation.

Learning about science, as opposed to learningscience knowledge or skills, is an insidious affair.Children do not need to have science lessons, theyhardly even need to hear the word `science'mentioned, to begin to learn whether it is import-ant or not, and in what way. Home is where theheart of science, like everything else, is. In thehome children begin to form first impressions ofscience and scientists.

Crowing up at home

Thinking about how a child in one's own culturecomes to characterise science requires a littleperspective. It may even he valuable to see whatthe social anthropologists who study child-rearingin different cultures have to say. Margaret Meadand Martha Volfenstein ( 1955), for example,started their c:assic study of child-rearing with a listof 12 postulates or features which they believedwere common to all cultures. Amongst these were

20

the 'ideal adult character(s)' thought to be import-ant in the culture, which influence how parentsreward and punish their children. Expand theusual meanings of 'reward' and 'punish', imagine ascenario in which a parent is drawn to comment onan infant's curiosity about some natural phenom-enon proper little scientist!' and it is not hardto see, from the tone in which such a remark ismade , how impressions may be created very earlyin childhood. Add to that another and totallyunsurprising postulate by the same authors that'habits established early in life influence all sub-sequent learning' and it becomes clear that thesmallest child's image of science may not be trivial.

There is lamentably little in the way of empiricalstudies about children's very early steps in learningscience, while whole libraries have been writtenabout their acquisition of language and, to lesserextent, number. This is not just another plea formore or earlier science; it is a sober observation ofthe skew of interest and scholarship in a culturewhich is still predominantly literary and unscien-tific, a fact very relevant to STS. The influence ofscience within society is founded upon people'sgeneral 'feelings' towards science such as famili-arity, respect, swmicion or trust, every bit as muchas it is upon knowledge of scientific facts ortheories.

Applying what we know about young children tothe question of what they may first learn `about'science, suggests that the societal aspects of sci-ence will not be at all easy to under:,tand. It takesmore than the whole first decade of a child's life to

-

-.011111


N umber of children aged 5 to 11, in stages of societal thinking (percentages of age in parentheses)Table 2.1

Stage 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 All ages

11

I I I

IV

15(94)1(6)

22(65)11(32)1(3)

2(8)18(72)5(20)

23(76)7(24)

13(28)32(70)

1(2)

5(15)23(68)6(18)

7(64)4(36)

39

71

75

11

master the principles of the money basis of otherpeople's jobs and roles, including the shop-keepers' necessary profit from buying and sellingtransactions, and the elementary functions ofgovernment (Stage IV, see Table 2.1). At earlierstages children still think of goods as being given tothe shop-keeper by the factory, or as being madeby the shop; and the government as a 'man with awig'. Hans Furth (1980) carried out an extensivestudy of children's ideas through some delightfullydescribed interviews about society and its trans-actions. Then he used a developmental approachto analyse the progress of children's thinking andto categorise it into four developmental stages ofincreasing complexity. In this he was quite con-sciously following in Piaget's cognitive tradition.

In Table 2.1, taken from Hans Furth's work, wccan see that only 36 per cent of the childreninterviewed at age 11 had yet reached level IV.This makes sober reading for anyone anxious toinclude a strong STS element, of the conventionalindustrial topdown type mentioned in Chapter 1,at an early age. It is interesting to note that the onlyproject developing STS materials for this age-group 'Early SAT1S (8-14)' does include theinvolvement of industry in its 'Mission Statement',even though most of its resources, up to this point,wisely do not emphasise this very demandingstrand of thinking. Without any proper under-standing of the economic basis of simple shoptransactions children of primary school age are notlikely to make very much sense of the role ofscience in industry.

There will be further requirements of socialdevelopment for children if they are to study STS.In addition to some understanding of the world ofwork, our pupils, even the youngest, will need adeveloped sense of self and other people, and a

sense of responsibility and justice which goes farbeyond merely 'being a good child' (seeKohlberg's study of moral development;Kohlberg, 1984). Where Furth sees the child'sdevelopment in all the social spheres as progress-ing through a series of Piagetian stages, withformal thinking using logical reasoning essentialfor performance at the top level for each one,other social psychologists have studied develop-ment from different perspectives. In particular theimportant work of Hartup (e.g. 'Children andtheir friends', 1978) is valuable because it crossesthe primary/secondary divide and traces the de-velopment of the group collaboration and identifi-cation which comes into prominence duringadolescence.

In STS education where empathy for anothergroup is required, or role-play is used to establishwhat differing points of view are important onsome technological issue, it does not seem likelythat pupils of primary age will be ready to profitfrom its introduction. Such work needs a suresense of self before empathy or role play caninstruct or teach. On the other hand the complexnotions of social cohesion and responsibility,which will later be drawn out through STS edu-cation, must rest upon a solid foundation of thesimpler but basic moral and social notions con-structed during this early vital phase of educationin the home and the primary school. To that extentat least, early education in social values is vital tolater STS.

The world of television

This is a whole new social domain for little childrennot just because they can get lost in its continuing

-21

OUR YOUNGEST PUPILS

soap operas and cult figures, nor even just becausethey may encounter those social issues which areproperly a part of STS education in the occasionalscience programme; although that is important.Television forms a separate social world because itis the medium through which, unbeknownst toparents, children begin to experience out-of-homevalues and issues.

It used to be the case that children wereintroduced to the adult matters of society by theirparents, learning about sex, or politics or employ-ment, in the home as and when the parents thoughtit suitable. That is now vanishir 'v rare: much islearnt about these matters directly from televisionfiction. Neither is it the case, in most homes, thatparents generally watch with their children and soare at least aware of what their children have beenexperiencing. Passage across this bridge from theignorance of childhood to the knowingness ofadulthood is no longer under the control ofparents. Joseph Meyrovitz (1984, p. 28) put it thisway:

Socialisation can be thought of as a process ofgradual, or staggered, exposure to social infor-mation. Children are slowly walked up the stair-case of adult information one step at a time. . . .

While young children once received virtually all oftheir information about the outside world fromtheir parents, telrwision now speaks directly tothem, with the result that power relationshipswithin the family are partially rearranged.

What effect does this information have on childrenif they receive it at an age when, as we have seen,social psychologists claim that they have suchslight social maturity? It would not be surprising tofind either that the children simply ignore allinformation that they cannot yet handle, oralterna0vely, that they are disturbed by it. Nodoubt both effects happen. The literature reviewof Barbara Tizard (1986), indicates not only thekinds of anxieties children have about social issues- including the threat of nuclear war - sometimesas early as the age of six, but also the parents'general ignorance about their anxiety. This is asmight be expected if the children encountered

5.00

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00

21

0 Low anxiety

II High anxiety

Lightviewing

HeavyviewingJustifiedviolence

HeavyviewingUnjustifiedviolence

Fig. 2.1 Perceived likelihood of being a victim ofviolence as a function of amount and type of violenceviewed in r.he. Bryant. Carveth and Brown (1981) studyNote: Based on data reported in 'Television viewingand anxiety: an experimental examination by J.Bryant, R. A. Carveth and D. Brown (1981)Journal ofC'ommunication , 30, 106-19.

22

these complex issues within the separate andsometimes frightening v arid of television.

There is a heated anc' -1ntinuing debate aboutthe effect that television programmes on sex andviolence may have upon the young. This is outsidethe STS remit. However it is worth recalling theunfinished nature of this controversy, and also thatreported anxiety is itself a social communicationand may not actually describe any very trouble-some behavioural symptoms. It is also interestingto find the general conclusion that, young childrenwho are just beginning to make social sense of theworld are more upset by chaotic and unjustifiedviolence, than by dangers fully explained (Figure2.1). This is an encouraging finding for the case ofcareful parenting, for school, and for STS issues.In the next section we shall find that such issues as'the Greenhouse effect' and 'the hole in the Ozonelayer' do have considerable currency amongstprimary age pupils. Neither issue seems to upsetthem very much. (Of course that must not be takento show that they fully understand any part of theseissues. Even adults, or candidates for STS examin-ations at AS level, commonly attribute climaticchange to the hole in the ozone layer, as though

122_

heat is leaking in!) Hodge and Tripp (1986) in theirresearch into how children talk about their viewingconclude that (p. 214):

Children . . . at least up to the age of twelve, notonly prefer different kinds of programmes toadults, they also respond differently to pro-grammes, and interpret them diff erently: but fromthe age of 9 they are capable of tMir own kind ofunderstanding of most mainstream television.

As far as STS education from te:,.wis:on is con-cerned we may conclude that most young childrendo watch programmes related to topical con-troversial issues, but without their parents' know-ledge or connivance. Despite a basic lack ofunderstanding about the commercial world ofgrown-ups, children above the age of nine maywell be constructing, from their television view-ing, their own simplified or distorted picture ofscientists and science issues.

Children's images of science and scientists

Out of their various experiences children piecetogether their own images of the role of scienceand scientists in society. Because these images areconstructed out of evidence from different circum-stances and from different social worlds they maywell be inconsistent. That does not mean, oF weshall see, that one child may not employ severalimages at different times for different purposes.

One way to find out what children think scien-tists are like, and even what they do, is to ask themto draw a picture of a scientist. This has been donefrequently from the classic work of Mead andMet rau (1957) to that of Williams (1990). Onereason why this line of research has been sopopular is, no doubt, that the data produced arefar more striking than is verbal evidence from suchyoung subjects. Another reason is the ease of itscc ilection. Children seem to love drawing thesefigures and so, as at least one researcher hasingenuously commented, a great number may begenerated with minimum effort on the part of theresearcher. Two out of the recent collection of11-year-old children's drawings made by Williams


are illustrated in Figure 2.2. The caption 'weirdscientist' is really not necessary: the pictures showclearly enough their comic intention and origin.The most casual observation shows both thescientists to be male, bald, and engaged in chemis-try, which may well have been dangerous andresponsible for the bandages to both their faces!Williams assures us that the pupil artists who drewthe pictures were in the first year of secondaryschool and had, thus far, done no chemistry at allin either primary or secondary school. They hadnever themselves used the foaming flasks whichfigure in their pictures. That marks out the picturesas stereotypes. We can confirm this view in twoways. In the first place the request to 'Draw ascientist' is tantamount to asking for fantasy ratherthan reality. It is as though one were to ask 'Draw adragon'. The very wording of the instructionassumes that there is some figure which w:11 havecommon currency as a cartoon with rccognitiontags on it. But it is also possible, by carefulinterviewing of the kind that Williams carried out,to show that the children themselves know that it iscaricature. He asked the child artists if they hadever seen a scientist walking down the road.

'But I wouldn't recognise one if I saw him,' saidone child.When the interviewer pointed to the picture, thechildren all said,'They don't really look like that.That's just how you draw them.'

Cartoon figures may be known not to be 'real', butthey are not altogether without power in any studyof the images of science that children hold. Theyare generated by the world of films and comics,and we shall meet them again as children start tolearn science.

Another way to probe young children's imagesof science is simply to talk to them. Williams andmany other researchers have done this and theoutcomes often show different images of scientistswhich may also derive from television viewing.Even though the more obvious idiocies of thecartoon scientist are now missing, gender stereo-typing does not so easily disappear. NaimaBrowne and Carol Ross (1990, p. 49) have ex-plored the gender stereotype amongst infants andnursery aged children.

23

Fig. 2.2 'Weird scientist'

ri/mum What is a scientist?noY r A scientist? I dunno.Boy 2: It's a man.I30Y 3: It's a man, it's a doctor and he helps women

and helps children. He gets his case andhelps them.

GIRL I: It's a doctor, a woman [whispered]. No it's aman [said loudly].

GIRL 2: It's someone who finds out what makespeople sick. Testing things like yoghurtbecause hazelnut yoghurt got a poison in itand it makes people sick . [This was areference to a recent outbreak of botulismwhich was traced to hazelnut yoghurt.] Hetests water. It is a man. It's a man who testsmedicines and make-up. He works in aschool laboratory.

GIRL I: You need science for doctors and nurses.GIRL 4: It's likc Doctor Who. They go into space.

In this short passage we have two or three imagesof the scientists in society which may be mixedtogether. One is drawn from current affairs' pro-grammes on the media. The scientist tests thingsfor us: he might be a doctor. Then thcrc is a hintthat the scientist is in a school, like a scienceteacher. At the end we have, once again, the'weird' scientist.

Through interviews and responses to simplequestionnaires which were carried out by our'Nature of Science Project' (Solomon, 1991a)working out of Oxford University we also identi-fied at least four distinct images, two of which havebeen already mentioned. In addition there is thescientist who makes things and who is said to workat improving them, and making them work better.This is the scientist/engineer and clearly has, likethe testing and knowledgeable scientist on the


television news, something of value to contributeto society. Finally there is the scientist who ismostly interested in ideas. (There is a suggestion ofthe secondary school science curriculum in thisimage and indeed, amongst older children it is

associated with the philosophical attitude of theirscience teacher.)

It was interesting to observe that, for each ofthese images of scientists at work, we found aslightly different rationale for experimentation.Only Image 2 seemed to be age-related, and morecommon among younger children. The others allflourished in the range from 9 to 14 years. It mustbe stressed, however, that children often identified.nore than one image. We interviewed them insmall groups and so, in the manner of all socialtalk, the children often left one image and em-braced another as they fell in with their friends'meanings and perspectives.

Referring back to Chapter 1 we can also ident-ify, more or less precisely, some of the age-longdiversity of purpose and practice within science inthis range of children's imagery. The intellectualand the inventor are there, as is the explainer, whomay be the scientist who saves society fromdisasters. (Even the children's comic caricature isto be found in the lampoons of Isaac Newton andfellow members of the Royal Society, written byDean Swift in the eighteenth century.) One inter-esting outcome of our inquiries amongst youngsecondary school children was that the last of theseimages, the 'intellectual' in pursuit of corrobo-rated theory, flourishes more in some secondaryclassrooms than in others, and seems to be relatedto the teacher's own philosophy of science. Thispoint will be taken up in Chapter 4 during thediscussion of STS material for this age range.

Scientist Character Purpose of work in society

Image I WeirdImage 2 Authoritative and helpful

Image 3 Technologist (good?)

Image 4 Intellectual

None. Dangerous and surprising experimentsTests and explains for us, like doctors and teachers (often said toexplain Ozone Layer or Greenhouse Effect)Makcs artefacts for us, tests to see 'if they work' and improvesthemHas ideas, and tests them by designing exper;rnents to sec ifpredictions work

25

a

'44a

OUR YOUNGEST PUPILS

Various different images of the role of scientistsare co-existent in most children's talking andthinking. The media - )mies, films and television

and the secondary sci. )1, may he the strongestinfluences in the construction of these images.

School/home links in science

So far we seem to have ignored the science thatyoung children first learn in primary school. Onereason for this is the splendidly 'everyday' char-acter of most primary science. It is taught bynon-scientists with the simplest of equipment andso manages to avoid a technocratic or esotericaspect. This is, in itself, a sure foundation for thesort of 'citizen science' which STS seeks to teach.Later some of the simpler STS materials andstrategies will be examined. These might be intro-duced into the lower secondary school classes withthe express purpose of linking their school learningof science with society outside the school. For theprimary school child, society is the family.

Many primary teachers set great store by thekind of class talk in 'Sharing time', or 'Newstime', by which they commonly make links withthe home worlds of their pupils. One of the objec-tives of this work is to develop the child's vocabu-lary; it might also be to expand the pupils'everyday understanding to embrace school sci-ence, or to lead the findings of school science intotheir everyday world. These objectives are rarelystated, partly because the general aims of in-creased oral fluency and language developmentarc, with good reason, the front-line interests ofmost primary teachers. But the argument fromprevious sections has emphasised the value of thcsocial world of home for the young child. Theeffect of ignoring this mini-culture, and theimages of science that it passes on to children,could quite well overwhelm the fragile edifice ofprimary science education.

Ever:!one knows that both home and choolcontribute to young children's general edlPerhaps it is not quite so easy to see how both cancontribute to science education. Homes have no

25

science apparatus, and many parents themselveshave had little or no science education. A newproject called SHIPS School/Home Investi-gations In Primary Science - has been set uprecently to build a bridge between home andschool education (Solomon, 1991b). In the firststage of this project a playground survey of parentswas carried out to see if parents in general, not justthe middle class or knowledgeable, would bewilling to help their children at home. Over 90 percent said they would. Although the tally droppedto 70 per cent when the word 'science' wasincluded, it rose again to over 80 per cent whenthey were told that this work would be a practicalactivity rather than more formal learning. Thismay be yet more evidence for the general frighten-ing image of science amongst parents.

Two schools which trialled the work in the firstyear clearly agreed that it was essential that theactivities were embedded in what might be calledthe 'culture of primary school science' as well ast!tc culture of the home. So simple instructionsheets were written for science relating to theschool's regular topics. ('Our community', or'Transport' were quite easy to match with investi-gations; 'Festivals' was more difficult and 'RomanBritain' almost defeated the project's designer!)

The schools ran parents' meetings to explainwhat the science learning activities would be likeand to answer their questions. These were smallgatherings where two communities, both unfam-iliar with the academic world of science, werebravely agreeing to work together in this some-what alien world; it was, perhaps, not unlike thevillage meetings held to promote science or healthactivities in developing countries. The work hasbeen running in different ways in each of theschools. One of the project team has been observ-ing in some of the homes on a regular scheduleduring the year. Mothers, fathers and grand-mothers were helping their children, each in theirown way, make, talk and write about the scienceactivity. This has been recorded and analysed tosee how the science survives and adapts to itschange of domain. In purely physical terms it isclear that thc activities take on the character andculture of the home. Sometimes a space is specially

26

26

cleared in a tidy room, on other occasions theactivity takes place in a busy kitchen. Someparents try to take on the tone of a teacher, othersjust watch, comment and even marvel, alongsidetheir children.

The home learning of science is not like learningin school. At home children have plenty of timeand no classroom constraints or rivalry for atten-tion. At home children ask questions, but these donot always get answered. Sometimes the child'scomment is halfway between a question and thekind of slow reflection for which there is rarelyenough time in the busy classroom. One child athome, for example, was floating a piece of Sello-tape in water to see if it would cast a shadow on thebase of the bowl. As she took it out anotherquestion arose in her mind and she wrote:

3e 5 Gcol See C<

5 kct,rWA, IC

-Lriej se totaPt.cA.N rnai3e askok.Jovu 6.At when-1- took the sellatafeOu.± 0-rr- -t be uuck:ter

Lkicts 3k1t sticKjwhY

PciPerbiacic shadoco cdso

1-1 e roLPer lvesoj9 thihic0-:t er Ca.n. le±.rooh this but It

,aoes no:t, .-Etke did


It is good to see the child so actively wondering andreflecting in this way, even if her query still hangsin the air. This is not academic .cience in which theuniquely correct answer is the only valid outcomeof observation. Science cannot help but lose someof its 'valid' character when it enters the home, justas it does in all STS work.

When parents talk with their children the learn-ing is easy-going and two-way, with each learningsomething from the other. In the following extract,Bob and his mother are looking at the impressionof a coin that Bob has made on wax. His friend andhis younger sister are also present.

MOTHER: You can see it's a coin actually can't you9because you can see the shape here, here.[Bob reads the sheet for a little while Thenhe gets up and goes to the cupboard ]

riot 9

w.rit.1.n5 Po-Per 15 sof-6fo1L 15 tictsc)

Miler) oU \nol.c)*10H- UP to tine

1-E fLect5VII. you ccoit,

roti.)t,

to,p, r Gioes 'notrefL ed, a_nd .30 caSee -Lb rou 5h 1-L

27

OUR YOUNGEST PUPILS

MOTHER:

BOB:

MOTHER:

BOB:

SISTER:

BOB:

SISTER:

MOTHER:

What do you think is going to happen?Why have you got a different candle?It's thinner.What effect do you think that will have?That's thicker. It doesn't let the heatthrough. That one doesn't let the heatthrough.One minute's gone.I'm going to leave it in for 2 minutes.Why?This is his experiment. You can leave it infor longer . . .

BOB: Oh, look at that! I told you it would beeasier. Ah neat! You can see a shape onit.

No comment is needed on the pupil's ownership ofscience, or on the casual non-technical languagewhich is used. School science learning is almost theopposite of this. Lateral wondering may be ig-nored, but skilful questioning from the teacher willdraw children's attention to some important fea-ture, compare their findings with what another hasfound out, or extend their use of language andunderstanding of science. In the extract below aclass of juniors was discussing with their teacher ahome activity on different kinds of fibres. Theprofessional skill of the teacher is obvious: the linkbetween science and society is more incidental andcould be missed.

JOHN:

TEACHER:

JOHN:

TEACHER:

SALI Y:

TEACHER:

TEACHER:

GEMMA:

I picked some fluff off different carpets.Some were thicker.So there were a greater number of fibres.What about the fibres in thc cottonwool?When I felt them, they welt; more tight.They were more . . . ? What do we callit when they are packed tightly?Compressed?Yes, compressed. A word like com-pressed?Compact.Yes. So the fibres in this carpet weretightly compacted. And which materialhad more space in between?I got fluff from the corners in my room.

These kinds of activity allow science to spread intothe home which is the young child's domain ofsociety. Even after the activity is formally over,

27

there is evidence that some children extended theinvestigation in their own time over several days.Talk about it may surface while the family is atsupper, or on holiday. This must be one of thesurest ways to increase the public understanding ofscience and to give it the kind of familiarity at homewhich encourages children to go on speaking andspeculating about it with their family. It fulfils, inits own small way, some of the basic objectives ofSTS listed in Chapter 1, such as the discussion ofpersonal opinion within science, and a first weak-ening of its rigid epistemological claims which canbe so forbidding.

If science is to be properly valued it must be ableto fit into the culture of the home. Only the familyitself can make this happen. Two examples frommaterial collected by the SHIPS project serve toillustrate this. The first takes place in a do-it-yourself home where a boy is making a 'High-riseCrane' out of a Squeezy bottle in the kitchen.According to the instruction sheet he needs to addsome damp soil to stop the bottle from falling over,but he has another idea. He goes out into thegarden where the father is laying concrete andtakes some back for ballast to put into his workingmodel. Later, when some concrete spills out on tothe kitchen table, the mother is commendablyrestrained but then it is an acceptable occurrencein that home culture.

In the second example an infant, in schoolterms, has jurt made two rainfall measurers fromjam jars and has tested them with the bathroomshower. The mother has talked with him about itand then wrote the following comment ia theParents' Diary: 'Olu was very excited and keen tocomplete this work. We discussed rainfall in theCaribbean and Nigeria how important the rain isfor these countries.' This demonstrates how suchsimple science ideas can be taken up and incorpor-ated into the home culture of an ethnic minority.This begins to fulfil another of the objectives ofSTS in providing a multi-cultural dimension.

Summary

This chapter has made no suggestions for specialSTS course materials. It even argued that much of

28

28

what we think of as STS material is out of reach formost young children. Instead the emphasis hasbeen on describing the social worlds of the youngchild and images of science which derive fromthese.

There are two good reasons for this approach. Inthe first place it is possible, by constructing anatmosphere of natural acceptance of science inschool and home, to build the foundations of alife-long attitude of familiarity and interest to-wards many aspects of science. This will stand thechild in good stead in later life should some healthor environmental problem threaten the quality oflife, and some scientific knowledge becomesnecessary for combating its real or imaginedeffects.

The second reason will be familiar to all goodteachers. When any lesson has to be taught, thefirst stage in designing suitable materials and

29


strategies is to 'ascertain where the student is', inthe famous words of David Ausubel. The chapterhas attempted to do that.

The only important and overt task being recom-mended in the name of STS, for which the youngage of these pup:'s is particularly apt, is the forgingof links between home and school. In this wayscience may become a talking point in both worldsof the child. It is easier to accomplish this beforethe onset of adolescence when children begin tooutgrow the influence of home, and while thescience being studied is still simple enough to takeplace in the kitchen or the garden. Such sciencewill be concerned with the everyday objects thateveryone uses. For STS, science should be set inthe context of the significant people in one'ssociety. At the beginning, these are to be found athome.

CHAPTER 3

Getting going on STS in the secondary school

'Models' of innovation

Changing from teaching 'valid' science of the typewhich lives in a world of its own on the textbookpage, to teaching STS where the science is inter-twined with technological response to individualneeds and cultural values, is a big step. Somewherealong the line there has to be someone who hasseen the world of teaching and learning throughnew eyes.

There are at least four types of agencies whichcan set out to produce changes in the sciencecurriculum. These are listed in Table 3.1. Each oneof them seems to have some effects, but indifferent places along the educational line. Theagency for change is listed in the left-hand columnand the locations of its likely effects are found inthe four other columns. Some idea of how muchchange the agents are likely to produce is indicatedin the order 'most', 'some', 'little' and 'none'.

This general outline does not imply, for ex-ample, that a change of government policy never

has an effect on the learning of our pupils. Ofcourse it does, but not by itself. The NationalCurriculum for Science states that (Programme ofStudy at Key Stage 4):

. . pupils should he given opportunities to de-velop thcir knowledge and understanding of theways in which scientific ideas change through timcand how . . . the uses to which they arc put arcaffected by the social, moral, spiritual and culturalcontexts in which thcy arc developed.

It is easy to see how extremely difficult thatinstruction is to implement as it stands. In coun-tries where educational change has always beentopdown, the government has learned that only ifit effects changes in teachers will there be changesin the classroom. For this purpose they try todevelop new curriculum materials and new INSETpackages to make their policy change bear fruit forpupils. If teachers are influenced by INSET thereis a chance that the proposed changes will take offin the classroom and so alter how children learnscience. In Britain it had always been the task of

'fable 3.1 Agencies to change the science curriculum

Agents Location of change

Policydocuments

Advice andINSET

Classroomteaching

Pupillearning

GovernmentResearchCurriculum developersTeachers

MostLittleNoneNonc

SomeMostLittleNone

NoneLittleMostMost

NoneNoneSomcMost

Source: After Aikenhead (1989).

30

30

Local Authority advisers or inspectors to carrysuch policy decisions to both curriculum de-velopers and teach' a.s.

Much the same i true of the results obtained byeducational research. There is much discontent inresearch circles about the lack of effect of the workthey do. But researchers do not themselves teach,nor do they often produce curriculum materialswhich teachers can use for instruction. So theimplications of their research are rarely implemen-ted. It is well known in research circles, forexample. that girls are more 'person orientated'with regard to what aspects of science interestthem (Collins and Smithers 1984), and have lesstrust in technological progress (Breakwell et al.,1990), than boys. Both of these results have directimplications for science teaching in general andSTS in particular, but they have had an almostnegligible effect on teaching and learning.

Curr'rndum developers are usually more effec-tive. eachers can easily take cm board the ma-terials they produce, buying the books orphotocopying the worksheets: SATIS (ASE,1988) has been particularly successful in thisrespect. In so far as the content of instruction isconcerned , this produces some obvious changes.But whether or not the learning process of chil-dren, and the image of science that they receivehas changed, no one can yet be sure.

It is the teacher with a new idea about scienceeducation with 'a bee in the bonnet' who makesthe real difference to how children learn scienceand what they think that this subject. science, is allabout. One reason for this is that the decision tochange is not only brought about by an ideologicalconversion, but also by an active dissatisfactionwith the present teaching and learning situation.

Several different 'models' of change to STSteaching will figure in this chapter. Each one willfocus upon teachers as the only effective changeagents as far as children in the classroom areconcerned. This does not mean that they act ontheir own without any regard to policy, advice, ornew curriculum materials. On the contrary, as willbe shown , both curriculum materials and theopinions of others are usually essential factors insuccessful change. But the teachers are the change


3 1

agents because only their action can bring STS tothe pupils.

Power to the secondary teachers?

The expertise of most primary teachers, as wasshown in Chapter 2, lies in a professional under-standing of young children and their struggles withlanguage and expression. The secondary scienceteachers, by contrast, rest their understanding ofchildren's learning on a substantial training inscience. Scratch such a science teacher and you willlikely find a science enthusiast. For what kind ofscience and science education are they so enthusi-astic?

Choosing whether or not to teach STS mightappear to be either a matter of curriculum choice,or of teaching strategy. In reality, the choice ismore profound than either. It concerns the teach-ers' basic professional intentions and attitudes.The decision also brings to the surface somewell-established attitudes towards science itselfwhich teachers may have picked up during theirown school or college education.

Britain is fortunate in having an all-graduateforce of secondary teachers. It can count itselfimmensely advantaged that so many have gradu-ated from an honours science course in a universityor polytechnic. This academic background givesmost of them considerable confidence in thesubstance of what they teach, which is illustrated intheir authorship of so many good school sciencetextbooks. This is by no means the case in all otherdeveloped countries, and gives some indication ofthe power that they are able to exert over second-ary science education. It was practising scienceteachers, not teacher trainers or college pro-fessors, who wrote the first STS school courses,and it has been other science teachers who madethe decisions whether or not to use them in theirschools.

Even in the new era of the National Curriculumit is still the teachers who decide hoiv scienceshould be taught (Table 3.1), both its overallstrategy and local classroom tactics. Examinationcommittees and chairmen of examiners are still

GETFING GOING ON STS IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

largely staffed by practising school teachers. Theone major change of recent years was broughtabout not by curriculum fiat but by the size ofcomprehensive schools. It is now the team ofteachers in the Science Department, rather thanthe individual, which decides on new develop-ments.

This freedom of choice has always had op-ponents. In 1969, Musgrove and Taylor wroterather extravagantly that: 'The freedom of teach-ers is the profession's glory: it is the people'sshame.' The tension between the public and theprofessional has been sharpened to a ferociousedge by the current polemic about 'parent power'and 'teacher accountability'. More balanced dia-logue between the two constituencies about thenature of the science that will be taught can donothing but good for the pupils. However, it is onlya Science Department that has discussed anddecided upon its aims and intentions which is ableto explain to parents the how and why of theparticular course of science they propose to teach.

The next three sections will describe some rc thedifferent ways in which teachers have set about aninnovation which led them towards STS. For mostof this description the words will be those of tn,..teachers, recorded while they spoke to the author,and transcribed verbatim.

Model I: Diagnosis and course material

In 1974, I think it was. I was at a school where wcear-marked the third year (14-year-olds) as theproblem for that school. It was the option year andwe were not getting kids to come forward andchoose science. Our girls were not taking upphysics and thc kids in general were dissatisfiedwith science that has all changed now. I wanted acoursc with personal and social issues bccausc, asyou know, I have always seen the need for that.R., my Science Adviser, suggested that we shouldstart with the first year. start from the bottom andmake a clean sweep, but we didn't have a problemwith the first two years. There were no social issuesin thcir course. you ',now, but the kids wereenjoying it. It was ali right. So we changed toSCISP for the third, fourth and fifth ycars.

That course was way ahead of Lts time. In fact,

31

later, when I first came back to teach in Londonand met my inspector at an ASE conference Ilaunched into him. I said, 'You helped to producethis course. You were in on it at the start. It wasten years ahead of its time. Why aren't youpushing it in ILEA?'

I think hc was rather taken aback by all this.Since then we have become good friends. I have agreat deal of respect for him in terms of what hisvision was, at that time, when the whole of STSbegan to take shape.

But the problem with SCISP was, in my opinion,that the books they produced were not very user-friendly and it was difficult for teachers to actuallyusc them and get the main issues out. So, it is myguess, that for most of the teachers in that school,and in my present school when we used SC1SP,that this madc the course into one where theytaught in the usual way as they had donc before,and then just 'tagged on' the social issues at theend if time permitted. In fact, to be honest, mostteachers ignored thc social issues to get at the 'truescience concepts'. They did not integrate thesocial, economic and environmental issues with the'true science'.

Remember when I say 'this is what we did,' Iwas not in other people's classrooms; I was teach-ing. I didn't know what thcy were actually doing,but I had a very good team of teachers andtechnicians then, and I have a good team now.

And I must say that the economic side of SCISPwas almost a complete disaster. Essentially it wasvery difficult for kids to handle at Year 9 (thirdyear). Looking back I think the problem was thatthose who developed SCISP did not have theresearch information that we have now about thepsychological aspects, and the misconceptions.That came afterwards from the work of John Head[Head, 19831 about maturation and science choice,and also Michael Shaycr's work on what childrencould understand [Shayer and Adey, 19801. Thepeople who developed SCISP just had a gut rc-action about what might work.

At my school we adapted it, but the economicpart was really difficult. You know in SCISP, allthat timc ago, there were short papers in Germanand French for the children to read. That's reallycross-curricular, and I thought at the time, this isgood. To bc honest though those books were moreboy-fricndly than girl-friendly but for the time,thcy were marvellous.

32

.s*


The above story was told by a Head of Science whosaw a need in his school for a change to STS in oneset of classes. He was already personally com-mitted to STS, and picked up the only availablecourse from the curriculum developers. Where itdid not fit his needs, he adapted it.

It is easy to see how this story relates to the tableof agencies for change on page the Head ofScience did talk over his plans with the ScienceAdviser, and yet it was his own professionalconcern with the uptake of science in his schoolwhich was the trigger for change.

He commented that the curriculum designershad made some mistakes (e.g. in economics)which he attributed to their lack of researchinformation, and also, probably, to lack of teachertrialling.

Finally he guessed about the way the course hadbeen taught by his colleagues and other teachers.

This illustrates the observation that new curricu-lum materials do not translate into changes in pupillearning unless all the teachers sec themselves asagents for a change which they think important initself.

Model H: All the Department decides uponchange

We started it all with a brain-storming session totry to sort out, as scicncc teachers, what we wantedto do. At that time, in 1983, we were teachingphysics, chemistry, and biology separately.Nobody talked to each other: wc each did our ownthing. So at our brain-storming session wc got eachperson to write down, on the board, just one aimof STS Science. Technology and Society edu-cation. I remember they wrotc:

Science is funScience relates to social, technical and economic

issuesScience is about problem-solving

Physicists, chemists and biologists were writing thesame things! You know the amazing thing was thatnot once during that two-and-a-half hour sessiondid anyone say `to teach physics', or 'to teachchemistry'. So what we did then was to prioritizethose aims. Wc ended up with a complete consen-sus on eight global aims. Thc social, the techno-

33

logical, the environmental, the economic and thepolitical were to be central to everything. And theproblem-solving approach was central too. Thatwas so wonderful for me!

We use 'problem-solving' in two ways in ourwork. The first of these is setting up scenarios forpractical investigations. The team was interested ingetting the kids to think about their thinking, so tosome extent it pre-figured my interest in the CASEproject [Adcy and Shaycr 1990]. It annoys mewhen teachers say, 'We are getting our children tothink in science now.' We want to get them tothink about their thinking in science there is areal difference.

And secondly we use problem-solving in a socialcontext what is best for people. Here you aredealing with moral and ethical opinions, but youwill find that very difficult to test in an end-of-termexam. SCISP tried to do that, I think. They usedpaper-and-pencil tests but these told us almostnothing about what the kids really thought as wcwere to find out later in the DISS projcct [seeChapter 7]. Some of us tried to introduce dis-cussion work but, I must admit, the teachers wererather blinkered about this. Written work waswhat we mostly did in place of discussion. But onething we did find out when we started to relatescience to people the girls began to out-performthc boys!

Our teachers, which I inherited at this school,were very good and very experienced. After thatbrain-storming, everything was their decision.They were the change-agents. Thcy decided to doSCISP in the third, fourth and fifth years, andSISCON in the sixth form, because they wanted toteach STS. And those two were the only courseswhich actually met our aims. Now we are movingover to Salter's Science for the fourth and fifthycars, and again, when we feel that the socialissues arc missed out wc use SATIS materials. Or,even more at this stage, wc use STS materials wehave written ourselves.

We have not agreed about particular strategiesfor thc whole department. You scc every time wedid not agree on certain strategies other people didnot carry them through. So now we arc trying to beflexible, but wc do all highlight in our Schemes ofWork where the social, thc technological, thecconomic and the political aspects can be broughtin. These are still part of our central aims. Theyhaven't changed since 1984 whcn we first wrote

GETTING GOING ON STS IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

thcm down. These aims must not be rhetorical tobe put in a drawer and locked away. Everything wedo has got to be central to those aims.

What we arc trying, in the sense of strategics, isto emphasise discussion and working in groups. Inorder to try and get pupils to discuss we give themfolders and get them to highlight the issues theyhave discussed. (Some teachers arc uncomfortableunless the pupils have something written down intheir books.) At the end, one person from eachgroup has to talk to the rest of the class about whatthey had discussed on that particular issue. Weintroduccd thc folders in order to monitor whetherthey were talking about the issue, or about lastnight's television, boy friends or girl friends! Thcidea was that they would use the folders to build uptheir own resources something to look back toand reflect on.

For example, in Year 8 when we arc doing acidsand carbonates, as part of the scheme of work,they have got to consider 'the economic consider-ations of acid weathering'. We include the socialaspects of acid rain, get them to discuss it, and thenbring social questions into their end of unit exam-ination.

Basically we want our pupils to challenge, totake nothing at face value not newspapers, notbooks, not even what I say 'Let's collect and lookat thc evidence !'. That's the word I was looking for

evidence'. At fourth and fifth year they are stilltoo young for economics and industry. They arcusing their own experiences and these are still alittle narrow for industrial development. At thisstage they cannot personalise industry f,r. being adircctor. But we can teach them about collectingevidence. What we are trying to do is to developskills so that when the children leave here, notnecessarily being brilliant scientists, they can havethc skills to be able to make judgements to en-hance their lives.

This Head of Science approaches change not byjust importing a new course but by looking towardshis colleagues to establish a common basis ofshared aims. His comment 'That was wonderfulfor me' is a reaction from the 'first among equals'who now knows that his team can move forwardtogether.

The whole Department then chooses what newcourses to follow, on the basis of their established

3;1aims. The common aims make it possible to trustcolleagues' teaching without imposing commonteaching strategies.

The STS aims inter-relate with other aims, suchas fun for the pupils, problem-solving practicalwork, and thinking skills, which are not usuallythought to be in the same domain. For thisDepartment the connections between these sets ofaims are so clear that they see no need to articulatethem.

From the basis of common aims the Departmentcan criticise the 'off the shelf courses they havepicked, and add to them materials they havecollected from other schemes or, more often,written themselves.

The Schemes of Work instituted by the newNational Curriculum are also used to forward theireducational aims for STS.

The brain-stormed view about science mergesinto a wider view of education itself. From seeingthe social implications of science, the teachersmove towards seeing the function of science in thefuture adult lives of their pupils. This feeds backinto further aims for their teaching in the class-room stimulating the children to challengestatements and to use the evidence they havecollected.

Model HI: Teachers write curriculummaterials

In the previous section the teacher went on todescribe how he had developed new ways ofteaching and new STS resource materials. Teach-ing strategies will be the subject of Chapter 4. Thissection will go on to describe another method ofinnovation in S'FS which is also teacher-centred. Itis widely practised, having begun with the ScienceIn Society course and continued by the SATISteam. The common factors have been a collabor-ation between

teachers from different schools, andexperts from outside education

for the purpose of writing resource materials.There are other features which make this model

very different from the previous two, such assubstantial funding, a far wider audience, little or

34


no debate lbout political issues, and more concen-tration on specific content related to industrialprocesses. It is the process of innovation gettingstarted on a new approach which is the focus ofthe next two short case studies which are drawnfrom conversations with teachers who have beeninvolved with one or other of the SATIS projects.The first of these began in 1984 when John Holmanconvened a weekend meeting of 30 science teach-ers. Since then it has recruited many more teachersall over England, and even abroad.

I didn't start on the project because I knew a lotabout STS, indeed I doubt if I had even heardthose letters then. I was at a loose end, a bit in thedoldrums with my teaching and getting stale Isuppose. Someone asked me if I would like to jointhe local SATIS writing team because I hadworked in industry before teaching, and I leapt atthe opportunity. Joining the team was greatreally inspiring.

I wrote one unit almost completely by myself,but thcn it went out to be vetted by an expert. Thathappened to each one. I was told, when we hadfinished writing them. I met the person who hadvetted mine and that was interesting too. I learneda lot more about how industrial research worksthan I had picked up from my own experience.They showed me round their outfit and later Ispent thc best part of a week there.

As you can imagine that sort of thing has mademe very keen to speak to my pupils about indus-trial processes when I am teaching. I do this quiteoften. I also use some of the other SATIS unitsquite regularly and they go down well. We have awhole filing cabinet of the sheets back at school, allphotocopied and ready to use. I recommend thcones I know to my colleagues but I don't pushthcm all that hard you can't, you know andam not at all sure how much they arc used. Peterand Sarah use them. They are also used by supplystaff when teachers arc ill, which is really veryhelpful.

This teacher has learned about one aspect of STSwhile already writing a unit. The organisation builton his existing strengths from experiences outsideschool, and expanded them. The teacher's workand attitude has been invigorated, but it has beenless easy to pass that on to his colleagues who havenot shared in the writing experience.

3 5

Model IV: Interstices model

SATIS is not based on STS in the same sense asyou were talking about. It starts, as John Holmansays. with the school science syllabus well, with awhole load of conventional syllabuses really inphysics, chemistry, earth science, biology, astron-omy you name it! Thcn we look to see wherethere is a good opening for a SATIS unit. I thinkJohn calls it the 'interstices model'. That makes itvery easy for teachers to use when they haven't gotenough time to look for interesting extensionmaterial for themselves. Most people haven't gotthe timc, have they?

I have spent nearly twenty years teaching inseveral different schools, but I didn't teach anySTS until SATIS came in. Before that I did a PhDin biochemistry. There was absolutely no STSimplications in the work I was doing then. But I amable to use some of that basic knowledge forwriting ncw units, and vetting others, on biotech-nology for example. I have also provided 'balance'(you know?) whcn wc get a rather way-out idea fora unit on the environment.

It is enormously interesting work and I havelearned a lot and spent some wonderful writingweekends in various places. There were expertsthere of different sorts, and I now know far moreabout the applications of science to society than Iever did before, even when I was still 'in science'. Ihave even learned a bit about scientific methodand all that, which I suppose I should have knownbefore. but I didn't.

Yes I use some of the units regularly in myteaching. I like thc simulation units very much.They arc the best possible way of teaching ourchildren what it is like to be involved in industry.They go down well; the kids learn to work ingroups and present a case from the evidence given.both skills which I think arc very importantwhether or not they become scientists when theyleave. I am also very glad that the SATIS unitshave all been properly evaluated by asking teach-ers and students how they went. The results of thatarc superb - very encouraging.

This teacher, like the last, has learned aboutaspects of STS while working on the project. Shehas expert knowledge as well as teaching knowl-edge and uses both. It is interesting to observethat neither science teaching nor science research

GETTING GOING ON STS IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

can be relied upon to generate reflection on thesocial, technological, philosophical or economicaspects of science.

The SATIS project does not attempt to makeany special STS curriculum but uses traditionalcontent and fits in isolated units of sociallyorientated material where they suit the content ofexisting syllabuses.

The materials are expected to recommendthemselves to 'busy teachers', and are evaluatedby both teachers and students in those schoolswhich have used them.

Teaching and writing STS units has producedreflection on those skills that pupils may need asfuture citizens.

Summary

Innovations which start with classroom teachers,in whatever mode, usually work wonderfully well.Indeed there is a special term 'the HawthorneEffect' for this. Teachers generally work in iso-lation and when they do get together, whether it isin a brain-storming session in the Department, orin a writing weekend with others, it gives them atremendous professional boost. If they are en-trusted with thc task of curriculum development inthis context they set about making it work with awill! But even if the reason for success does havemore to do with the psychology of teachers thanwith the merit of the materials, that does not meanthat this effect has no message for would-beinnovators.

One suggestion is that all curriculum develop-ment should be based upon a large network ofpractising teachers. In the USA computers anddatabases have been used to create a network forSTS (called NESTS) which runs across the wholecountry. In Britain, although we usually thinksmaller, our SATIS project has begun to develop aEuropean network. In the models given above inthe words of practising science teachers, it is clearthat the small group which comprises no more thanthe science teachers in a particular school hasspecial advantages in terms of mutual trust, im-plementation, feedback and Departmental objec-tives.

35

The small Departmental group also has somedisadvantages. Chief amongst these is the lack offur ling and expert support. Models A and Breli, i to some extent on knowledge culled fromboth INSET and LEA advice. The SATIS model,on the other hand, uses no background from thekind of INSET which gave these teachers access toresearch results about STS,the personal approachto science, or thinking skills.

To some extent the advantages and disadvan-tages of the two approaches may seem to balanceout. However the complete tally of educationalthemes for STS, mentioned in Chapter 1 andbriefly listed below, do make great demands onteacher understanding, and this presents a con-siderable problem for both attempts at innovation.

Environmental threats to the quality of lifeProblems in the developing worldEconomic and industrial aspects of technologyTeaching about the nature of scienceDecision-making skillsOpinions on politically controversial issuesMulti-cultural dimensions

36

Some of the above may be best coped with byexpert advice on the SATIS model (e.g. industrialaspects, see Chapter 6) and others by cross-curricular collaboration within a school on theDepartmental model (economics, developingworld). The teacher in Model B, who had beguninnovation with a brain-storming session, went onto mention his collaboration with Drama, Historyand Geography colleagues.

One last point about innovation concerns feed-back information, to guide further change. Wherea school has particular objectives for the newscience course such as in the Models A and Bthis sets a marker for their success which can beused for monitoring and evaluation. Feedbackfrom the classroom can then make suggestions forinformal additions or deletions. This is true of anykind of school innovation and can be one of itsmost valuable features. The acid test for anyvigorous STS course can be embodied in a singlequestion:

Can the original innovation in STS be altered

36

subsequently to make it fit even better with theteacher's perceptions of new pupil needs?

If the answer is 'No' then the classroom teacher's

37


power and involvement is unreal and will notsurvive. The innovation also can only age, harden,or be discarded.

CHAPTER 4

Teaching strategies in the secondary school

Choosing

The major STS themes were teased out in ChapterI. They emerged from the history of science atwork in the world, and from general consider-ations about education, but now need to beaddressed in terms of classroom strategies. It isworth repeating the themes again here for use as achecklist for action. They were summarised at theend of the last chapter.

It is not enough just to list these, nor to commentupon the different ways in which STS teaching maybe introduced into a school curriculum. The task inthis chapter is to try to combine the teacher's aims,which are general prescriptions for outcomes inthe classroom 'science should be about people' or'science should be fun', with the more abstractthemes listed above. As they stand these are still atseveral removes from the classroom and thepupils. The task cannot be accomplished withoutoffering a picture, drawn from school life, of howthese teaching strategies work out in the class-room

There is a problem with presenting teachingstrategies in consecutive prose. Lists of resourcematerials will certainly not fit the bill, but neitherwill prescriptions for types of teaching withoutactual examples. In the belief that only vignettes ofclasses of learning pupils can show what somestrategy actually looked like in action, this chapterruns the risk of falling between the two alterna-tives It will draw on a specific example of aparticular gcnre, so that a shortlist of resources

may seem to be presented. It will also makerecommendations about how some strategies maybe carried out which may seem too prescriptive.Each one of the following examples is securelybased on personal experience.

Before the specifics are discussed in any detailthere are two bogies to be laid to rest. There isabsolutely no conflict between teaching orthodoxconceptual science for understanding, and teachingSTS. In the examples given below it is taken forgranted that thc pupils (aged 11-16) are engaged inlearning science and technology in the normalcurriculum. It would clearly be absurd first to teachsomething called 'science', or 'technology', in away that made no contact with people and theirlives, and then to clear the throat, as it were, andteach STS as though it had suddenly struck us thatscience had a personal, or a fallible dimension. Insome books the imp- ession is given that 'science'(whatever that is) must first be taught as anabstract discipline or an illustrated dictionary, andthen the 'applications of science' will be tacked onafterwards. The 'science' in STS educ.ition is schoolscience and will be taught in just that spirit.

Secondly, statistical data plus hand-waving talkis not the sum of STS. All science teaching requirespractical illustration and activity. Environmentalwork needs field work, and other branches ofscience need the investigatory laboratory. Withouta laboratory, science would become like gardeningwithout a garden, or cooking without a stove. Thewhole feel of science, at least at the beginning,demands practical activities so that pupils can

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connect thinking about science with observing andexploring the actual phenomena of nature. Teach-ing which is all 'chalk and talk' may be inspiring insmall doses if it is well done, but in too large anamount it distorts the very meaning of science. Itbecon es amassing information, instead of explor-ing natural pnenomena. That means that any STScourse must contain laboratory or field work.

Example I Using technology

The middle of STS, the 'T' for technology, is oftenlost in teaching for 'social issues' (Layton, 1988).Some argue that what is needed is no more than'non-CDT technology'. By this they mean that it isnot a matter of pupils designing and making, butonly of discussing the benefits and risks of indus-trial innovation. That is thc prevalent view in theUSA, but not in Britain. Most advocates of STShere want real technological work. Time con-straints are certainly very severe when children arcset a task which involves all the blind alleys andcraft skills essential to making something well.However technology is an experience that no childshould either miss, or be led to believe is quiteunconnected with science.

The most basic characteristic of all technology isthat it is designed to serve people society. Itfollows that 'egg-race' types of invention, althoughfun, forms no part of STS. In the followingexample technology leads thc learning work, anapproach which could easily be adapted for othertopics.


Making a water turbine

The study of energy is a prictical exploit in sciencefor a number of reasons In the first place youngchildren believe energy to be something you canfeel in your body, like 'being energetic'. There areways in which such an approach, although formallyincorrect, can be used. By making connectionswith the sensorimotor world of the child, as inPiagetian theory, energy may become simpler tounderstand.

However 'energeticness' is not the same as'energy' because

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it cannot be measuredit cannot be transferred to an objectit cannot be stored

Good practical work should address all thesepoints.

Secondly, energy, or the exploitation of it to douseful work for us, is at the heart of almost alltechnology. Here is where the social aspect of thework emerges. All pupils of secondary school agealready have some idea that there is public con-troversy about nuclear power and about the emis-sions from coal-fired power stations. Controversialtopics are always most welcome in the classroomjust because the pupils already know that the topic isthought to be important by people outside the closedworld of the school.

The children will know that there arc energytechnologies which rely on neither fuels nor nu-clear power, , like solar power or hydroelectricpower. Some have learned that they are called'renewable' forms of energy, but commonly inter-pret this to mean that 'the same energy is usedagain and again' (common response on STS exam-ination scripts). These energy sources seembenign, 'natural', and non-threatening. What mostpeople know little about, and need to know muchmore if they are to think and speak usefully aboutthe subject, is how such energy is 'harnessed' andhow efficiently we can use it. That is what thefollowing exercise is all about (Figure 4.1).

The pupils must first think about how water-power has been used in the past for grinding corn,and how it is used in hydroelectric stations today,in order to give civic importance to their work. Afew swift questions arc usually enough to re-awaken some knowledge of the social context ofwater-power. The children will also probablyknow that it seems to cause no pollution, and thinkof it as 'good' technology.

They are then challenged to make a waterturbine out of a cork, spindle, pieces of plastic(from yoghurt cups) which they can shape, andsleeves into which the completed rotor can beloosely fitted so that it turns easily. The turbine ispowered by a flow of water supplied by the pupilsraising and pouring a measured amount of water

TEACHING STRATEGIES IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 39

Fig. 4.1 Making a water turbine and measuring its efficiency

(The general principle of this exercise can be applied to making a windmill, steam turbine, or chemical battery.)

You will need:

A large bowl or deep trayCork and spindle2 glass tubes sealed at one endThreadPlastic cupScissorsKnifeFunnelRubber tubingBeakerA weight (ah..)u t 200 g)

(their energy, stored in raised water) on to theblades of the rotor.

The task of the turbine is to raise a weight.So far this is a technological task: like all good

technology teaching it starts with people's needs(power), and people's values (concern about pol-lution). The next stage is to improve the designlengthening or broadening the blades of the rotorso that it turns faster or more powerfully for thesame quantity of water flow. Later this will betranslated into terms of energy. (With a little helpthe pupils can find out that 'faster' and more'powerfully', are different and often competingconditions.)

Lastly, the pupils need to conceptualise thenotions of energy and energy efficiency, whichmay have already started to form as they struggledto make a 'better' turbine than their neighbours.For this the pupils may be able to build on previouswork. They will measure how much energy theyhave transferred to the turbine (weight of water xthe height they have raised it). Then they measurehow much useful work the turbine performs interms of raising the small weight dangling on the

end of the thread. The result is rarely more than 7or 8 per cent.

There is no need to continue further with detailsof the exercise. As most teachers could tell fromthe account so far, this project has a slightly chaoticcharacter. Water tends to spray around from somedesigns which spin too fast, or have very longblades. Carrying it out also has an element ofcompetition. It is certainly fun.

This simple exercise provides a way to showstudents of almost any age that there is always aleakage of useless energy from a device whichproduces motive power (or electricity) for us. Bothwaves and wind are obvious sources of energyderived from the sun-driven atmospheric machine,but they are not quite the happy sources of endlesspower without any cost that some people seem tobelieve. They need excellent design, and manufac-ture which itself uses energy. and even then theywill still convert only a small percentage of theavailable energy into electricity. The 'gradient'down which energy runs of its own accord with near100 per cent efficiency is towards chaotic movement(swirling water, and heated substances), or

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chemical linkage, but not, alas, towards usefulszreamlined or rotary motion.

Either of the following make an enjoyableending to this energy exercise:

pupils' strip cartoon of how energy movesthrough the atmospheric machine which ispowered by the sun's incoming he:.t energy, andis tapped for our use, orstories and pictures for pupils to show the risks orhazards of water power the dreaded 'mill-race'of earlier times where the spent energy of thewater could drown anyone who fell in orphotographs to show the environmental impactof a new hydroelectric dam, e.g. the Danube.

Water-power technology means, as technologyalways does, that people, like our students, have tomake choices between energy, the environment,and human risk.

Example 2 Using history of science tounderstand its social relations and fallibility

In general conversation, and on the media, to saysomething is 'scientific' is tantamount to assertingit is 'entirely sure'. We may cast scorn on thisbetween ourselves, but the problem of teachingscience clearly to our pupils without giving thisimpression is substantial. Could we teach scienceat all if we really believed that all of it was 'up forgrabs"? Classroom teachers need to explainauthoritatively, and yet not give the impressionthat the explanation is certain for all time.

Two ways in which this may be done are throughthe interpretation of experiment, and through

eas from the history of science. There are plentyof experiments where the teacher can ask thepupils how they imagine what is happening, orexplain what they have observed. This makes thepoint that scientific explanation does not just fL.;out of 'correct' experimental results. There is anuncertain pathway from experiment to theoryalong which it is quite essential that the imagin-ation be used. Then it must be used again to makepredictions for further experiments. (In a recentSTS examination at GCSE level nearly half the


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candidates gave an experimental result like'heavy objects fall at the same rate as light ones'when they were asked to state a theory (Solomon,1988). Another 25 per cent gave no theory at all.)

In the second context for teaching about thetentative nature of scientific explanation theteacher tells the class how the present acceptedtheory arrived on the scene. If this can be done sothat pupils see that parts of the explanation are stillmissing today, then the point about fallibility iseven better made.

Are there 'heat rays'?

(All objections to words like 'heat' or 'heat rays'have had a lower priority, in what fol:. ws, than theobjective of making the concepts easily compre-hensible to our young pupils.)

This work begins with a simple experiment,related to the pupils' own sensations, throughwhich they begin to talk about how heat may travelfrom a heated wife gauze to their hands. Theimportant discussion about how they interpret orimagine what is happening requires that groups ofthree or four pupils should work together. One ormore of them put a patch of silver foil on the backof one hand, and a patch of thin black paper on theother. Holding both hands the same distance oneither side of the heated gauze the pupils first findout that the black patch feels warmer.

Now they have to be encouraged to think,imagine and discuss what is happening. Childrenof all abilities find this equally difficult if they havenever done it before but all can do it. The teacherneeds to find just one or two children prepared tobreak the ice, and then others will follow. Themost frequent comments are:

'Black attracts heat''Silver repels heat''Black soaks up heat''Silver reflects heat'

The point to make about these alternative inter-pretations is not that one (the last?) is right, whilethe others are all wrong. Nor need we fight veryhard to produce conceptual change. It is not thecase that these interpretations are very tenaciously

TEACHING STRATEGIES IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL

held by the pupils. Indeed a count of predictionsmade before the experiment is performed usuallyshows many more guesses that the silver will behotter than the black one. Only when they havefelt the hot black paper on their skin will the pupilsbegin to seek for possible explanations, sayings, orways of imagining the result.

That process is not only the beginning of makingmeaning out of this experiment, it is also the firststep in understanding that scientific theory is not'discovered' by experiment, like a virgin continentmight be by some intrepid explorer. In the termsthat philosophers use, this approach avoids naiveempiricism (assuming that the experimental resultis the whole of the answer).

Designing the next phase of teaching requires alittle reflection. Some teachers might want toproceed at once to teach the accepted moderntheory. The problem with that approach is that it istantamount to rejecting all the personal interpre-tations which we went to such pains to collect:'What is the point', some pupils might then say, 'ofrisking looking a fool if s/he has the right answer uptheir sleeve all the time!'

Some constructivist researchers (e.g. Driver andOldham, 1986) have argued that considerable timeshould be allowed for students to work out theirown views in more detail. Still others reply that somany of the children's inte.pretations are onlylightly held, that io concen:rate on developingthem runs the danger of fixing 'incorrect' viewsmore firmly in the mind. The problem here is howto accord value to the children's views withoutlabouring so much over the process that weactually reinforce them.

One resolution is to point out that diversity ofinterpretation is almost inevitable for any newobservations, and has happened regularly in thehistory of science. By tracing some of these earlyguesses, and the findings which changed whatscientists then believed, the teacher has an oppor-tunity to demonstrate more about the nature ofscience in general, and about the properties of heatradiation in particular. It also treats the pupils'efforts to interpret and understand as an integralpart of the scientific endeavour.

At this point the pupils need some historical

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information. When such passages are selected it isalways important to remember that history itselfcan be presented in several ways. It can be

(a) conceptual and chronological, or(b) related to scientists and triumphant, or(c) social and imaginative.

From the first of these our pupils learn only howone idea followed another, and when this hap-pened. From the second they learn stories of greatmen, and very occasionally women, doing betterand better as time goes on! (It tends to reinforcethe idea which many children hold that 'we aremore intelligent nowadays'.) From the third kindof history they learn the basic stuff of all STS.

The problem for teachers is how best to intro-duce the historical information. It can be providedin a series of snippets, one for each group, so thateach passage is not too long and complex, but thisstill does not answer the question of how we canbest help the pupils to study it. No experiencedteacher needs to bc told that pupils do not just sitquietly reading and absorbing information! Prob-ably the best way to proceed is to provide anactivity which makes them search the text in someinteresting way. These sort of activities are some-times called DARTs (Directed Activities Relatedto Text) (Davies and Greene, 1984).

In the case of heat radiation it has provedsuccessful to ask each group to prepare a posterwhich incorporates the information in their shortpassage. Using this they can then explain to therest of the class their piece of the history ofunderstanding about heat rays. The posters arethen pinned up around the room for other classesto see as they enter the laboratory.

An alternative DART is making an overheadtransparency. This can be excellent for a sub-sequent mini-lecture (2 minutes), so long as it doesnot just have words from the text on it.

An assortment of pieces of text which can beused are to be found in a unit in Exploring theNature of Science (Solomon, 1991a, pp. 53-56).The examples given run as follows:

An old idea was that heat and light from flamesare particles.

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John Leslie finds that black surfaces of metalcontainers holding boiling water give off moreheat than silver ones, but that the heat will notpenetrate glass.Caroline Herschel finds that heat from the sungoes through some of the telescope filters whichabsorb light.William Herschel finds that heat lies beyond redin the visible spectrum, He argues that it isinvisible light'.Photographs can be taken using heat rays. Thisis used for studying distant stars and galaxies,and also in war for detecting soldiers andengines.Heat radiations can be used for cooking or inmedicine.Glass lets through radiation from the sun, buttraps radiation from cooler objects. (This ex-ample leads to a discussion of the GreenhouseEffect.)

The pupil groups then deliver their own explan-ation. Experience shows that even shy pupils canmake some attempt at facing the class and talkingcoherently when they are part of a group which isarmed with a poster to point at.

So far this exercise has used both class experi-ment and the history of science, and has touchedupon the uses of radiation in medicine and war-fare. It has also brought in an environmental topicwhich has been much debated in the media theGreenhouse Effect. STS teachers will want todiscuss this with their pupils, and to hear what theythink, at several points in their science curriculum.For the purposes of teaching about scientificexplanation it is valuable because we can acknow-ledge our present lack of knowledge about thedetails of this effect.

Young children are apt to say that scientifictheories are either 'facts' or 'guesses' rather thanattempts to predict and explain. What we havetaught them so far about heat rays begins to correctthe first impression that science just relies on 'facts'(Solomon et al., 1992). However it has done less toteach them about prediction from a hypothesis.This is now remedied.


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The pupils are reminded of William Herschel'sthcory that 'I kat is like invisibl light'. They arcasked what they would expect neat to dJ if itreally was like light. (This can be a groupinvestigation where they discuss together, designan experiment, and then carry it out.)

Boxes of mirrors, pieces of foil, lamps, lenses,thermometers, and heaters are put out for thepupils to usc in thcir investigations. Thcy alsoserve to trigger ideas about reflecting heat,making heat shadows, or focusing heat on to athermometer. (If prisms arc put out experiencesuggests that several groups will just attempt. andprobably fail, to repeat William Herschel'sexperiment.)

Scientific theories, like this one of Herschel's, areoften models for how things work. That means thatthey can be manipulated in the mind, almost like amechanical model, to make a prediction for whatmay happen under new circumstances. Here isanother important task for the imagination, inaddition to the original act of personal interpre-tation. This special function of theory may takeseveral lessons on different topics for the pupils tobegin to understand it clearly, but a beginning iscertainly possible in the simple manner of thisexercise.

Example 3 Using the cultures of differentpeoples to deal with different local problems

Of all the objectives of STS in our list this isundoubtedly the one which is most likely to gohorribly wrong. With the best of motives both thefamine relief organisations and good-heartedteachers, give the impression that the poorernon-Western countries are populated by mal-nourished, uneducated people who have too manychildren. To use this image, even for the purposeof collecting money or stimulating good will, isindefensible. Our task in STS is not to offercharity, nor to examine other living conditions inorder to devise yet more applications of simpleschool science. We study local problems in other


communities in order to see how the people use orextend their indigenous technologies to protecttheir own style of living. Its objective is to observeand learn from other societies how they usetechnology to preserve or extend their quality oflife. Like all STS it should he about real people,their objectives and their issues. Reading well-meaning answers to STS questions about ThirdWorld medicine shows how oLen this objective hasbeen completely missed. Students too oftenimpose our issues and ways of living (small fami-lies, settled living and western medicine).

The stone walls of Burkina Faso

The sub-Saharan countries have been growingmore arid over the last centuries for at least tworeasons. One is a climatic change. The otherreason is the confining of previously semi-nomadfarmers to these precarious dry regions from whichthey can no longer retreat to better wateredsouthern lands in seasons of drought, since thelatter are now enclosed and farmed. The semi-aridfarms in this flat region always had a problem ofholding back the precious rain watcr during theshort, occasional, but heavy downpours. Now thisproblem has been made more severe since the landis in regular cultivation, so the soil is loose and canbe washed away.

The old solution to this problem was to buildlines of stones to hold back the water as long aspossible to soak into the ground. Now it becomeseven more essential that these lines follow thecontours very exactly otherwise the flash floodingmay be channelled by the stones and swirl alongthe walls taking even more soil with it. Thetechnological question was how these farmerscould use the old custom for greater benefit.Oxfam sent out sr:ientists to consult with farmersand together they came up with a simple man-ometer made from plastic hose attached to twomeasuring sticks. With this they can now mark outlevel lines on this nearly flat landscape for layingdown the stones far more exactly. The farmershave the task of finding and transporting the stones(Figure 4.2). This simple aid to existing practicescan increase crops by at least as much as 35-40 per

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The hosepipe is filled with water

Fig. 4.2 Equal water pressure

Pupils learn about air pressure and waterpressure in the usual way, as African children willalso learn it. Then they make a model of themanometer and use it to mark out the contourson some uneven piece of land. I can vouch for thefact that this requires group collaboration of ahigh order. A dropped stick at one end involvesspilled water and may mean going back to refillthe tubing, and even starting all over again.

To introduce the topic it is suggested in thebook that groups of pupils once again read piecesof text and use an activity to illustrate theirunderstanding of the information. This timedrawing posters has drawbacks. Because thcAfrican context is so foreign to our pupils theydraw pictures with considerable uncertainty.What they produce inevitably bears littleresemblance to the actual landscape or plant-lifeof Burkina Faso. Where texts in othercircumstances may be illustrated by simple orhumorous cartoons, these are obviously lessappropriate for cross-cultural work.

cent. The classroom resource is to be found in thesame textbook, Exploring the Nature of Science(1991).

A local issue

The most valuable outcome of a cross-culturalstudy in an STS context is not a detailed under-standing of some technological development inanother country. It is a more general understand-ing that every : cality has difficult issues, threatsto soil fertility a .,1 problems with land bound-aries. Each neighbourhood tries to cope with the

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issues using scientific and local knowledge aboutthe environment, technological inventiveness,and concern for how people live. In Britaincountry children will know about the controver-sies over hedges, and town children about threatsto parks from diseases spread by dog excrement.The soil is precious everywhere, only the issuesare local.

A successful method of studying such issues is touse local newspapers. This has the advantage ofbeing in a familiar setting so that our pupils are in abetter position to understand the concerns ofpeople. The disadvantage is that it is not possibleto plan for some appropriate local crisis just as thatpoint in the syllabus is reached! There are twostrategies for dealing with this. One teacher mayarrange to collect newspaper cuttings on problemsaffecting the neighbourhood over a few monthsand use them at an appropriate point in her schemeof work. Others may make an opening for this kindof exercise when the news breaks it may bepollution of the water supply, trying to make agraffiti-free surface for bus-shelters, or lookingafter the elderly in some different way.

It is clearly impossible to dictate a soil-relatedissue which will fit neatly with the African exampleabove: that is a disadvantage. On the other hand itwill now be the pupils themselves who collect theinformation from newspapers, local radio, andpeople that they know, and that is clearly anadvantage. Above all the issue will be real to them,


The pupils cut out newspaper articles and recordradio interviews wherever possible. These arcbrought to school and the class activity is tomount thcm together with connecting passageswhich groups of pupils are asked to contribute.To do this the pupils are encouraged to talk intheir groups while planning and writing so thatthey can exchange information and begin adiscussion of the issue and what they think shouldbe done. At the end there is a class display andalso a plenary discussion with the teacher inwhich she draws out the reactions of the childrenand shows that she values their contributions.

topical, and about people they know. It will enablethem to begin to form their own opinion on a civicissue, and even to see what action might follow todeal with it.

Example 4 Using role-play

The words 'role-play', 'simulation', and 'gaming'have been used interchangeably in a lot of writingabout classroom strategies. Although these activi-ties overlap, they are not the same. The purpose ofsimulations is to try to copy roles and actions in aparticular situation so that the mechanics of plan-ning and decision-making will be understood. It isespecially useful for learning about industrialdecision-making and public enquiries: this may bethe reason why most simulations do not run verywell with our middle school pupils fot whom theseformal and managerial situations are not easy tounderstand. This will be discussed further inChapter 6.

Role-play, by contrast, has more limited objec-tives. The pupils take on parts and act them out inorder to feel their way into the likely reactions ofthe characters, as they perceive them. A 13-year-old boy is unlikely to make a convincing or usefuljob of acting out the part of a company directorhe is much more able to throw himself into the roleof a Victorian boy chimney-sweep. The historicalexactness of the performance will be far fromcomplete, but the pupil can often bring the char-acter to life, extend his sympathy, and so begin tothink about the causes of mistreatment, and meansof curing the abuse. Thus role-play fulfils theessential aims of showing that science is aboutpeople.

Successful role-play requires information briefsfor the preparation stage, but not complete scripts.Acting to prepared scripts allows for none of thepersonal empathic reaction that is the main pur-pose of role-play for STS.

Jenner's vaccination of young James

The outline of this role-play is also to be found inExploring the Nature of Science (see above). The

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following discussion does not repeat the infor-mation already published, but shows how thecharacter briefs were designed so that teachersmay use the general principles to design their own.It will also report what was learned during theextensive trialling of this unit.

The outline of the story of how Edward Jennerchose an 8-year-old boy and inoculated him firstwith cow-pox pus, and then with active pus from asmallpox victim is well known. When the resourcematerial was being put together the televisionseries Scientific Eye had just produced a 5-minutehumorous cartoon of the story in their programmeon 'Mini-beasts and Disease'. It contained visualjokes, such as cranking up the cow for milking, andwas always received by the pupils with muchhilarity, but it did not touch at all on the social orcontroversial implications of the story.

At first we used this cartoon video simply as a'text' which was looking for a DART activity. Wetried posters, but with only limited success. Thepupils were attempting to copy the images theyhad just seen on the screen, and like all copying, itoperated without further reflection on the subjectmatter. Taking a written text and putting into thepupils' own words, probably the commonest of allDARTs, similarly requires little involvement orcreativity from the pupils. It is also poor learningexperience. There seems to be a point here forquite general application only if the pupil activity'translates' the information into a new medium,will durahie learning take place. (Acting the story,as it was seen on the television excerpt, wasanother DART used by one school but it alsoinvolved too much copying to make for soundlearning.) The two most useful DARTs, in termsof the durability of the learning produced, turnedout to be sequencing sentences about the story interms of the scientific process involved, and aNewsnight-type role play. It was the second ofthese which had the strongest STS elements.

We have evidence from interviews carried outseveral months later with only average abilitypupils that the details of this story were wellremembered, and so were the scientific processes.That in itself is satisfactory. However STS teachersmay want to take the general issue of testing new

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Each group of pupils was given a brief for one ofthe seven characters who was going to take partin the final News Conference. The mother ofJamcs, for example, was told that Dr Jenner hadfailed to save two of her babies, or to help hersistcr who had died in child-birth. That wouldhave been commonplace in the eighteenthcentury and might well have affected her trust in'thc good doctor', as the cartoon film had calledhim. James' father was told that he was DrJenner's gardener and lived on t-%.: estate in acottage owned by Jenner. That in itself mighthave influenced him to allow the riskyvaccination experiment on his son to go forward.The group that are to choosc one of themselvesto act the part of Jenner himself, read that he hadalready tried giving smallpox to a group of peoplewho all said they had suffered from cow pox buttwo of them did contract smallpox and becamedangerously ill. The othcr characters, seven inall, were 'created' to present differentcontemporary attitudes towards smallpox and itstreatment.

The groups of pupils studied thc briefs forlO--20 minutes and thought up answers to thesimple questions set. This ensured that they had alittle time to prepare for the flood of questionswhich might be thrown at them. At the lastmomcnt one person from each group was chosen,by thc pupils or thc teacher, to bc thc charactcrin the press conference. The rest asked'journalist'-type questions, in turn, from 'thefloor'. In this way all the pupils got a chance totake part in the Newsnight Conference, whichwas sometimes chaired by the teacher. It hasalmost always been fun for all concerned.

medicines further and to talk with their class abouthow such tests are carried out today.

Pupils who had just taken part in this role-playwere very ready to argue against the use of a childin any potentially dangerous test. We found italmost impossible to convince our pupils thatchildren's lives were thought to be more expend-able in a century when so many were expected todie in infancy. Indeed there was a consensus in oneYear 7 class that the experiment should have been

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carried out on an old person who had less time tolive. (This made us feel aged and uncomfortable!)The same criterion was applied in the subsequentdiscussion of the use of animals in the testing ofnew medicines. The pupils wrote that 'only oldanimals should be used'.

It is valuable to see young pupils offering ideason science-based social issues in the classroom.


The discussion is of intrinsic worth because itattacks the damaging idea, which many pupilshold, that scientists, science teachers, and scienceitself, are callous and uncaring. At some later stage(see Chapters 5 and 6) the subject of testing drugsmay become the focus of serious teaching for anSTS course, for now it has just begun to build up amore humane image of science teaching.

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CHAPTER 5

The examination classes

Citizenship at the top of the school

In the high theory of education, from the time ofMatthew Arnold until the present day, prep-aration for responsible citizenship within a democ-racy has been the stated goal of all education (atleast for the middle and upper classes of society!).And yet it has usually been only in the ratherremote regions of the restricted-access sixth formthat anything like this kind of education has beenseriously attempted.

In most of today's comprehensive schools thereis an abrupt break between the lower or middleschool, and the sixth form. It is exclusively thesixth form which is allowed any measure of self-governance, permitted to choose their own formsof dress, or is addressed by the teaching staff withanything like the consideration expected by anadult of another adult. All of these are essentialpreparations for becoming an autonomous citizen,and are also signals of its approaching fulfilment.No doubt One reason for this sudden onset ofemancipation is the voluntary aspect of post-16education. Another reason may be the proximityof these students to the age of political franchise.

STS education is deeply impregnated with no-tions of citizenship and social justice. It is notsurprising, therefore, -to find it more stronglyrepresented in the sixth-form curriculum than inany other parts of the school. It began there, inBritain during the 1970s, with courses such asScience in Society and SISCON-in-Schools and isnow furnished with newer courses, largely derived

from these, such as SATIS and Science Tech-nology and Society both of which can now be takenat two different levels (GCSE and A level). Thesecorrespond, in levels of difficulty, to the twopopulations at the top of the school.

When the sixth form first showed signs ofexpanding, in the 1970s, by taking in more thanjust those preparing for university entrance orstaying on for a term to re-take public examin-ations, several inspirational books about the 'NewSixth' were written. The best known of these, byA. D. C. Peterson (1973. pp. 30-31), put theeducational implications of the nc .v and expandetsixth form in the following terms:

. . . every sixth-former. whether in school or out ofit, needs and wants to develop his [sic] capacity forinterpreting his environment, for understandinglife. This means not only his external environment.the social and to a lesser extent the physical andtechnological environment in which he lives, butthe inner environment of his own personality . . .

But the young do not merely want and need tounderstand their environment, they want to oper-ate within it, they want to be able, in some respectsat least, to he able to change it.lemphasis added]

A later book by Reid and Filby (1982) traced thehistory of the sixth form from its origins in therublic schools of the nineteenth century to theexpanded sixth form which, by this time, alreadyexisted in the comprehensive schools. The sixthform was only just beginning to feel the pushtowards vocational training and work experience

4 8

48

which figure so prominently in current post-16education, but the less academic 'one year sixth'which had some vocational flavour, had alreadyovertaken the traditional A level sixth form interms of sheer numbers. The authors of this 'essay'were critical of many of the elitist syllabuses inexistence, and finished their account with thiscomment (Reid and Filby, 1982, P. 246):

Ultimately, the choices we make about sixth formeducation are choices about what form we wouldlike democracy to take. Should it be one whichleaves effective power in the hands of an elitemarked off from the rest of society by a curriculumbased on principles of exclusion? Or should it beonc which sets a high value on the incorporation ofas many of the population as possible into sharedconceptions of democratic citizcnship?

However much we may agree with that point ofview it still offers no reason for the sudden change,described above, which marks admission to thesixth form in Britain. Education for democracy, ifit has any virtue, should be a gradual processthrough which students are led by degrees, and bythe teacher's encouragement and expectation,towards an understanding of how they can partici-pate in democratic government. Much of thischapter will be concerned with the construction ofsyllabuses, and their examination, but thc underly-ing theme will be education for citizenship. Thearguments will override considerations of age andlevel within the school and may easily be adaptedfor use in sub-I 6 classes. Whether it is exclusivelyfor the segregated sixth form or for students in anyclass who exhibit a more mature attitude towardssocial issues, the passages about sixth form edu-cation (quoted above) are important. They maketwo controversial points which are central for anyconsideration of the type of STS education re-quired for our older students. Peterson writes ofthe students' need to be able to change society (seealso Skilbeck's notion of education for 'societal re-construction', 1984, p. 16). Reid and Filby questionthe separation of the two sections of the sixth formthe specialised academic group, and the growingnumbers of less able generalists in the context oftheir education for democratic citizenship.


For the academic sixth form

When STS first began in an organised way, this wasthe level at which it happened. Indeed the Sciencein Society course was not only intended for A levelstudents, it was also piloted, for the most part, inthe public schools. With the elitist tradition of suchplaces there was a suspicion that it was beingoffered for the future 'captains of industry'. Atleast one of the founders of this innovative coursespoke of his boys' interest as lying most naturallywith the functions of industrial management. Ifpower in our society was increasingly to be foundin the boardrooms of the sun-rise technologicalfirms, then it was possible to see STS as apreparation for the exercise of that power. Thiswas the technocratic approach to STS.

That kind of STS ed :cation is rare in schoolstoday. One reason for the shift away may be themovement of affluence in our society from indus-try to commerce, during the last decade. Anotherreason is, undoubtedly, our greater understandingof the real educational needs of the older student.Seen from a restricted access sixth-form collegeSTS has much to offer which relates simply to thestudent's own development of study skills, to theirunderstanding of academic work, and to theirentrance into higher education. The followingextract is iPken from a report by a gifted andenergetic sixth-form college teacher who has pion-eered several new developments in STS.

48

STS for a closed-access sixth-form college

As science teachers we have all had to deal withlarge numbers of students struggling with theintricacies of the Periodic Table. the structure ofthe atom, etc. with little motivation and even lessclue to the relevance of their (sometimes!) valiantefforts. This may be less of a pt 1)lem to the ablewho can take a more abstract and analytical viewof thc subject matter when it is presented in thetraditional format. What is needed for a lot ofstudents is a fresh approach and one which catchestheir imagination. STS is one of those ways.

The students, whether very able or just average,have many of the same pressures. During thc twoyears of sixth-form education they mature at an

,t6

THE EXAMINATION CLASSES

accelerated rate. Not only are they following aca-demic syllabuses but they also have part-time jobs,more responsibility at home and more chance tomake many decisions for themselves. At collegetoo, demands on them have changed: they areasked to give thcir own views on topics, to accessdata for themselves, to assess their own academicprogress, to evaluate courses, and to think abouttheir futures in further education or in the world ofwork. They are expected to develop skills ofcommunication, to learn to deal in an adult fashionwith peers and staff, and to integrate their increas-ingly active social lives with their work. Needlessto say, students at sixth-form level are, these days,much less likely to accept courses which arc notrelevant. enlightening, or enjoyable.

The role of STS in a closed-access sixth-formcollege is twofold:

(a) It provides a one-year GCSE course for thosestudents who wish to study only two A levelsubjects. The course allows them to take ascience qualification at GCSE if they do notalready have one. For those who do have aGCSE science qualification thc STS courseallows them to study thc social aspects ofscience which, although increasingly touchedupon at GCSE, may not have arouscd theirinterest previously.

(b) It provides an AS [Advanced Supplementary]cow-se for those students who are opting forthe [two A level + two AS level] route toHigher Education. On the whole these stu-dents have only one subject which has anyscience flavour, such as Social Biology orPsychology. Those who are taking two Alevels in the traditional sciences are moreusually advised, although not by mc, to takean AS level in Mathematics or, perhaps in amodern language to further their businessaspirations.

I believe there is an enormous scope for STS atAS level, but many sixth-form colleges arc yct tobe persuaded of this. They see AS level courses asones which replace traditional A levels. But STS isnot that sort of commodity. It is 'an extra', not areplacement, an additional subject which broadensand complements sixth-form science studies in anew and essential direction.

Although the target groups are different, boththese STS courses fulfil many of thc requirements

49

for entry to university and polytechnic. Thc chal-lenge is to overcome the fears of college teachersand to get the subject more widely established.There is clearly an interest at the admissions end.Students arc coming back from interviews havingspent a good part of thc time discussing STS.Presumably the interviewer wants to know moreabout it!

There is no typical lesson for STS. Some topicslead to discussion in greater depth than others andthe teacher will learn to 'go with the flow', afterhaving created the stimulus to learn. It is essentialto have an interactive dialogue of views at thislevel to dispel thc myth that 'teacher knows it all'.There should be an equality of access to infor-mation so as not to create a power imbalance, ifstudents arc to develop thcir own views and de-cisions. If everyone is contributing to the dis-cussion and analysis of a problem, then the power-base is more equally distributed.

These sixth formers are often unaware of theeffects of science and technology, and of thedecisions that scientists and others have to make.Without such awareness they cannot challengeestablished views. They often start with a low'nse of their own power. They have their own

private and often untested assumptions about theway society is about full employment, and abouthealth care in the developing countries. In STScourses tiles 2, and other assumptions. are all likelyto be challenged.

It is important to allow for flexibility. Theteacher must be free to present material in amanncr suitable for hcr own students. The follow-ing arc inherent in all STS teaching:

The subject mattcr is relevant to the studentsand to the society in which they live. (This Ibelieve to be the key to success in all scienceteaching.)It creates new interest in science and tech-nology.It offcrs a preparation for living in our increas-ingly technological society where thc less wellinformed can easily become disempowercd.Above all else it gets thc students thinking,discussing, and questioning, questioning . . .

STS for our ethnic minorities

Thc next extract has been contributed by an STS

50

teacher who works in.a girls' school with an over 90per cent Asian intake from a working-class inner-city district.

Our girls, it seems to me. have less awareness ofthe world they live in than do thc majority. This isnot surprising. Their parents are mostly workingclass and do not speak much English and thismakes it difficult for a lot of the girls to grow upfeeling that they arc really a part of the Britishsociety. They have sometimes said, about issuesthey have discussed in STS lessons. 'Isn't it a goodthing we do these lessons otherwise we wouldnever hear about this!'

I have noticed an improvement this year with mySTS group. They are now the brighter ones whoarc doing one or two A level subjects, often inSociology or History as well as STS. But even so Ihave often found myself delivering knowledge thatother young people might well gct from thcirhomes. In science lessons thc gi-ls perform well,but they have simple and unsophisticated viewsabout social issues. At times it can be almost abattle to start them thinking for themselves atdifferent levels about problems. They haveopinions, as everyone has, but I doubt if they haveworked them out for themselves because. I be-lieve, they would find it very hard to disagree withwhat they are hearing at home. At school, in theirSTS lessons, I can see this process of forming theirown opinions gradua;ly beginning.

It is especially hard to teach them about issueswhich are really controversial but I enjoy trying.Sometimes I show them a serious video fromtelevision; it might be about health-care, vacci-nation and the resulting increase in population inthe developing world. Of course that is just onelittle part of the equation: there are other factorsto consider like culture and tradition. During classdiscussions I mav have to act as 'Devil's advocate'.but I do worry that I may over-influence them. Atpresent I have a large group with a wide abilityrange for whom special resources have been pro-vided so that they can work independently at theirown pace and level. But I am finding that even thismakes some of my girls feel insecure. (They wouldprobably rather that I dictated pages of notes!)One strategy I have developed is to give them aseries of questions which they discuss, and preparea report. Then I tell them to consider the samequestions and prepare a ncw report from the


51

opposite point of view totally biased. They arenot good at balanced arguments and their firstattempts have almost always been biased in theother direction, so I am beginning the process ofexamining the assumptions inherent in thcir ownarguments. I set the tone of the whole course inthis way. The girls need to get used to consideringboth sides of any argument.

I find that they almost always choose to do topicslike health and food in the developing countries.They probably relate more easily to that becauseof their own Asian background, and they actuallyfind it harder to relate to things which arc happen-ing around them here in Britain. Their under-standing of our technology, for example. is ratherlimited. Their community has a very strong workethic, and for them technology is often equatedwith unemployment among their menfolk. Manyof my girls will never themselves have the oppor-tunity to work outside the home. I do not want toimpose my culture on them but I find it frustratingsometimes when I see that they arc not readilygiven thc means to make any choices, even athome. It is not due to any lack of intelligence ontheir part. but because of a whole range of con-straints, what they learn in science at school doesnot easily become a part of their lives, or theirthinking, at home.

Technology and decision-making

Their narrow view of technology just computersand electronics. or automation and unemployment

may be partly due to the fact that most of themhave never played with construction toys whenthey were little, nor been allowed to get dirty atplay. Often women do not even do the cooking dthome. So I have sometimes set a 'survival exercise'on paper to begin to give them a new perspectiveon thinking and doing. I set up an imaginarysituation, like being ship-wrecked on a desertisland, and provide a list of items which they findand can use to build a shelter. This is designed toshow technology as a way of dealing with basicproblems using local materials. They may not do itvery well at first: most of the girls tend not to bevery confident with their hands even though manydo quite wonderful needlework at home. But theydo makc progress.

Above all I want them to come to understandthat they can make their own decisions and choices


about a whole range of issues. They can even dothis at home. Take the Greenhouse Effect, forexample. They come up with the usual talk aboutdamaging the atmosphere and that we shouldn'tcause this pollution. When we discuss it together inclass I get them to tell me about the small thingswhich they could do themselves, in their everydaylife at home, which would contribute to protectingthe atmosphere. This becomes their own way ofmaking a contribution towards dealing with a verylarge problem.

Ex-fouling horizons

The girls all tend to be very suspicious of politicsand politicians. Basically they believe that allpoliticians tell lies. That's not good enough. Theyhave got to learn to sift through what they hear, tothink about it and make choices. For this they needto start reading quality newspapers and listening tomore serious programmes on the television. Theyneed to give up depending on me, and learn to askquestions for themselves.

For our girls I have always thought that STS wasone of the most useful things that they have donein school. When you think about their specialproblems with language and literacy, it issurprising what a lot they get out of the course. Imark their project work and its standard is oftenimpressive. They sit an enmination which. forthem, is really quite hard; but thcy work, and theyachieve really quite good results. It is just becausetheir lives are so sheltered at home that an STScourse becomes so immensely valuable.

As if to echo these sentiments an Asian studentwrote 10 her teacher after the end of her year ofSTS:

As an Asian person, doing the STS course showedme that this (being Asian] did not alter how Iapproached things. And if I really wanted to makea difference what I could do. It encourages me tohe more active in the issues that wc have studiedtrying to save the rain forests, and raising moneyfor health-care in the Third World.

An examination 41Iabus in STS

These two extended comments, by experiencedSTS teachers preparing students from such diffe:--

[ 51

ent backgrounds for public examinations, set thescene for examining the examinations. Here weneed to set out our objectives so clearly that asyllabus can be constructed, papers written, marksallocated to candidates' scripts, and standardsmaintained from one year to the next. This isaltogether a more rigorous task than was at-tempted in earlier chapters and will be tackled infour stages.

The usual method is to begin by setting out thegeneral educational aims for STS 'pious aspir-ations' as some have called them rather dismiss-ively. They may only be forgiven for sounding toosupercilious to be examinable, if they set the tasl.in a useful context. They represent our purposesfor teaching STS, as a directive for those who beginto design the syllabus. Why STS? The list ofgeneral aims are:

To increase citizen's scientific literacy.To help students become better decision-makers.To encourage interest in the interactions be-tween science, technology and society.

Each one of these is to be found in one or other ofthe current published STS syllabuses. At first sightthey seem to provide little beyond the kind of'motherhood' mottoes which sound more likemaxims than educational guides. Nevertheless,they are not quite without use: it is quite possibleto use such statements to evaluate the next set ofaims which are far closer to classroom reality.

For this type of specific aim we might use the fiveareas of interest which were set out in Chapter 1 asfollows:

1 Environmental threats, including global ones,to the quality of living.

2 The economic and industrial aspects of tech-nology.

3 The fallible nature of scientific explanation.4 Personal values and group concerns about the

uses of technology, leading to appropriatedemocratic action.

5 'The multicultural dimensions of technology.

These arc much nearer to providing a syllabus wecan begin to see what students might be taught.

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The first set of general aims can be used as achecklist for these more specific aims:

AIM I: 'Scientific literacy' may be principallydelivered by (3) in the list of areas ofinterest.

Al M 2: 'Better decision-making' will call, at thevery least , for (1), (4) and (5).

AIM 3: 'Interest in the interactions' will beencouraged more, perhaps by (1) and (2).

Every item on the list has now been accounted forin terms of the list of general aims. How t. ver thiscorrespondence cannot guarantee that the trawl ofobjectives has been sufficiently wide, only that thefive specified are all useful.

Another way of setting out the areas of interestis to start from the three areas of STS science,technology and society and decide what studentsshould know about each. This is something likewhat has been attempted by the SATIS 16-19'Framework' or F-units (SATIS, 1991).

The science in STSWhat are scientific theories?Where do these theories come from?Society conies to depend on its theoriesflow scientific theories change'Science and para-scienceHow scientists make scientific knowledge

777e technology in S TSWhat does technology mean?Inspiration, invention and scienceTechnology in industryTechnology and economicsCultural differences in technoloa

The social decision-making in STSRisk perceptionControls and regulationsThe process of governmentPublic groups in decision-ma k ingIndividual understanding and decision

These are more detailed than the former five areasof interest, which makes them useful for designingstudent textbooks.

A subject syllabus needs even greater precision.We shall need to think about assesstnent objectives.These are the clear indications of what students

could be expected to come to know and under-stand, and skills that they may be expected todevelop. To list these components we shall needboth to look backwards at the general aims orpurposes and the areas of interest, and alsoforwards towards setting the examination paperand marking the candidates' scripts. Such require-ments are hard, task masters. They mean that eachassessment objective will need to be judged on atleast three criteria:

Does it fulfil some part of our purpose inteaching STS?What precise knowledge or skill is involved?Is it both teachable and assessable?

Most lists of objectives contain knowledge itemssuch as:

Some key scientific conceptsStructures of civic and industrial organisationHistory of science and technology in sonteperiodSome 'erms used in logic, and in technologicaldiscussion

Each of these can then be defined more closely andplaced in the actual syllabus (e.g. whic' ',:oncepts?how much about industry? which period of historyand what detail? should we include specific philo-sophical theories?).

Next comes a list of skills of atudysis:

Be able to understand and interpret statisticaldataBe able to read and interpret articlesBe able to relate data and information to a

problem

This list is also useful and can he translated almostimmediately into teaching strategies. It will guidethose who set the examination questions as well asthose wh;) teach the course.

Some syllabuses also try to specify skills ofevaluation. Indeed it is hard to see how thepurposes of STS, which set such store by helpingstudents to become better decision-makers, couldbe translated into a syllabus without including thismore diffuse and intangible arca. The STS syllabusproduced by thc Northern Examination Associ-

53


ation (1990) for example, requires that candidatesshould be able to

weigh evidence and to identify inherentassumptions including value judgements,propose alternative ways and means ofsolving problems,assess the costs and benzfits of alternativesolutions including possible social conse-quences, and give reasons for a choice ofone or more solutions.

The difficulty with these objectives lies not inbringing them out into the open in our teaching(see, for example, the section above by the teacherof Asian girls), but in examining for them. Thc firstevaluation skill above simply asks for the identifi-cation of hidden assumptions. It is important thatthese are not denigrated as 'non-scientific' or not'objective' as they are in some other syllabuses. Allevidence will incorporate more or less hiddenassumptions. None can be value-free. Our studentsshould get used to looking for assumptions andevaluating them through the use of their own valuesystem. Some teaching materials, and even exam-ination questions, have deliberately included pass-ages where the author's intentions can be rathereasily exposed and discussed. This is not done in aspirit of 'the true scientist must be objective', oreven the relativist's dismissive 'all value judge-ments are equally permissible'. It is an opportunityfor reflection on m.,ral standpoints, presented asan integral part of the STS lesson, and a challengeto evaluate one's own position.

The second evaluation skill presents anotherproblem . Many of the STS issues which are herecalled 'problems' will have already taxed the bestbrains in the nation. Could the students"alterna-tive solutions' possibly he of any practical value? Itis important to notice that this NEA syllabus doesnot specify that the students' solutions will resolvethe problems, but they do need to be sensible.(The development of the third of the evaluationskills would imply that each suggested solution hasbeen subjected to some fairly careful scrutiny bythe student.)

The third evaluation skill has been more help-fully worded, even though the almost insuperable

53

difficulty of identifying all the social consequencesof solutions to our technological problems isprecisely what has led to so many modern dilem-mas. Fortunately the last part of this requirementgives both teacher and examiner much clearerguidance. Students should be encouraged to givereasoned choices. The reasons they give may wellbe sound and worthy of good marks, even if theproposed solution does not seem entirely satisfac-tory either to the teacher or the examiner.

Even after guidance has been given on thewritten paper there is still unfinished business.Some of the general purposes of STS cannot easilybe satisfied by the traditional format of examin-ation. Is it really possible to

encourage interest in the interactions betweenscience, technology and society, orexpress personal values and group concernsabout the uses of technology, leading to appro-priate democratic action?

Many examination boards have decided that it isonly through student's own project work on afreely chosen topic that the first of these aims canbe met. This is now a popular addition to almost allGCSE assessments. Some have suggested thatsmall group discussion work would be the only wavto satisfy the second of these aims. (This is a farmore innovative practice which will be discussed ingreater depth in Chapter 7.)

Feedback from STS examination scripts

Students' work in examinations provides limitedamounts of evidence. In thc first place there arethe official reports from the Chief Examiners: inthe second a few very limited but more detailedexplorations of thc success of candidates judged bytheir own scripts. Only answers to that part of thepaper which examines the candidate's generalunderstanding of STS will he scrutinized. Thework on specific options within the paper is toofactual to give answers about the real difficulties orsuccesses.

Examiners' reports regularly (a) praise the can-didate's efforts to understand and interpret com-prehension passages, (b) bemoan the fact that

54

54

their interpretation of graphical or numerical datais of a much lower standard, and (c) comment onthe difficulties candidates seem to have inanswering questions about the nature of science.Of course this is not a blanket effect. It is oftenreported that questions On Darwin's theory ofevolution (option on 'Evolution, Genetics andFertility') are well answered, whereas the samecandidates often have greater difficulty inanswering questions about scientific theories ingeneral.

In a similar vein, examiners report that ques-tions about health-care in the candidate's owncountry are often answered with both care andunderstanding, while questions about health-carein the developing countries are, in general, poorlyanswered because they are based on prejudicesabout the inhabitants' ignorance, lack of educationand malnutrition. This can even distort the candi-date's interpretation of facts clearly presented inpassages on the examination paper. (This problemof the reception of data being coloured by expec-tation is explored in Chapter 7.)

Examiners also report on the project work doneby the candidates, often praising its high qualityand evidence of commitment. They make threegeneral points for the guidance of teachers.

1 Many students need help in choosing an appro-priate topic. Some, like 'Alternative Energy' aretoo wide; so is 'Health in the Third World'.What is needed is a subject which interests thestudent but is sufficiently restricted in scope forher/him to become, as it were, a 'mini-expert'.Then there is some possibility of studentsachieving adequate cc'..erage not so wide, butdeeper.

2 The topic chosen should allow for aspects ofscience and technology and societal effect. De-tailed description of some new item of technicalprogress, such as a ncw car engine, may be tootechnological. Discussion of delinquency mayallow for too little in the way of science or socialeffect. Topics such as 'Wind-power' and, moresurprisingly, 'Death, burial and cremation',have managed to produce well balanced topicwork.


55

3 Comment and personal evaluation are essential.Too often all that is offered is a brief summingup of points of view 'for' and 'against' on the lasthalf page. The project becomes far more bal-anced and readable if the various social perspec-tives are presented earlier. This makes forgreater ease in suggesting alternative strategies.

Research data

A question on a paper for 16-year-olds, askedthem to 'describe any onc school experimentwhich helped you to understand a scientifictheory'. Most of the students found little difficultyin describing an experiment, but identifying anytheory at all let alone one associated withexperiment defeated most of them.

25 per cent correctly identified a theory relatedto the experiment27 per cent gave the experimental result as if itwas a theory (e.g. 'that copper conducts elec-tricity' or 'the Theory of Brownian Movement')24 per cent gave the experimental process thefood test or the construction of a solar panel as

if it were a theory.25 per cent omitted the question altogether eventhough it was in the compulsory section.

From these sorts of results, which can be matchedin the 'Nature of Science' literature (e.g. Aiken-head et al., 1987), it must be assumed that theconnection of theory with experiment is veryrarely taught. Only for the specially contentioustopic of evolution is there evidence that scienceteachers are making efforts to show how scientifictheories arc constructed. However, this is a some-what special case, and may offer students little ofmore general value. 'Experiments' in evolutionarc rare and difficult (for one good example seeHen's Teeth and Horse'.v Toes by S. J. Gould). Thecreationism debate, which is entirely relevant toSTS courses, is easily highjacked to be about thcnature of truth, or science versus religion, insteadof the uncertainty of evidence and tentativeness oftheory, which it illustrates so very well.

Research findings also indicate that theie is


general confusion about the meaning of 'tech-nology' (see also Breakwell et al., 1987). As thepassage quoted earlier from the teacher of Asiangirls indicated, many of our young people simplyequate technology with computers or electronicmachines. In Solomon (1988) the examinationcandidates were given the following question:

. . the new technology of in vitro fertilisationoutside the human body is a response to the socialproblem of infertility. However the developmentof this technology has resulted in problems con-cerning the use of live embryos in scientific experi-ments.(a) The paragraph above uses the term 'tech-

nology'. Explain carefully what technology is.

With help from the preamble, the question asatisfactory 57 per cent of the students managed toavoid the usual pitfall, and wrote instead thattechnology was 'a process using knowledge for asocial purpose' (in some equivalent form ofwords). Even with this help, 16 per cent of thecandidates still defined technology as equipment,tools or machines.

The second part of the question asked:

Give one argument for, and one against, banningexperiments on human embryos. Give you ownview in relation to these arguments.

The fact that 85 per cent of the sample of 284managed to construct plausible arguments fromopposing points of view is impressive evidence ofthe careful teaching that had taken place, andnicely validates thc opinions and experiences ofthe two practising teachers quoted at the start ofthis chapter.

The research article ends with comment on howfew of the candidates, only 12 per cent managed tosuggest ways in which new laws or regulationsmight answer the problems and anxieties which thetechnology had aroused. This brings our attentionback to the citizenship aspect of education which isthe principal educational purpose for all sixth-form curricula.

There is just a little more data on this importantpoint which is taken from a more taxing paper onScience, Technology and Society designed formore able students taking the AS paper. Once

55

again the candidates were asked about scientifictheory.

It is not always easy to tell the difference betweenthe following kinds of statement:

a scientific theory,a simple generalisation,a non-scientific theory

Give one example of each of the three kinds ofstatement, and explain carefully why you haveselected it to represent that sort of statement . . .

This time 57 per cent of the students were able togive an example of a theory. There was someadditional internal evidence to show that theability to answer correctly may have been pro-duced by specialised STS teaching. Very fewcandidates (less than 7 per cent) both got halfmarks or more on the question as a whole, and yetfailed to give an example of theory. This maysuggest that normal science teaching withinschool, of which these students had all experiencedsome five years or more, had not addressed thesubject of scientific theory at all. Without suchteaching students can only fall back on folkloreabout scientific evidence and proof, e.g. 'Scientifictheory is a statement supported by stientific evi-dence. Example that a new gas field exists in theNorth Sea, for which there is evidence'. What thatlamentable answer shows is how necessary ex-amples of theory are for showing the student'sunderstanding of terms like 'evidence'. It is some-times suggested usually hy those who have nottried teaching STS that the social element isparticularly easy and needs no teaching. Since it ishere that the subject comes closest to studies incitizenship science, it is valuable to explore theresponses to a question of this kind.

. . . There have been several environmental issuesin the last few years which have raised a great dealof strong feelin- metimes scientific 'experts'have even disagl,.ed about the 'facts' of the case.

(i) In the case of one such environmental issueexplain why the experts might have disagreed.

(ii) If members of the public want to take part inthe controversy over thc issue, what possiblecourse of action can they usefully take?

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(iii) People often blame the media for stirring upcontroversy. What is your view on this?

1 hese questions did not prove to be so easy. In thefirst part, 30 per cent of the students wrote simplythat the experts would be biased. Some justsuggested that experts might be corrupted by theindustry for which they worked or by the moneythat they hoped to gain. Just 44 per cent of theanswers indicated clearly that the evidence was, byits very nature, unlikely to be conclusive. In thisway teaching about the nature of scientific knowl-edge was being vindicated. It supplied essentialunderstanding of its controversial nature.

In the third part of the question, 35 per cent ofthe answers simply agreed that the media was'sensationalist' and 'stirred up the muck'. (News-papers were blamed for this even more often thantelevision suggesting that these candidates were


not reading the better quality press.) This paperwas being sat at a time when this pejorative view oftelevision coverage of news was being widelydiscussed. It was encouraging, therefore, to findthat 56 per cent of the answers both agreed that themedia brought issues out into the open, and alsoadded their own comment that this was valuableand even necessary for the public.

In conclusion, it is worth returning to theaccounts given by the two experienced STS teach-ers who described how they taught their students.Both reported how difficult it was to get them toquestion what they heard, viewed and read; howimportant it was to get them to examine both sidesof public issue:; and not just to allude vaguely to'bias'. It seems, from the limited examinationevidence, that they were on exactly the righteducationPI track.

CHAPTER 6

Games, simulation, and role-play

Industrial awareness and value issues

There are at least two aspects of STS educationwhich have been given scant attention so far in thisbook. One is concerned with economic and indus-trial awareness, and another is about the students'discussion of values with respect to STS issues andpossible democratic action. These two aspects ofSTS are miles apart, with one set in the hard-nosedworld of industry and commerce which is largelyunknown territory to the students, and the otherhaving its existence so deeply within their ownfeelings about what is right and wrong, thatarticulation may be hard for quite differentreasons, related to shyness in talking about feel-ings, or lack of appropriate vocabulary. Whatbinds values and industrial awareness together isonly that in STS issues such as pollution or powergeneration, both are involved. In addition there isa view, which will be challenged in parts of thischapter, that learning about both industrialmanagement and personal values clarificationcan be handled in the classroom by the samestrategies of role-play and simulation.

There are those who deny the need for anyspecial technological or industrial understandingin dealing with science-based social issues. MaryMcConnell (1982, p. 13), for example put her viewin uncompromising terms:

The problems associated with technological de-velopment may not primarily he problems of tech-nology. Rather, they may be problems among usand between us, problems in a large measure the

result of a pluralistic society in which commonpurpose, common values, and common images arcno longer prcscnt. Thcy arc issues involving con-flicts between values and goals within persons andamong persons, rather than conflicts betweendams and people, or industry and the environ-ment. Resolution of conflict requires communi-cation and creative problem solving to facilitatemutual understanding and effective interactionbetween people and groups that have differentvalues, different images of the future, and differ-ent images of trade-offs and benefits and costs.

We may all agree that in our pluralistic societythere are great potentialities for inter-group con-flicts of nterest and values, but might not be sosure that the basis for resolution of these is simplyto be found through communication about values.There is a suggestion here that students do notneed to learn about technology, or industry, oreconomics. All they require is a nose for sniffingout trade-offs, benefits and costs which do notconform to their values, and a facility for effectivecommunication. Sadly there is now a real conflictbetween industry and the environment in a sensewhich transcends the caricature of the evil polluterwho does not care about people, and the spotlessenvironmental purist. As people, the groupscannot fail to share many objectives; it could belack of a shared understanding .which separatesthem.

STS education is dedicated to the propositionthat it is well worth learning about the knowledgeand perspectives of the different groups involved

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in the technological issues of our times, for onlywith such understandings can decisions about theissues be made. We need to learn about theperspectives of those in industrial management, ifat all possible, and how their world view isconstructed. Just as we try to teach about thenature of science, so we should also strive to teachabout the nature of industrial technology.

Games and imagined simulations

Ever since STS first broke in upon the schoolscience curriculum in the late 1970s there havebeen calls to develop new and appropriate strat-egies for teaching. Several of the suggestionsproduced have involved gaming, and simulation.According to Ellington et al. (1981) exercises ofthis kind can fulfil objectives:

. . educating through science fostering interper-sonal and communication skills, and. . . teaching about the nature of science and tech-nology illustrating the making of political, socialand economic decisions.

There is little doubt that the first of these objec-tives can be met by group discussions aboutindustry or other matters, in science or in any otherschool subject: it will be considered in some detailin later sections. But the second objective becomesproblematic if the political, social and economicdecisions lie too far beyond the teacher's and thestudent's own experience.

A number of fairly light-hearted simulations ofother countries' technological problems are avail-able, which may deserve the name 'game' not justbecause they try to amuse students, but becausetheir names and fact-sheets immediately showthem to be thoroughly fictitious. Although muchmay be learned through fiction it is doubtful if STS.whose very basis is relevance to real social prob-lems, can afford to use it. Early games such asMinerals in Buenafortuna (1983) used just suchfact-sheets and encouraged students to discuss theissues that had been invented in rather contrivedand restricted situations. Students were workingwith circumscribed sets of information and soonfound that the agenda was already set by the


authors. Questions such as whether the countryreally wanted to develop its mineral resourceswere taken for granted. Although the authorsstated that open-ended questions such as 'theconsequences in terms of pollution, noise and thedisruption of the local community' can be put tothe group, the 'only problem of any importance',they admitted, was predetermined by the game-makers.

The word 'game' is bound to be misleading in acontext where a simulation of reality is intended. Itis possible to buy many of these, ranging fromsimple snakes-and-ladders to complex role-playsabout newspaper reporting of a health hazard inthe Third Wo' Id. In the early 1980s there was evena dice and card game about subsistence farmingpublished by Oxfam, in which participants pickedup cards announcing that they were suffering fromsevere malnutrition, life-threatening diseases, oreven death. It was called, with quite startlingineptitude, The Poverty Game! It has now beenre-named The Farming Game. Although it almostalways caused hilarity in totally inappropriateplaces, this game did serve one purpose for whichit would be hard to find its equal. When the playersreached a stage at which their village was so deeplysunk into poverty that at long last they werepermitted, by the rules of the game, to pick up a`Help' card from the pack, there were occasionalrebuffs when the legend on the back stated starkly'Western governments do not like the politics ofyour country NO AID'. The students' disappoint-ment and muttered comments of not fair' n'ade abrief but instructive point.

What these imaginary scenario., were reallyattempting was (a) a simulation of a nearly realsituation, and (b) a role-play by students. Thestudents were asked to act out particular roles inorder 'to appreciate hard decisions made byothers' (Ellington et al.). This created three seri-ous problems:

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1 The first was that most students would bemaking their own difficult future decisions ascitizens rather than as technocrats so the activitymissed that immediate relevance for which STSeducation aims.

GAMES, SIMULATION, AND ROLE-PLAY

2 Secondly, in so far as the simulation called forrole-play of characters whose backgroundknowledge and skills were largely unknown tothe students, in practice it produced enormousdifficulties.

3 The third problem was that acted parts call forartificial opinions. Participants who already hadformed clear, and even passionate, ideas on thepublic issue in question, might be precluded bytheir given role from expressing what they reallybelieved.

Much has been learned about simulations andother classroom activities since those compara-tively early attempts. Nevertheless some of theproblems of designing and using simulations stillremain, most noticeably those relating to indus-trial understanding.

Teaching about technology, economics andindustry

Economics is a popular subject in the sixth formwith ever-increasing enrolment. It also has a partto play, at this level, in STS courses but not as a dryclear-cut mathematical or theoretical disciplinewith complex modelling and a right answer whichrelates more to industrial growth than to quality oflife. Nor is it of very great value just to burden allthe students with endless graphs of imports andexports related to some technological innovation.We shall, of course, want all our students to benumerically literate to the extent of being able toscan information from graphs and charts of variouskinds, with ease. However it is the use to whichsuch information is put which distinguishes STSfrom economics for its own sake.

Economics, like science, is just one part of thesocial dimensions of technology with which ourcourses will be concerned. It is a weighty factor forindustrial bosses to take into account when theymake decisions. Although teaching about tech-nology within industry has been considered here.alongside simulations and role-play, it is by nomeans certain that these arc the only ways, orindeed the best ways in which it can be taught.

Stories of past innovations arc an excellent way

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to illustrate important points as well as being veryinspiring to some types of student (e.g. Goodyearand the vulcanisation of rubber, or RussellMarker's explorations for making an oral con-traceptive). From these stories, so long as they donot amount to any more than heroic legends, thefollowing general points should emerge:

Scientific knowledge is not always essential forinvention, but it will accelerate its later stages.Chance plays a part in invention, but events stillhave to be noticed and exploited by the in-ventor.War often triggers and accelerates innovation.Discoveries may be made by several inventors atthe same time bee. Ise of market drive.New technologies change people's ways of livingin both expected and unexpected ways.

Other aspects of technology also need teaching.We shall want our students to learn about culturaldifferences in the technologies appropriate fordifferent countries, and the economic constraintswhich operate there. Closer to home they will needto learn a little about the role of technology inmodern industry, which is substantially differentfrom the tales of individual inventors mentioned inthe previous paragraph. This will involve somepractical economics related to the costs of R & D(Research & Development), competition after thefirst phase of innovation which is protected bypatent, and military spin-off into civil use. It is herethat simulations of what it might be like to makedecisions within industry may be able to breathesome life into these rather dry and esoteric no-tions.

Industrial simulations

Most teachers find industrial simulations extra-ordinarily difficult to run in class, not just becausethey themselves have little grasp of economics, butbecause they have so little feel for the humancontext which they are trying to simulate. Thisbecomes most apparent when they need to showtheir classes what kinds of argument would win theday when rival projects jostle fo. .unding within an

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industrial firm. Some teachers have found anexcellent local solution to their problems.

One very experienced STS teacher told me howshe had once set up a hospital scenario where sheand her students could study the decision-makingconcerned with priorities for operations such askidney transplants and hip replacements. She hadselected the problem from some resource ma-terials. The students, using costings from theprinted example, had already spent about a weektrying to decide what treatments and operationsthey would put money into. Then she invitedsomeone from the management team in the localNHS hospital to come in. Given the same problemshe asked him to tell her class how he would haveallocated the money.

'And, do you know', she said 'it was totally differ-ent from anything that they or I had come up with!'

But when the manager made his presentation andwent through his reasons it had all seemed com-pletely valid to both teacher and students. Theycould immediately see why he had made hisdecision.

It was fascinating. I could not have done that sortof exercise and given that kind of reply myself.Economic and industrial awareness are importantbecause they influence decisions which directlyaffect society. I get the impression that decisionsare made as to whether or not a particular productwill have R & D money put into it for reasons Iwould never have imagined. It goes ahead forimportant internal reasons, not just as a result ofsimple market research.

I have never found role-play very successful inmy classes unless I've already got some familiaritywith the background. Role-play in industry isparticularly difficult. For GCSE courses I canmake do with a computer program showing, forexample, the costs of metal extraction, or theadvantages of one site over another. But for moreadvanced work you do need to have a properscience and technological link. I think that mostareas have them now. In my area the 'neighbour-hood engineer' is from the polymer industry, andhe has always been very keen to come in and talk,not about the science involved because I can dothat, but about the decision-making processeswithin industry and that's exactly what I need.


Other STS teachers and resources designers haveheld similar views on the need for knowledgeabout industrial decision-making. New course ma-terials (e.g. SATIS 16-19) are appearing for thesixth-form age group but it seems possible todiscern the same kinds of problems in most of theunits which aim at industrial simulation.

One simulation (Unit 4), `R & D at MUPCorp'(from SATIS 16-19), is said to explore 'the variousdecisions which must be taken after the initialscientific discovery of a product or process, up tothe point at which it might become a commercialproduct'. This seems ambitious but it leads to ashort and well-devised activity. The students takeup roles as Project Managers with the task ofdeciding which of a number of 'promising' re-search projects should be explored further with aview to future investment. For each project theyhave to consider at the very least:

whether it will work on a larger scalewhat uses it may havehow big the market might behow it fits in with the firm's existing expertisesocial effectsscale of manufacturing plantpromotional ideas for advertising

The printed list is much longer and the tasks seemto be demanding.

There are ten new scientific research projects tobe considered; all of them are comprehensible, atleast in general terms, to a lay person, and most arethought-provoking and even amusing. The activitywas written by a science teacher, vetted by someindustrial scientists, and shows every sign of beingfun to do in the classroom, with groups of studentsextolling the virtues of their particular productwith the 'added spice' of a threat of redundancy ifthey fail to convince the Board!

The author of that activity adds a note from hisown experience, and those of others, that 'it is

important that students should not get "hung up-on the nature of the product. Scientific licence isallowed in advocating the merits of proposalswhich seem outlandish'. This point is thought-provoking. The purpose of this simulation, and

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others like it, is to experience some of the prob-lems of industrial decision-making from an in-ternal standpoint. From what has been discussedearlier it clear that the gaming aspect of theactivity Co. .d easily outweigh the relevant indus-trial aspects. Here again the presence of a 'neigh-bourhood engineer' might well be very valuable inturning the balance towards reality.

Another simulation (Unit 56), Planning a newedible-fats factory' illustrates an alternative ap-proach, which would seem to ensure validity, byinviting industrialists to write the simulation them-selves. (Several of this kind of exercise alreadyexist but, in the experience of some teachers havenot been easy to use.) This example, which runs tomany pages of close script, is based on a real casestudy which is used in industry as a trainingexercise. Once again the students work in groupsbut, instead of taking on roles of scientific entre-preneurs, they have to become 'managementconsultants' who make detailed presentationsabout the best site for a new factory making ediblefats, or 'specialist subcontractors' who give, or sell,specialist advice to the contractors.

This exercise has not only traded fun for realityand made a convincing simulation of a real situ-ation a has also asked the students to adoptspecialised professional roles. Now the printedsuggestions for running the simulation specificallyinclude inviting a 'visitor from industry' to takepart. This is clearly an essential ingredient if thereis to he any chance of making such a difficultactiNity come to life in a school classroom. Teach-ers who have succeeded with this sort of simulationhave often involved the whole of the sixth form fora complete day of 'industrial awareness' activity.

From inside industry or from outside?

Even if all the practical difficulties are overcomethe simulation of industrial decision-making maystill miss most of the central concerns of STS. (Oneteacher even commented that, in the previousindustrial simulation, the basic STS question 'Dowe really need another factory?' could only hetreated after the activity is over.) Thc aims of STS

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courses nowhere include the training of futuremanagers for industry; but they have been reiter-ated often enough in this book for key terms suchas 'citizenship', 'values' and 'democratic action', tobe thoroughly familiar. Although all our studentsdo need some understanding of the economics ofinnovation, most teachers in schools with a mixedintake will want to spend more time consideringthe point of view of the workers or the generalpublic. Here it will be the student's values whichsuggest priorities, and not the rules and roles of thesimulation.

This externalist approach would teach from theperspective of active and concerned citizenship.The students would be learning, for example, notonly how to test for polluting substances in theenvironment, but also to value moral and civicreactions to the act of pollution. The followingextract comes from the experience of an enthusi-astic STS teacher from a working class area inLondon, who is talking about the work he does onindustrial hazards with Year I I pupils. The strat-egy, of course, can be neither simulation norrole-play if the outcome is to concern real socialaction. Instead he weaves STS into his schoolchemistry coursework, teaching about industrialcontrols in this country, and then contrasting itwith what happens abroad.

We do a lot about hazards and the transportationof dangerous chemicals how to deal with spill-ages, and controls in the chemical industry. Wewere talking about hazard signs and the kids wereworking out how to recognise thc dangerouschemicals, and it seemed that everything waswonderful - the signs were clear and the tire-service well organised.

Then I said 'How would you feel if there was achemical spillage and ten thousand people died?'You know, they just laughed. and said. 'No. Itcouldn't happen.' Of course over here it couldn'thappen. but I was leading up to talking about thetragedy at Bhopal, and conditions in the chemicalindustries in the developing countries. This reallytook off. We have a lot of Asian children here atthis school, boys and girls, and they knew nothingabout it. They listened. All these people still dyingin Bhopal. You should have heard how theylistened!

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It would be difficult to &al with issues asemotive as this through simulation and role-play.The aims would be completely different to those inindustrial simulations which study the internalprocesses of decision-making. Now the studentswould need to have freedom in constructing theroles that they want to play, since the objectivewould no longer be to 'feel your way into someoneelse's shoes'. The new objective will be to work outwhat their own sense of justice and compassiondemands in the kinds of circumstances whereordinary people may confront risk or disaster. Therationale for setting this kind of teaching in asimulation is that there is something in the pro-cedures being simulated which could be especiallyvaluable to the students as citizens.

Teaching about social decision-making

The final 'S', in STS, is too often assumed to be nomore than a backcloth for the science and tech-nology being taught. Curriculum developers jus-tify their materials by pointing out how useful theinnovation they are teaching about has been tosociety, how it has added to the quality of living,and increased industrial production. That, forthem, comprises the whole social context.

Other courses develop more realistic resourceswhich point out both the benefits and the risks intechnological innovation. But it is precisely herethat the missing ingredient becomes most acute. Ifthere is an uncertain balance between risk andbenefit, if the results will affect large sections ofour society, and if there is controversy about theissue, we can hardly end our teaching with no morethan a limp question mark as to the future. Theyoung people in front of us need answers to thequestion, how can 'ordinary' citizens like them findtheir own voice in 'he debate? It is here that thefinal S begins to impose its curriculum.

The kinds of topics that need to be coveredmight run as follows:

I Risk analysis including some simple calculationsof probability, but also personal perceptions andtoleration of risks, thc considerations of specialgroups such as workers, and our obligations to


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native peoples, to wildlife, and to future gener-ations.

2 Controls and regulations which are feasible, the'teeth' which governments might give to thosewho enforce the controls, the powers given topublic inquiries, and the problems with gettinginternational agreement in the face of globalissues.

3 The process of government the powers of MPs,ministers, parliamentary committees and localcouncillors and how they tackle matters re-lated to science and technology. The relation-ship between the citizen and his/herrepresentative.

4 Special interest groups which are bound to-gether by their concerns, professional groupswith lay representatives for questions of medicalethics, etc. pressure groups with commercialinterests, and environmental groups with andwithout a political agenda.

5 How individuals can make up their minds andinfluence the state apparatus. This may includethinking about television and newspapers, theinformation they provide and the bias they maytransmit, as well as the more general question ofthe public's 'right' to information, and rights inlaw.

That seems a formidable list for either teacher orstudent. Nevertheless it seems quite essential thatthose who are seriously teaching STS face up tothese general dimensions of decision-making.They form neither just a context for science andtechnology, nor an add on ('and this is how a publicinquiry operates') but are central to the wholeconcept of citizen science. Furthermore, they areevery bit as controversial as is any other part.Social apparatus is no more static than is scienceand technology, so it follows that students may beinvited to comment on the provision for publicparticipation in decisions about new innovations,as well as to play their part in them.

Like other parts of STS which have been dis-cussed in previous chapters, the nature of socialdecision-making is not best tackled in the abstract.No teacher is invited to work their way painfullydown the list given above, point by point. As in the


case of the nature of science it is top. _s being taughtwhich supply the context in which the role ofgovernment, citizen or pressure group comes upfor comment. Out of a number of such examples,some local, some political, and some global, STSteachers can ensure that their students are learningabout the place of science and technology withinthe constraints of a democratic society.

Simulation for understanding socialdecision-making

One arena for decision-making, that of publicinquiries, has certainly not been ignored by thewriters of simulation resources. Usually they dis-sect the problem, which might be the siting of somepotentially hazardous plant, in terms of the argu-ments which might be presented by differentinterest groups. Thus it falls neatly into a kind ofteam game in the classroom. The great advantageof this is that several important points of view arepresented to the students, and information for thevarious teams can bc provided. Once again, how-ever, the criticisms which have been levelledagainst other simulations cannot be avoided. Thestudents are marshalled into predeterminedcamps, the agenda is set, and committed studentsmay find no way to express their own )--diefs.

It is difficult, although not impossible, to avoidthese traps while keeping to the simulation format .

Simulations about current concerns arc particu-larly successful. They both catch the students'interests and ensure that the fictitious 'gaming'aspect is avoided. It is also very valuable tosimulate a procedure inquiry, court of law, orinquest at the time when public attention isfocused upon it. Thc organisational problemsinclude providing information (not difficult if thereis plenty of newspaper and television coverage)and allowing space for individual, and possiblyemotive, points of view which may be less easy.

The following account is from a teacher who setup an impromptu simulation of a court case in thewake of the trial of a doctor who had, at theparents' urging, let a severely handicapped babydic without treatment. The emotional story had hit

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the headlines for two weeks and was a naturalsubject for argument in the sixth-form common-room. The simulation allowed the teacher to showa little of the operation of a real court of law.

We set up a trial complete with judge and jury. Iappointed lawyers for each side, but it was thestudents who decided, with a little prompting frommc, what thc other roles should be. I had tosuggest charactcr witnesses, and then they tookoff. They had thought that only specialist witnesseswere called, just doctors and the guy that did thcautopsy. Thc great thing about character witnesseswas that they could use their own experiences, youknow? didn't have to mug up a lot of info. And itwas these characters which brought out the stu-dents' own feelings and values.

The one I remember best, and this took placesome years ago, was done by a girl of less thanaverage ability who volunteered, rather shyly, totalk about having a severely handicapped child inthc context of the court case. She must haveworked up the idea in the next couple of days. orperhaps she already held strong views on thesubject; I really don't know. Anyhow when thesimulation was on and the prosecuting lawyerasked if she loved her handicapped son, and if shewould let him be killed, she did just wonderfully. Ican't remember the exact words but something like

'Of course I love him now, but all the pain he'shad, perhaps it would have been better if thedoctors had not struggled so hard to keep himalive. No one ever asked me what I wanted'. Youcould tell her heart was in it!

Summary

This chapter has produced an odd assortment ofevidence about simulations. Some of the exampleshave been given in the words of those who carriedthem out because there is a strong personalelement in the choice of strategy. Science teachersvary enormously in their attitudes towards any sortof 'acting' in thc classroom; some love it, othersare frankly scared. If the context is unfamiliar tothe class, the teachers' misgivings about the ac-tivity may be justified.

The internal dynamics and decisions of theindustrial boardroom are by no means central to

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STS, although they can be instructive if well done.Civic contexts for decision-making, such as courtsof law and public enquiries are closer to the citizenand may produce rewarding simulations. The best


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of these strategics which (a) use a valuable cont,:.xtfor the simulation, (b) which is adequately fam-iliar, and (c) allows for the expression of individualviews, can be quite excellent.

CHAPTER 7

Group discussion of issues the DISS Project

Introduction

This chapter is devoted to the subject of groupdiscussion of science-based social issues in theclassroom. For the most part it uses the findings ofthe DISS (Discussion of Issues in School Science)project which is a very rich source of data onstudent talk. With its help we can begin to see thevariety of ways in which students regard SI'Sissues, and how they talk with each other aboutthem. This is research data which is not only of thegreatest interest in its own right, it also supports away of teaching and learning which brings outstudents' value positions, relates these to ourcomplex society, and considers possible citizenaction.

There has been a fairly long tradition of class-room 'discussion' of controversial issues in thehumanities and the social studies. At first it wasused as an occasion for teaching the skills ofdebate. This had two dimensions. First it wasconsidered to be important for students to be ableto express themselves orally, and secondly to beable to marshal evidence in an even-handed way.Making personal value positions explicit was notpart of this programme.

It was the Humanities Curriculum Project(HCP) of the 1960s which first took seriously thepromotion of more genuine discussion. This was togo beyond the closed agenda of weighing up theevidence from both sides of the case and coming tothe supposedly 'logical' conclusion. For the firsttime the HCP accepted that value judgements

were not only acceptable but might even transcendthe paper data. It followed from this that theresulting decision-making could not but be afallible process: there would be no 'right answer'.That immediately posed another problem whatwas the teacher's role during the discussion? Sheor he could no longer direct the discussion towardsthe uniquely correct denouement but it did seemimportant, in the mêlee of different value-positions, that the teachers did not try to intrudetheir own values. In such personal matters thereshould be absolutely no indoctrination. Out of thisdebate was born the notion of the 'neutral chair-man' (Stenhouse, 1969). The teachers could cer-tainly run these new types of discussion, but theyshould take care to give no inkling of where theirown opinions lay.

Teachers tried to follow the recipe of the neutralchair, but it was difficult. In S'S, or any othercourse devoted to the notion of encouragingconcerned citizenship, it was particularly difficultand, in some sense, quite self-defeating. If theimplicit message was that adults should becomeinvolved in public concerns then it was surely oddto find that the very teacher who had transmittedthe message was pretending not to abide by it. Itwas inconsistent and embarrassing.

The next fashion in the conduct of discussionwas the 'balanced chairperson', closely followedby the 'Devil's advocate'. It is all too easy to pokefun at the sober educational material which pro-posed one strategem after the other with so littleevidence of having tried out any of them. There

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are certainly some occasions when either one orthe other has its merits. Teachers who tried tointroduce appropriate strategies for discussionlearned the hard way that large class groups wercnot able to 'discuss' in any meaningful way, andthat small friendship groups of students felt morefree to talk about social issues without the directparticipation of t:ie teacher. This meant that thestudents had to arrange, lead and report on theirdiscussions for themselves. Each group thusbecame a symbol of free speech within a society,listening to each other and reporting any agree-ments reached. It was an important landmark forthe classroom, and for STS.

Public understanding of science

STS is basic to the public understanding of scienceboth because it is an educational movement re-lated to the connections between science, tech-nology and society, but also because it emphasisesthose aspects of science which are most relevant tolay people, and pays attention to their values, theirrights to information, and their capacity for action.The 1980s have, in some respects, been a decadedevoted to exploring and expanding scientificliteracy which is a much wider issue than some ofthe more simplistic reports of what questions offact can be readily answered by the person in thestreet. In 1985 the British Royal Society broughtout a report on The Public Understanding ofScience (Bodmer) which made a number of specificrecommendations for improving the nation'sknowledge of science. Amongst its commentswere some on the importance of school education,and others which deplored the sensationalist as-pects of much media communication of science.

Following upon this report, the Science PolicySupport Group set up a series of linked researchprojects (funded by the ESRC), designed to ex-plore different facets of the public's understand-ing. Two of these were large-scale surveys (Durantet al. , 1989; Breakwell, 1990), several others werecase studies which looked at small groups who hadspecial need for particular scientific information(e.g. Wynne 1988, which recorded how Cumbrianfarmers reconstructed the information that they


received from scientists in Whitehall concerningthe radiation count of their lambs after the Cher-nobyl fallout). A third group was concerned withthe fashioning of scientific communication to thepublic.

DISS was the only project to have a schoolsetting, but it also shared some features with thcothers it included a queqionnairc about attitudesand interests, used me ia communication, andfocused on small groups of individuals. The projecttook advantage of the STS coui-ses already set upin schools which had small group discussion as apart of their internal assessment. From herc it setout to explore how students used scientific kncwl-edge when they discussed controversial issueswhich they had been watching on television.

The research reflected, in microcosm, what isprobably the commonest way of getting to under-stand science-based issues for adults and studentsalike. What was studied was public understandingin the making, not only because of the young age ofthe participants, but also because, during the trainof talk, it was possible to see opinions beingclarified, exchanged and even formed fromscratch. Studies of environmental issues amongAmerican high-school students had already in-dicated that television is the most frequentlyquoted source of information and there was noreason to suppose that the situation was differentin Britain. Other data (McQuail, 1984; Hodge andTrip, 1986) reported that both children and adultsseem to feel th,-; 1,.ed to discuss television pro-grammes in order to work out their understandingof them.

Some students seem to acquire a large part oftheir information on most subjects through dis-cussions with friends. Oral contributions arc rarelyrecognised in the school assessment system butthey were pioneered in STS examinations duringthe early 1980s. Now, in the context of research, itbecame possible to use recorded group discussionin the classroom, after watching television, as datafor exploring how information is received, ex-changed and reconstructed. In this way our re-search was to have a substantially differentcomplexion from those which had been carried outbefore on students' attitudes and values; it would

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ott-

GROUP DISCUSSION OF ISSUES THE DISS PROJECT

rely more upon data from social interaction than onindividual probes like interviews and question-naires.

Group discussion in action

One of the aims of STS education was stated, inChapter I , as the discussion of personol opinionand values, as well as the participation in demo-cratic action. In Chapter 6 some large-scaie activi-ties were mentioned which involved the expressionof opinions and values, but these are not perfea'ysuited to all kinds of issue. In particular for shystudents, for deeply felt issues, and for thosestudents who have not yet worked out where theystand, supportive discussion in small groups mayhe just the right environment for this importantfacet of STS.

The philosopher David Bridges, in his book onEducation, Democracy and Discussion argues thatthere are four functions for discussion when it isapplied to a controversial issue. All useful talkbegins with a working out and sharing of personalperspectives on the topic. This may sound rathertrivial, like the endless superficial discussions ofcharacters in last night's soap opera, which can beheard all round the school. Nevertheless it can bethe outward sign of beginning an inner deliber-ation. How and where these discussions finishindicate different kinds and levels of achievement(Bridges, 1979, p. 44):

(a) For some the sharing of perspectives is asufficient goal in itself.

(b) For others, who listen carefully, reaching anunderstanding of the variety of available re-sponses is important.

(c) Those who are more reactive and responsivewill go further into a stage where some kind ofsubjective choice between different values ismade.

(d) If the participants can find a rational resol-ution to the controversy they will havereached a further stage of planning citizenaction.

In stage (a) the expression of personal valuesrequires time and a supportive environment, but

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should lead on naturally to stage (b). That is why afriendship grouping of students was recommendedin the project so that the students could listencarefully and responsively to each other. At stage(c) there must be an element of 'weighing upalternatives' (Kitwood, 1984) which is the basicmeaning for that over-used term 'evaluation'. Thismay be partly private but also social and sociablethrough the mechanism of trying out one'sopinions on friends. Students who do not yet knowwhere they stand are likely to go through a processof what sounds like hesitant deliberation.Achievement of the final stage (d) does notindicate that all the world's problems have beensolved, only that there is a consensus on what hasgone wrong and what 'right action' might look like.That implies that this stage is also a valuesachievement.

How the research took place

Fourteen secondary comprehensive schools indifferent locations helped with the work. Twowere sixth-form colleges (age 16-19), and theothers catered for the complete 11-19 age range.The students were not, for the most part, taking an'A'- Level course. There was no way in which oursample could have been tailored to suit a researchcriteria, and the very fact that they had elected totake an STS unit gave the groups a special com-position.

Research began by selecting a series of six videoextracts to be shown in class. Each excerpt had itsown special features:

1 The first was donation of kidneys for trans-plantation was taken as a personal issue by thestudents. It raised ethical and cultural points asit visited the USA and Japan, and discussedbuying kidneys from live but needy donors.

2 The second video was on the more political issueof nuclear power its risks and costs. Differentgovernment attitudes and public opinion wereshown, in Britain, France, Sweden and theUSA. The presentation was itself contentiousand the video finished in the midst of a heateddebate between the (then) Chairman of the

68

68

Central Electricity Generating Board and theorganiser of Friends of the Earth.

3 A third video excerpt was about genetic coun-selling.

4 Compensation for veterans of the Atomic Testswhich took place on Christmas Island in theearly 1950s was another.

5 The fifth was access to information about indus-trial effluent.

6 The final video excerpt concerned Third Worldmedicine showing efforts to combat blindnessdue to vitamin A deficiency in parts of Africaand India, and finishing in a mobile eye clinic forcataract operations.

Group discussion is usually managed by theteacher to a set agenda of questions. However inthis work we wanted to explore the student's ownagenda what they found to be important. So weurged teachers to ask no general questions butsimply to encourage their students to form groups,talk together, and record their Own, discussionswith the tape recorders which we supplied.

The six television excerpts were from general,not educational, programmes. They had all theusual characteristics of media communication.emphasising the worrying features, and assuminglittle previous knowledge. Several of them werealso, in terms of the Bodmer Report, somewhatsensationalised. Each video extract lasted no morethan 20 minutes. They were shown in the sameorder during the year, but at different times to suitthe individual teachers. The students' discussionswhich followed were usually about 10 minutes long

although there were cases where they went on forhalf an hour, and a few (about 8 per cent) wherethe students seemed unable to begin at all. By theend of a busy two years, however, we were inpossession of about 200 tape recordings, all ofwhich we had carefully transcribed, of youngpeople talking together with all the frankness andseriousness that we could have desired.

Three functions of talk

One common mode of discussing simply madereference to incidents from the video. At first sightthis seemed totally redundant in view of the fact


that all the students had been similarly placed toreceive the excerpt. Nevertheless it was clearlyimportant for them to be sure that others hadnoted what they had noted, and that what theyfound impressive, surprising, or distressing, wasfound to be the same by others. Sometimes itemsof science knowledge were included in this phaseof talk for confirmation about what had been saidand the way it should be understood. 'There wasradioactive stuff in the smoke, wasn't there?', or'The chance was one in 25, yeh?' In this way thereception process began to set an agenda forsubsequent discussion by identifying importantissues. We called this kind of talk framing.

The second type of talk was less tentative andmore deliberative. Personal opinions and ideaswere tried out and exchanged so that the speakercould begin to clarify his/her own views, and alsoto see if the others might agree and reinforce them.

. . and life's not going to he that good for thechild so maybe it's the best decision, don't youthink?' or 'I couldn't cope with a handicapped kid,could you?'

This was the stage of discussion at which collabora-tive speech, where one student completed a sen-tence begun by another, was most common.Frequently questions were posed in a ruminativeway, to see how some possibility might work out.'What would you do if it was your mother?' was afavourite gambit of this kind. Items of scientific ormedical knowledge were treated in the samequestioning and rhetorical way: 'Why do we havetwo kidneys then if we only need one'?'

The third mode of discussion was more argu-mentative and committed. Sometimes the studentseven counted up who was 'for' and 'against' in themanner of an election. As they spoke they openlypersuaded, rather than merely deliberated, andthey did this in one of several rhetorical ways. Afavourite method was simply to exemplify the issue

'My father has had three unsuccessful operationslike that.' Alternatively they posed a personal orintimate situation followed by a question:

'Suppose they built a nuclear power station in yourgarden?'

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'fps


'How would you like your kidney to he in amurderer?'

The third rhetorical device involved puttingspeech into the mouth of another.

'They would say "Don't worry, just give us yourkidney, you'll be all right",' or

'So you would say to your wife "Shame about ourchild's leukaemia, I want employment!'

Three points must be borne in mind about thisclassification. In the first place, hile it is true thatthe forms of logic, 'if.. . . then . . .' were vanish-ingly rare, it does not follow that the talk wasirrational. Secondly, the three types of talk are byno means always easy to distinguish. Indeed ourearly attempts to identify and quantify the threedifferent types of talk on every transcript met withsuch poor success in terms of inter-researcherreliability that it had to be abandoned. A pro-portion of the discussion passages were veryclearly of oae kind or another, but there were toomany cases where it is difficult to distinguishbetween deliberation and commitment, or be-tween personal clarification of values and deliber-ation.

The third point concerns the order of these typesof talk. It was not the case that one followed on theother, as logic might seem to dictate. Discussioncould begin with a committed outburst againstsome aspect of the issue, only to be followed by aquieter passage of social deliberation. Othergroups began with deliberation and then wentback to framing talk to gather more evidence fromtheir memory of the video.

In every case, however, any ideas for strategiesto deal with the problems under considerationwere discussed during the committed type of talk.For this purpose more knowledge was sometimesmquired and students asked about or volunteeredmore information. Sometimes this was of a scien-tific kind, like the effect on effluent distribution ofraising the height of a factory chimney, or legal andsocial such as possible legislation or the operationof trust funds.

Scientific knowledge?

Reading through the discussion tranwripts gave

69

the first impression that little or no school scienceknowledge was being used, just as most otherresearchers on STS have reported. A closer exam-ination suggested, however, that familiarity withsimple science terms and concepts was under-pinning every bit of the discussion work. It wasonly when this knowledge failed, when the easyunderstanding broke down and students used theold jibes 'Why don't they speak English!' or 'Theytry to blind you with science', that we realised howmuch they had been relying upon familiarity withscience terminology. This may not be equivalent toorthodox definition but it served to allow mean-ingful talk to continue. As Wynne (1988) hasremarked in another context, public understand-ing makes knowledge about science 'invisible' innormal discourse. Only when this familiarity faileddid terms like 'catalytic converter' or 'radioactivehalf-life' become a matter for bewildered com-ment.

Finding out how much scientific knowledge wasbeing used was harder than we expected. In thefirst place explicit tutoring and mini-lectures onscientific concepts were rare events for reasonswhich, we suppose, are more related to adolescentnorms of behaviour than ignorance. This madeidentifying the depth of understanding, or itssource, quite difficult and uncertain. Secondly,personal prejudice or history brought about a kindof mental filtering which could diswrt the infor-mation given on the video. It was common, forexample, for Japanese to be reported as Chinese,or for Third World doctors to be thought of as nomore than health volunteers. Thirdly, experientialinformation about ethnic groups, individualaction, or civic strategies were such essential facetsof knowledge that it was difficult to know where todivide scientific from social information. Thisinterweaving of different kinds of knowledge hasalso been a fcature of some other studies of publicunderstanding. Nevertheless, we did score thestudents each time they added a piece of scientificknowledge to me discussion, just as we scoredreferences to television programmes on science, toreading about science, and claims that more infor-mation aucut science was needed.

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Discussion behaviour and questionnaireclaims


In an effort to wring some more generalisableconclusions from the data, we constructed a profileof all the items of discussion behaviour which wewere able to record with an inter-researcher re-liability of better than 90 per cent. (These wereonly compiled for the 112 students who had takenpart in at least four discussions.)

Pre- and post-course questionnaires were ad-ministered with five main sections exploring thefollowing general areas:

1 School experience and aspirations in science.2 The origin of their knowledge about 'science

issues'.3 Attitudes towards particular issues.4 Understanding of the nature of scientific know-

ledge.5 Views on civic responsibility for science issues.

The purpose of this data collection was not simplyto record the percentages in each area, but to makea comparison between how the students spokeduring the discussions, and what each student hadclaimed in section II of the questionnaire.

The majority of the students who had taken partin the discussions agreed that: 'My science teach-ers have often mentioned science issues duringlessons.' This was hardly surprising in view of theSTS course they wcre following, but it effectivelyeliminated this from our investigations. The threeother categories of knowledge sources claimed inthe questionnaire responses remained:

(a) knowledge from TV(b) knowledge from talking with friends(c) knowledge from reading

The slightness of the associations between what

the students wrote in their questionnaires andwhat they said in their discussions was striking.The associations between claiming that most oftheir knowledge came from television

and mentioning television programmes duringdiscussion, between claiming tha they got quitea lot of information from reading

and mentioning reading during discussion, andbetween claiming that most of their knowledgecame from talking with friends

and being persistent during discussion

were either non-existent or not significant.The lack of expected associations between these

two types of score was repeated in the section ofthe questionnaire which concerned civic responsi-bility (section V). Thus the associations betweenagreeing with the statement about taking individ-ual action or joining a pressure group had onlyweak associations with either mentioning individ-ual action or civic strategies during discussions.

This is far from being the only set of researchdata where expressions of attitude in a question-naire have failed to show any correlation withactual behaviour. It does not necessarily mean thatthe questions were at fault. It could simply meanthat the students 'presented themselves' throughthe questionnaire in a way they wanted to berecognised. A factor analysis of the questionnairedata showed clusters of responses describing stu-dent 'types (including those related to gender)which are very familiar. The major factors arisingfrom preferred questionnaire responses for boysand girls are presented below in a condensed form.

Even the data about preferred knowledgesources showed some features which have beenreported elsewhere. There has been researchwithin schools from the USA (Iozzi, 1984) and

Girls

When certain I try to convince others

Most of my knowledge about issues comes from TV

My views on issues are probably likc my friends'

More likely to watch TV than go out with friends

My views on issues arc probably like my parents'

Boys

Those who worry about issues are probably ignorant

My science teachers do not mention issues

Issues are best left to the scientists

My views on issues are probably likc my friends'

Issues mentioned arc all good for society

71


from national educational initiatives in SouthAmerica and Africa (reviewed in Greenfield,1984) suggesting that there may be very littleoverlap between groups who favour informationreception via watching and via reading, althoughthere is much more in common between those whofavour watching and those who discuss withfriends. This matches nicely with our finding thatthose who claimed to get most of their knowledgefrom television, and those who claimed to get mostfrom talking with friends, shared other featureslike talking in a collaborative fashion and notmentioning any intention to take individual action.'Readers' on the other hand, had a negativeassociation with mentioning TV, just as 'talkerswith friends' had with reading.

On the basis of these data we might concludethat the three groups (designated by claimedknowledge sources) were showing how theythought of themselves in relation to knowledge,rather than expressing any information-processingpreference.

Do boys and girls talk differently about moralissues?

There has been work which suggested that there isa profound difference in the ways in which the twosexes address moral questions (Kohlberg, 1984).The discussion profiles of boys and girls showed nosignificant difference on practical suggestions forsocial action, either at an individual or a civic basis.The transcripts showed that different topics pro-duced very different types of response, e.g. in-dividualistic on kidney donation, political onnuclear power, gender-related on genetic coun-selling. This meant that we had to select just onetopic for closer investigation.

We examined the 14 transcribed discussionswhich had been recorded during the first year ofthe projec:, about the veterans of the AtomicBomb tests. From these three different categoriesof moral response were scored which might re-semble those identified by Kohlberg.

'Broad statements'These comment upon the problem ( issue from anover-arching perspective. Kohlberg .de fined his

71

sixth, and highest stage of moral development as'universal principles of justice' (Kohlberg, 1984,pp. 174-77). Occasional statements by the pupilswere decontextualised in this way: 'It's the prin-ciple not the money.' However the majority of thestudents' judgemental statements, in which theystood back from the details of the situation,focused more specifically on what the governmentshould do, on the servicemen's rights, or onregulations which should be enforced:

'They should bc allowed compensation because itwas not voluntary.'

'Yeah, I mean that isn't right. 1 don't think it'sright. You shouldn't have to pay with yourlives.'

'Personal statements'At the opposite extreme is a type of commentwhich shows the speakers so strongly empathisingwith the people in the video that they try to includethemselves in the situation. They attempt tounderstand the issues by imagining how they wouldfeel, and what they would do if directly involved.Kohlberg placed such statements 'putting your-self into other people's shoes' down at stage 3 inmoral development. We included in this categorystatements where the speakers encouraged othersto imagine themselves in the situation.

'I'd rathcr die first if they dropped thc bombanyway I'd go and sit myself underneath it.''Would you worry?'

'Contextual statements'This third category is characterised by commentswhich are neither abstract, nor yet so completelypersonalised as those in the second category. Herethe speakers take account of the situations of thepeople and events in thc video, and add commentsbased on their own experience or understanding ofsimilar situations. Some showed strong emotivereactions, others were cooler and even cynical,and many simply recalled factual details from thevideo which seemed relevant to the present stageof the discussion.

72

'The children arc the ones that are going to livewith it.'

'I think it could be bccausc he [the official] isprobably in favour of the government, and hecould be a bit biased.'

Results of the gender analysis

1 By far the largest number of contributions fromboth girls and boys were contextual. The stu-dents seemed to be using their talk to get a graspof the situation and needed to mull over thedetails of the story in order to underline thoseissues which seemed salient (similar to 'framing'talk in the earlier categorisation).

2 The proportions of broad to other commentsmade by each boy and girl in the Atomic Testdiscussions was calculated for the mixed gendergroup discussions. Both boys and girls seemed tomake broad statements during discussion more inaccordance with individual or group styles ofargument than with gender.

3 The opening statements of the discussions seemedto serve special managerial purposes. In one wayor another the students girls or boys seemedto be attempting to get the discussion going.There were several tapes showing a hesitantstart with words like 'Right . . or 'Well . .

Others, in the manner of a chairman, beganalmost formally with 'We're talking about testveterans . . .' (see also Barnes and Todd, 1977).

4 In every discussion which opened with a broadstatement, this was made by a male student.This finding was corroborated by a searchthrough the 93 transcriptions of the differentdiscussions held the first year. The results of thisexploration confirmed that where the openingstatement was in the broad category it wassignificantly more often made by a boy than by agirl (Figure 7.1).

5 Using the same method as for (2), we found thatpersonal statements were not made more often bygirls than by boys in the main sequences ofdiscussion.

6 Those statements which included reflections oncivic action for dealing with the issue, e.g. aboutlegal constraints or procedures which werethought to guard against future risk, or tocompensate for an injustice appeared as a resultof a thought out position.


26

24

22

20

18

16

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0Broad Contextual Personal

Fig. 7.1 Opening comments (n=91): 0 female; 0male

e.g. . . there should be some laws . .

'You can't put a price on that . . . thcy should put[the money] into a big fund which you take out asyou need it.'

In no case did these strategic statements follow anopening broad comment.

So it seemed that boys and girls did not differ muchin the kinds of moral statements that they made.Only whcn they opened a discussion was there aclear difference of style. Boys tended to begin witha moral judgement which may have been some-what 'off-th-cuff'; girls were more hesitant anddeliberating.

Our results may have been dissimilar to otherswhich had reported large differences between thesexes, because the D1SS project gave data drawnfrom behaviour in a social situation. The basicpurpose of social talk is to try out opinions, receivefeedback, and respond to others. This necessitatestaking On board others' perspectives and even,perhaps, their style of discourse. The questionsand comments of friends in this setting may welloverride personal and gender-related styles andorientations. That in itself implies a recom-

73


mendation for teachers to run their classroomdiscussions in mixed-gender groups.

STS, as we have argued, denies that science isvalue-free, and maintains that technology affectsdifferent sections of society in different ways. Forboth these reasons we are bound to listen to, andconsider, the views of all involved in the issues ofour times. This is an important point in our STSeducation. All matters of social justice need to beconsidered from points of view, different from ourown. The philosopher John Rawls (1971) haswritten that we should consider what is best for oursociety as though we were hidden 'behind a veil ofignorance' about our own situation. Howeverdifficult that may be to achieve in practice, themoral analysis of the discussions given abovesuggests that some progress towards this goal wasbeing made.

Change of attitudes on issues?

One section on the pre- and post-test question-naire asked about the students' attitudes towards arange of issues, including those which figured inthe discussions, on a five-point attitude scale. Itseemed important to find out whether these re-sponses showed a change in attitude over the year.What made this difficult was the undeniable factthat during the course of the year other factors,quite unrelated to the set-piece research dis-cussions, must also have been responsible forsubstantial changes in the students' knowledge.

The recommended way to control for suchfactors is to collect data from another similar groupwhich had not gone through the discussions. Wehad asked each school to find a control group tocompare with those who had taken the STS course,but events showed that they did not, and indeedcould not, be effectively matched. Even at thebeginning of the year this was so. People are nottailor's dummies in respect to attitudes on issues. Itwas hardly surprising to find gross differencesbetween the views of the two groups on socialissues in view of the courses which they had chosento take.

On the question of stopping all experiments onanimals, which was not included in the discussiontopics, both groups changed their attitudes, and in

73

the same direction. On those issues which werediscussed in the project, attitudes sometimesmoved in different directions for the two groups(Figure 7.2). However it is still necessary tocounsel caution in attributing changes of attitudeunequivocally to the single discussion during theyear which was held on the particular issue. Thecharts of Figure 7.2 also hide a considerablechange of individual attitude. Such variationsmight be taken to show that no indoctrination wastaking place during the STS lessons and that thestudents' opinions on some matters were quitefluid and changeable. But it also urges caution inclaiming that any overall change in attitude on anissue was the direct result of class discussionsalone. (It seems distinctly reductive to expect afree and serious exchange of views within a groupof four friends, to produce a result which could berecorded unequivocally by a tick in one of fiveboxes.)

Any re-appraisal of personal values, or a newunderstanding about some important issue, mightbe expected to stimulate student thinking evenafter the talk has stopped. It could be argued thatthe 'speakerhearers', as Barnes and Todd (1977)have called them, will have the argument continu-ing in their heads, and possibly in their talk, forsome time after the discussion is over, if it hassufficiently engaged their attention. Conversationwith the teachers showed us, during the course ofthe first year, that the topics discussed earlier werequite often referred to a later date when they weretriggered by some item in the coursework or on thenews. We asked a few of the teachers to collectshort pieces of writing from the individual studentsabout a week after the video discussion had beenheld. These were little more than half a page inlength and some of them were strikingly similar, inchoice of words as well as general argument, to thecontributions made to the actual discussions. Suchexact recall of what had been argued more than aweek before provided unexpected evidence forcontinued reflection by the students on the classdiscussion and its arguments.

Personal values and civic responsibility

The students' attitudes towards civic responsibility

74

lbw

74

Fig. 7.2

60 -

54

48 -

42

g, 36

cs 30 -

experimental group

IIcontrol group

PRE-

12 I6

01 2 3 4 5

(b) Building more nuclear powerstations(Discussed by experimentalgroup)

40

36

32

28

24

20

16

12

8

4

0

a,

PRE-

50

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5


experimental group

control group

POST-

rillni

PRE-

(a) Genetic counselling andabortion(Discussed by experimentalgroup)

POST-

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4

POST- (c) Stopping all animalexperiments(Not discussed)

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

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60

54

48

42

36

30

24

18

12

6

0

PRE- POST-

4 5 1 2

(c) Controls on industrial pollution(Not discussed)

ro

*e.a)

a.

70

63

56

49

42

35

28

21

14

7

3

PRE-

4 5

75

(d) Providing more hearts andkidneys(Discussed by experimentalgroup)

POST-

2

wa<, yet another matter which was mixed up withthe reception of knowledge and the construction ofunderstanding. It has already been reported thatthe students' reception of information was

coloured by their preconceptions: it was alsoaffected by their trust in the figures of authoritythe scientist, doctor, industrialist or politicianpresented on the programmes. Often these werethe very figures who might be thought to bear allthe civic responsibility for decision-making onthese issues. How much did the students trustthem, or seem content to leave decisions to them?The discussion transcripts showed the studentsusing social caricatures 'All politicians would saythat!' or 'They always lie' in their comments on theprogrammes. Caricatures, however, form poor

3 4 5 2 3 4 5

guides to confidence in others' judgement, or toany wish for personal involvement and action

It was surprising, perhaps, to find that thequestionnaire responses did show a few significantcorrelations between academic achievement in thesciences (e.g. the number of sciences taken atGCSE, or the number of C grades or above whichhad been gained) and beliefs about civic responsi-bility for science issues; 86 per ccnt of the dis-cussion group were taking a GCSE course with noA level subjects, while all the control group weretaking an A level course in the sciences. Thus acomparison between these groups in the pre-course test is effectively one between groups at thesame age with an interest in science (scored in thequestionnaire at over 87 per cent) but markedly

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76 1

Table 7.1


Statement More agreement with statementsin pre-test

1 'Deciding on science issues is thc responsibility of government'2 'Deciding on science issues is thc responsibility of scientists'3 'Thc politicians' main responsibility is to protect and encourage industry'4 'Science-based issues are too complicated for ordinary citizens to

understand properly'5 'Once I am over 18 I shall vote in every election'6 'Really caring about issues means joining a group and doing something

about it yourself'7 'Scientific knowledge should be kept secret if it is industrially valuable'

Discussion Group*Control Group**Discussion GroupDiscussion Group

Control GroupDiscussion Group*

Discussion Group

* Move of discussion group significant at p < 0.005). ** Move of control group significant at p < 0.05).

different academic achievement in science whichhad led them into different sixth-form courses, andgiven them different career expectations.

Just after the GCSE examination results hadcome out and the students started their newcourses, there were more differences between thegroups than at the end of the year in the sixth form.This was an unexpected result (Table 7.1).

By the end of the year all except two of thesedifferences had disappeared. The control group,with its better background of scientific knowledge.still believed more strongly that deciding was aresponsibility of scientists,.and also that the issueswere too complicated for ordinary citizens.

All the very significant changes during the yearhad been made by the group which had beenfollowing the STS course and taking part in theDISS project discussions.

Evaluating STS

Of course it is not possible to claim that thesechanges of attitude towards civic responsibilitywere due to the discussions in particular, or to theSTS course in general. They could just as well be aresult of a year's maturation in the more adultatmosphere of the sixth form. At all events it wasgood to find that the STS group were no longer sokeen to leave decisions to the government or toscientists. It was somewhat less satisfactory to find

that the group was now less inclined to believe thatthey would vote in every election than they werebefore the course started. This result is quitegeneral. however, for the control group in thisstudy, and in other research data. As the date ofenfranchise approaches the appeal of voting seemsto decrease.

Perhaps the greatest success recorded in thispart of the attitude test, in terms of STS objectives,was that the group who had taken the course werenow confident enough to disagree with the state-ment that these issues were too complicated forordinary citizens.

On this note we may end this exploration of STSeducation with the words of a student of averageability who had just completed the year of study.

I learnt more about things I had just briefly heardof such as the creation of the Atomic bomb andhow it affected the Eves of mdlions. I studied anddiscussed the topics I enjoyed thc Third World,its health food and population. I have becomemore aware of how I could help in areas ofinterest.

By doing my project I was able to find out moreabout the charities which are helping with ThirdWorld health problems, such as Oxfam.

Overall I gained a lot of knowledge on scienceand technology which I hadn't heard of before.

It has made me more aware of how societydiffers on topics like nuclear power. It has mademe respect other people's opinions.

77

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7 9

'7

Index

academic achievement. 75-6academic sixth form, 48-51action, contemplation and, 12,13aims, common Departmental, 32-3aims of STS, general, 51analysis skills, 52animal experimentation, 46.73,74anxiety, 21-2A level, 16.47-9,50,75AS (Advanced Supplementary)

level, 49,55assessment objectives, 52assumptions, hidden, 53attitudinal change, 73.74-5

Bacon. Francis, 12'balanced chairperson'. 65-6Bhopal tragedy 61British Society for Social

Responsibility in Science, 14broad statements, 71,72Burkina Faso, 43-4

Canada, 18cartoon images, 22children, 19-20,46children's images of science/

scientists. 22-5citizenship, 15.47-8,55-6,61-2,

6-L-3

civic responsibility. 20,73-6class system, 13classroom strategics, 37-46closed-access sixth form college,

48-9Club of Rome report, 15-16

constructivism. 41contemplation, action and, 12,13contextual statements, 71-2controversial issues, 21-2,38,46,

50,51,55-6.65-76court casc simulation, 63cross-cultural work, 43-4cross-curricular collaboration, 35culture, 14-15,19,25,27,43-4,

49-51curriculum developers. 29,30,32curriculum development, 35curriculum materials, 31-2,33-4

DARTs (Directed ActivitiesRelated to Text), 41 . 42,45

decision-making, 50-1,51-2,59-63,73-6

deliberation. 68-9Department. innovation by, 32-3.

35

developing countries, 16,18.43-4.50,54,58

development, stages in. 19-20'Devil's advocate', 65-6diagnosis and course material

innovation model, 31-2disasters, large-scale, 61-2discussion, 33,53,65-76DISS (Discussion of Issues in

School Science) project, 32,65-76

'Doomsday Syndrome', 16

'Early SATIS (8-14)', 20economics, 59-61

80

empathy, 20,44,71empiricism, 15,41energy, 38-40cthnic minorities, 27,49-51evaluation skills, 52-3evolution. 54examination classes, 47-56cxamination syllabus. STS, 51-3examiners' rcports, 53-4experiment, theory and, 40-2,54

fallibility of science, 40-2Farming Game, The, 58feedback, innovation and, 35-6field work, 37-8framing, 68-9

Galilico, 12gaming, 57-64gas warfare, 14gender differences, 30-2,71-3gender stereotyping, 22-4general aims for STS, 51genetic counselling, 74girls, 30,49-51government policy. 29-30Green Revolution, 16Greenhouse Effect, 21.41,42,51group discussion, 33,53,65-76

Hawthorne Effect, 35health-care, 54heat radiation, 40-2Herschel, William, 41history of science, 40-2Holland, 18

[ 80

home, 19-20,50home/school links, 25-7,28Hooke, Robert, 13hospital scenario, 60humanists, 13-14Humanities Curriculum Project

(HCP), 65hypotheses, predicting from, 42

images of science/scientists, 22-5Industrial Revolution, 13industry, 19-20,34,48,57-8,59-62innovation, educational, 29-36innovation, scientific. 59INSET, 29,35interest groups, 62,63interstices model, 34-5issues, controversial, 21-2,38,46.

50,51,55-6,65-76

Jenner, Edward, 45

kidneys. donation of, 67,75knowledge, scientific, 69knowledge items, 52knowledge sources, 70-1Krupps chemical complex, 14

laboratory work. 37-8LEA advisers, 29-30,31,32,35liberation, 13-14Limits to Growth, The, 15-16local problems, 43-4

machincry, making, 13manometer, 43-4media, news, 56,62medicines, testing, 45-6Minerals in Buenafortuna game, 58moral development, 20,71morality, 13-14

National Curriculum, 29,30,33NESTS, 35'neutral chair', 65'news time', 25Newton, Isaac, 12nuclear power, 67,74newspapers, 44,56,62


Nuffield courses, 16

opinions, 49,50,59Oppenheimer, Robert, 14ozone layer, hole in, 21-2

personal statements, 71,72philosophy of science, 15,40-1,52,

54,56'Planning a new edible-fats

factory', 61politicians, 51pollution, 13,15,61-2,75Poverty Game, The, 58prediction from hypothesis, 42pressure, 43-4primary schools, 25-7problem-solving, 32project funding, 59-61project work, 53.5,public inquiries, 63public understanding of science,

66-7Pugwash Conference, 14

questionnaires, 70-1

radiation, heat, 40-2radical scientists, 13-14'R&D at MUPCorp', 60research, educational, 29,30responsibility, civic, 20,73-6responsibility, scientific, 14rhetorical devices, 68-9risk, 40,59.61-2,72role-play, 20,44-6,57-64

SATIS, 30,32,33,34-5, ,5,47school/home links, 25-7,28science, 11-15,37-8,52,66-7science education. 15-16Science in Society course, 16,17,

33,47,48Scientific Eye, 45scientific knowledge, 69scientific literacy, 51-2scientists, 11,17,22-5SCISP (School Council Integrated

Science Project), 16-17,31,32

8 1

secondary teachers, 30-6'sharing time', 25SHIPS (School/Home

Investigations in PrimaryScience), 25-7

simulations, 34,44,57-64SISCON (Science In a Social

CONtext), 9,17,32SISCON-in-Schools, 17,47sixth form, 47-51sixth-form college, 48-9skills, 17,33,49,51-2smallpox vaccination, 45-6social decision-making, 52,62-3,

73-6social reconstruction, 13-14,16socialisation, 21societal thinking, 19-20soil, 43-4stereotypes, 22-4stone walls, 43-4syllabus, STS exam, 51-3

teachers, innovation by, 29,30,31-6

tcaching strategies, 32-3,37-46.63-4

technology, 38-40,50-1,52,55television, 20-2,56,62.66theory, 40-2.54,55Third World, 16,18,43-4,50,54,

58transactions, understanding. 19-20turbine, water, 38-40

understanding of science, public,66-7

Unitcd States (USA), 15,17-18,35

vaccination role-play, 45-6values, 20,53,57-8,67,73,73-6video extracts, 67-8violence, 21vocational education, 48voting, 76

war, 14water turbine, 38-40work, world of, 19-20



This is the first book to describe an area which hasincreasingly generated classroom materials, and educa-tional polemic, without any proper discussion of itsrationale or aims. Different approaches to the teachingand implementation of STS are used, through the wordsof teachers, or through descriptions of classroom activity,to explore different facets of its nature. This illuminatesthe intentions and reality of STS far better than any rigidprescription of its meaning and practice.

Successive chapters describe the history of STS withinscience and education, its relevance to young childrenand their families, ways that have been used to introduce itinto secondary schools, teaching strategies in the middleschool, examinations and modes of assessment, simula-tions and role-play, and group discussion of values andcivic issues.

The book is based on wide personal experience, andmakes inspiring and informative reading for practisingteachers.

Joan Solomon is University Lecturer in Research, De-partment of Educational Studies at the University ofOxford. She taught science in secondary schools fornearly 30 years during which time she initiated severalprojects, including SISCON (Science In a Social CONtext).She completed doctoral research, on learning about en-ergy, while teaching, and has recently directed severalother research projects designed to improve the broadcontext of science education.

Open University11111" Press

SON 0-335-09952-1

I 11 11111119 780335 099528 >

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