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Science education is the teaching and learning of science to school children, college students, or adults within the
general public. The field of science education includes work in science content, science process (the scientific method),
some social science, and some teaching pedagogy. The standards for science education provide expectations for the
development of understanding for students through the entire course of their K-12 education and beyond. The traditional
subjects included in the standards are physical, life, earth, space, and human sciences.

Historical background
[edit]
The first person credited with being employed as a science teacher in a British public school was William Sharp, who left
the job at Rugby School in 1850 after establishing science to the curriculum. Sharp is said to have established a model for
science to be taught throughout the British public school system.[1]

The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) published a report in 1867[2] calling for the teaching of
"pure science" and training of the "scientific habit of mind." The progressive education movement supported the ideology
of mental training through the sciences. BAAS emphasized separate pre-professional training in secondary science
education. In this way, future BAAS members could be prepared.
The initial development of science teaching was slowed by the lack of qualified teachers. One key development was the
founding of the first London School Board in 1870, which discussed the school curriculum; another was the initiation of
courses to supply the country with trained science teachers. In both cases the influence of Thomas Henry Huxley. John
Tyndall was also influential in the teaching of physical science.[3]

In the United States, science education was a scatter of subjects prior to its standardization in the 1890s. [4] The
development of a science curriculum emerged gradually after extended debate between two ideologies, citizen science
and pre-professional training. As a result of a conference of thirty leading secondary and college educators in Florida, the
National Education Association appointed a Committee of Ten in 1892, which had authority to organize future meetings
and appoint subject matter committees of the major subjects taught in secondary schools. The committee was composed
of ten educators and chaired by Charles Eliot of Harvard University. The Committee of Ten appointed nine conferences
committees: Latin; Greek; English; Other Modern Languages; Mathematics; History; Civil Government and Political
Economy; physics, astronomy, and chemistry; natural history; and geography. Each committee was composed of ten
leading specialists from colleges, normal schools, and secondary schools. Committee reports were submitted to the
Committee of Ten, which met for four days in New York City, to create a comprehensive report.[5] In 1894, the NEA
published the results of the work of these conference committees.[5]

According to the Committee of Ten, the goal of high school was to prepare all students to do well in life, contributing to
their well-being and the good of society. Another goal was to prepare some students to succeed in college. [6]

This committee supported the citizen science approach focused on mental training and withheld performance in science
studies from consideration for college entrance.[7] The BAAS encouraged their longer standing model in the UK.[8] The US
adopted a curriculum was characterized as follows:[5]

 Elementary science should focus on simple natural phenomena (nature study) by means of experiments carried
out "in-the-field."
 Secondary science should focus on laboratory work and the committee's prepared lists of specific experiments
 Teaching of facts and principles
 College preparation
The format of shared mental training and pre-professional training consistently dominated the curriculum from its inception
to now. However, the movement to incorporate a humanistic approach, such as inclusion of the arts (S.T.E.A.M.), science,
technology, society and environment education is growing and being implemented more broadly in the late 20th century.
Reports by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), including Project 2061, and by the National
Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment detail goals for science education that link classroom
science to practical applications and societal implications.

Fields of science education

[edit]
See also: Branches of science
Science is a universal subject that spans the branch of knowledge that examines the structure and behavior of the
physical and natural world through observation and experiment.[9] Science education is most commonly broken down into
the following three fields: Biology, chemistry, and physics. Additionally there is a large body of scientific literature that
advocates the inclusion of teaching the Nature of Science, which is slowly being adopted into the national curricula.[10]

Physics education
[edit]

Demonstrates a free body

Main article: Physics education
Physics education is characterized by the study of science that deals with matter and energy, and their interactions. [11]

Physics First, a program endorsed by the American Association of Physics Teachers, is a curriculum in which 9th grade
students take an introductory physics course. The purpose is to enrich students' understanding of physics, and allow for
more detail to be taught in subsequent high school biology and chemistry classes. It also aims to increase the number of
students who go on to take 12th grade physics or AP Physics, which are generally elective courses in American high
schools.[22]
Physics education in high schools in the United States has suffered the last twenty years because many states now only
require three sciences, which can be satisfied by earth/physical science, chemistry, and biology. The fact that many
students do not take physics in high school makes it more difficult for those students to take scientific courses in college.

At the university/college level, using appropriate technology-related projects to spark non-physics majors' interest in
learning physics has been shown to be successful.[23] This is a potential opportunity to forge the connection between
physics and social benefit.

Chemistry education
[edit]
Main article: Chemistry education
Chemistry education is characterized by the study of science that deals with the composition, structure, and properties of
substances and the transformations that they undergo.[12]

Children mix different chemicals in test tubes as part of a science education program.
Chemistry is the study of chemicals and the elements and their effects and attributes. Students in chemistry learn the
periodic table. The branch of science education known as "chemistry must be taught in a relevant context in order to
promote full understanding of current sustainability issues."[13] As this source states chemistry is a very important subject in
school as it teaches students to understand issues in the world. As children are interested by the world around
them chemistry teachers can attract interest in turn educating the students further.[14] The subject of chemistry is a very
practical based subject meaning most of class time is spent working or completing experiments.

Biology education
[edit]
 Picture of a Biology lab taking place.
Biology education is characterized by the study of structure, function, heredity, and evolution of all living organisms.
[15]
Biology itself is the study of living organisms, through different fields including morphology, physiology, anatomy,
behavior, origin, and distribution.[16]

Depending on the country and education level, there are many approaches to teaching biology. In the United States, there
is a growing emphasis on the ability to investigate and analyze biology related questions over an extended period of time.
[17]
Current biological education standards are based on decisions made by the Committee of Ten, who aimed to
standardize pre-college learning in 1892.[18] The Committee emphasized the importance of learning natural history
(biology) first, focusing on observation through laboratory work.

Nature of Science education

[edit]
Nature of Science education refers to the study of how science is a human initiative, how it interacts with society, what
scientists do, how scientific knowledge is built up and exchanged, how it evolves, how it is used. It stresses the empirical
nature and the different methods used in science. The goals of Nature of Science education are stated to be to help
students evaluate scientific and pseudo scientific statements, to motivate them to study science and to better prepare
them for a career in science or in a field that interacts with science.[19]

Pedagogy
[edit]
While the public image of science education may be one of simply learning facts by rote, science education in recent
history also generally concentrates on the teaching of science concepts and addressing misconceptions that learners may
hold regarding science concepts or other content. Thomas Kuhn, whose 1962 book The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions greatly influenced the post-positivist philosophy of science, argued that the traditional method of teaching in
the natural sciences tends to produce a rigid mindset.[20][21]

Since the 1980s, science education has been strongly influenced by constructivist thinking.[22][23][24] Constructivism in science
education has been informed by an extensive research programme into student thinking and learning in science, and in
particular exploring how teachers can facilitate conceptual change towards canonical scientific thinking. Constructivism
emphasises the active role of the learner, and the significance of current knowledge and understanding in mediating
learning, and the importance of teaching that provides an optimal level of guidance to learners. [25]

According to a 2004 Policy Forum in Science magazine, "scientific teaching involves active learning strategies to engage
students in the process of science and teaching methods that have been systematically tested and shown to reach
diverse students."[26]

The 2007 volume Scientific Teaching[27] lists three major tenets of scientific teaching:

 Active learning: A process in which students are actively engaged in learning. It may include inquiry-based
learning, cooperative learning, or student-centered learning.
 Assessment: Tools for measuring progress toward and achievement of the learning goals.
 Diversity: The breadth of differences that make each student unique, each cohort of students unique, and each
teaching experience unique. Diversity includes everything in the classroom: the students, the instructors, the
content, the teaching methods, and the context.
These elements should underlie educational and pedagogical decisions in the classroom. The "SCALE-UP" learning
environment is an example of applying the scientific teaching approach. In practice, scientific teaching employs a
"backward design" approach. The instructor first decides what the students should know and be able to do (learning
goals), then determines what would be evidence of student achievement of the learning goals, then designs assessments
to measure this achievement. Finally, the instructor plans the learning activities, which should facilitate student learning
through scientific discovery.[28]

Guided-discovery approach
[edit]
Along with John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, and many others, Arthur Koestler[29] offers a critique of contemporary science
education and proposes its replacement with the guided-discovery approach:
To derive pleasure from the art of discovery, as from the other arts, the consumer—in this case the student—must be
made to re-live, to some extent, the creative process. In other words, he must be induced, with proper aid and guidance,
to make some of the fundamental discoveries of science by himself, to experience in his own mind some of those flashes
of insight which have lightened its path. . . . The traditional method of confronting the student not with the problem but with
the finished solution, means depriving him of all excitement, [shutting] off the creative impulse, [reducing] the adventure of
mankind to a dusty heap of theorems.