ISSUES & TRENDS James R. Okey, Section Editor

Developing the Concept of “Curriculum Emphases” in Science Education *

DOUGLAS A. ROBERTS+ Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, The University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N IN4

Introduction

This article is about conceptual invention and application. In it I have three pur- poses.

First, I wish to present some systematic analysis of an important but murky area of science education: alternative views about why students should learn science. Every such view advocates a position about what the science curriculum should emphasize; hence I speak of different “curriculum emphases” in science education. Seven of these can be discerned in science education practice in North America during this century.

Second, I wish to share some anecdotal impressions about the heuristic potential of the concept “curriculum emphases” in a practical setting. These anecdotes are drawn from research and development work focussed on science for early adolescent students (Ontario’s “Intermediate Division,” grades 7-10). The major part of the work has been the study of three areas: curriculum policy debate, instructional materials development, and curriculum implementation in the classroom. The “curriculum emphases” idea was central to the conceptualization of the research.

Completing the article, I have recast some questions which are touched on in Parts 1 and 11. These are questions which seem to be perennial concerns about science programs for early adolescents, but they appear in a somewhat different light when put in terms of the concept “curriculum emphases.”

* Presented as part of a symposium, “Early Adolescence: A Critical Stage for Science,” at the Annual

t Work was completed while at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Mceting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Toronto, January 3-8. 1981.

Science Education 66(2): 243-260 (1982) 0 1982 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0036-8326/82/020243- 18$02.80

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Part I: Curriculum Emphases in Science Education (Note 1)

Two Very Different Physics Textbooks

Being an inveterate pack rat, I saved a copy of the physics textbook I used in secondary Jchool in 195 1. For a frontispiece, the book (Burns, Verwiebe, & Hazel, 1943) features one of Harold Edgerton’s magnificent high-speed photographs. This particular one is in color. The toe of a kicker’s boot has just connected with a football. The boot has sunk in halfway to the ankle, yet the football appears to be still a t rest. I remember being en- ormously impressed by that photograph.

But the most remarkable feature of the textbook is the extent to which the subject matter of physics, once presented, is used in developing brief explanations for the workings of various familiar (and some not-so-familiar) technological gadgets. The theme is all- pervasive: science is useful for understanding and coping with the gadgetry one encounters every day in a technological society. For example, the unit dealing with the physics of liquids includes a section explaining why water systems (both city and country) and dams are built as they are; in another spot a diagram shows how hydraulic brakes work in an automobile. The unit titled “Heat and Molecules” includes a short explication about convection in hot water heaters. The section on electricity explains the workings of the telephone, the electric iron, and home fuses, among other devices. Near the end of the book a high-speed photograph shows the taking of the high-speed photograph featured as the frontispiece. There is an explanation, based on electronic principles, which lets the student in on how the gadgetry used by Edgerton to get his split-second timing actually works.

My 1960 edition of the PSSC physics textbook also contains some high-speed photo- graphs by Harold Edgerton. An especially dramatic sequence of thirteen consecutive pictures (taken at a rate of 4000 per second) shows a bullet puncturing a toy balloon. On the opposite page a picture of the apparatus is presented, but there is no explanation of how the timing works. In fact, the topic of high-speed photography has a different function in this textbook. The pictures are in a section that deals with a fundamental aspect of the nature of science: relating observation to conceptualization. Specifically, in this case, the student is being introduced to the difference between observable changes in position (observable, that is, with the aid of high-speed photography) and the conceptual device we know as continuous motion (presented as a sensory illusion resulting from persistence of vision).

But it is not only high-speed photography which has a different function in the two textbooks. In the PSSC text there is an all-pervasive theme of recounting intellectual purpose, of showing how the subject matter of physics is developed and structured. Thus, in the chapter titled “Heat, Molecular Motion, and Conservation of Energy,” we find no mention of hot water heaters. (Indeed, the word “convection” cannot be found even in the index.) Instead we find; consistent with the all-pervasive theme of the book, such material as discussion of the adequacy of a computational model based on some simpli- fying assumptions about the behavior of molecules. This discussion follows a development and presentation of the subject matter itself-that is, the model and the equations de- veloped from it.

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What is a “Curriculum Emphasis” in Science Education?

It is clear enough that in those two physics textbooks the all-pervasive themes differ because the subject matter is being used with two different overall curricular intentions. The two themes are systematic and deliberate expressions of two different viewpoints about the role of science subject matter in the schools, and thus serve as major distin- gishing characteristics for the two textbooks. 1 call such all-pervasive themes curriculum emphases.

A curriculum emphasis in science education is a coherent set of messages to the student about science (rather than within science). Such messages constitute objectives which go beyond learning the facts, principles, laws, and theories of the subject matter it- self-objectives which provide answers to the student question: “Why am I learning this?” The answer to that question differs significantly for the Burns text and the PSSC text just noted.

The “curriculum emphases approach” is not the first attempt to make sense of curri- cular diversity in science education, of course. For example, Rosen’s historical approach to analyzing science curriculum determinants in America (see, e.g., Rosen, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1963) is powerful and the results remain definitive; some of that work has been incorporated to very good advantage in the science education textbook by Brandwein, Watson, and Blackwood (1958). Again, Hurds works on American biological education (Hurd, 1961) and American science education generally (Hurd, 1969) are classics. More recently Bybee (1977) has used the term “transformations” in science education to conceptualize changes in overall aims as these occur from time to time. All of those authors have identified essentially the same science curriculum diversity in North America since the turn of the century, roughly. However, my reasons for inventing and elaborating the concept of curriculum emphases go beyond the development of an his- torical perspective on science education practice. I needed a concept which could be ap- plied actively and productively in several areas of practical concern-e.g., in analyzing curriculum policy debate, in guiding the development of instructional materials, and in studying curriculum implementation in the classroom.

Before examining seven curriculum emphases in science education, one further point is in order about the concept itself. A curriculum emphasis, as noted above, is a coherent set of messages about science. Bear in mind that such messages can be communicated both explicitly and implicitly. Explicit messages are plain enough in the two physics textbooks discussed above. Text material is added to the bare-bones subject matter to accomplish explicit communication.

lmplicit communication is a contextual phenomenon. An implicit message about science can be communicated by what is not stated, then, as well as by other contextual devices (Note 2). Schwab (1 962) referred to such implicit messages as “meta-lessons.” Science taught as a “rhetoric of conclusions,” he claimed, implicitly communicates as a meta-lesson “the impression that the assertions of science are inalterable truths” (p. 45). Similarly, Dewey’s (1938) “collateral learning” (p. 48) can be seen as an example of students receiving implicit messages; Dewey commented especially about attitudes toward learning itself.

Thus, to specify the substance of a curriculum emphasis in science education one must attend to both explicit and implicit messages about science. Paradoxically, one has to

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consider simultaneously what is stated (about the subject matter) and what is not stated.

Seoen Curriculum Emphases in Science Education The distinguishing characteristics of each curriculum emphasis, as presented below,

are general descriptions of the substance of the emphasis: the selected set of messages about science (i.e., related to science) embodied in each. Seven emphases are discussed: Everyday Coping; Structure of Science; Science, Technology, and Decisions; Scientific Skill Development; Correct Explanation; Self as Explainer; and Solid Foundation.

I developed this category system inductively, by studying what has been advocated in policy statements and woven into textbooks in the past eighty years or so of science education practice. I would not claim the set of categories is exhaustive in terms of what is theoretically possible in science education, but it does seem to be exhaustive in terms of what has been tried. Independent confirmation for that point comes from two studies of science teaching objectives in American secondary schools since the early part of this century-one for biology (Ogden & Jackson, 1978) and one for chemistry (Ogden, 1975). Seven major categories of biology objectives and nine major categories of chemistry objectives were discerned in the professional literature. In both cases my seven curriculum emphases are close enough to the investigators’ categories that I am satisfied nothing significant has been missed (Note 3).

Note also that my seven emphases do not necessarily constitute a set of mutually ex- clusive categories. Rather, they capture the essence of very broadly different overall orientations which science education can assume.

The “Everyday Coping” Emphasis: The selected set of messages constituting this emphasis declares, in sum, that science is an important means for understanding and controlling one’s environment-be it natural or technological. Because the physics textbook cited earlier (Burns et al., 1943) displays this emphasis (with regard to tech- nological gadgetry, at least), i t is tempting to consider it a thing of the past. However, it is alive and well in currently used textbooks and curriculum materials for environmental studies, as an example.

Hurd (1 969, p. 12) has identified some species of this genus in American science ed- ucation, noting that they are a response to “the changing social scene.” Thus, around 1900 “civic biology” emerged in the secondary schools as a course oriented toward im- proving “unsanitary and poor health conditions.” About 191 5, in response to “growing industrialization,” chemistry courses began to include “processes such as making steel . . . , manufacturing sulfuric acid, and smelting ores,” while physics courses began to reflect “the growing use of telephones, internal combustion engines . . . [and] electrical appliances.” Then, “consumer science” courses emerged in the depression years of the 1930s, the major goal for the student being the application of scientific knowledge to “the intelligent purchase of goods and services.”

There is a common theme in these few examples, even though the particular problems differ in 1900, 191 5 , the 1930s, and the 1970s. What is being valued is an individual and collective understanding of scientific principles, as a means for coping with individual and collective “problems” (Note 4). The student must apply, indeed must learn how to apply, the principles and generalizations learned in the science classroom, if the message is to get through (Note 5 ) .

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The “Structure of Science” Emphasis: The substance of this emphasis is a set of mes- sages about how science functions intellectually in its own growth and development. The messages are communicated through repeated discussion of such matters as the interplay of evidence and theory, the adequacy of a particular model for explaining phenomena at hand (as noted earlier about the PSSC physics textbook), the changing and self-cor- recting nature of scientific knowledge, the influence of an investigator’s “conceptual principles” on the kind of theory developed, etc.

Because so much has been written on the nature and structure of science, and because course materials embodying this curriculum emphasis are now so familiar, little more needs to be said about the emphasis itself. It is very much in vogue at this time, right around the world.

The “Science, Technology, and Decisions” Emphasis: Unlike the Everyday Coping emphasis, this one concentrates on the limits of science in coping with practical affairs. The substance of the Science, Technology, and Decisions emphasis is a set of messages which distinguish science from technology, first, and subsequently distinguish scien- tific/technological considerations from the value-laden considerations involved in personal and political decision making.

Thus, for example, scientific knowledge and technical know-how can be shown to have an important but limited role in deciding on the route for an oil pipeline. That is a practical problem, in the Aristotelian sense of wanting a defensible decision. A scientific problem, contrariwise, eventuates in some bit of warranted knowledge. In this curriculum emphasis the two would be clearly distinguished.

Schwab (1 974) has discussed features of this emphasis at some length in a paper which is both enlightening and sobering (Note 6). However, there are to my knowledge no textbooks and few curriculum materials in science which systematically embody a Science, Technology, and Decisions emphasis; the British “Science in Society” materials contain some examples (Note 7).

The “Scientific Skill Development” Emphasis: A clear example of materials which embody this curriculum emphasis is found readily: the “Science-A Process Approach” materials developed under sponsorship of the AAAS Commission on Science Education. In discussing these materials, GagnC (1966) pointed out that they “are directed toward developing fundamental skills required in scientific activities . . . The goal is not an ac- cumulation of knowledge about any particular domain, . . . but competence in the use of processes that are basic to all science” (p. 49).

Development of the processes themselves constitutes a set of objectives within science. What, then, is the set of messages related to science (or about science) which constitutes this emphasis? Simply this: in sum, that process is more important than product or, crudely speaking, that getting there is not only half the fun, but more than half.

The point is fairly straightforward. Discussions of “process” and “product” in science education (not limited, or course, to the elementary school years) are, essentially, dis- cussions of means and ends. The Scientific Skill Development emphasis places heavy, virtually exclusive, emphasis on means, thereby communicating to the student the implicit message that skillful use of means (scientific process) will automatically yield for him a correct end (product).

The “Correct Explanations” Emphasis: This curriculum emphasis stresses science “products” as heavily (nigh exclusively) as the former one stresses “processes.” The

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practitioner encounters the messages constituting this emphasis simply because, in his own scientific training, some ideas (products) are accepted by the scientific community, while others are not.

This is the familiar “master now, question later” emphasis in science education. Ziman ( 1 968) put i t thus. “The job of the ordinary science teacher . . . is to make all plain, and plausible, to encourage the student to entrust himself freely to the basic theory. To express doubts, to utter warnings, at this stage will inhibit the confident use of the new technique, the new language” (p. 71).

To be sure. Ziman is speaking of the education of scientists, and the emphasis in his essay is on “the consensus”-the body of ideas accepted by the scientific community at any given time. Nevertheless, the substance of this curriculum emphasis is a set of mes- sages about the authority of a group of experts to determine the correctness of ideas.

‘The “Self as Explainer” Emphasis: The messages constituting this emphasis deal with the character of science as a cultural institution and an expression of one of man’s many capabilities. The story is a long and interesting one, but to simply call it “history of science” is likely to mislead; probably the most common image of history of science is the dry catalogue of who-did-what-when. To animate the history of science is to examine growth and change in scientific ideas as a function of human purpose, and of the intel- lectual and cultural preoccupations of the particular settings in which the ideas were developed and refined. Other systematic (though nonscientific) ways to explain events-e.g., religious, magical-can readily be seen in a similar light, especially with regard to explanatory purpose (Roberts, 1970). Then one has something other than “ignorance” with which science can be compared.

The student thus gets the message that the humanity of science is his own humanity. For he, too, is an explainer of events, with his own purposes, his own place in a matrix of intellectual and cultural preoccupations.

The prototype instructional materials which embody this curriculum emphasis are the eight “case histories” in experimental science developed at Harvard (Conant, 1948 et seq.). These were prepared for use by undergraduates in courses designed as alternatives to specialized “prevocational” science courses of the type designed for intending scientists (Note 8). The materials produced by Project Physics constitute a prototype for secondary schools. Watson (1 967) has explicitly stated key messages which the latter materials are designed to communicate. “Physics is a science through which young adults can begin to consider some basic questions about how we can attempt to explain the phenomena we observe. Also, throughout its long history physics has had profound effects on the philosophical orientation of Western culture. The individuals, instruments, assumptions, and expanding theories of physics provide an almost ideal vehicle through which young people can inspect science in the making, and engage to some extent in the same process” (p . 213).

A different aspect of this curriculum emphasis is revealed when one concentrates on the student’s engagement (rather than the scientist’s) in the intellectual operations in- volved in explaining events. The individual’s idiosyncratic set of explanations for events he has decided to explain is seen as consistent and reasonable, given his purposes and preoccupations-the same construction as this emphasis puts on the explanations de- veloped by scientists of an earlier time. Context is, clearly, all-important for such a

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construction. The message communicated to the student is that he makes sense, given what he is trying to explain and given his preoccupations about it (Note 9).

The “Solid Foundation” Emphasis: This curriculum emphasis has it that science in- struction should be organized to facilitate the student’s understanding of future science instruction. Thus science in the elementary school is seen as preparation to learn science in the secondary school, which in turn is preparation for some future purpose. The set of messages communicated to the student is reassuring: that what he is learning fits into a structure which has been thought about and planned. Immediate and nonesoteric an- swers can be given to questions such as “Why should we learn this?”

One manifestation of thinking about curriculum in this way is the practice of recom- mendation by university science teachers about the nature and substance of adequate secondary school science instruction. Secondary school teachers can and do advise ele- mentary teachers similarly. This is a common enough practice in education, one that respects the need for long-term internal consistency in the student’s instruction. What this curriculum emphasis is silent about, of course, is the ultimate set of instructional goals toward which all prior instruction is to be directed.

Part II: Curriculum Emphases in a Practical Setting

In this section of the article I should like to relate a number of anecdotes noted during some research and development work sponsored over the past three years by OISE- anecdotes which illustrate the heuristic potential of the concept “curriculum emphases” for the practical science education activities of curriculum policy formulation, materials development, and curriculum implementation in the classroom. Along the way, I shall touch on some nourishing points for the final section.

The setting for the research and development work is ‘‘local’’ curriculum development (i.e., within the jurisdiction of a single school district). In Ontario a t present, each Board of Education is responsible to design its own science program for students in grades 7-10 (the “Intermediate Division”). The program has to be tailored to the Board’s specific needs but also must be consistent with the general policies of a provincial curriculum guideline, which mandates 50% of the subject matter topics and a total of fifteen broad aims for the four years. Thus the policy problems facing each Board’s Science Coordinator (or other responsible agent) have to do with grade placement and sequencing of subject matter units, deciding what subject matter units are to emphasize which aims, specifying breadth and depth of treatment of concepts and ideas in the subject, providing differ- entiation for different ‘‘levels’’ of program (e.g., “advanced” vs. “general”), and similar mattcrs of curriculum policy formulation as experienced by practitioners. Interrelated but different problems involve the selection of textbooks and/or development of other materials to support the program, and appropriate assistance to and evaluation of classroom implementation efforts by the teaching force. In our research, those three problem clusters were examined separately, and I should like now to turn to them one at a time.

Curriculum Policy Formulation In the Board where our project was located, the Science Coordinator established a

policy-making structure in two parts. A planning committee consisted of three grade

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7-8 teachers and three grade 9- 10 teachers (the Intermediate Division spans the juris- dictions of elementary school and secondary school in Ontario), with the Coordinator as chairman. I n addition, a broadly representative group was established, consisting of one elementary spokesperson and one secondary spokesperson from each of the 23 “families of schools” (secondary school and its associated feeder elementary schools) in the Board. At least one member of the research team was present at all discussions of both groups (the large group met twice a year only), recording all policy deliberations for subsequent transcription and analysis, but participating only when clarification of issues was sought. [The principles governing our participation have been described in detail by Orpwood ( 1 980a).]

What was immediately apparent to the research team (and, indeed, a central feature in the conceptualization of the research in the first place) was that the fifteen broad aims in the provincial guideline could be readily clustered into three curriculum emphases. Structure of Science was obvious, as was Scientifi? Skill Development; the third ap- proximated Science, Technology, and Decisions but we called it, simply, “Science and Society.” Once the Coordinator and his planning committee were introduced to that conceptualization of the broad aims, their policy problems could be recast. Instead of simply sequencing subject matter and “hoping for” the accomplishment of fifteen broad aims (“hoping for” is quite frequently the fate of broad educational aims, as we all know), the committee could look systematically at the incorporation of three different emphases into twelve subject matter units spread over grades 7-8 and another sixteen spread over grades 9- 10.

One advantage which the concept of curriculum emphases brought to this area of policy formulation, then, was to give realistic status to broad science education aims, thereby sharpening the choices practitioners had to make, and also to point the way to systematic provision for accomplishing aims in the context of specified subject matter. For example, it became a clear point for debate, in a meeting of the large representative group, whether a unit on energy would systematically incorporate a “Science and Society” emphasis, or would instead be a general subject matter background concerning several kinds of energy (a Solid Foundation emphasis) with a few hints sprinkled in to admonish students not to waste electricity. The planning committee, thoroughly knowledgeable about the integrity of a curriculum emphasis, resisted the latter suggestion. The spokesperson for it, however, expressed the opinion (reasonable from the viewpoint of a Solid Foundation emphasis) that early adolescents could not deal with the decision-making considerations necessary for a “Science and Society” treatment until they knew a lot about nuclear energy, electricity, heat, and so forth. Elsewhere (Roberts, in press) I have reproduced portions of the debate and commented extensively on its dynamics. Suffice it to say here that the substance of the debate would not have been clear, without the concept of cur- riculum emphases.

A second advantage was to associate curriculum emphases with individual units of subject matter (five to six weeks of instruction), rather than with whole textbooks (typ- ically a year of instruction). Experience showed the planning committee that a curriculum emphasis could be made to materialize in five or six weeks (although not much less than that), and the typical pattern of six (or eight) units per year thus allowed comfortably for all three mandated emphases to be attended to within one school year. (Since most

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textbooks tend to incorporate only one emphasis, the adoption of a textbook limits the flexibility.)

Materials Selection and Development

Early in the first year of the project, a writing team was appointed by the Coordinator to draft six required units for the 7-8 program, spanning the three curriculum emphases in equal measure (two units incorporating each emphasis). The writing conference was necessary because the planning committee could not locate a suitable textbook or text- books for the two grades; none could be found that incorporated “Science and Society” considerations into the required subject matter units. To be sure, new texts were just about to be published for grades 7-8 and these included all of the required subject matter of the units under consideration; but the curriculum emphasis was either largely Structure of Science and partly Scientific Skill Development, or vice-versa. The only texts which treated the subject matter in the context of a “Science and Society” emphasis were old books (some from the 1930s and 194Os), out of print in most cases, and also unilateral in their emphasis (incorporating nothing on Structure of Science and only a little on Scientific Skill Development).

One advantage which the concept of curriculum emphases brought to this part of the committee’s task, then, was to provide a useful analytical device for discerning what makes one textbook “feel different” from another, even though both share many of the same subject matter topics. Thus a chapter on Heat in one textbook might deal with a com- parison between caloric and kinetic-molecular theory, while another (older) one might include diagrams and explanations to compare hot-water and hot-air heating systems in homes (Note 10).

A second advantage, specifically in the task of writing instructional materials, was to bring out the need for a coherent theme or, as we came to call it, a plausible “story line” to integrate the unit. That is, the subject matter topics in a unit have to flow logically, of course, but so does the emphasis. The reader will recall that a curriculum emphasis was defined as a coherent set of messages about science and, therefore, that coherence and flow are matters for concern as much as the coherence and flow of the subject matter itself. Thus the writing team had to make short-term (daily, weekly) objectives for both the subject matter and the curriculum emphasis consistent with broader (perhaps unit- length) aims and even broader (perhaps year-length) goals for each (Note 1 I ) .

I t became clear rapidly, during the writing conference, that a curriculum emphasis shapes not only the contextual (“meta-lesson”) objectives and aims of a unit, but also to a certain extent controls the depth and breadth of subject matter treatment and the in- clusion/exclusion of some optional subject matter as well. Interestingly, Zacharias and White (1964) wrote incisively about this matter (although they did not use the concept “curriculum emphasis”), when they described the orientation of the PSSC course. They stated that “the Physical Science Study Committee course contains little about sound, or electric circuitry, or relativity. They are omitted, not because they are devoid of interest, but because they are not central to the theme” (p. 71). The “theme” it was decided the PSSC course should convey is “the modern physicist’s outlook upon his universe,” and to that end “the course would be directed toward familiarizing the student with two central

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notions of modern physics: the wave-particle duality and the modern concept of the atom” (Ibid. ).

“The modern physicist’s outlook upon his universe” does not constitute a curriculum emphasis, nor do the “two central notions.” However, the following comment completes the picture. “The task of the [curriculum] reviser is to see that what [the student] learns is appropriate, and that through what he has learned he will be able to grasp the signifi- cance of the discipline as a whole” (p. 72). They speak, of course, about the Structure of Science emphasis. Notice how the choice of subject matter is influenced. The selected set of messages about science constituting this curriculum emphasis deals with the sig- nificance of physics as a discipline, presumably through a set of explicit messages about how the discipline functions. Such significance, in turn, is embodied (for these developers, at least) in “the modern physicist’s outlook upon his universe,” which is represented by the two “central notions of physics” identified. Other subject matter in physics is thereby (logically) declared marginal or irrelevant.

A final advantage we found the concept of curriculum emphases brought to the work of the writing committee was a sense of active, systematic control over the writing process, That is, by keeping in mind the curriculum emphasis desired for a particular unit, the writers were able to approach the design of the materials more rationally. When produced i n trial form for teachers to implement in the classroom, the materials were even color- coded; blue for Structure of Science (the Coordinator preferred “Nature of Science”), red for Scientific Skill Development, and green for “Science and Society.” Some subject matter units were produced in more than one version, to give teachers maximum flexibility of choice. As part of the project the research team itself produced one unit (Properties of Matter) in all three versions, together with an introduction which described the process and the rationale for doing so (Roberts & Orpwood, 1979). The popularity of the mul- tiple-version manual in other Boards of Education (judging from sales figures), coupled with requests for professional development sessions in which curriculum emphases are explained and operationalized, indicates that the use of the concept as an active, sys- tematic approach to materials development has been very successful indeed.

Classroom Implementation of the Materials

Perhaps the most important advantage conferred by the curriculum emphases concept, when one gets to the point of classroom implementation, is that it provides a linguistic “handle” for talking about a very sensitive area: teacher values. Despite the general agreement amongst the large decision-making body the Coordinator established, con- cerning the emphases to be expressed in each of the subject matter units in the 7-8 pro- gram, when it came to the nitty-gritty of actually teaching the units some teachers balked-especially over the “Science and Society” ones. Teachers complained that they did not know how to teach according to such an emphasis. Others declared that the em- phasis was somehow “wrong,” thereby confirming something I had intuitively noticed for a long time. That is, I have found that practitioners incline, somewhat dogmatically, to a view that the Structure of Science emphasis is the “correct” one. (That’s what science is, isn’t i t? they ask.) Other emphases are seen by such folk as aberrations or, worse, bastardizations of the “real thing.” (Even the Coordinator remarked at one point that the “Science and Society” units were “applied science, not science.”)

Two matters make this phenomenon interesting and important. First, it tells us

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something about curriculum emphases. They function as paradigms (or at least as frames of reference), and therefore must be understood in that way. Many of the secondary teachers with whom I have worked recently grew up on American course reform efforts of the 1950s and 1960s in science: BSCS biology, C H E M Study chemistry, and PSSC physics. They studied those courses and now teach them. Also, they were steeped in the Structure of Science emphasis when they were preparing to teach, since it was anticipated they would be teaching courses of that ilk. The possible legitimacy of other curriculum emphases, then, is difficult for them to comprehend; they have never experienced any others. They are constrained by a bias, and are unaware of it, even when discussing science for early adolescents (rather than students in “named” science courses in the upper secondary school).

Second, it tells us something about curricular argument. The degree to which the messages about science in anyone’s Structure of Science emphasis actually correspond to “the way science is” is an important issue, of course. One does not wish to communicate incorrect information about what science is. ( I leave aside, for present purposes, a dis- cussion of the point that “what science is” depends on which philosophy of science is being used as an interpretive framework.) But the decision to orient curriculum efforts to communicate such information at all, or exclusively, or to whom, is a different kind of issue-one for which there is no “correct” answer. I t is the value-laden aspect of argu- ments on behalf of curriculum emphases.

Thus, the concept of curriculum emphases removed the teacher arguments from the status of “merely opinion” to a larger and more significant level in science education. That the coherent set of messages comprising a curriculum emphasis is selected is an obvious clue that a curriculum emphasis expresses a value position-a declaration abogt the worth of certain outcomes for students. It is just as obvious that making sense of claims on behalf of conflicting curriculum emphases is not a matter of determining which em- phasis is “correct” or “true.” Rather, an emphasis is judged in terms of its defensibility for particular students under particular circumstances. In some cases, of course, the arguments advanced in defense of particular curriculum emphases can be found in statements of overall goals for science education, as these have been set forth from time to time by various committees, commissions, and other groups. More important, though, is the point that no one curriculum emphasis is any more “right” than another, apriori. Each is theoretically as possible as the others. Each provides an answer to the question: Why should the student study science a t all? (Note 12).

Part 111: Science for Early Adolescents-A New Viewpoint for Old Problems

It is healthy to discuss perennial problems of science education in the context of the 12-1 5 age range, for in those years we are closest to holding the total future adult pop- ulation as a captive audience for science instruction. The shoe of professional responsibility pinches tightly. When the students get older, in a large number of educational jurisdictions they can opt out of science courses completely. Many do. When the students are younger, in a large number of educational jurisdictions the school can opt out of providing any systematic science instruction. And many do. I don’t need to cite the numbers, for they are readily available. Instead I shall focus on three major points: the matter of “relevance” of science instruction, the appropriate character of debate about science programs, and

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a very specific aspect of the influence teacher education can have on the defensibility of science programs in schools. These matters will be viewed, of course, through the conceptual lens of curriculum emphases.

Seeing “Relevance” in a New Light

To begin the examination of relevance of science education programs for early ado- lescents, I invite the reader to reflect on the seven curriculum emphases which emerged in science education practice in North America since the turn of the century. It must be clear that, in an absolute sense, no one of those is any more “relevant” than another. That is, each emphasis expresses an aspect of science and, indeed, legitimate theoretical and practical activities of mankind are seen reflected in every one. Thus philosophy of science informs and parallels the Structure of Science emphasis, while engineering, the study of technology, and the practice of various technical and political arts are all counterparts to Everyday Coping and Science, Technology, and Decisions. The scientific disciplines themselves, especially because of their cumulative and self-correcting nature, both mirror and are mirrored in three emphases: Scientific Skill Development, Solid Foundation, and Correct Explanations. The Self as Explainer emphasis is essentially the counterpart to university study of intellectual and cultural perspectives on human institutions-one way to study science from the vantage point of the humanities, as sometimes is done ~LI the history of science. The relative legitimacy of the emphases, when compared to each other, is simply a nonissue: all of their “parent” disciplines or activities are equally le- gitimate.

If there are seven equally legitimate emphases around “in the air,” surely the relevance of a science education program would rest on the extent to which students are exposed to as many emphases as possible. Recall that in the early adolescent age range one stands the best chance of holding the total future adult population as a captive audience for science instruction. Also, recall that early adolescents are developing rapidly in a number of ways: physically, emotionally, and ethically, as well as intellectually. The relevance of a science education program which stressed some aspects of development but neglected others, or which favored one subgroup of the population to the detriment of others, would be questionable automatically. Yet a moment’s reflection will show that limiting a pro- gram to one or two curriculum emphases would do just that. Let us explore the matter further.

The Proper Character of Arguments about Science Programs Arguments mounted in favor of one or another direction for science programs are

appropriately practical in character, rather than theoretical. That is, what is wanted as a result of the argument is a defensible decision rather than some warranted knowledge. (The distinction is Aristotle’s, not mine.) In that regard, science education (a practical endeavor) is radically different from science (a theoretical endeavor). For the practical task of program design takes as its ultimate problem the question “What shall we do?” rather than “What is the case?” To be sure, knowledge has a role in the deliberations conducted by practitioners responsible for science programs. But knowledge is blended with ethics in that process. Hence the objectives a group decides are appropriate for particular youngsters under particular circumstances cannot be derived from “research” alone. Alternatives must be weighed in terms of what is valued as worthwhile for the

CURRICULUM EMPHASES 255

youngsters being taught, and that weighing is not a scientific process (cf. Orpwood, 1980b).

Such arguments become more manageable when the issues are cast in terms of cur- riculum emphases, for two reasons. First, the alternatives are a manageable number, and their broad overall differences are relatively clear. Second, for most emphases there is at least one program in existence which incorporates the features of the emphasis, so that practitioners can see what is entailed if they were to opt for it. But the debate about alternatives is not assisted by such questions as “Do the methods of the new curriculum achieve science objectives better than older methods?,” a specific question which also reflects the entire tone of the paper on science education alternatives by Saadeh (1 973). That question is posed theoretically, and it ignores the practical character of debate as practitioners (who, after all, must decide) experience it, viz. “What aspect($) of science (what curriculum emphases) shall we stress, for these students, now?” Saadeh asked “What’s the best way to do IT?,” as if IT were unidimensional rather than multiple. More promising, for the much-touted integration of theory into practice, is a research sum- mary/analysis about a single emphasis, in terms of who can master it, how well, at what ages, what the unintended consequences are, etc. A recent paper by Welch (1 979) is an example. Similarly, an earlier paper by Dede and Hardin (1 973) is an analytical exam- ination of change to a new emphasis. Both papers deal with the Structure of Science emphasis-the authors don’t call it that, of course-as it was expressed in many American science course reform efforts, whose products were widely adopted in Canada.

Teacher Education, Teachers, and Defensible Science Programs I have made reference already to the impression I have that a science curriculum

emphasis can serve as a set of conceptual blinders, or a bias, about which teachers are frequently unaware. Specifically in terms of the Structure of Science emphasis, let us consider present-day science teachers up to about age 40, all of whom would have entered secondary school after 1957. It is highly likely that virtually all science teachers in that age bracket (at least in the U.S. and Canada) studied secondary science courses stressing a Structure of Science emphasis. It is also likely that the science teaching courses which were part of their preservice teacher education stressed Structure of Science, since preservice instruction tends to concentrate on what intending teachers can expect to be teaching in classrooms. Then, those new teachers actually found Structure of Science texts in their own classrooms, as the material from which they were to teach.

Now, given the overwhelming consistency of that evidence-secondary school expe- rience, teacher education experience, and on-the-job experience-anyone would come to believe that Structure of Science was the way to organize a science program. Any other curriculum emphasis would naturally be seen as deviant from the “correct” emphasis. The implication for science program planning for early adolescents, then, would be that such courses should prepare youngsters for Structure of Science courses (the “real thing”) in secondary school. It is an argument frequently advanced by secondary teachers, and it is entirely plausible once one recognizes the biasing influence of a curriculum em- phasis.

A curriculum emphasis, then, can be a science teacher’s whole way of construing his professional craft-his whole purpose in teaching. One doesn’t have to search too far into history to find evidence that it is difficult to get teachers to shift to a new curriculum

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emphasis. Howard Gruber’s name is generally associated with early evaluation of teacher re-education programs sponsored by the U S . National Science Foundation. In 1959 he published an evaluation of the first such program held at the University of Colorado-a year-long, full-time program of teacher re-education to support implementation of the (then) new Structure of Science courses. Note this from the Preface to his report.

During this first year, one problem emerged that seemed both significant and unduly neglected. This was the need to convey to the high school teacher, and ultimately to his pupil, something of the way in which scientists and mathematicians work and think. Transmitting the established facts and theories in many fields of science has long been the focus of science education, but not enough attention has been given to the problem of encouraging a scientific frame of mind. And yet it is thisfeel rather than the particular facts of science that is of most general value for the interested public, i f not for the highly developed specialist. The way in which this problem unfolded itself will be one of the re-current themes in the present report. (Gruber et al., 1959, p. ii)

Gruber is saying, essentially, that the key problem encountered in the program was not mastery of new science, but mastery of the new curriculum emphasis. I would call it a shift from a Correct Explanation emphasis to Structure of Science, and Gruber’s data support what a number of writers were saying at that time (e.g., Schwab, 1962; Watson, 1962). Several of Gruber’s papers reiterate the same point (1960, 1961, 1963).

Consider another example. Two decades later, in the report of the Exeter Conference on Secondary School Science Education (Aaronian et al., 1980), we find in the Summary that the participants met because of

what they considered to be a crisis in science education. . . . Typical high school courses were considered to be woefully inadequate in addressing those many current problems which require scientific knowledge for their understanding-e.g., energy, pollution, population resources, genetic engineering-and in providing students with the background knowledge and problem-solving skills they will need in their lives. (p. I )

Later in the report the problems teachers would face in mastering and delivering the material in the “new” emphasis ( I would call this one a shift to Science, Technology, and Decisions) are stated as follows.

For the science teachers the problem is that however great the good will, the technical training, and the experience, they usually have limited access to the essential information on a useful, il- lustrative social issue in a form that is usable in a classroom setting. And new issues are constantly arising (e.g., chemical waste disposal) and old ones changing their dimensions. Of necessity the teacher sticks to the permanent and unchanging on the grounds that in at least one sense nothing is so new as Newton’s Laws nor so old as the morning newspaper. (p. 10, italics in original)

In one sense, then, history is repeating itself. Once a curriculum emphasis comes into vogue it suffuses textbooks, teacher preparation programs, schools, and-above all- teacher thinking. It will be no more easy to shift the thinking of large numbers of teachers to Science, Technology, and Decisions than it was twenty years ago to shift teacher thinking to Structure of Science.

Those two examples reveal a challenge to,science teacher education and re-education, and indeed to science education generally. As mentioned earlier, the greater the range of curriculum emphases in a program the more defensible it is-especially a program for students in the early adolescent age range, many of whom are experiencing their last science instruction. Unfortunately, when reform movements are initiated they typically

CURRICULUM EMPHASES 257

call for a shift to a single emphasis which is being neglected. Once a significant amount of support develops for the new emphasis (as seems to be happening now for Science, Technology, and Decisions), the usual demeanor of educational rhetoric is to cast the chosen emphasis as “good” and “modern” and “innovative,” while all others are “inad- equate” and “traditional” and “out of date.” The implications for practice which flow from such bandwagon rhetoric suggest throwing out the baby with the bathwater-i.e., excising all remnants of the older emphases from textbooks, teacher education programs, etc.

Far more promising would be an approach that reflected enlightment about the shifting forces which bring different curriculum emphases to the forefront a t different times, coupled with an active cultivation of tolerance for more than one emphasis. Such en- lightenment and tolerance would logically require that the curriculum emphases concept be understood, that its function be recognized, and that its several manifestations in the history of science education be appreciated. That approach, as we have seen, is especially important in planning programs adequate to the challenge of science for early adolescent students.

Reference Notes

1. Part I of this article is adapted from an earlier unpublished paper of mine (Roberts, 1978).

2. Watzlawick et al. (1967) discuss communication as a process in which two messages are distinguished: the digital communication expressed by the actual words and the analogic com- munication expressed by the context. The two are inseparable. Implicit messages about science are, obviously, examples of analogic communications.

3. Further (if indirect) confirmation comes from the work of Gabel (1976), who attempted to classify all science education objectives which relate to “scientific literacy” from an extensivc literature search. Gabel found he needed a system of eight categories, and again my seven emphases have dealt with the same diversity as that found by another investigator.

4. The Everyday Coping emphasis is based on a most optimistic view of the potential of science. See the discussion of Science, Technology, and Decisions (below) for a curriculum emphasis bascd on a more moderate (I would claim also a more realistic) view.

5. In the thirty-first NSSE Yearbook (Whipple, 1932), the objectives of science teaching (sec especially pp. 41 -57) are related to overall aims of education as “functional understanding” of scientific principles, including the ability “to apply the principle in practical situations” (p. 43). That captures the essence of this curriculum emphasis.

6. The paper is also helpful in considering how decisions and choices about curriculum emphases themselves might be made defensibly. In that regard, see also Schwab’s more detailed treatment in his series of three papers characterizing curriculum development as a “practical” enterprisc (Schwab, 1969, 1971, 1973).

7. John Lewis is Organizer for the Science in Society Project. Information can be obtained from the Association for Science Education, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. Also, over the next twelve months OISE Press will be publishing a series of eight teacher’s manuals incorporating this emphasis; these are keyed to grades 7- 10 units, and have grown out of my work.

8. One hesitates to use the phrase “general education,” because of the many images it calls forth. Nevertheless, this curriculum emphasis has its historical roots in a particular interpretation of “general education in science.” See Chapter 4 (especially) of the report prepared by the Harvard Committee (1945). See also Conant (1951), and Cohen and Watson (1952).

258 ROBERTS

9. More detailcd development of this aspect of the Self as Explainer curriculum emphasis can be found in my doctoral dissertation (Roberts, 1965).

10. Actually, the research team developed a rather popular scheme for practitioner use in an- alyzing textbooks to determine curriculum emphases (Orpwood & Rpberts, 1980).

I I . Grobman ( 1 970) deals cogently with this point, in her discussion of the relationships among “long-run aims,” on the one hand, and “intermediate” and “immediate” aims, on the other (pp. 96- 104). She, in turn, takes due note of a similar set of relationships discussed by Krathwohl (1965) among global aims, intermediate aims, and detailed aims. And, finally, we retain in everyday ed- ucational parlance a similar set of relationships when we distinguish among goals, aims, and ob- jectives.

12. Arguments made on behalf of curriculum emphases are partly empirical, partly value-laden. Hence they are instances ofpractical reasoning (see Gauthier, 1963). A classic example i s Watson’s ( 1967) argument on behalf of the curriculum emphasis expressed by Project Physics.

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Received 17 February 1981 Accepted 16 July 198 1

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