Valuable Lessons

1
Valuable Lessons

• Engaging with the social context of science in
  schools (report for The Wellcome Trust)
• Ralph Levinson
• r.levinson_at_ioe.ac.uk

2
Aspects of controversy

• A contemporary issue
• Science is controversial?
• Precedents
• The National Curriculum

3
Attitudes

• Types of school
• Locus of values
• Balance
• Sensitivity
• Professionalism
• Content-laden syllabus

4
Recommendations implications for teaching

• Research to look at effective ethics teaching in
  science
• Training opportunities to use principles of moral
  philosophy when addressing socio-scientific
  issues
• Educational materials
• Research into how philosophy courses currently
  run in some primary and secondary schools affect
  the moral development and ethical decision making
  by pupils
• Quality training courses to update teachers on
  biomedical developments and their social, ethical
  and legal implications
• Support material to accommodate range of secular
  and religious perspectives towards various
  socio-scientific issues.

5
Organisation

• The democratic school
• Time
• School policies
• Across the curriculum

6
Recommendations implications for organisation

• DfES, professional subject bodies, HEIs and those
  involved in relevant initiatives - such as
  Citizenship Education - to explore potential for
  cross-curricular initiatives
• Teacher access to CPD to ensure they can
  implement such schemes
• Citizenship curriculum to encourage consideration
  of socio-scientific issues and guide schools on
  relevant topics and issues.
• Educational materials to invite analysis of
  socio-scientific issues from a range of
  perspectives but which also provide sufficient,
  accurate and accessible technical scientific
  information for non-specialists

7
Expectations

• Parents and students
• Teachers
• Modes of assessment (valuing what students
  achieve)
• Formal assessment

8
Recommendations implications for the curriculum
and its assessment

• Set out issues more clearly in exam
  specifications
• QCA to identify where issues could be covered in
  the curriculum and make explicit to awarding
  bodies.
• Socio-scientific issues to be integrated into the
  curriculum where possible
• Formal assessment criteria devised to give
  recognition both to discursive argument and
  knowledge of science
• Post-16 students to be encouraged to take AS
  Science for Public Understanding course

9
Moving on the stakeholder conference

• Emphasis on teaching science in a social context
  at Key Stage 3
• More flexibility in the curriculum
• Teach social context through science and should
  be mainstreamed
• Citizenship may be best means of fostering
  cross-curricular integration
• High level (ministerial endorsement) of national
  centre of excellence for science teaching
• Intermediate level support for resource
  development and review
• Local agents, e.g. INSET specialist, LEA
  advisers, to promote or expedite new initiatives