Abstract
Present science education reforms, prompted by students’ declining participation and achievement in science, have focused on changing the precollege science curriculum. Those changes shift the emphasis from content to process, from students’ regurgitating knowledge to showing they understand the material and an attempt to show students that science is a “way of knowing” and “a process for producing knowledge” (Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990). Science educators have utilised constructivism as a theory of knowledge to help us understand how students learn, and in particular how this theory may improve the teaching of science education. There are several different forms of constructivism: radical constructivism, trivial constructivism, social constructivism and contextual constructivism. Several researchers have outlined constructivism’s limitation as a theory of knowledge (O’Loughlin, 1992; Solomon, 1994). More specifically in a discussion about gender, science education and constructivism, McComish, (1995) cited five areas that were “problematic for constructivism”. (1) The nature of science; (2) the purposes of education; (3) the nature of individuals; (4) how students learn; and (5) the role of teachers. She notes that these areas are inter-related and “none… can be changed in any fundamental way if corresponding changes in the others are not made” (McComish, 1995, p. 131). In this chapter I will address how students learn and the role of teachers because the rhetorical space for a meaningful discussion regarding gender, the nature of science and the purposes of education does not exist (Code, 1995).
Philosophers of science focus on rationality and logic, not friendship and love; on prepositional knowledge and theoretical understanding, not intimate knowledge and integrative intuition. The uniqueness and complexity of individuals are viewed as problems to be overcome by science not as irreducible aspects of nature; personal feelings and relationships are taken to be impediment to objectivity, not ingredients of discovery. J.R. Martin (1988, p. 130)
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Scantlebury, K. (1998). An Untold Story: Gender, Constructivism & Science Education. In: Cobern, W.W. (eds) Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Science Education. Science & Technology Education Library, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5224-2_6
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