Review of Research on Humanistic Perspectives in Science Curricula
Glen S. Aikenhead
College of Education
University of Saskatchewan
28 Campus Drive
Saskatoon, SK, S7N 0X1
Canada
glen.aikenhead@usask.ca
A paper presented at the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) 2003 Conference,
Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, August 19-23, 2003.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
Introduction
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
A Short history of Humanistic Perspectives in the Science Curriculum . . . . . 3
Science
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The Science Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
A Recent Humanistic Science Curriculum Movement . . . . . . . . . . 8
Conclusion
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Curriculum Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Major Failures of the Traditional Science Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . 11
Learning and Using Science in Other contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Research on Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Wish-They-Knew Science
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Need-To-Know Science
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Functional Science
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Enticed-To-Know Science
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Have-Cause-To-Know Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Personal-Curiosity Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Science-As-Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Conclusion
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Cultural Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Processes For Formulating Curriculum Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Classroom Materials
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Research and Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Developmental Research
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Action Research
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Teacher Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Challenges to Curriculum Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Decisions Not to Implement
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Success at Implementation
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Components to a Teacher’s Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Pre-Service Experiences
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
School Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Conclusion
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Student Learning
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Canonical Science Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Evidence Gathering Techniques for Humanistic Content . . . . . . . . 54
Summative Assessment in Quasi-Experimental Studies
. . . . . . . . 59
Other Investigations in Humanistic Science Education
. . . . . . . . 62
Student Decision Making
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Conclusion
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Discussion of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Credibility
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Relevance
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Research Paradigms and Methodologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Scale
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Implications for Future Research Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
References
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
By convention, school science has traditionally aimed to prepare students for the next level of
science courses, ultimately funnelling students into careers associated with science and engineering, that
is, “the pipeline” phenomenon (Frederick, 1991; Millar & Osborne, 1998). For students who embrace
other career goals (the vast majority of students; Atkins & Helm, 1993; Lyons, 2003; Reiss, 2000), the
same school science is often rationalized as serving two main purposes: the need to understand science
well enough to appreciate its national importance, and the need to be literate enough to receive scientific
messages expressed by experts or the mass media (AAAS, 1989). The traditional science curriculum with
its canonical science content assumes that “science” in “school science” has the same meaning as it has in,
for example, “the American Association for the Advancement of Science.” A different assumption for
school science is considered here.
Over the past century, alternative perspectives to the traditional science curriculum have been
developed and researched. Probably the most pervasive alternative has been the perspective that views
science as a human endeavour, embedded within a social milieu of society and conducted by various
social communities of scientists. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the research about these
humanistic perspectives in the school science curriculum, perspectives that would significantly alter the
tenor of school science.
Any perspective on the science curriculum, be it humanistic or solely scientific, expresses an
ideological point of view explicitly or implicitly (Cross, 1997; Cross, Zatsepin & Gavrilenko, 2000;
Fensham, 2000b; Fourez, 1988, 1989; Kain, 2001). This paper’s ideology gives priority to a studentcentred point of view aimed at citizens as consumers of science and technology in their everyday lives, as
opposed to a scientist-centred view aimed at scientific or science-related careers. In the political arena
defined by Spencer’s (1859, p. 5) question, “What knowledge is [should be] of most worth?” the research
literature expresses essentially two contrary positions, often in combination (Lijnse, Kortland, Eijkelhof,
van Gerrderen & Hooymeyer, 1990; Solomon, 1999b): educationally driven propositions about what is
best for students and society, and politically driven realities supported by de facto arguments of the status
quo. Although empirical evidence overwhelmingly speaks to the educational failure of traditional school
science (described below), the continuous survival and high status of traditional school science attest to its
political success. The research reviewed in this paper reflects the tension between educational soundness
and political reality. We must not forget that curriculum decisions are first and foremost political
decisions (Brickhouse& Bodner, 1992; Carr, 1993; Eijkelhof & Kapteijn, 2000; Fensham, 1992; Roberts,
1988; Rudolph, 2003; Young, 1971). Research can inform curriculum decision making, but the rational,
evidence-based, findings of research tend to wilt in the presence of ideologies, as curriculum choices are
made within specific school jurisdictions, most often favouring the status quo (Aikenhead, 2002b; Bell,
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Jones & Carr, 1995; Blades, 1997; Carlone, 2003; Cross & Price, 2002; Fensham, 1992, 1993, 1998;
Gaskell, 1992, 2003; Hart, 2002; Hurd, 1991; Panwar & Hoddinott, 1995; Roberts, 1995).
Humanistic perspectives in the science curriculum have been described in various ways, including:
values, the nature of science, the social aspects of science, and the human character of science revealed
through its sociology, history, and philosophy. Since the 1970s, humanistic perspectives in school science
content are perspectives typically found in science-technology-society (STS) curricula, but are not
restricted to STS curricula. Table 1 describes dichotomies of goals and ideologies found in various
research studies. Each row singularly represents what is included and excluded in the phrase “humanistic
perspectives” used in this paper. The various rows indicate different definitions found from study to
study. The first column in Table 1 does not necessarily describe humanistic science courses per se, but
rather some possible components of those courses. Most humanistic science courses combine some of
column one with some of column two, in order to meet the needs of students. (This integration of a
humanistic perspective with a canonical science perspective varies with different research studies
[Aikenhead, 1994d] and can be problematic [Hughes, 2000].)
Table 1. Possible Characteristics of “Humanistic Perspectives” in a Science Curriculum
Included
Excluded
Induction, socialization, or enculturation into students’
local, national, and global communities that are
increasingly shaped by science and technology.
Induction, socialization, enculturation, or
indoctrination into a scientific discipline.
Citizenship preparation for the everyday world
Preprofessional training for the scientific world.
Savvy citizens cognizant of the human and social
dimensions of scientific practice and its consequences.
Canonical abstract ideas most often decontextualized
from everyday life.
Emphasis on science-in-the-making.
Emphasis on ready-made science
Knowledge about science and scientists.
Knowledge of canonical science.
Moral reasoning integrated with values, human
concerns, and scientific reasoning.
Solely scientific reasoning and scientific “habits of
mind.”
Seeing the world through the eyes of students and
significant adults.
Seeing the world through the eyes of scientists alone.
Playing in the subculture of science as an outsider.
Identifying with the subculture of science as an insider.
3
Humanistic perspectives in the science curriculum have a long history, dating back to the early
19th century when natural philosophy was sporadically taught in some schools. This history, particularly
events following World War II, provides a context for appreciating both the educationally and politically
driven agendas that motivate the research found in the science education literature, and for understanding
the literature’s conceptualization of humanistic perspectives in the curriculum.
This paper also encompasses the three forms of any curriculum: the intended, taught, and learned
curriculum. An intended humanistic curriculum relates to curriculum policy that determines which
humanistic perspectives are sanctioned. The taught humanistic curriculum comprises the classroom
materials that support humanistic science teaching, and the teachers’ orientations that determine the
implementation of a humanistic perspective into school science. The learned curriculum, of course, is the
humanistic content students actually learn. Accordingly, pertinent research studies will be reviewed and
synthesized in the following sequence: history of humanistic perspectives in science education,
curriculum policy, classroom materials, teacher orientation, student learning, discussion of the research,
and implications for future research studies. This synthesis gives emphasis to how different research
methods shape different types of outcomes, and it draws conclusions concerning strengths, weaknesses,
and fruitful directions for further research.
A humanistic perspective is not the only radical innovation to challenge the status quo of school
science. Other innovations, such as project-based learning, technology-design courses, social
constructivism, and science for practical action, are not considered here directly, but may surface as
features of a particular humanistic oriented science curriculum.
In-depth studies into students’ abilities to deal with philosophical and social aspects of science
suggest that overt humanistic content is more suitable for students aged 11 and older (Pedretti, 1999;
Solomon, Duveen, Scot & McCarthy), and aged 16 or older for controversial issues (Driver, Leach, Millar
& Scott, 1996). Accordingly, this paper restricts itself to school science that serves that age group. This
review also excludes non-research literature that simply advocates a position or offers a rationale for a
humanistic perspective.
A Short History of Humanistic Perspectives in the Science Curriculum
School subjects are grounded implicitly in the historical process through which they arose (Sáez &
Carretero, 2002). The ideology of the traditional science curriculum is easily understood when placed in
the historical context of its 19th century origin, an origin that emerged within the on-going evolution of
science itself. Research into the history of the school curriculum is summarized here to provide a
4
framework for the conceptualizations of humanistic perspectives in the science curriculum. This summary
is contextualized within the development of science itself.
Science
The domain of knowledge we call “science” today has evolved over the years and continues to
evolve in the 21st century. This history has a direct bearing on school science content, traditional and
humanistic. Our Euro-centric line in the evolution of science began with the Greek origins of philosophy
(pure abstract ideas) and then radically advanced during the 17th century with the establishment of natural
philosophy as a social institution within Western Europe, a transformation called “the scientific
revolution” today. As natural philosophers, such as Newton or Boyle, learned more about the physical
universe, their success at exercising power and dominion over nature attracted the attention of
entrepreneurs who adapted the methods of natural philosophy to gain power and dominion over human
productivity, in the context of various industries emerging across 18th century Britain (Mendelsohn,
1976). This gave rise to the Industrial Revolution and provided a new social status for technologists.
Industrialists at the time spoke of natural philosophy as “the handmaiden of technology” (Fuller, 1997).
However, the independent minded natural philosophers would have none of it. In the early 19th century,
natural philosophers began to distance themselves from technologists, thereby precipitating the next
radical transformation in the evolution of modern science.
Natural philosophers, led by Whewell, an Anglican priest and natural philosopher of mineralogy at
Trinity College Cambridge, set about to revise the public image of natural philosophy by portraying
technologists, for example James Watt of steam engine fame, as people whose success depended upon
applying the abstract knowledge of natural philosophy (Fuller, 1997; Layton, 1991). He and his
colleagues succeeded in their revisionist project, and today there is widespread belief in the erroneous
notion that technology is solely applied science, thereby maintaining the ideology that holds “pure
science” superior to practice (Collingridge, 1989).
Reconstructing history was only one step in the 19th century’s radical advance towards modern
science. A new social institution was required and it needed a secure social niche in 19th century society.
In short, natural philosophy needed to be professionalised (Layton, 1986; Mendelsohn, 1976; Orange,
1981). Very purposefully and deliberately, the name “science” was chosen to replace “natural
philosophy” during the birth of a new organization in 1831, the British Association for the Advancement
of Science (BAAS). “In seeking to achieve wider public support for science, the British Association
wanted to present its members as a group of men united by a common dedication to the investigation of
nature” (Yeo, 1981, p. 69). With the advent of the BAAS in 1831, a new meaning for “science” was
5
added to the English lexicon, a meaning we primarily use today (Orange, 1981). In a speech to the 3rd
annual meeting of the BAAS in 1834, Whewell coined the term “scientist” to refer to the cultivators of the
new science – those who attended annual meetings of the BAAS (MacLeod, 1981).
To accommodate participants at yearly BAAS meetings, themes of concurrent sessions were
organized around the administrative structure of the new University of Berlin, founded in 1810, which
partitioned natural philosophy into the disciplines of physics, chemistry, geology, zoology, botany, etc.
(Fuller, 1997). This classification scheme would eventually determine the structure of the science
curriculum in the 1860s.
In addition to providing a professional identity for scientists, a professionalised science required
the authority to decide who would become a scientist and who would be excluded. This gate-keeping role
was quickly taken up by universities where new disciplinary departments were being established. By
ensconcing itself within the cloisters of university academia where it could control access to the various
disciplines, and by defining what those disciplines would entail, the professionalisation of natural
philosophy was essentially complete in England by 1850.
The BAAS served as a model for the American Society of Geologists and Naturalists when in
1848 the Society established the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 2002).
Similar to the BAAS, the prime functions of AAAS were to promote the cultivation of science across the
US, give systematic direction to scientific research, and to procure resources for its members.
Nineteenth century science continued to evolve during the 20th century. World War II likely
reshaped science more than any single historical event (Mendelsohn, 1976). Abstract science was forced
to cohabit with practical technology in order to defeat the Axis powers and preserve democracy. This
unlikely marriage irrevocably bound most of science and technology into a new social institution called
research and development (R&D). Today the dominant patrons of R&D include business, industry, the
military, government, and private foundations. Only a small minority of academic scientists, less than 5%,
undertake purely curiosity-oriented research (Council of Science and Technology, 1993). Following the
20th century radical transformation of 19th century science into modern science (i.e. the collectivization of
science; Ziman, 1984), scientists still strive for power and dominion over nature, but in a new social
context of R&D where technology, values, corporate profits, and social accountability play an
increasingly important role (Hurd, 1994; Solomon, 1994a,b). The evolution of science continues today.
The Science Curriculum
The history of a formal, school science curriculum dates back to the 19th century (Bybee, 1993;
DeBoer, 1991; Del Giorno, 1969; Gaskell, 2003; Hurd, 1991; Jenkins, 1985; Keeves & Aikenhead, 1995;
6
Layton, 1973, 1981; Montgomery, 1994; Osborne, 2003). In the 1850s, the British school curriculum was
overcrowded with religious studies, the classics, grammar and languages, mathematics, and history. There
was little room for new subjects such as the sciences. It would take the prestige and influence of the
BAAS to change that.
The BAAS approved its “Scientific Education in Schools” report in 1867 (Layton, 1981). The
BAAS promoted an ideology of “pure science,” serving a self-interest in gaining members in the
Association and in obtaining research funds for those members. This also resonated well with the 19th
century progressive education movement’s ideology that stressed mental training (Layton, 1981). “It
seemed that chemistry and physics had been fashioned into effective instruments for both intellectual
education and the production of embryonic scientists. A common thread had been devised to the twin
ends of a liberal education and the advancement of science” (Layton, 1986, p. 115, emphasis in the
original). As a result, UK education reformers in 1867 produced a science curriculum that marginalized
practical utility and eschewed utilitarian issues and values related to everyday life, reflecting the BAAS’s
newly achieved divide between science and technology, and at the same time, reinforcing social class
ideologies that favoured the elite upper class (Seddon, 1991). The “mental training” argument certainly
helped squeeze the new science disciplines into an already crowded school curriculum.
The BAAS official position on education in 1867 distinguished between public understanding of
science for the general education of a citizen and pre-professional training for future members of the
BAAS (Layton, 1981). Pre-professional training served the scientific community’s ideology and also
augmented the progressive education movement by promising it the following outcome: “the scientific
habit of mind [is] the principal benefit resulting from scientific training” (p. 194). These ideologies
quickly became the status quo and have not changed much in spite of the collectivization of science
during the 20th century (Aikenhead, 1994c).
In the US, organized curriculum development for high school science began in earnest during the
1890s in the context of a debate between advocates for citizen science (e.g. “Science of Society;”
Spencer, 1859, p. 90) and pre-professional training (encyclopaedic science; Noll, 1939). The latter
position was encouraged by events in the UK and by the appearance in the 1860s of German schools that
specialized in teaching scientific disciplines (Jenkins, 1985). The AAAS was absent from this forum
because of its preoccupation with its own survival as an institution between 1861 and 1894. Prior to the
1980s, the science curriculum in the US consisted of assorted topics in astronomy, physiology, geology,
natural philosophy, physics, chemistry, zoology, and botany (Del Giorno, 1969). In 1892, the National
Education Association established the Committee of Ten, chaired by Charles Eliot, President of Harvard
University (Hurd, 1991; Kliebard, 1979). Ideologically Eliot championed mental training, but opposed
7
screening high school students for college admission as a central function of schools. The Committee
proposed four areas of high school study: classics, Latin-sciences, modern languages, and English; a
menu of programs much broader than the college admission requirements at the time. Eliot harboured an
unbridled optimism about the intellectual capability of all students (“science for all” in today’s
vernacular). Eliot’s Committee of Ten was unanimously against streaming students, within their elective
interests. These and other proposals by the Committee drew strong criticism (Kliebard, 1979). As often
happens in the heat of debate, one’s opponents make false accusations that sometime stick like Velcro in
the public eye. Eliot’s critics accused the Committee of imposing college entrance expectations on the
high school curriculum, a criticism that college science faculty then embraced as a Committee
recommendation (Hurd, 1991). Thus, in the aftermath of the debate over the report by the Committee of
Ten, the US science curriculum stressed both pre-professional and mental training. By 1910, the
American status quo for school science mirrored England’s.
By contemplating the historical origins of today’s traditional science curriculum, we recognize it is
as essentially a 19th century curriculum in its educational intent. In addition, we can better appreciate the
powerful ideologies that guide and sustain school science today and therefore socialize students into
scientific disciplines (i.e. moving through “the pipeline”). This same socialization causes most science
teachers to teach in very similar ways toward very similar goals (Aikenhead, 1984; Cross, 1997;
Gallagher, 1998). The ideologies of pre-professional scientific training, mental training, and screening for
college entrance challenge any move to reform school science into a subject that embraces a humanistic
perspective (Fensham, 1992, 1998).
Before, and ever since the science curriculum’s inauguration in 1867 (UK) and 1893 (US), there
have always been educators who promoted school science as a subject that connects with everyday
society. Different eras have brought different social, economic, political, and educational forces to bear on
reforming the science curriculum into a humanistic type of curriculum (DeBoer, 1991; Del Giorno, 1969).
Hurd (1986, 1991) reviewed American attempts at this type of reform, mentioning, among others: the
early 1900s applied science and technology courses, “viewed by scientists as an educational fad and were
soon replaced by … simplified versions of … university science courses” (1991, p. 254); a 1920 US
Bureau of Education report; a 1928 AAAS committee; a 1932 NSSE study; a 1945 Harvard report; and
the 1983 Nation at Risk report. Hurd’s historical research concluded that every committee and report
criticized the science curriculum as being too narrow in vision, in subject matter, and in organization to
relate science and technology to human, social, and economic affairs. “What the critics are seeking is a
new and more viable contract between schooling and society, one in which science and technology are
more closely tied to human affairs and social progress” (Hurd, 1989, p 2). Other historical studies by
8
Hodson (1999), Layton (1991), and Solomon (1994a), as well as case study research by Fensham (1998),
showed how innovative humanistic proposals in the UK and Australia contravened the social privilege
and power that benefited an elite student enrolled in a traditional science curriculum.
This historical research on the science curriculum leads to one conclusion: throughout the 20th
century, attempts at reforming the traditional school curriculum into a humanistic one have largely been
unsuccessful (Bromley & Shutkin, 1988; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; Hurd,
1986, 1991; Klopfer, 1992; Layton, 1991; Walberg, 1991). This research finding provides further
evidence for the complex political power involved in reaching curriculum decisions, an issue revisited
throughout this paper.
A Recent Humanistic Science Curriculum Movement
The empirical research reviewed in this paper is framed by several post World War II humanistic
conceptions of school science often associated with the history and philosophy of science (Matthews,
1994; Fensham, 1992; Seroglou & Koumaras, 2001) and particularly with a movement called “sciencetechnology-society,” STS (Ziman, 1980). Details of the history STS are found elsewhere (Aikenhead,
2003b; Bybee, 1993; Cheek, 1992; Cutcliffe, 1989; Fensham, 1992; Keeves & Aikenhead, 1992;
Solomon, 2003b; Solomon & Aikenhead, 1994; Yager, 1996a) but can be summarized as follows.
Many proposals for a humanistic alternative to school science were inspired by university STS
programs formally initiated in the late 1960s, in the US, UK, Australia, and The Netherlands. These
university academic programs responded to perceived crises in responsibility related to, for instance,
nuclear arms, nuclear energy, many types of environmental degradation, population explosion, and
emerging biotechnologies. Thus, social responsibility for both scientist and citizen formed one of the
major conceptions on a humanistic perspective in school science (Aikenhead, 1980; Bybee, 1993; Cross
& Price, 1992, 2002; Kortland, 2001; Rye & Rubba, 2000; Waks & Prakash, 1985). At the University of
Iowa, for instance, a societal issue-oriented science curriculum project evolved from the integration of
social studies and science (Casteel & Yager, 1968; Cossman, 1969) and a decade later in Colorado
(McConnell, 1982).
A second major conception to emerge from post World War II academia were the poststructuralist
analyses of science itself, often associated with Kuhn’s (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
This analysis tended to challenge the positivism and realism inherent in traditional science courses (AbdEl-Khalick & Lederman, 2000; Kelly, Carlsen & Cunningham, 1993). Interest in humanistic content in
the science curriculum enjoyed a renaissance at several university centres after World War II. At Harvard,
for instance, President J.B. Conant (1947) encouraged his faculty to give serious attention to the history,
9
philosophy, and sociology of science, encouragement taken up at the time by young instructors such as
I.B. Cohen, Thomas Kuhn, and Everett Mendelsohn, respectively; and enhanced by physicist Gerald
Holton. They influenced Ph.D. student Leo Klopfer who produced the History of Science Cases (Klopfer,
1969; Klopfer & Watson, 1957) and who critically researched their impact in schools (Klopfer & Cooley,
1963). Similarly influenced was Jim Gallagher’s (1971) presciently articulated blueprint for an STS
science curriculum (echoed in Hurd’s 1975 seminal publication) that rationalized teaching scientific
concepts and processes embedded in the sociology/history/philosophy of science, relevant technology,
and social issues (i.e. teaching content, process, and context). Probably the most influential science
education project to emerge from Harvard was the Project Physics Course (Holton, Rutherford & Watson,
1970), a historical and philosophical perspective on physics aimed at increasing student enrolment in high
school physics (Cheek, 2000; Walberg, 1991; Welch, 1973). It stimulated many other humanistic
curriculum innovations worldwide (Aikenhead, 2003; Irwin, 2000; Thomsen, 1998).
The integration of two broad academic fields, (1) the interaction of science and scientists with
social issues and institutions external to the scientific community, and (2) the social interactions of
scientists and their communal, epistemic, and ontological values internal to the scientific community;
produced a major conceptual framework for STS (Aikenhead, 1994d; Ziman, 1984). However, in practice
some STS projects narrowly focused on just one of these domains, for instance, the role of science and
technology in society (Bevilacqua & Giannetto, 1998), societal issues (Yager, 1983), or applied science
(Hunt, 1988). Other important conceptual frameworks for humanistic school science have been articulated
in the research literature:
1. The degree to which a humanistic perspective supports or challenges a traditional positivist and
realist view of science (Bingle & Gaskell, 1994).
2. Whether a humanistic perspective advocates: being aware of an issue, or making a decision on the
issue, or taking social action on the issue (e.g. Dahncke, 1996; Rubba, 1987; Solomon, 1988b), a
framework particularly salient to environmental education (Rubba & Wiesenmayer, 1991, 1999)
and to social responsibility (Cross & Price, 1992, 2002; Cross, Zatsepin & Gavrilenko, 2000; Rye
& Rubba, 2000; Waks & Prakash, 1985).
3. The degree to which humanistic content is combined with canonical science content (Aikenhead,
1994d; Bartholomew, Osborn & Ratcliffe, 2002; Jeans, 1998; McClelland, 1988).
4. The degree to which the content and processes of technology are integrated into the humanistic
perspective (Black, 1986; Cheek, 1992, 2000; Fensham, 1988a; Layton, 1994).
10
5. The degree to which school science is integrated – the integration of scientific disciplines, and the
integration of school science with other school subjects (Venville, Wallace, Rennie & Malone,
2002).
6. The degree to which schooling is expected to reproduce the status quo or be an agent of social
change and social justice (Apple, 1996; Barton, 2001a; Cross & Price, 1999; Hodson, 1994).
Slogans for a humanistic perspective in the science curriculum, such as STS, can change from
country to country and over time. In every era, slogans have rallied support for fundamental changes to
school science (Roberts, 1983). Today, there are a number of slogans for humanistic science curricula
worldwide, for instance: “science-technology-citizenship” (Knain, 1999; Kolstr, 2000; Solomon &
Thomas, 1999; Sjøberg, 1997), “nature-technology-society” (Andersson, 2000), “science for public
understanding” (Eijkelhof & Kapteijn, 2000; Millar, 2000; Osborne, Duschl & Fairbrother, 2003),
“citizen science” (Barker, 2001; Cross et al., 2000; Irwin, 1995; Jenkins, 1999), “functional scientific
literacy” (Ryder, 2001), “Bildung” (Hansen & Olson, 1996), variations on “science-technology-societyenvironment” (Bencze, Hodson, Nyhof-Young & Pedretti, 2002; Dori & Tal, 2000; Hart, 1989; Zoller,
1991), and “cross-cultural school science” (Aikenhead, 2000a). These humanistic science programs are
often seen as vehicles for achieving: science for all, girls’ participation in science, and scientific literacy.
Will history repeat itself by rejecting a humanistic perspective in the science curriculum, as
predicted by Rutherford (1988, p. 126) when he surmised of STS, “just one more passing fancy in
education”? Or will the events of the past 30 years indelibly change school science? Time will tell.
Conclusion
Four conclusions seem warranted from the historical research summarized here. First, the current
humanistic perspectives in science curricula are deeply embedded in our culture and have been for the
past 150 years (Hurd, 1991; Layton, 1973; Solomon, 1997a).
Secondly, just as science had to compete in the 1860s with the classics and religion to get a
foothold in the school curriculum, today a humanistic perspective must compete with the pre-professional
training of elite students (moving through “the pipeline”) to earn a place in the school science curriculum.
This reflects a competition between ideologies: on the one hand, promoting practical utility, human
values, and a connectedness with societal issues to achieve inclusiveness and a student-centred
orientation; on the other hand, promoting professional science associations, the rigors of mental training,
and academic screening to achieve exclusiveness and a scientist-centred orientation. Society in general
did not reach a broad consensus on the latter position, but instead specific stakeholders politically
achieved their goals within 18th century European and North American society, establishing an ideology
11
that would become the status quo. Thus, historical precedents and ensuing social privilege, not consensus,
buttress the traditional science curriculum (Hodson, 1994; Seddon, 1991).
Thirdly, while 19th century professionalised science has been dramatically transformed into a 21st
century R&D by the collectivization of science (Ziman, 1984), school science has not similarly undergone
any lasting dramatic reform. This conclusion addresses education soundness, not political reality.
And fourthly, humanistic perspectives fit a variety of curricular conceptual frameworks (partly
captured in Table 1), all of which are found in the research studies reviewed in this paper. To bring a
modicum of structure to this diversity and to ensure all three forms of the science curriculum are
addressed, the review is organized around the topics: curriculum policy, classroom materials, teacher
orientation, and student learning.
Curriculum Policy
The motivation to promote a humanistic curriculum policy for school science arises from, on the
one hand, persistent, humanistic ideologies about the purpose of school science deeply embedded in our
culture, and on the other hand, periodic and specific episodes of disappointment with the traditional
science curriculum (usually designated as “times of crisis;” Klopfer & Champagne, 1990). Four areas of
research address an educationally sound curriculum policy for humanistic perspectives in the science
curriculum: major failures of the traditional curriculum, successes of learning science in non-school
contexts, the relevance of curriculum content, and the processes for formulating curriculum policy itself.
Each area is discussed in turn.
Major Failures of the Traditional Science Curriculum
Deficiencies in the traditional science curriculum have been the cornerstone of arguments
supportive of a humanistic perspective (Ziman, 1980). At least three major failures are documented in
research studies.
The first failure concerns the chronic declines in student enrolment (Dekkers & Delaeter, 2001;
Hurd, 1991; Osborne & Collins, 2000; Tobias, 1990; Welch & Walberg, 1967) due to students’
disenchantment with school science (Bondi, 1985; Hurd, 1989b; SCC, 1984; Ziman, 1980). This failure of
school science threatens its primary goal: to produce knowledgeable people to go into careers in science,
engineering, and related jobs; or at least support those who do. It is instructive to examine “the pipeline”
data from a 15-year longitudinal study (beginning in 1977 with grade 10 students) conducted by the US
Office of Technology Assessment (Frederick, 1991). Of the initial sample of four million grade 10
students, 18% expressed an interest to continue toward university science and engineering courses. Of
12
these interested students, 19% lost interest during high school (i.e. they moved out of “the pipeline”), and
then during university undergraduate programs, 39% of first year science and engineering students lost
interest; twice the proportion than in high school. These quantitative data support in-depth qualitative
research that concluded: the problem of qualified students moving out of “the pipeline” resides much
more with universities than with high schools, especially for young women (Astin & Astin, 1992;
Seymour, 1995; Tobias, 1990). Another substantial reduction in “the pipeline” population occurred
between high school graduation and first-year university, a transition that showed a 42% loss in the
number of students interested in pursuing science and engineering courses (Frederick, 1991; Sadler & Tai,
2001). These data are partly explained by an in-depth UK study which discovered that highly capable Alevel science students, particularly young women and minority students, switched out of science as soon
as they received their school science credentials, because the curriculum discouraged them from studying
science further (Oxford University Department of Educational Studies, 1989). Similar results were
obtained from international studies (Gardner, 1985, 1998). Most research into students’ views of the
science curriculum concluded that school science transmits content which is socially sterile, impersonal,
frustrating, intellectually boring, and/or dismissive of students’ life-worlds (Bennett, 2001; Hurd, 1989b;
Klein & Ortman, 1994; Lee & Roth, 2002; Osborne & Collins, 2001; Osborne, Driver & Simon, 1998;
Reiss, 2000; SCC, 1984). This perception prevails even for science proficient students who enrol in senior
science courses in high school (Lyons, 2003). One major reason for advocating humanistic content in
school science has been to reverse this chronic loss of talented students (Eijkelhof & Lijnse, 1988; Ziman,
1980). Evidence suggests that humanistic perspectives in the science curriculum can improve the
recruitment of students (Brush, 1979; Solomon, 1994a; Welch & Rothman, 1968).
A second, and related, major educational failure of the traditional science curriculum concerns the
dishonest and mythical images about science and scientists that it conveys (Aikenhead, 1973; Gallagher,
1991; Gaskell, 1992; Kelly et al., 1993; Knain, 2001; Larochelle & Désautels, 1991; Milne & Taylor,
1998; Olson, 1997; Schibeci, 1986; Weaver, 1955). As a consequence: some strong science students lose
interest in taking further science classes, some students become interested in science for the wrong
reasons, and many students become citizens illiterate with respect to the nature and social aspects of the
scientific enterprise. One major reason for offering humanistic content has been to correct these false
ideas (Ziman, 1980). The section “Student Learning” below will review research into these outcomes.
A third documented major failure dates back to the 1970s research into student learning: most
students tend not to learn science content meaningfully (Anderson & Helms, 2001; Gallagher, 1991; Hart,
2002; Osborne, Duschl & Fairbrother, 2003; Shamos, 1989; White & Tisher, 1986), an empirical
conclusion usually explained in one way or another by the lack of relevance in school science (Fensham,
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2000b). Many research programs in science education have attempted to solve this lack of meaningful
learning in different ways (e.g. Millar, Leach & Osborne, 2000). But much of the research suggests that
the goal of learning canonical science meaningfully is simply not achievable for the majority of students
in the context of traditional school science (Aikenhead, 1996; Cobern & Aikenhead, 1998; Costa, 1995;
Hennessy, 1993; Layton, Jenkins, Macgill & Davey, 1993; Osborne et al., 2003; Shamos, 1995). As a
result, alternative science curriculum policies have been proposed to radically change the meaning of
“science” in “school science,” a controversial idea to be sure (e.g. Aikenhead, 2000a; Barton, 2001b;
Fensham, 2000b, 2002; Jenkins, 2000; Layton, 1994; Millar, 2000; Roth & Désautels, 2002).
An important consequence to this third educational failure of the traditional science curriculum is
the reaction of most students and many teachers to the political reality that science credentials must be
obtained in high school or a student is screened from post-secondary opportunities. Empirical evidence
demonstrates how students and many teachers react to being placed in the political position of having to
play school games to make it appear as if significant science learning has occurred (Bartholomew,
Osborne & Ratcliffe, 2002; Costa, 1997; Loughran & Derry, 1997; Larson, 1995; Meyer, 1998; Roth,
Boutonné, McRobbie & Lucas, 1999). The many rules to these school games are captured by the phrase
“Fatima’s rules” (Larson, 1995). Playing Fatima’s rules, rather than achieving meaningful learning,
constitutes a highly significant learned curriculum of students and a ubiquitous hidden curriculum of
school science (Aikenhead, 2000a). A curriculum policy that inadvertently but predictably leads students
and teachers to play Fatima’s rules is a policy difficult to defend educationally from a humanistic
perspective, even though the policy flourishes for political reasons.
Learning and Using Science in Other Contexts
Although the goal of meaningful learning of canonical science is largely unattainable for many
students in the context of the traditional science curriculum, it seems to be attained in other contexts in
which people are personally involved in a science-related everyday issue (Davidson & Schibeci, 2000;
Dori & Tal, 2000; Goshorn, 1996; Lambert & Rose, 1990; Macgill, 1987; Michael, 1992; Tytler, Duggan
& Gott, 2001b; Wynne, 1991). Thirty-one different case studies of this type of research were reviewed by
Ryder (2001) who firmly concluded: When people need to communicate with experts and/or take action,
they usually learn the science content required.
Even though people seem to learn science content in their everyday world as required, this
learning is not often the “pure science” (canonical content) transmitted from a traditional science
curriculum. Research has produced one clear and consistent finding: most often, canonical science content
is not directly useable in science-related everyday situations, for various reasons (Cajas, 1998; Furnham,
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1992; Jenkins, 1992; Layton, 1991; Layton et. al., 1993; Ryder, 2001; Solomon, 1984; Wynne, 1991). In
other words, the empirical evidence contradicts scientists’ and science teachers’ hypothetical claims that
science is directly applicable to a citizen’s everyday life. What scientists and science teachers probably
mean is that scientific concepts can be used to abstract meaning from an everyday event. The fact that this
type of intellectual abstraction is only relevant to those who enjoy explaining everyday experiences this
way (i.e. those who have a worldview that harmonizes with a worldview endemic to science; Aikenhead,
1996; Cobern & Aikenhead, 1998), attests to the reason most students perceive science as having no
personal or social relevance. But when investigating an everyday event for which canonical science
content was directly relevant, Lawrenz and Gray (1995) found that science teachers with science degrees
did not use science content to make meaning out of the event, but instead used other content knowledge
such as values (i.e. humanistic content). This research result, along with the 31 cases reviewed by Ryder
(2001), can be explained by the discovery that canonical science content must be transformed (i.e.
deconstructed and then reconstructed according to the idiosyncratic demands of the context) into
knowledge very different in character from the “pure science” knowledge of the science curriculum, as
one moves from “pure science” content for explaining or describing, to “practical science” content for
action (Jenkins, 1992, 2002; Layton, 1991). “This reworking of scientific knowledge is demanding, but
necessary as socio-scientific issues are complex. It typically involves science from different subdisciplines, knowledge from other social domains, and of course value judgements and social elements”
(Kolstr, 2000, p. 659). When the science curriculum does not include this reworking or transformation
process, “pure science” remains unusable outside of school for most students (Layton, et al., 1993). When
students attempt to master unusable knowledge, most end up playing Fatima’s rules instead.
This empirical evidence supports the educational policy of adding another meaning of “science” in
“school science;” this in addition to and directly associated with humanistic content in the science
curriculum. Researchers Lawrence and Eisenhart (2002, p. 187) concluded, “science educators and
science education researchers are misguided not to be interested in the kinds of science that ordinary
people use to make meaning and take action in their lives.” A humanistic science course would embrace a
judicial balance between this everyday action-oriented science content (citizen science; Irwin, 1995) and
canonical science content. (This position contrasts with a traditional science policy that attempts to
replace citizen science concepts – preconceptions – with canonical science concepts.) Concept
proliferation of canonical concepts is suggested, rather than simple conceptual change (Aikenhead,
2000a; Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer & Scott, 1994; Mortimer, 1995; Solomon, 1983).
Given these research conclusions that question the efficacy of teaching for meaningful learning in
the context of the traditional science curriculum, there would seem to be little educational advantage for a
15
teacher “to cover” the entire science curriculum but instead, greater advantage to teaching fewer canonical
science concepts chosen because of their relevance to a humanistic perspective (Eijkelhof, 1990;
Kortland, 2001; Eylon & Linn, 1988; Häussler & Hoffmann, 2000; Walberg & Ahlgren, 1973). The latter
approach is supported by a plethora of comparison studies, based on standardized achievement tests of
canonical science, that showed no significant effect on students’ scores when instruction time for the
canonical content was reduced to make room for the history of science, the nature of science, or the social
aspects of science (Aikenhead [review], 1994b; Bybee, 1993; Eijkelhof & Lijnse, 1988; Irwin, 2000;
Kelly, 1981; Klopfer & Cooley, 1963; Pedersen, 1992; Wiesenmayer & Rubba, 1990; Welch, 1973); and
on occasion, students in a humanistic science course appeared to fair significantly better on achievement
tests of canonical science (Blunck & Yager [review], 1996; Häussler & Hoffmann, 2000; Mbajiorgu &
Ali, 2003; Meyers, 1992; Poedjiadi, 1996; Rubba & Wiesenmayer, 1991, 1999; Solomon et al., 1992;
Sutman & Bruce, 1992; Wang & Schmidt, 2001; Winther & Volk, 1994; Yager & Tamir [review], 1983).
In summary, a recurring evidence-based criticism of the traditional science curriculum has been its
lack of relevance for the everyday world (Gibbs & Fox, 1999; Millar & Osborne, 1998; Osborne &
Collins, 2000; Reiss, 2000), a problem dating back at least 150 years (Hurd, 1991). The issue of relevance
is at the heart of most humanistic science curricula.
Research on Relevance
Humanistic approaches to school science represent many different views on relevance (Bybee,
1993; Cheek, 1992; Irwin, 1995; Kortland, 2001; Kumar & Chubin, 2000; Layton, 1986; Matthews, 1994;
Millar, 2000; Solomon & Aikenhead, 1994; Yager, 1996b). “Relevance” is certainly an ambiguous term.
Mayoh and Knutton (1997) characterized relevance as having two dimensions: (1) “Relevant to whom?
Pupils, parents, employers, politicians, teachers?” and (2) “Relevant to what? Everyday life, employment,
further and higher education, being a citizen, leisure, children’s existing ideas, being a ‘scientist’?” (p.
849, emphasis in the original). In the educational context of a humanistic science curriculum, the first
question is invariably answered “relevant to pupils.” (In a political context, however, the answer is much
different.) The second question (Relevant to what?) leads to various meanings of relevance for curriculum
policy. In this paper, however, the multidimensional character of relevance is defined by a more political
question (Häussler & Hoffmann, 2000; Roberts, 1988): Who decides? Research into humanistic
curriculum policies is reviewed here according to seven types of relevance, a scheme developed in part
from Fensham’s (2000b) views about who decides what is relevant. These seven heuristic categories
overlap to varying degrees.
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Wish-they-knew science. This type of relevance is typically embraced by academic scientists,
education officials, and many science educators when asked: What would make school science relevant?
(AAAS, 1989; Driver, Leach, Millar & Scott, 1996; Fensham, 1992, 1993, 2000b; Shumba & Glass,
1994; Walberg, 1991). The usual answer, canonical science content, moves students through “the
pipeline” for success in university programs.
But how relevant is this wish-they-knew content for success by science-oriented students in first
year university courses? Research evidence suggests it is not as relevant as one might assume, and on
occasion, not relevant at all (Aikenhead, 1994b; Champagne & Klopfer, 1982; McCammon, Golden &
Wuensch, 1988; Stuart, 1977; Tanaka & Taigen, 1986; Yager & Krajcik, 1989; Yager, Snider & Krajcik,
1988). First year university students who had not studied the prerequisite physical science course in high
school achieved as well as their counterparts who had enrolled in the prerequisite. Sadler and Tai’s (2001,
p. 111) more recent survey research claims, “taking a high school physics course has a modestly positive
relationship with the grade earned in introductory college physics.” An endorsement of “modestly
positive” would seem to be faint praise indeed. These research studies might rationally assuage science
teachers’ fear that time spent on humanistic content and citizen-science content will diminish students’
chances of success at university. Although the educational arguments favouring wish-they-knew science
are particularly weak, political realities favouring it are overwhelming (Fensham, 1993, 1998; Gaskell,
2003).
Need-to-know science. This type of relevance is defined by people who have faced a real-life
decision related to science, exemplified by the Science for Specific Social Purposes project (Layton,
1991; Layton et al., 1993), a study of: parents dealing with the birth of a Down’s syndrome child, old
people’s dealings with energy use, workers at a nuclear power plant dealing with scientific information on
radiation effects, and town councillors dealing with the problem of methane generation at a landfill site.
Curriculum policy researchers ask: What science content was helpful to them in making their decisions?
Ryder’s (2001) analysis of 31 case studies of need-to-know science came to the same conclusion as a
more modest analysis completed 16 years earlier (Aikenhead, 1985), when Ryder wrote, “Much of the
science knowledge relevant to individuals in the case studies was knowledge about science, i.e.
knowledge about the development and use of scientific knowledge rather than scientific knowledge itself”
(p. 35, emphasis in the original). In other words, for the “science” in “school science” to be relevant, the
curriculum perspective must expand to include need-to-know science content, that is, knowledge about
science and scientists (defined earlier as humanistic content). One reason that people tend not to use
canonical science content in their everyday world (in addition to it not being directly useable, as described
17
above; Jenkins, 1992; Lawrence & Eisenhart, 2002; Layton et al., 1993) is quite simple: canonical science
content is the wrong type of content to use in most everyday action-oriented settings; instead need-toknow science (humanistic content) turns out to have greater practical value. (This issue is explored in
greater detail below in the section “Student Learning.”)
Even though research that identifies need-to-know science as having potential for rationalizing the
selection of specific humanistic and scientific content for the science curriculum, its potential has not yet
been demonstrated. Fensham (2000a, p. 74) suggests a reason: “Its retrospective unpredictability, its
variation of experience among citizens, and the time gap between school and the ‘need’, make it
unattractive to curriculum designers of school science.”
Functional science. This is science content that is deemed relevant primarily by people with
careers in science-based industries and professions. The category encompasses Chin et al.’s (in press)
notion of “workplace science.” Coles (1998) surveyed UK employers and higher education specialists in
science who were asked to identify scientific content thought to be essential to school science.
Unexpectedly this content received very limited consensus across all domains. The most valued
prerequisites for advanced science qualifications were generic thinking skills and mathematical
capabilities. Moreover, large organizations such as the Chemical Industries Association, the Association
for the British Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Ford Motor Company preferred their recruits to possess
general capabilities rather than specific canonical science content (Coles, 1997). Desired capabilities
included (from highest to lowest priority): commitment and interest; skills in communication, numeracy
and information technology; personal effectiveness, relationships, and teamwork; self-reliance and
resourcefulness; initiative and creativity; analysis skills; a good general knowledge, and professional
integrity. Of lesser importance was the list of scientific capabilities sought by these employers (from
highest to lowest priority): practical common sense; problem solving through experimentation (e.g.
formulate hypotheses and design simple and reliable experiments); decision making by weighing
evidence; scientific “habits of mind” (e.g. scepticism and logical thinking); and finally, understanding
science ideas. Similar research findings emerged from broader studies into economic development within
industrialized countries (e.g. Bishop, 1995; Cuban, 1994; David, 1995; Halsey, Lander, Brown & Wells,
1997; Rotberg, 1994), although Walberg (1991) contends otherwise, a position critiqued in turn by
Solomon (1997b). Consistently the research indicates that economic development depends on factors
other than a population literate in canonical science, and on factors beyond the influence of school
science, for example: emerging technologies, industrial restructuring, poor management decisions, and
18
government policies that affect military development, monetary exchange rates, wages, and licensing
agreements.
Ogawa (1999) shed light on the complexity of functional science by describing a hierarchy of
interpreters (knowledge brokers) who can function as a liaison between the lay public at one extreme, and
the community of scientific experts at the other extreme. For example, interpreters include science
journalists (Stocklmayer, Gore & Bryant, 2001) or government and public-spirited science people who
can be telephoned by a lay person (Fensham, 2000b). These knowledge brokers have an important role to
play in a nation’s science and technology literacy with respect to functional science.
By conducting research on the job with science graduates, Duggan and Gott (2002) and LotteroPerdue and Brickhouse (2002) discovered that the canonical science content used by science graduates
was so context specific it had to be learned on the job, and that high school and university science content
was rarely drawn upon. On the other hand, Duggan and Gott’s findings suggested that procedural
understanding (ideas about how to do science) was essential across most science-related careers. More
specifically they discovered one domain of concepts, “concepts of evidence,” that was generally and
directly applied by workers in science-related occupations to critically evaluate scientific evidence, for
instance, concepts related to the validity and reliability of data, and concepts of causation versus
correlation. Similar findings arose in their research with an attentive public involved in a science-related
societal issue. Duggan and Gott spoke for many researchers (e.g. Fensham, 2000a; Ryder, 2001) when
they concluded, “Science curricula cannot expect to keep up to date with all aspects of science but can
only aspire to teach students how to access and critically evaluate such knowledge” (p. 675). The
humanistic perspective germane here concerns a correct understanding of concepts of evidence when
dealing with social implications, for instance: Is the scientific evidence good enough to warrant the social
action proposed (Wiesenmayer & Rubba, 1999)? In this context, it is useful to understand the ways in
which scientific evidence is technically and socially constructed (Bingle & Gaskell, 1994; Cunningham,
1998; Kelly et al., 1993; McGinn & Roth 1999), that is, humanistic content for the science curriculum.
Although functional science often lies outside the sphere of canonical science content normally
transmitted in traditional school science, functional science does not ignore canonical science content, but
rather, subordinates it in favour of more important capabilities valued by employers and employees in
science-based occupations (Chin et al., in press). The implication for curriculum policy might be to
include scientific content in school science, but to recognize it as being secondary in importance
compared to objectives more directly related to a humanistic perspective in the science curriculum. For
example, learning to critically analyze scientific evidence requires scientific concepts to be sure, but it
19
matters little which canonical concepts are used as long as they are germane to the evidence at hand
(Kolstø, 2001b; Ratcliffe, 1999).
In a project that placed high school students into science-rich workplaces (e.g. veterinary clinics
and dental offices), Chin and colleagues (in press) investigated ethnographically (1) the relationship
between school science and “workplace science” (functional science), and (2) the participants’ perception
of that relationship. The fact that students saw little or not connection was explained by the researchers:
school science (canonical content) in the workplace was not central to the purposes of the workplace, and
therefore, it was not overtly apparent in the workplace, which in turn made it less accessible to the
students. In short, knowing canonical science content was not relevant to one’s accountability in a
science-rich workplace; a very similar conclusion to the research concerning need-to-know science
(reviewed above). The researchers concluded that workplace science (functional science) met the purpose
and accountability of the workplace, causing workplace science to differ qualitatively from school science
(just as citizen science differs from canonical science). At the same time, the students experienced
accountability of school science in terms of playing Fatima’s rules.
Surveys and ethnographic research methods are not the only ways to substantiate functional
science content. The Delphi research technique used by Häussler and Hoffmann (2000) in Germany was
shown to be an educationally rational, in-depth method for establishing a physics curriculum policy by
consensus among diverse stakeholders over “What should physics education look like so it is suitable for
someone living in our society as it is today and as it will be tomorrow” (p. 691). Their 73 stakeholders
represented people associated with wish-they-knew science (e.g. physicists and physics teachers) and with
functional science (e.g. personnel officers in physics-related industries and general educationalists).
Häussler and Hoffmann did not initially group their stakeholders into these two categories, but instead
used a hierarchical cluster analysis statistic to tease out like-minded stakeholders. This analysis produced
two coherent groups: Group 1 favoured “scientific knowledge and methods as mental tools” and “passing
on scientific knowledge to the next generation” significantly more than Group 2 who favoured “physics as
a vehicle to promote practical competence” (p. 693). These statistical results lend credence to the two
categories of relevance that distinguish between wish-they-knew and functional science. Interestingly,
however, Häussler and Hoffmann found that both groups gave highest priority to topics related to
“physics as a socio-economic enterprise” that show “physics more as a human enterprise and less as a
body of knowledge and procedures” (p. 704). (This Delphi study was only the first phase of Häussler and
Hoffmann’s extensive research project. Phases 2 and 3 – relevance from a student’s viewpoint and student
achievement in a humanistic physics curriculum – are discussed separately later in this paper.)
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Enticed-to-know science. By its very nature, enticed-to-know science excels at its motivational
value. This is science content encountered in the mass media and the internet, both positive and negative
in its images of science and both sensational and sometimes dishonest in its quest to entice a reader or
viewer to pay closer attention. Fensham (2000a, p. 75) reports that the OECD’s Performance Indicators of
Student Achievement project is using enticed-to-know science “to see how well their science curricula are
equipping [15-year old] students to discern, understand and critique the reporting of science in
newspapers and the Internet.” In the UK and in Greece, Millar (2000) and Dimopoulos and Koulaidis
(2003) described how their longitudinal analyses of the content of science-related articles in their
respective national newspapers identified the science and technology knowledge that would be most
useful in making sense of these articles and the stories they presented. Millar’s analysis stimulated a
revision of the AS-level syllabus in the UK and eventually culminated in Hunt and Millar’s (2000) high
school textbook AS Science for Public Understanding that provides a humanistic perspective. For highly
controversial issues, however, Thomas (2000) cautions policy makers over the extent to which “sound
science” can be taught strictly from newspaper articles.
Moral issues and public risk are often associated with enticed-to-know science because the media
normally attends to those aspects of events (Conway, 2000; Cross & Price, 1992, 2002; Eijkelhof, 1990;
Levinson et al., 2000; Nelkin, 1995; Osborne, Duschl & Fairbrother, 2003; Stocklmayer et al., 2001).
Moreover, the more important everyday events in which citizens encounter science involve risk and
environmental threats (Hart, in press; Irwin, 1995).
Have-cause-to-know science. This is science content suggested by experts who interact with the
general public on real-life matters pertaining to science and technology, and who know the problems the
public encounters when dealing with these experts. In addition to identifying common problems, an
expert would also consider economic, personal health, and environmental well being as criteria for
including science content as relevant, in terms of what people have cause to know. This empirical
approach to developing curriculum policy is being tested in China where the societal experts were drawn
from the following domains: home and workplace safety; medical, health, and hygiene problems;
nutrition and dietary habits; consumer wise-ness; and leisure and entertainment (Law, Fensham, Li &
Wei, 2000). The approach assumes that societal experts are better situated than academic scientists to
decide what knowledge is worth knowing in today’s changing scientific and technological world.
Fensham (2002) envisions a have-cause-to-know science curriculum policy unfolding in three phases: (1)
selected societal experts systematically determine features of society endemic to an informed citizenry;
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(2) academic scientists specify science content associated with the features of society identified in phase
1; and (3) based on the first two phases, science educators develop a school science curriculum.
Have-cause-to-know science is a feature of the Science Education for Public Understanding
Project, SEPUP, in the US (Thier & Nagle, 1994, 1996). Societal experts in industry, the sciences, and
education provided the curriculum developers with elements of a relevant issues-based curriculum that led
to STS chemistry modules and three STS textbooks (SEPUP, 2003): Science and Life Issues; Issues,
Evidence and You; and Science and Sustainability.
In the Netherlands, Eijkelhof (1990, 1994) used the Delphi research technique to gain a consensus
among societal experts to establish the humanistic and canonical science content for an STS physics
module, “Ionizing Radiation.” The 35 Delphi participants in Eijkelhof’s study were carefully selected to
represent a variety of fields and opinions on the risks of ionizing radiation (a group purposefully more
homogeneous than the stakeholders in Häussler and Hoffmann’s [2000] study discussed above). After the
normal three rounds in the Delphi procedure, Eijkelhof’s radiation experts pointed to suitable societal
contexts of application and concomitant scientific content that the public had cause to know (Eijkelhof,
Klaassen, Lijnse & Scholte, 1990). Eijkelhof (1990) warned, however, that policy research by itself
should not prescribe the final curriculum. A curriculum development team must also consider educational
issues, for example, learning difficulties of students, available instruction time, and pedagogical factors.
He attended to those issues by drawing upon a decade or more of research (Eijkelhof & Lijnse, 1988;
Ratcliffe et al., 2003).
In contrast, an Australian chemistry curriculum committee could not reach a consensus on a
balance between societal contexts of application and scientific content, and as a result the committee’s
writers tended to promote the status quo (wish-they-knew science) rather than the intended have-cause-toknow science (Fensham & Corrigan, 1994).
The National Curriculum in the UK calls for humanistic content to be taught but does not specify
the content in any detail. In a study focused entirely on humanistic content, Osborne and colleagues
(2001) employed the Delphi technique to establish a consensus in the UK on what “ideas about science”
should be taught in school science. During three rounds of the Delphi procedure, 23 “experts”
(professional and academic people notable for their contributions to the clarification of science for the
public) produced 18 ideas of which nine showed sufficient stability and support (“scientific methods and
critical testing,” “creativity,” and “historical development of scientific knowledge;” to name the top three)
to inform the development of teaching materials that explicitly taught these nine ideas about science
(Bartholomew, Osborne & Ratcliffe, 2002). The resulting materials were embedded within a large-scale
research project, “Evidence-Based Practice in Science Education” (IPSE). The have-cause-to-know ideas
22
about science, elucidated by the IPSE project, addressed only humanistic content; the canonical science
content had been established by the National Curriculum’s wish-they-knew science.
Curriculum policy research has also included surveys of experts to determine which social issues
(and therefore, which have-cause-to-know science) they valued most in a humanistic science curriculum.
The experts included scientists and engineers (Bybee, 1984a), citizens (Bybee, 1984b), science teachers
(Bybee & Bonnstetter, 1986), and science educators in the US (Bybee, 1987) and internationally (Bybee
& Mau, 1986). The relevant contexts for have-cause-to-know science were identified, but their actual
influence on curriculum policy has not been noticeable (Cheek, 2000). This survey research was perhaps
more successful at raising awareness of STS than developing specific curriculum policies.
Personal-curiosity science. When students themselves decide on the topics of interest for school
science, relevance takes on a personal, though perhaps idiosyncratic meaning when students’ hearts and
minds are captured (Gardner, 1985, 1988; Osborne & Collins, 2000; Reiss, 2000). Based on a humanistic
curriculum policy principle that one builds on the interests and experiences of the student, Sjøberg (2000)
surveyed over nine thousand 13-year-old students in 21 countries to discover (among other things): their
past experiences related to science, their curiosity toward certain science topics, their attitude to science,
their perception of scientists at work, and their self-identity as a future scientist. Based on the same
curriculum policy principle, Häussler and Hoffmann (2000) surveyed over six thousand German students,
aged 11 to 16 years, to determine, among other things: (1) their interest in various physics topics (i.e. the
everyday context for the topic and its relevant content), (2) their interest in physics as currently taught in
their school, and (3) personal background factors. Data from Häussler and Hoffmann (2000) and from
Sjøberg (2000) offered insights into students’ differential interests, for instance, “music” was much more
interesting than “acoustics and sounds,” and “the rainbow and sunsets” much more than “light and
optics.” In short, concrete themes embedded in student experiences were much more relevant than science
discipline topics, a finding supported by three decades of research by the Dutch PLON project (Kortland,
2001). In Sjøberg’s study, students in non-Western countries had a significantly more positive image of
scientists (i.e. heroic figures helping the poor and underprivileged) than their counterparts in Western
countries, a finding that points to the importance of culture in a student’s everyday world. (This type of
relevance is addressed in the next sub-section.) In the Häussler and Hoffmann (2000) study, two outcomes
are pertinent here. First, compared to the two groups of stakeholders in their Delphi research (i.e. experts
in wish-they-knew science and in functional science), students’ personal interests generally fell between
the priorities of each Delphi group. Secondly, students’ personal interests were seriously at odds with the
traditional physics courses offered at their school. In short, students’ views were congruent with
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stakeholders who advocated a humanistic perspective in the physics curriculum but discordant with the
status quo. Häussler and Hoffmann pointed out that a curriculum policy founded on the Delphi results
would look very similar to a curriculum policy founded on student interests alone (i.e. personal-curiosity
science). (As described in the section “Student Learning,” teaching a humanistic physics course structured
by student interest did result in significantly greater achievement on canonical science content than
teaching a traditional physics course.)
Sjøberg (2002, 2003) initiated an international in-depth study of personal-curiosity science, the
Relevance of Science Education (ROSE) project, whose results will soon be forthcoming.
Surveys of student interest have typically accompanied the evaluation of a humanistic science
pilot course. This research produced fairly consistent results: the personal-curiosity science in which
students expressed most interest is related to sex and drugs (e.g. Aikenhead, 1992; Stoker & Thompson,
1969). These preferences, however, shift to problems of population and pollution when other questions of
relevance are posed, for example: What topics are of most value to you now? or What topics will be most
valuable to you in the long run? (Stoker & Thompson, 1969).
Science-as-culture. A more holistic yet abstract concept of relevance for school science was
advanced by Weinstein’s (1998) research concerning the enculturation of students into everyday society,
an approach to science education that stands in stark contrast to the enculturation of students into
scientific disciplines (discussed below in “Cultural Relevance”). Culture decides, de facto, what is
relevant for science-as-culture. For instance, in school culture, “Students constantly are being measured,
sorted, and turned into objects of scrutiny. They learn science up close and personal but not as scientists;
rather, they learn it as objects of science” (p. 493). Weinstein identified a network of communities in
students’ everyday lives: health systems, political systems, the media, environmental groups, and
industry, to name a few. Each community interacts with communities of science professionals, resulting
in a cultural commonsense notion of science described by Weinstein as follows:
The meaning making that we call science happens in a way that is distributed over the society
spatially and temporally. It happens through science fiction, it happens through laboratory work, ...
it happens in hospitals, it happens in advertising, and it happens in schools. To emphasize this, I
explicitly refer to science-as-culture rather than to just science. I do this as a reminder to the
reader that I am concerned with science in all parts of the network and not just the laboratory, field
station, and research institute. (p. 492, emphasis in the original)
Science-as-culture is more than just pop culture (Solomon, 1998). As a category of relevance, science-asculture serves in part as a super ordinate category to the need-to-know, functional, enticed-to-know, have-
24
cause-to-know, and personal-curiosity science categories. Its relevance resides in the student’s
community’s culture (a commonsense notion of science) and in the student’s home and peer cultures
(Costa, 1995; Kyle, 1995; McKinley, in press; Solomon, 1994c; 1999a, 2003a). Science’s role in society
is also embedded in science-as-culture, as evidenced by roles such as: setting standards, regulating
commerce, providing legal evidence, announcing medical breakthroughs, creating novel ethical dilemmas,
and requiring financial support for research and development (Dhingra, 2003; Jenkins, 2000; Stocklmayer
et al., 2001).
Future research into students’ science-as-culture may reveal useful ideas for a humanistic science
policy, particularly for the enculturation of students into their local, national, and global communities.
Prelle and Solomon (1996), for instance, provide a rich account of the differences between students’
orientation to an environmental issue and their scientific knowledge on the subject. The researchers
explored students’ science-as-culture by investigating those differences in three settings: the science
classroom, students’ homes, and on holidays. McSharry and Jones (2002) discovered that television
commercials continually expose viewers to a large amount of science (65% of all commercials), but
apparently few viewers realized it. The researchers concluded, “Advertisements could prove to be
extremely useful in increasing the relevance of science education to children” (p. 496). A new curriculum
policy research question arises: What knowledge is of critical value to consumers of television
commercials? Nelkin’s (1995) and Stocklmayer and colleague’s (2001) seminal research into science and
the media raises an even broader policy question: What understandings of science and journalism are of
critical value to consumers of the mass media?
Science-as-culture can also be captured by project-based learning in which local science-related
real-life problems are addressed by students in an interdisciplinary way (e.g. Barton & Yang, 2000;
Bouillion & Gomez, 2001; Dori & Tal, 2000; Hart, in press; Jenkins, 2002; Lee & Roth, 2002). This
approach draws upon community resources and local culture to stimulate need-to-know, functional, and
have-cause-to-know science, as well as science-as-culture; in short, citizen science. The presence of a
humanistic perspective in a project-based curriculum depends, however, on the degree to which its
humanistic content is made explicit in the instruction and assessment of students (Aikenhead, 1973;
Kortland, 2001; Lederman, in press; Ratcliffe, 1997b).
Conclusion. These seven heuristic categories of relevance, based on who decides what is relevant,
can help describe the content and contexts found in a humanistic perspective of a particular science
curriculum. More often than not, a curriculum will embrace several categories simultaneously, for
example, by combining some wish-they-knew science found in a government curriculum document (the
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intended curriculum) with, for example, functional science, enticed-to-know science, have-cause-to-know
science, and personal-curiosity science (e.g. Aikenhead, 1994a; Eijkelhof & Kapteijn, 2000; Eijkelhof &
Kortland, 1988). From an STS perspective, relevance has generally been associated with informed
decision-making on problems and issues related to science and technology, and therefore associated with
being able to participate in society as opposed to feeling alienated from society (Bybee, 1993; Eijkelhof et
al., 1990; Kumar & Chubin, 2000; Solomon & Aikenhead, 1994; Yager, 1996b; Ziman, 1980). This STS
view embraces several categories of relevance described above.
Cultural Relevance
Ideologies inherent in any science curriculum can be categorized in terms of two mutually
exclusive presuppositions of school science (Aikenhead, 2000a; Pillay, 1996; Rudolph, 2003; Weinstein,
1998): (1) the enculturation of students into their local, national, and global communities, communities
increasingly influenced by advances in science and technology, and (2) the enculturation of students into
the disciplines of science. These presuppositions represent two fundamentally different axiomatic views
of relevance. From a student’s point of view, relevance concerns the degree to which curriculum content
and classroom experiences speak to the student’s cultural self-identity (Aikenhead, 2000a; Brickhouse,
2001; Brickhouse, Lowery & Schultz, 2000; Brickhouse & Potter, 2001; Gee, 2001; Häussler &
Hoffmann, 2000; Solomon & Thomas, 1999; Stairs, 1993/94). For instance, in an unusually rich, in-depth,
longitudinal research study, Reiss (2000) examined 563 science lessons over five years as 22 targeted
students worked their way through secondary school science in the UK. Not surprisingly, doing science
was seen as getting marks on the examination. “Beating the examiner” was one of their Fatima’s rules. By
interviewing students and their parents together at home (225 times in total), Reiss illuminated the
cultural relevance that school science held for these students. Two unavoidable conclusions surfaced:
science education played a meagre to insignificant role in most of the students’ personal lives; and school
science will only engage students in meaningful learning to the extent to which the science curriculum has
personal value and worth for students, that is, when it contributes to students’ cultural capital (Bourdieu &
Passeron, 1977) and enriches or strengthens their cultural self-identities (Brickhouse, 2003; Brickhouse &
Potter, 2001; Eijkelhof, 1990; Pillay, 1996; Stairs, 1993/94).
Drawing upon culture-based research into the worldviews of a class of grade 9 students, Cobern
and Aikenhead (1998) identified a student (Howard) who felt comfortable with the traditional school
science curriculum because it harmonized with his worldview of nature. Students like Howard have been
called “Potential Scientists” or “I Want to Know” Students (Aikenhead, 2001) and they have future career
paths enhanced by canonical science content (Lyons, 2003). Cobern and Aikenhead (1998) also identified
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many more students’ whose worldviews of nature were at odds with the traditional science curriculum,
and whose cultural self-identities were not enhanced by a traditional science curriculum because science
seemed like a foreign culture to them. Research into this cultural issue is beyond the scope of this review.
In Mayoh and Knutton’s (1997) research into using everyday experiences in science lessons, the
researchers implicitly embraced the presupposition “enculturation of students into scientific disciplines,”
in which students’ everyday experiences were deemed relevant to the extent to which those experiences
motivated students to think like a scientist and to assume a scientific “habit of mind.” The 1990s
“relevance-in-science movement” (Campbell & Lubben, 2000, p. 240) similarly advanced the implicit
goal to enculturate all students into a scientific worldview, even for those students whose worldviews are
incongruent with the science curriculum (Aikenhead, 1996). From the viewpoint of these students, the
curriculum’s goal was not enculturation but rather, cultural assimilation. As mentioned earlier, most
students avoid this assimilation by playing Fatima’s rules (Aikenhead, 2000a; Costa, 1997; Larson, 1995).
The most fundamental question of relevance is not so much “Relevant to who?” “Relevant to what?” or
“Who decides?” but rather: “Relevant to which enculturation process?” – enculturation into a scientific
discipline (the status quo), or enculturation into students’ local, national, and global communities (one
possible facet of a humanistic perspective). In short, relevance precipitates a policy dilemma. Depending
on the humanistic science curriculum, relevance will be fundamentally framed by a primary allegiance to
scientific disciplines or to students’ communities. In an attempt to resolve the dilemma by integrating the
two mutually exclusive positions into the same curriculum, educators risk confusing and alienating
students (Egan, 1996).
The research reviewed in this paper suggests that any science curriculum, humanistic or purely
scientific, dedicated to the enculturation of all students into scientific ways of thinking will constantly be
challenged and undermined by Fatima’s rules.
Processes for Formulating Curriculum Policy
Throughout this paper’s review of research, educationally driven research findings conflicted with
political realities. Politics intensify when we examine research into the processes by which people have
formulated curriculum policy, for example, when answering the research question: Who has the sociopolitical power to decide, and how do they assert and maintain that power? The paucity of research in this
domain (Kortland, 2001; Roberts, 1988) may speak to the unease felt by research participants when
political events come under public scrutiny, exposing the natural tension between maintaining the status
quo of pre-professional training in “the pipeline,” and innovating a humanistic perspective for equity and
27
social reconstruction (Apple, 1996; Barton, 2001a; Barton & Yang, 2000; Fensham, 1998; Lee, 1997;
Roth & McGinn, 1998).
Curriculum policy is established in a number of different ways, from the “top-down” central
control by government bureaucrats to the “grass-roots” populist control by stakeholders (Hart &
Robottom, 1990; Lijsne, 1995; Solomon, 1999a). The ultimate expression of a top-down policy
formulation happened when a national political leader publicly denounced, and therefore crushed, a
humanistic perspective in the science curriculum (Solomon, 2002). Most curriculum policies develop by
way of collaboration that lies between these two extremes.
Historical events, summarized earlier in the paper, revealed the political context in which the first
science curriculum policy emerged; a context characterized by the cultural values, conventions,
expectations, and ideologies that determined at that time what school science would be. Because context
is paramount for policy inquiry, researchers have often employed qualitative methods such as case studies
or vignettes to interpret and understand processes that formulated a humanistic science curriculum policy.
This was certainly the case for research into power conflicts over curriculum policy reported by
Aikenhead (2002b), Blades (1997), Fensham (1993, 1998), Gaskell (1989, 2003), Hart (2002), Roberts
(1988, 1995), and Solomon (2003b). Each study revealed the power dynamics adopted by various groups
of stakeholders. When deciding what knowledge is of most worth, people usually negotiate by using both
rational criteria and political power in an attempt to ameliorate influences by various stakeholders. Each
educational jurisdiction has its own story to tell about how curriculum policy is formulated. Two research
studies are mentioned here to illustrate this type of research. In his book Procedures of Power &
Curriculum Change (a research study into the temporary defeat of a humanistic science curriculum policy
in Alberta, Canada), Blades (1997) allegorically described the intense clashes between newly aligned
interest groups, who organized a network of relationships (actor-networks; Carlone, 2003; Foucault, 1980;
Gaskell & Hepburn, 1998) to serve their own self interests, and who enacted “rigor” as a power ploy in
their discourse. Blades discovered that one very powerful stakeholder-group altered its alliances along
different lines, thereby reversing its policy position. Treachery thy name is government bureaucrat! A
second study by Gaskell (1989) in British Columbia, Canada, showed how science teachers’ allegiances
to different professional organizations and to their own professional self-identities undermined an
emerging humanistic science curriculum policy (Rowell & Gaskell, 1987). Both of these research studies
provide answers to the question (posed above): Who has the power to decide, and how do they assert and
maintain that power?
Although each case study and vignette found in the literature was unique, all reached the same
conclusion (with a few unique exceptions): local university science professors have a self-interest in
28
maintaining their discipline (empire building, perhaps) and will boldly crush humanistic initiatives in
school science policy (Aikenhead, 2002b; Blades, 1997; Fensham, 1992, 1993, 1998; Fensham &
Corrigan, 1994; Gaskell, 1989; Hart, 2002; Pandwar & Hoddinott, 1995; Roberts, 1988; Shymansky &
Kyle, 1988); resulting in what Gaskell (2003, p. 140) called “the tyranny of the few.” If local science
professors become marginalized and lose their power to control policy decisions, they tend to realign their
actor-networks into international alliances to defeat a local humanistic curriculum policy (Rafea, 1999), or
sometimes they resort to blackmail (Aikenhead, 2002b).
Science curriculum policy is normally formulated more smoothly through consultation with
different stakeholders (Orpwood, 1985), for instance: government officials, the scientific community,
science teachers, university science educators, students, parents, business, labour groups, industry, plus
other groups and institutions. Government ministries of education generally rely on the advice of
curriculum committees variously comprised of some of these stakeholders. Because government
committee meetings are almost always held “in camera,” out of the view of an inquisitive researcher, their
confidentiality has prevented research into the early stages of formulating government policy (De Vos &
Reiding, 1999; Roberts, 1988).
Less confidential, and hence more amiable to systematic investigation, is the collaborative
dialogue between parents and curriculum developers, a dialogue investigated by Cross and Yager (1998)
in a pilot research study with 17 parents in Iowa. The researchers discovered parents’ concerns about the
impact of science and technology on their lives, the role of scientific experts who advise the public, and
the parents’ vision of science education (a vision that was most supportive of a humanistic science
curriculum). This consultative type of research could inform and influence curriculum committees that do
not have parent representation.
Consultative research has also taken the form of research and development (R&D) studies that
produced STS classroom materials (e.g. textbooks and modules) as a means to influence or articulate a
humanistic curriculum policy. Researchers collaborated with ministries of education, selected teachers,
students, and experts who furnished “functional” and “have-cause-to-know” science (among other types
of relevance) for the science curriculum (Aikenhead, 1994a; Eijkelhof & Lijnse, 1988; Eijkelhof &
Kapteijn, 2000; Kortland, 2001; Solomon, 1981).
More rigorously systematic policy studies have used the Delphi research method to inform
humanistic curriculum policy, for instance (as described above), the research by Eijkelhof (1990),
Häussler and Hoffmann (2000), and Osborne and colleagues (2001). Their experts were able to reach a
consensus on the relevant contexts and associated knowledge for an educationally sound, humanistic
science curriculum policy.
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The most elaborate, theory-based, consultative methodology is deliberative inquiry. Inspired by
Schwab’s (1974) “deliberative enquiry,” it combines top-down and grass-roots approaches. Deliberative
inquiry is a structured and informed dialogic conversation among stakeholders who, face to face, help
government officials reach a decision on curriculum policy by discussing and re-examining their own
priorities (i.e. values) along with their reading of relevant research (Orpwood, 1985). Because science
teachers will be central to implementing a humanistic science curriculum (Roberts, 1988) and because
curriculum evaluation research consistently shows that the teacher has more influence on student
outcomes than the government’s choice of curriculum taught (Welch, 1979, 1995), the science teacher is a
key stakeholder and usually holds a central role during deliberative inquiry meetings. The process of
deliberation encompasses both educational and political dimensions to formulating curriculum policy.
The Science Council of Canada (SCC) used deliberative inquiry to produce a national science
curriculum policy that embraced a humanistic perspective (Aikenhead, 2000b; Orpwood, 1985; SCC,
1984). The SCC study ensured that significant problems in science education were identified, that
appropriate evidence was collected, and that the problems and evidence were considered by diverse
stakeholders attending one of the 11, two-day deliberative conferences held across Canada. Stakeholders
included high school students (science proficient and science shy students); teachers (elementary and
secondary); parents; elected school officials; the scientific community; university science educators; and
representatives for the business, industry, and labour communities. The students’ contributions were
pivotal to recommendations related to student assessment. As Schwab (1978), predicted, “Deliberation is
complex and arduous. …[It] must choose, not the right alternative, for there is no such thing, but the best
one” (pp. 318-319, emphasis in the original). The “best” science curriculum policy for Canada was
published as Science for Every Citizen (SCC, 1984). Inspired by the success of this deliberative inquiry,
two other Canadian provinces conducted similar research but on a smaller scale. Drawing upon the SCC’s
national study, Alberta resolved the problems identified by Blades (1997) (described above) by holding a
series of deliberative conferences that gave science teachers a political voice (Roberts, 1995).
Saskatchewan almost replicated the SCC study during the renewal of its science curriculum and yielded a
strong teacher consensus on a humanistic perspective (Hart, 1989).
A very different method of policy formulation, illustrated by the AAAS’s (1989) Project 2061 and
the National Research Council’s (NRC, 1996) Standards in the US, utilizes consultation with stakeholders
on a grand yet narrow scale. After conducting a complex series of inclusive national surveys and
committee meetings, a “consensus panel of leading scientists” (Walberg, 1991, p. 57) determined the
content of Project 2061 (content critiqued as conveying a positivist non-contemporary view of science, by
Bingle & Gaskell [1994] and Fourez [1989], and as ignoring student relevancy, by Settlage and Meadows
30
[2002] among others). Thus, the final say in the curriculum lay with people who narrowly espouse the
conventional wish-they-knew science. This exclusivity, plus the lack of published research on the
consultation process itself, suggests that the national agencies may have prioritized political opportunism
over educational soundness and repeated their predecessors’ 1867 policy decisions. A humanistic
perspective loses significance in the wish-they-knew science of Project 2061 and Standards.
Considering all the research studies into policy formulation reviewed here, the process of
deliberative inquiry holds greatest potential for devising an educational rationale for a humanistic
perspective in the science curriculum, while at the same time providing a political forum for negotiations
among various stakeholders. “This requires bringing to the surface the tacit social aims and assumptions
that are constantly in play in the development of the school science curriculum as well as carefully
considering the social consequences, intended or not, of the curriculum produced” (Rudolph, 2003, p. 76).
Although these considerations will likely enhance the quality of the resultant science curriculum
policy, other important areas of research are pertinent to successful deliberative inquiry, areas such as
classroom materials, teacher orientations, and student learning; topics to which we now turn.
Classroom Materials
Classroom teaching materials, particularly textbooks and modules, seem to dictate the taught
curriculum for many teachers (Chiang-Soong & Yager, 1993; Chiappetta, Sethna & Fillman, 1991;
Lijsne, 1995; Osborne et al., 2003; Weiss, 1987; Weiss, Pasley, Smith, Banilower & Hect, 2003).
Textbooks and modules can operationally define a humanistic perspective for science teaching and
therefore can provide needed support and guidance to an innovating teacher. In the absence of such
support, teachers feel unsupported in their attempts to implement a humanistic perspective in their
classroom (Bartholomew et al., 2002), discussed below in “Teacher Orientations.”
Roberts’ (1982) analyzed a number of North American science policy statements woven into
textbooks during the 20th century to determine the implicit and subtle messages they conveyed about goals
for studying science. His research inductively developed seven different messages he called “emphases.”
(Fensham [2000b] added three more emphases to this list.) Although the most popular emphasis for
secondary schools was “solid foundations” (the pre-professional training “pipeline”), Roberts also
detected the highly humanistic emphasis “science, technology, and decisions.” Thus, over the years
textbooks generally did not ignore a humanistic perspective, but they gave it wavering and meagre
attention. (Roberts’ research results paralleled other historical analyses reviewed above; e.g. Hurd, 1991).
As the STS school science movement evolved in the 1980s, researchers investigated the degree to
which STS content appeared in popular contemporary textbooks (e.g. Chiang-Soong & Yager, 1993).
31
This content, however, was defined differently from study to study (Aikenhead, 1994d). Bybee (1993)
reviewed this literature and concluded that little STS content was found, reflecting the low value placed
on it by school personnel, textbook authors, and commercial publishers. His review also noted that even
when STS textbooks and modules were available across the US by 1990, they were not implemented by
teachers to any extent; as was the case in the UK (Monk & Osborne, 1997). Thus, the availability of
humanistic science materials is a necessary but insufficient condition for a humanistic perspective to be
found in the taught curriculum (Cross & Price, 1996; Eijkelhof & Kortland, 1988).
Researchers have also systematically analyzed traditional science textbooks to investigate what
images they convey about science and scientists (Anderson & Kilbourn, 1983; Cross & Price, 1999;
Gaskell, 1992; Knain, 2001; Kelly et al., 1993; Milne, 1998; Olson, 1997). An idealized heroic
rationalism paints a picture of individual scientists discovering (revealing) truth by applying the scientific
method; a picture that equates scientific knowledge of nature with nature itself. Most textbooks convey an
ideology of indoctrination into positivistic realism endemic to the traditional science curriculum. As
mentioned earlier, replacing this ideology with a more humanistic one became a cornerstone for the STS
movement.
Even though humanistic science textbooks can potentially play a critical role in classrooms,
systematic investigations into their development have been rare, likely because the financial resources of
most humanistic innovative projects are drained by the production of the materials themselves and the
professional development of prospective teachers. Even Harvard Project Physics (Holton, Rutherford &
Watson, 1970) did not systematically research the development of its textbook, and as a consequence the
writers did not revise it sufficiently to meet the needs of many teachers and students (Cheek, 2000;
Welch, 1979, 1995).
Research into the development of humanistic science materials exemplifies formative and
summative assessment (Black, 1998; Scriven, 1967). Broadly speaking, formative assessment produces
feedback to the writers from teachers and students by identifying problems to be resolved to improve the
materials. Summative assessment usually produces data on student learning and teacher satisfaction to
evaluate the overall effectiveness of the materials, for the benefit of other teachers (potential users) or
policy makers who can offer political support for the innovation, for example, by influencing examination
content. This section reviews studies in formative assessment, leaving summative assessment to a later
section, “Student Learning.”
Various degrees of collaboration have been achieved between, on the one hand, writers or
developers of classroom materials who have a vision of the intended humanistic science curriculum, and
32
on the other hand, teachers and students engaged with those materials. Research methodologies have
included: research and development (R&D), developmental research, and action research.
Research and Development
In the natural sciences, R&D combines scientific inquiry and engineering design in a context
bounded by everyday exigencies (Ziman, 1984). In the social science domain of education, R&D collects
data to be fed directly into improving the product of the study or the practice related to using it. This type
of research differs from the typical science education research reported in the literature where data are
collected to inform a theoretical model, for instance, or to be interpreted to convey a participant’s lived
experience.
Because R&D results are an improved product or the improved use of a product, R&D studies are
rarely published in the research literature. Cheek (1992) conducted a formative assessment study for the
New York Science Technology and Society project, a set of STS modules for lower secondary science
that gave more attention to technology than was normal; and Sáez, Niño, Villamañan, and Padilla (1990)
completed a formative assessment study of biotechnology units being developed in Spain for high school
students.
The most substantial R&D study to publish its formative assessment of teaching materials took
place in The Netherlands from 1972 to 1986. The PLON project developed many humanistic physics
modules for lower and upper secondary school (Eijkelhof, 1990; Eijkelhof & Kortland, 1988; Eijkelhof &
Lijnse, 1988). The modules attempted to motivate students into learning canonical physics content by
placing that content in relevant contexts (e.g. the physics of sound is taught in a module called “Music”).
The modules also aimed to improve students’ capacity to interpret media messages, to make consumer
choices, to follow new developments reported in the media, and to engage in public decision making, all
related to physics. The researchers used questionnaire data from students and teachers, field notes of
teacher meetings and of occasional classroom observations, and interview data from students and
teachers. At least three major results emerged from this research program. First was the difficulty
encountered finding real-life contexts that involved only canonical physics content, due to the fact that
science-related issues are largely interdisciplinary (e.g. “Music” touches significantly on physiology and
aesthetics). This research result exemplifies the historical evolution of 19th century professionalised
scientific disciplines into 21st century collectivized science (described earlier). Unfortunately, the PLON’s
results were educationally constricted by the political realities of a national curriculum structure that
required separate disciplines. The second major result related to meaningful learning of canonical physics:
it did not improve significantly in PLON units, adding further evidence to the inherent difficulty of
33
meaningful learning experienced by most students (reviewed earlier). The third major result was the
proposal of a useful four-phase pattern for R&D: (1) studies of first version materials (formative
assessment), (2) studies of second version materials (formative and tentative summative assessment), (3)
in-depth studies into problems related to humanistic science materials in general, and (4) studies into the
goals of the project (summative assessment).
Other R&D studies have involved students more directly and substantially in the development of
classroom materials (Aikenhead, 1983, 1994a, 2000b; Solomon, 1981, 1983). For instance, in
Aikenhead’s (1994a) first phase R&D into the production of an integrated STS science textbook, he
collaborated extensively with grade 10 students by teaching a first version himself, a version to which
students actively contributed material. In phase 2, he observed three teachers daily as they taught a draft
of the student text by using a draft teacher guide. This resulted in refinements to both. These classroom
materials had developed in situ, as daily research on student preconceptions of canonical concepts, for
instance, immediately led to changes in the text as suggested by the practical actions of students and
teachers. The next revision was piloted by a diverse group of 30 teachers whose written and focus-group
feedback fine-tuned the materials for commercial publication. This R&D project established that students
can contribute significantly to a textbook’s content, structure, and language, and that most students
respond eagerly to this type material. But unlike the PLON project, resources were only available for
formative assessment research.
Developmental Research
A post-PLON research program expanded R&D into developmental research: “a cyclic process of
reflection on content and teaching/learning process, small-scale curriculum development and teacher
preparation, and classroom research of the interaction of teaching and learning processes” (Kortland,
2001, p. 10). These are research studies into producing PLON-like modules but whose validity rests on
the study’s transferability to other teaching contexts (e.g. the improvement of science teaching, and the
development of didactical theories), rather than on the quality of the specific materials only (Eijkelhof,
1990; Kortland, 2001; Lijnse, 1995). For instance, Eijkelhof (1990) demonstrated how a Delphi study
could produce have-cause-to-know science and authentic contexts for school science (reviewed earlier)
that lead to science materials integrated around risk and safety assessment (e.g. a PLON module “Ionizing
Radiation”). Kortland (2001) explored the topic of decision making in the context of developing an
ecology module on waste management (reviewed later in “Student Learning”). The production of high
quality classroom materials is only one principal outcome to developmental research.
34
Post-PLON developmental research laid the foundations for developing a grade 10 humanistic
science curriculum in The Netherlands between 1996 and 2003 (Algeme Natuurwetenshappen) often
named “the public understanding of science” curriculum (De Vos & Reiding, 1999; Eijkelhof & Kapteijn,
2000). Interestingly, the final responsibility for polishing and publishing these classroom materials was
turned over to commercial publishers.
Action Research
Action research is small-scale, classroom R&D, largely initiated by teachers to find solutions to
their practical problems (Keeves, 1998). Some action research has produced humanistic science materials
(Aikenhead, 2002a; Blunck & Yager, 1996; McFadden, 1980, 1996; Pedretti & Hodson, 1995; Rye &
Rubba, 2000). Unfortunately, most action research that produces classroom materials is quite
idiosyncratic and this inhibits their transferability. One notable exception was the Atlantic Science
Curriculum Project that worked 15 years to publish a Canadian textbook trilogy SciencePlus (McFadden,
1991, 1996) and then an American textbook trilogy SciencePlus Technology & Society (McFadden &
Yager, 1997). Three other exceptions include: the Science and Technology in Action in Ghana Project
(Anamuah-Meusah, 1999); the Science, Technology, Environment in Modern Society (STEMS) project in
Israel (Dori & Tal, 2000; Tal, Dori, Keiny & Zoller, 2001); and the Science Through Applications Project
in South Africa (Gray, 1999). The Israeli and South African projects produced a number of modules by
teams of teachers supported by parents and the community’s industries, over a one-year and three-year
period, respectively. The Israeli and South African projects’ formative assessment targeted teachers’
professional growth, but not the classroom materials themselves, unlike the Ghanaian project.
A more modest action research project, Rekindling Traditions, investigated ways to engage First
Nations (Native American) communities in collaborating with a science teacher and students to develop
local classroom materials that integrate First Nations science with Euro-American science (Aikenhead,
2002a). The resultant six teaching units illustrate a cultural orientation to a humanistic perspective in the
science curriculum, from which the traditional science curriculum is viewed as a foreign culture to be
appropriated by students.
Research into the development of classroom materials reviewed here did not reveal their influence
on teachers, for instance, whether the materials dictated the taught curriculum to the teachers, or whether
the teachers modified the materials to conform with a teacher’s personal orientation to a humanistic
science curriculum. This crucial process is explored next.
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Teacher Orientation
Teachers construct their own meaning of any intended curriculum as they negotiate an orientation
toward it and decide what to implement, if anything, in their classroom. Over the years, researchers have
studied teachers’ rejection, acceptance, and idiosyncratic modulation of an intended humanistic science
curriculum, beginning at first with simplistic assumptions about “teacher-proof” curricula (Solomon,
1999a; Welch, 1979) and then evolving into more detailed ideas such as: curriculum emphases (Roberts,
1982); holistic teacher-beliefs and value systems (Aikenhead, 1984; Cronin-Jones, 1991; Lantz & Kass,
1987; Mitchener & Anderson, 1989); and more highly complex research frameworks, for example,
“science teacher thinking” “teacher practical knowledge” and “pedagogical context knowledge” with
which teachers make decisions and take action (Barnett & Hodson, 2001; Clandinin, 1985; Clandinin &
Connelly, 1996; Duffee & Aikenhead, 1992; Roberts, 1998). The more recent research provides greater
insights than earlier research.
Two general conclusions about teachers’ orientations can be drawn from the literature reviewed
earlier in this paper. First, the historical research would predict that in any era a small proportion of
science teachers would be predisposed in varying degrees to an ideology supportive of a humanistic
perspective for school science. Thus, there will always be a few science teachers who teach from a
humanistic point of view (humanistic science teachers), and who gladly volunteer for any research study,
R&D project, developmental research, or action research that promises to enhance their humanistic
orientation. History similarly predicts there will be a nucleus of teachers committed to “the pipeline”
ideology that promotes pre-professional training, mental training, and screening students for university
entrance. These teachers (“pipeline” enthusiasts) will resist and even actively undermine any humanistic
innovation in school science (Aikenhead, 1983; Blades, 1997; Carlone, 2003; Fensham, 1992; Rowell &
Gaskell, 1987). There exists a third group of science teachers who can be persuaded to move toward
either ideology for a variety of different reasons (middle-of-the-road teachers). A similar triad of teachers
(those who accept, reject, or alter, a humanistic curriculum) emerged from two studies of high school
teachers faced with implementing an STS curriculum and textbook in the US (Mitchener & Anderson,
1989) and STS modules in the UK (McGrath & Watts, 1996). The relative presence of these three groups
of teachers in any research study will greatly affect the nature of its conclusions. For instance, in one of
the most insightful in-service programs for a humanistic science curriculum (Leblanc, 1989), its leaders
ensured that a high proportion of participants came from the first and third teacher groups (humanistic and
middle-of-the-road teachers), and the leaders selected judiciously a small number of high-profile teachers
from the second group (“pipeline” enthusiasts). After three years of periodic intensive in-service sessions,
supported by university research scientists and enriched by classroom trials of materials by participants
36
and then followed by in-depth group reflection, the province of Nova Scotia formally implemented an
STS science curriculum supported by all the in-service teachers, including “the pipeline” enthusiasts of
group 2. No follow-up study was reported, however.
Elmore (2003) drew upon a great deal of research and experience with school innovation when he
cryptically characterized a typical, science education, innovation study as follows: a gathering of “the
faithful” (i.e. humanist science teachers of group 1) to show that the innovation can work on a small scale,
and then leave “the virus” (i.e. the innovation) to populate the system on its own because the innovation is
such a good idea (i.e. educationally sound). This approach to changing school science has continually
failed, due mostly to a scaling-up problem that creates a non-transfer problem (from group 1 participants
to group 2 and 3 teachers), which in turn creates a political problem arising from ideological conflicts.
The majority of the research literature on teacher orientation to a humanistic science curriculum is
comprised of small-scale studies necessarily comprised of a few volunteer science teachers to initiate or
participate in the novel project, which did not have sufficient resources to expand in scale or over time
(Anderson & Helms, 2001).
A second general conclusion can be drawn from earlier sections of this paper. Because a key
ingredient to humanistic curriculum is relevance, and because relevance has different operational
definitions from project to project, it is very difficult to compare research studies without oversimplifying
their common attributes.
With these two broad limitations in mind, the research into science teachers’ orientation to a
humanistic curriculum is reviewed in terms of (1) challenges to changing a traditional science curriculum
into a humanistic one, (2) some teachers’ decision not to implement it, (3) some teachers’ success at
implementation, (4) components to a teacher’s orientation, (5) pre-service experiences in teacher
education, and (6) school politics. Each is explored in turn.
Challenges to Curriculum Change
Normally science teachers are attracted to, and uniformly socialized into, specific scientific
disciplines in university programs where teachers are certified to be loyal gatekeepers and spokespersons
for science; and in return they enjoy high professional status and a self-identity associated with the
scientific community (Bartholomew et al., 2002; Cross, 1997; Cross & Ormiston-Smith, 1996; Cross &
Price, 2002; Gallagher, 1998; Gaskell, 1992, 2003; Goodson, 1987; Roberts, 1988; Venville et al., 2002).
As a consequence, teachers favour abstract decontextualized “pure science,” and marginalize studentcentred perspectives and utilitarian issues related to everyday life; as occurred historically in the 19th
century. At the same time, a teacher’s loyalty to the academic science community, and to its myths,
37
becomes well established and hence a teacher’s orientation to a traditional science curriculum is set (AbdEl-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997; Aikenhead, 1984; Allchin, 2003; Davis, 2003; Duschl, 1988; KilianSchrum, 1996; Milne & Taylor, 1998; Nadeau & Désautels, 1984; Olson, 1997). This orientation includes
the transmission of an established body of knowledge and technique that uses weak evidence and
inductive overgeneralizations to persuade students of the correctness of a scientific worldview steeped in
positivism and realism (Bartholomew et al., 2002; Osborne, Duschl & Fairbrother, 2003).
When STS was first proposed for school science, Gaskell (1982) clearly forewarned that a
consensus among science teachers could not be achieved due to the deep-rooted values, ethics, and
politics inherent in STS (humanistic) content, content that science teachers tend to assiduously avoid, for
example: theory-laden observations, biased technical data, the epistemology and sociology of scientific
knowledge, ethics-laden scientific questions, and politics-laden scientific communication. Gaskell (1982)
and Gallagher (1987) also questioned the capability of science teachers steeped in empirical reductionist
worldviews to engage competently with ethical, economic, and political issues in the classroom. Although
research has by and large confirmed these predictions, it has afforded helpful insights into the complex
world of science teaching.
A number of research studies (from surveys to case studies) have focused on teachers’ prerequisite
knowledge related to teaching humanistic content (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000; Cunningham,
1998; Cross & Price, 1996; Gallagher, 1991; Herron, Lamb & Morris, 2003; Lederman [review], 1992;
Pedersen & Totten, 2001; Rampal, 1992; Rubba, 1989; Rubba & Harkness, 1993; Shapiro, 1996),
especially when a humanistic perspective is first introduced into a country, such as in South Korea (Lee,
Choi & Abd-El-Khalick, 2003) or Lebanon (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997). The results generally
showed inadequate and discrepant background understanding by teachers (with one exception; King,
1991). However, a prerequisite understanding may not necessarily be a determining influence on a
teacher’s initial orientation to a humanistic perspective (Abd-El-Khalick, Bell & Lederman, 1998;
Bartholomew et al., 2002; Tsai, 2001). At one extreme, some teachers gain an understanding only through
implementing a humanistic perspective (Aikenhead, 2000b; Bencze & Hodson, 1999; Elmore, 2003;
Fensham & Corrigan, 1994; Sáez & Carretero, 2002; Tal et al., 2001; Tsai, 2001). At the other extreme,
some teachers maintain their traditional preconceptions (e.g. positivism or scientism) in spite of explicit
instruction in the content, or in spite of teaching a humanistic perspective over a period of time
(Gallagher, 1991; Herron et al., 2003; Hlady, 1992; Yerrick, Parke & Nugent, 1997). In short, a
prerequisite understanding may or may not be a necessary influence, although by itself it is certainly an
insufficient influence, on a teacher’s decision to implement a humanistic perspective.
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More salient influences on a teacher’s humanistic orientation have been documented: a teacher’s
values, assumptions, beliefs, ideologies, self-identities, self-images, and loyalties to traditional school
science. All research unanimously and unambiguously confirms one result: changing any one of these
salient influences is very difficult for most middle-of-the-road teachers, and is usually impossible for “the
pipeline” enthusiast (Aikenhead, 1984, 2000b; Anderson & Helms, 2001; Briscoe, 1991; Cronin-Jones,
1991; Cross, 1997; Davis, 2003; Gallagher, 1991; Hart & Robottom, 1990; Herron et al., 2003; Lantz &
Kass, 1987; Kortland, 2001; Lumpe, Haney & Czerniak, 1998; McRobbie & Tobin 1995; Millar &
Hanes, 2003; Mitchener & Anderson, 1987; Mitschke, 1993; Osborne et al., 2003; Roberts, 1998; Sáez &
Carretero, 2002; Tobin & McRobbie, 1996; Walberg, 1991; Yerrick et al., 1997). Taken together this
cluster of salient influences has been referred to by some researchers as the culture of school science
(Aikenhead, 2000a; Bianchini & Solomon, 2003; Brickhouse & Bodner, 1992; Lee et al., 2003; Medvitz,
1996; Munby, Cunningham & Lock, 2000; Osborne, 2003; Pedersen & Totten, 2001; Solomon, 1994e,
2002; Tobin & McRobbie, 1996; Venville et al., 2002; Vesilind & Jones, 1998), and consequently,
implementing a humanistic science curriculum is judged by teachers to be either culturally safe or unsafe
(McGinnis & Simmons, 1998). “These teachers are moulded by the culture and habitus of the culturally
accepted practice of science teaching – an activity in which they have engaged, often for many years.
Breaking that mould is, therefore, neither straightforward nor simple” (Osborne et al., 2003, p. 11).
Teachers often speak about their orientation to a humanistic science curriculum in terms of their comfort
level. From their research, Barnett and Hodson (2001) concluded, “Knowledge that enables teachers to
feel more comfortable in the classroom and to enhance their sense of self is likely to be embraced;
knowledge that increases anxiety or makes teachers feel inadequate will almost certainly be resisted or
rejected” (pp. 431-432).
Decisions Not to Implement
When asked if teaching from a humanistic perspective is a good idea (terms such as “socially
relevant” are actually used), most science teachers (about 90%) overwhelmingly endorse it (Bybee, 1993;
Hart, 1989; Lee et al., 2003; Pedersen & Totten, 2001; Rhoton, 1990; Rubba, 1989). Yet when asked
about implementing such a curriculum, teachers provide many reasons for not doing so. A lack of
available classroom materials is often mentioned; but as reviewed earlier, when teaching materials do
become available, teachers point to other reasons for not implementing a humanistic perspective. These
reasons are listed here but in no particular order of importance because their presence and priority change
from study to study: unfamiliarity with student-centred, transactional, teaching and assessment methods
(e.g. group work or divergent-thinking); greater than normal emphasis on oral and written language, and
39
the complexity caused by combining everyday and scientific genres; lack of confidence with integrated
content; fear of losing control over the class (e.g. open-ended activities and unpredictable outcomes –
teachable moments); uncertainty about a teacher’s role in the classroom (e.g. facilitator) in spite of
attending in-service workshops; a reliance on a single national textbook that contains little or no
humanistic content; an unease with handling controversial issues, or even group discussions of a social or
ethical nature; uncertainties over assessing students on “subjective” content; inadequate background
knowledge and experiences (i.e. pre-service teacher education programs); no opportunity to work with an
experienced competent teacher or with scientists in industry; lack of school budget to support the
innovation; lack of administrative or colleagues’ support; lack of parental or community support; no clear
idea what the humanistic innovation means conceptually or operationally; predictions that students will
not appreciate or enjoy philosophical, historical and policy issues in a science class (e.g. “students want to
light Bunsen burners and get the right answer”); a preoccupation with preparing students for high-stake
examinations and success at university; pressure from university science departments to raise standards
and cover more content in greater depth; an unease over the reduced time devoted to canonical science
content and to covering the traditional curriculum; pressure to comply with state content standards defined
by the current reform movement; identifying oneself with scientists (i.e. lecturer expert) rather than with
educators; the fact that non-elite and low achieving students enrol in humanistic science courses; greater
need for cultural sensitivity with some humanistic topics such as social justice in the use of science and
technology; the survival mode of beginning teachers discourages them from taking seriously humanistic
ideas developed in their teacher education courses (Aikenhead, 1984, 1994a; Bencze et al., 2002;
Bianchini, Johnston, Oram & Cavazos, 2003; Bybee [review], 1993; Bybee & Bonnstetter, 1987; Carlson,
1986; Cross & Price, 1996; Driver, Newton & Osborne, 2000; Eijkelhof, 1990, 1994; Eijkelhof &
Kortland, 1988; Gallagher [review], 1987; Gaskell, 1992; Grady et al., 2002; Gray, 1999; Hofstein,
Aikenhead & Riquarts, 1988; Hodson, 1993; James, 1985; King, 1991; Levinson, 2003; McClelland,
1998; McGinnis & Simmons, 1998; McGrath & Watts, 1996; Mitchener & Anderson, 1989; Monk &
Osborne, 1997; Munby et al., 2000; Osborne et al., 2003; Pedersen & Totten, 2001; Pedretti, 1999;
Russell, McPherson & Martin, 2001; Schwartz & Lederman, 2002; Shymansky & Kyle [review], 1988;
Solomon, 2002; Rhoton, 1990; Roberts, 1988, 1998; Tsai, 2001; Walberg, 1991). One is faced with an
inescapable conclusion: there are daunting challenges to educators wishing to change the traditional
science curriculum into a humanistic one.
Even under circumstances supportive of teaching from a humanistic perspective, willing teachers
will modulate a humanistic science textbook or other resources to conform to their specific epistemic and
sociological beliefs and to their goals for teaching science (Aikenhead, 1984; Barnett & Hodson, 2001;
40
Carlone, 2003; Herron et al., 2003; Hlady, 1992; Ryder, Hind & Leach, 2003). Hlady documented how
science teachers: (1) consciously omitted textbook passages that offered ideas at odds with the teachers’
understanding, (2) reinterpreted passages for their students in a way that changed the textbook’s meaning
completely, or (3) personalized sections of the textbook in such a way as to change its intent, for instance,
they presented an anecdotal lecture to avoid the decision-making perspective intended by the textbook.
A parallel but different avenue of research looked at willing science teachers (humanistic teachers)
who possessed a contemporary understanding of humanistic content, but whose taught curriculum did not
convey that content to students (Abd-El-Khalick et al., 1998; Brickhouse, 1989; Lederman, 1992; Munby
& Russell, 1987). This research discrepancy challenged the notion that teachers who understand
humanistic content will teach it, a notion that has sustained many in-service workshops since the 1960s.
The discrepancy arose during research into factors affecting the acquisition of humanistic content by
students (the learned curriculum; see section “Student Learning”). Abd-El-Khalick and colleagues (1998)
listed constraints felt by instructors knowledgeable in humanistic content. Their list overlaps with the
general list of reasons given by teachers not to implement a humanistic science curriculum. Their list
includes: lower priority given to humanistic outcomes than to canonical science outcomes; preoccupation
with classroom management weakened by student-centred instruction; teachers’ discomfort with their
understanding humanistic content in spite of the evidence to the contrary; and lack of resources and time
to locate resources. Other researchers discovered more pervasive influences inhibiting humanistic science
teachers from practicing a humanistic perspective, influences such as the school’s social organization and
the school culture (Carlone, 2003; McGinnis & Simmons, 1998; Medvitz, 1996; Munby & Russell, 1987).
These influences can operate by simply overwhelming humanistic teachers’ best intentions to include a
humanistic perspective in classroom practice – the taught curriculum. In a related study, Kleine (1997)
conducted a detailed qualitative study into the inclusion of humanistic content in the taught curriculum of
four science teachers with diverse university undergraduate degrees in history, philosophy, botany, and
education. (Lower secondary science teachers in North America tend to have diverse backgrounds.)
Under close scrutiny, Kleine could not detect any differences among the teachers’ humanistic taught
curriculum, although she did note that the teachers’ humanistic understandings were often relegated to a
secondary consideration in their decisions about what to teach. Perhaps the four teachers were
overwhelmed by primary considerations (listed above). In short, teachers’ humanistic conceptual
understanding does not necessarily influence classroom practice – the taught curriculum. To ameliorate
this problem, Monk and Osborne (1997) proposed a pedagogical model that integrates humanistic content
with teachers’ main aims for teaching science.
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In terms of the research itself, interpretive (qualitative) studies tended to provide rich in-depth data
situated in a particular context (e.g. Carlone, 2003; Herron et al., 2003; McGinnis & Simmons, 1998;
Mitchener & Anderson, 1989; Pedretti & Hodson, 1995) that allowed the reader to consider complex
relationships and subtle nuances and qualifications, features necessarily overlooked in quantitative
studies. For example, Carlone (2003) presented evidence (discussed below) to explain paradoxes in her
ethnographic study of a humanistic physics course, Active Physics, in a large high school; contractions
such as, stakeholders celebrated its legitimacy as an innovation but curtailed its growth within the school.
Explanations for these types of dynamics can emerge from research within a quantitative paradigm but
such explanations are merely speculations for variance in data. However, the interpretive research projects
were characterized by inconsistencies from study to study, likely due to the small number of participants
(from 2 to 14) and their idiosyncrasies. Inconsistencies were also found among the quantitative studies,
and therefore their generalizability was compromised, often because their sample selection was either
narrow or non-random. Some quantitative studies purposefully selected a narrow sample in order to
influence policy makers or administrators (e.g. within one particular educational jurisdiction), an instance
of the politics of research, perhaps.
Success at Implementation
Successful implementation of humanistic science teaching has occurred under favourable
circumstances. Success seemed to be associated with teaching grades 7 to 10 rather than higher grades,
perhaps because teachers were not confronted as much with the litany of obstacles to implementation
listed above. Action research studies have been consistently successful, perhaps because of their relatively
high proportion of human resources for the participating teachers and their relatively high proportion of
eager participants (humanistic science teachers). Research has identified the following favourable
circumstances: involvement of teachers in policy and curriculum development; involvement of teachers in
producing classroom materials; establishment of supportive networks of teachers that included teachers
experienced with humanistic science teaching who take leadership roles; a predisposition toward
exploring new avenues of pedagogy and student assessment; a willingness to deal with degrees of
uncertainty in the classroom; a substantial in-service program offered over a long period of time,
coordinated with pre-service methods courses and student teaching where possible; teacher reflection via
diaries or journals and via discussion; a recognition of the rewards from becoming socially responsible in
their community, from enhancing their curriculum development and writing skills, and from improving
their vision of science teaching; a responsive and caring project staff to provide the top-down guidance for
achieving a balance with grass-roots initiatives; contact with working scientists who convey intellectual,
42
moral, and political support; an openness to evidence-based decisions founded on formative assessment
and classroom experiences; and a focus on individual, autonomous, professional development into
becoming, for example, a continuous learner rather than a source of all knowledge (Anderson & Helms
[review], 2001; Bartholomew et al., 2002; Blunck & Yager [review], 1996; Briscoe, 1991; Cho, 2002;
Eijkelhof & Kapteijn, 2000; Fensham & Corrigan, 1994; Gray, 1999; Hart, 1989; Hart & Robottom,
1990; Keiny, 1993, 1996; Kilian-Schrum, 1996; Kortland, 2001; Leblanc, 1989; Ogborn, 2002; Osborne
et al., 2003; Pedretti & Hodson, 1995; Roberts, 1988, 1998; Rubba & Harkness, 1993; Sáez & Carretero,
2002; Solomon, 1999a; Tal et al., 2001; Wang & Schmidt, 2001; Yager & Tamir [review], 1993).
Teachers in one study summarized their development and implementation achievements realistically and
metaphorically: “Progress as a tension between a blessing and a curse” (Keiny, 1999, p. 347).
Some large scale research projects hold promise for supporting teachers’ attempts at transforming
their science teaching into a humanistic perspective: the Iowa Chautauqua Program (Blunck & Yager,
1996; Yager & Tamir, 1993), replicated in South Korea (Cho, 2002) and in India (Banerjee, 1996); the
“Science Education for Public Understanding Program,” SEPUP, in the US (SEPUP, 2003; Thier &
Nagle, 1996); the UK “Public Understanding of Science” syllabus (Hunt & Millar, 2000; Millar, 2000;
Osborne et al., 2003); the Dutch “Public Understanding of Science” curriculum (De Vos & Reiding,
1999; Eijkelhof & Kapteijn, 2000); and the Israeli “Science, Technology, Environment in Modern
Society” curriculum (Dori &Tal, 2000; Tal et al., 2001). Individually these projects exemplify the many,
empirically derived, favourable circumstances (listed above) that influence a teacher’s orientation to a
humanistic perspective on school science.
By way of an example, one in-depth research study offered insight into features of middle-of-theroad teachers who composed and taught humanistic science lessons in spite of a lack of curriculum
materials. Bartholomew and colleagues (2002) in the UK followed and supported 11 volunteer teachers
whose background understanding was unknown but who were interested in implementing the UK national
science curriculum’s “ideas about science,” specific ideas empirically derived from a large Delphi study
(reviewed earlier in this paper). The researchers were interested in “what it means to integrate teaching
about the nature of science, its practices and its processes, with the body of canonical content knowledge
in a way which reinforces and adds to the teaching of both” (p. 11, emphasis in the original). The
researchers identified 10 orientations within five “dimensions of practice” in order to characterize their
less successful and more successful teachers (respectively):
1. Teachers’ knowledge and understanding of humanistic content – from “anxious about their
understanding” to “confident that they have a sufficient understanding.”
2. Teachers’ conceptions of their own role – from “dispenser of knowledge” to “facilitator of learning.”
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3. Teachers’ use of discourse – from “closed and authoritative” to “open and dialogic.”
4. Teachers’ conception of learning goals – from “limited to knowledge gains” to “includes the
development of reasoning skills.”
5. The nature of classroom activities – from “student activities are contrived and inauthentic” to
“activities are authentic and owned by students.”
These dimensions are not mutually independent, but they do help to detail teachers’ orientations to a
humanistic perspective, more so than vague feelings of comfort or discomfort.
Small-scale studies have also provided the research community with fruitful methodologies or
findings. Several studies are reviewed here. In a case study of two exemplary, humanistic, chemistry
teachers, Garnett and Tobin (1989) discovered that in spite of their similar humanistic orientation, each
used distinctly different teaching strategies – whole-group and individualized instruction. Working
closely with 14 secondary teachers, Luft (2001) found their beliefs and practices related to studentcentredness changed differentially depending on the experience of the teacher: neophyte science teachers
“changed their beliefs more than their practices, whereas the experienced teachers demonstrated more
change in their practices than their beliefs” (p. 517). Geddis’ (1991) case study of a teacher introducing
controversial issues into his science class traces how the classroom discourse improved the more the
teacher paid attention to (1) the ideology of the knowledge presented, (2) the ideology inherent in the
teacher’s instruction, and (3) the intellectual context of that instruction. Briscoe’s (1991) case study of one
teacher’s experience changing his beliefs, changing his metaphors that described his teaching role (his
image or vision of teaching), and changing his classroom practices, shows that teachers “need time to
reflect on their own practices, assign language to their actions, and construct new knowledge which is
consistent with the role metaphors they use to make sense of changes in their practice” (p. 197).
On a larger scale, Kilian-Schrum (1996) investigated (through interviews, classroom visits, and a
questionnaire) what 400 teachers were going through as they attempted to implement a provincial STS
curriculum in Alberta, supported by authorized textbooks produced specifically for the curriculum. She
concluded that one’s self-image as a science teacher and one’s loyalty to a scientific discipline both have
to change before the teacher’s taught curriculum approximated the intended curriculum. To examine this
confluence of the intended and taught curricula more closely, McClelland (1998) and Jeans (1998)
videotaped lessons of a willing sub-sample of 12 of these Alberta teachers as they taught what they felt
was a humanistic science lesson that integrated STS and canonical science content. (Edited versions were
to be shown as model lessons at in-service workshops.) The videotapes were analyzed and each teacher
was then interviewed about the lesson and about the researchers’ interpretations of the lesson.
Unexpectedly McClelland (1998) found a greater diversity of teacher orientations toward humanistic
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school science among the grades 10 to 12 teachers than among the grades 7 to 9 teachers. And by
focusing on classroom events in the videotapes, Jeans (1998) was able to extend Briscoe’s (1991) research
methods and identify each teacher’s image (or vision) of humanistic science teaching in action, as
opposed to an image arising from interviews alone. Both McClelland (1998) and Jeans (1998) were aided
in their analysis by two different clue structures: teacher practical knowledge (reviewed just below in
“Components to a Teacher’s Orientation”) and an eight-category scheme devised by Aikenhead (1994d,
2000b) for describing both the importance afforded STS content in a curriculum and its infusion with
canonical science content. The low-importance end of the continuum has three categories that do not alter
the traditional scientist-centred structure of the curriculum: (1) a little STS content for motivational
purposes only, (2) casual infusion of more STS content but with no coherent purpose, and (3) a purposeful
infusion giving even more time to STS content. Category (4) continues to integrate the two types of
content but in a student-centred fashion, though only within a single scientific discipline. A category (5)
STS curriculum continues to integrate both types of content in a student-centred fashion, but it also
integrates scientific disciplines as required by the humanistic context. The proportion and importance of
STS content increases with ensuing categories until category (8), which most science teachers would view
as social studies with a little canonical science thrown in. Jeans (1998) was able to locate teachers along
this continuum (e.g. teachers were at categories 2, 3, 5 and 6) and compare their “images in action” with
the intended curriculum’s image represented by category (4) in Aikenhead’s scheme. Jeans’ research
included videotaped micro-teaches by pre-service science teachers (reviewed below in “Pre-Service
Experiences”). The research studies empirically validate two conclusions: the phrase “successful
implementation of a humanistic perspective” has many meanings for different teachers, and these
meanings can be described by various schemes.
Mitchener and Anderson’s (1989) case study of 14 teachers implementing a humanistic science
curriculum explained how decisions to accept, alter, or reject the new course were all made on the basis of
the same set of concerns (five were identified: concerns over reduced canonical science content,
discomfort with small group instruction, uncertainties over student assessment, frustrations with the nonacademic type of student attracted to the new course, and confusion over the teacher’s role). The
researchers could not distinguish between the accepting teachers and the rejecting teachers based solely
on the teachers’ concerns, yet the teachers’ orientations (in this case, their “beliefs and values”) obviously
differed.
And lastly, three different case studies of innovative teachers documented how the teachers coped
with negative reactions from their colleagues, administrators, and parents, and how this affected the extent
to which the teachers’ taught curriculum matched the intended humanistic curriculum (Aikenhead, 1983;
45
Carlone, 2003; Lantz & Kass, 1987). Carlone’s (2003) study reinforced earlier research findings that
showed both positive and negative influences by students on their teacher’s decision to implement or to
modify a humanistic perspective (Anderson & Helms, 2001; Hodson, 1994; Kapuscinski, 1982; KilianSchrum, 1996; McRobbie & Tobin, 1995). The researchers strongly recommended that innovators take
into consideration students’ ideas, goals, and conventions when student roles are changed, for example,
from passive to active roles, or from playing Fatima’s rules to engaging in critical thinking. Osborne and
colleagues (2003, p. 19) pointed out a related key finding in their research into the UK syllabus Public
Understanding of Science: “teaching a course which is enjoyed by students is…much more engaging and
motivating for the science teacher.”
Components to a Teacher’s Orientation
To give clarity to the holistic complexity of life in a science classroom, researchers have attempted
to articulate frameworks that encompass science teachers’ beliefs and values, and recognize contextual
features of a teacher’s actions. These contextual features have included the social system of the school, as
Stake and Easley (1978, p. 16.21) concluded, “What [science] teachers do with subject matter is
determined by how it sustains and protects them in the social system [of the school]. Subject matter that
did not fit these aims got rejected, neglected, or changed into ‘something that worked’.”
Life in a science classroom also features an individual teacher’s wealth of past experiences (e.g. as
a member of a family, and as a university student) that shaped a teacher’s understanding and metaphorical
images of science teaching, and that interact with the current features of school science (Aikenhead, 1984;
Jeans, 1998; Kleine, 1997; Munby et al., 2000; Roberts, 1998; Russell & Munby, 1991). Tobin and
McRobbie (1996), for instance, focused on teachers’ actions, determined by a teacher’s beliefs,
behaviours, and the context of that action. Krull-Romanyshyn (1996) drew upon a large-scale STS inservice project in Alberta (170 teachers) to delineate a science teacher’s “functional paradigm” and upon
the successful strategies that caused a shift in a teacher’s functional paradigm. Duffee and Aikenhead
(1992) proposed a heuristic model for “teacher practical knowledge” (TPK) to explain the holistic
complexity of classroom life by assuming behaviour results from decisions made consciously or
unconsciously by teachers. These decisions are based on a teacher’s practical knowledge, comprised of
many interacting sets of personal ideas, for instance, practical principles, rules of practice, values, and
beliefs that integrate past experiences, such as teaching experiences, educational experiences, life
experiences, and one’s personal background and worldview. These ideas interpret the current teaching
situation (e.g. the intended curriculum, specific students in the classroom, physical classroom features,
colleagues, administration, and community) before a decision for action is made (Brooks, 2000;
46
Clandinin, 1985; Clandinin & Connelly, 1996; David, 2003; Hlady, 1992; Mitschke, 1992). All these
considerations are filtered through a teacher’s vision or image of how teaching should be, before a final
decision for action is taken. Most decisions reflect this image (Briscoe, 1991; Hand & Treagust, 1997;
Russell & Munby, 1991). TPK emphasizes the individual teacher as decision maker influenced by a
myriad of practical considerations. Barnett and Hodson (2001, p. 433) have expanded TPK into “the work
culture of teachers, derived from their roles as institutional, social, and political actors.” These researchers
coined the phrase “teacher context knowledge” (TCK) to draw attention to “what good teachers know, do,
and feel is largely about teaching and is situated in the minutiae of everyday classroom life” (p. 436).
TCK emphasizes the institutional, social, and political influences on teacher behaviour.
By identifying the complexities inherent in a teacher’s orientation, heuristics such as TPK and
TCK (both empirically derived from research) compel science educational researchers to consider a much
deeper analysis of teachers’ orientations toward changing the traditional science curriculum into a
humanistic one, a change for most teachers as painful and personally challenging as a Kuhnian paradigm
shift is for most scientists (Mitroff, 1974). If a middle-of-the-road teacher is to successfully negotiate a
humanistic orientation to science teaching, there are many personal deep-seated traits, values, beliefs, and
conventions, that must change. To quote a teacher in Roberts’ (1998) Science Teachers Thinking study,
“We had to learn a whole new way of teaching.” For a “pipeline” enthusiast to change, however, it could
involve, in some cases, changing a person’s worldview or personality. And all of this must take place
within a supportive school and community (Aikenhead, 2000a; Carlone, 2003; Elmore, 2003; Ryder et al.,
2003).
In retrospect, it seems sensible that many studies into the implementation of a humanistic science
curriculum selected humanistic science teachers in order to establish that such a curriculum can be
implemented. It was only when the research realistically involved middle-of-the-road teachers and
“pipeline” enthusiasts did problems arise that forced researchers to produce richer data, analyzed in
greater depth. One simple solution to the problem of implementing a humanistic science curriculum
seems obvious: produce many humanistic teachers in pre-service teacher education programs
(Brickhouse, 1989; Koulaidis & Ogborn, 1989; Rowell & Cawthron, 1982; Wang & Schmidt, 2001).
Researchers have explored that avenue.
Pre-Service Experiences
As with in-service studies, researchers of pre-service science teachers’ orientation to a humanistic
perspective first focused on documenting students’ understanding. While many students expressed naïve
and simplistic ideas (Cunningham, 1998; Nieswandt & Bellomo, 2003; Stuart & Thurlow, 2000; Tsai,
47
2001), and while some students expressed more contemporary and complex ideas (students with strong
academic backgrounds in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science, and those with scientific
experience in industry and government labs), evidence showed that this understanding did make a
noticeable difference in practical teaching settings generally supportive of such innovations (Bianchini et
al., 2003; Cunningham, 1998; David, 2003; King, 1991; Nieswandt & Bellomo, 2003; Schwartz &
Lederman, 2002). One exception is Jeans’ (1998) analysis of 35 videotaped STS micro-teach lessons
(described above) that clearly showed his pre-service teachers were not appreciably including their
humanistic ideas in their lessons (i.e. they were in the bottom two categories of infusion of STS content
with canonical science content, that is, STS content for motivation only, and casual infusion; described
above). Jeans concluded that these pre-service teachers mimicked the pure content orientation of their
recent university science classes and succumbed to peer pressure to demonstrate subject matter expertise.
David (2003) and Schwartz and Lederman (2002) discovered a different reason to explain the reluctance
of pre-service teachers to include humanistic content in their lessons: novice teachers naturally lack
confidence in teaching canonical science content, and until a reasonable confidence can be attained, other
instructional outcomes are relegated to a low priority. Background knowledge of humanistic content
seems to exert an influence in some pre-service settings, but not in all; especially when pre-service
teacher apprentices are placed in an unsupportive school setting (Abd-El-Khalick et al., 1998).
Researchers have assessed university courses that purport to transmit a contemporary
understanding of humanistic content to pre-service science teachers. Their disappointing results show that
some university students do not easily reconstruct naïve and simplistic preconceptions into contemporary
conceptions (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000; Cunningham, 1998; Gallagher, 1991; James, 1985;
Lederman, 1992), likely because those preconceptions are anchored in personal beliefs, values,
ideologies, identities, allegiances, and goals. The university transmission model is not very effective in
this context (Bencze & Hodson, 1999; Rubba & Harkness, 1993; Solomon, 1999a). Changing personal
deep-seated ideas about humanistic content related to science often requires much more than a methods
course; it takes a whole university (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997; Cunningham, 1998; Nieswandt
& Bellomo, 2003).
Transactional and transformational approaches to pre-service humanistic science content have
been researched. These approaches are usually experiential, reflective, collaborative, and critical (Bencze
& Hodson, 1999; Bianchini & Solomon, 2003; Solomon, 1999a). They address aspects of teacher
development (professional, social, and personal; Bell, 1998) embraced by teacher practical knowledge
(TPK) and teacher context knowledge (TCK). Evidence supports the greater success of transactional and
transformation approaches over transmission approaches. For instance, Lin’s (1998) research into training
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pre-service teachers on how to develop and teach chemistry through the history of science provides both
quantitative and qualitative data. Modest gains on quantitative measures were interpreted through
interview data to support the conclusion that when students understand the history of science, they tend to
use that knowledge, rather than their intuition (preconceptions), to discuss humanistic content in science
class.
Still, the most influential pre-service experience from the point of view of a practicing teacher is
invariably student teaching or internship in which a novice pre-service teacher apprentices with an
experienced teacher (Brickhouse & Bodner, 1992; Roberts & Chastko, 1990; Richardson-Koehler, 1988;
Russell et al., 2001). Only when pre-service teachers are placed in humanistic-supportive apprenticeships
can their humanistic perspective develop further (Bianchini & Solomon, 2003; Nieswandt & Bellomo,
2003; Tsai, 2001), otherwise “pipeline” enthusiasts and similarly committed middle-of-the-road teachers
direct their apprentices to forget the ivory tower humanistic perspectives on school science presented in
their pre-service courses (Abd-El-Khalick et al., 1998; Barnett & Hodson, 2001; Broadfoot, 1992; Munby
et al., 2000; Russell et al., 2001). And the vicious cycle reproduces the status quo; another political
reality.
School Politics
In the review of research into formulating an intended humanistic curriculum (the section
“Curriculum Policy” above), political dynamics were a critical force, as explained, for instance, by actornetwork theory (Gaskell & Hepburn, 1998). In research related to the taught curriculum reviewed here,
tension continues between educationally sound arguments for a humanistic perspective in a teacher’s
orientation to school science, on the one hand, and the political reality of institutional expectations,
rituals, customs, ceremonies, beliefs, and loyalties favouring the status quo, on the other.
The in-service and pre-service humanistic science projects (reviewed above) largely failed to
achieve the radical changes in school science envisioned by their project leaders. When analyzing these
failures, many researchers chose not to address explicitly the power of political reality but instead focused
on non-politicized, practical, epistemological, and academic theory-building matters, that is, educationally
sound arguments (e.g. Anderson & Helms’ [2001] thoughtful review of Standards). Other researchers,
however, have placed political reality explicitly on their agenda because the enactment of an intended
humanistic science curriculum into a taught curriculum takes place not only with individual teachers and
their unique orientations to humanistic school science, it takes place within a political arena of students,
colleagues, administrators, the school culture, and the immediate and extended community (Aikenhead,
2000a; Bianchini & Solomon, 2003; Carlone, 2003; Fensham, 1992; Gaskell, 1989, 2003; Pedretti &
49
Hodson, 1995; Medvitz, 1996; Roberts, 1988). This political arena has been researched explicitly at the
school level.
Humanistic science is integrative by nature and Venville et al.’s (2002) review of curriculum
integration sheds light on school politics in which status is a principal factor (Goodson, 1987). Status in
most school cultures is high for courses that are (1) rigid in their course content, (2) highly differentiated
and insulated from other subjects, and (3) academically and idealistically objective. On the other hand,
status is low for courses that are: (1) flexible in their content to achieve relevance and timeliness, (2)
amenable to overlap with other subjects, and (3) utilitarian, relevant, and subjective. Status is animated by
the language used within a school, for example, “hard” and “soft” sciences. Clearly, humanistic science
courses currently fall in the low status category, and this directly affects who teaches them (Carlone,
2003; Gaskell, 1989), which in turn sustains their low status. For example, teachers with a general science
background who normally taught home economics and technology courses were recruited to teach the
humanistic “Science & Technology 11” course in British Columbia, largely because many regular high
school science teachers refused to take it on. Consequently, a low status was quickly conferred on this
innovative curriculum in many schools, in spite of the endorsement it received from the provincial
Ministry of Education, from David Suzuki (a renowned television scientist), and from the Science
Council of Canada; all high status agencies (Gaskell, 1989).
Roberts’ (1988) research into the politics of the science curriculum recognized the roles of status
and loyalty within school politics.
If one wants to promote science teacher loyalty to a science curriculum proposal: guarantee the
status of the content by enshrining it in an acceptable, recognized examination, and secure the
support of the subject community. Otherwise the spectre is ever present, for the teachers, that the
proposal’s academic status will degenerate to utilitarian and pedagogic [student-centred] limbo. …
[Loyalty] is quite a different matter from the need for in-service education to ensure that the
teachers understand a new proposal. (p. 48, emphasis in the original)
Teacher loyalty forms a bridge between teacher orientation and school politics.
In the US, Carlone (2003) conducted a highly informative, ethnographic case study of this bridge,
showing specific tensions between support for, and constraints on, a humanistic physics course, Active
Physics (Eisenkraft, 1998). The study took place in a large upper-middle class high school proud of its
graduates’ post-secondary enrolment figures, proud of its five different grade 11 and 12 physics courses
each with multiple sections, and proud that 50% of its students enrolled in first-year physics. Active
Physics, one of three first-year physics courses (grade 11), had six sections, compared to 37 sections of
regular physics offered at this school. Backed by the status of both the American Association of Physics
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Teachers and the American Institute of Physics, Active Physics is a reform-based curriculum that
contextualizes physics content in social issues, technology-centred lab activities (tool use), and everyday
events (i.e. a combination of “functional,” “personal curiosity,” “need-to-know,” and “wish-they-knew”
science). Instruction emphasized a social constructivist view on learning. The course’s two, humanistic,
well credentialed, physics teachers (Ms. Carpenter and Mr. Stewart, a minority among nine other physics
teachers) had initiated the course and had taught it four years, successfully preparing students for grade 12
advanced placement physics. By Roberts’ (1988) standards, the course met the conditions for being
enshrined as acceptable in this school.
Not only does Carlone’s case study concretely and holistically illustrate research findings
concerning teachers’ decisions to implement or not to implement (reviewed above), it clarifies how status
is dynamically played out in this school’s politics. For example, “Ms. Carpenter said that she thought she
had a large role in maintaining the survival of Active Physics because she was more ‘political’ than Mr.
Stewart. She did more of the public relations work with Active Physics in that she spent more time trying
to convince others of its legitimacy” (p. 322). “Interestingly, this demonstration of legitimacy was enough
to ensure the survival of Active Physics, but not enough to ensure its growth and Mr. Stewart and Ms.
Carpenter’s prestige within the department” (p. 326). Many reasons accounted for this, but only a few are
summarized here. Neither teacher had political access to the many students in regular physics classes who
seemed to garner personal status as academic students by pejoratively calling Active Physics “blow up”
(i.e. easy) physics. The teachers of regular physics protected their own superior position in the school
hierarchy of status (Cross & Ormiston-smith, 1996) in a variety of ways: by rationalizing (e.g. we must
protect the sanctity of physics), by belittling (e.g. Active Physics is really grade 9 science), and by
marginalizing (e.g. the professional interaction between Active Physics teachers and the other teachers
was restricted). Although the administration proudly provided substantial financing to implement this
tool-centred course, it restricted the number of sections offered and thus, it did not allow the course to
expand. Nor did the administration provide sufficient political support to ameliorate the isolation between
the innovators and the other physics teachers. Perhaps the administrators were simply balancing the
politics of the school in two ways: (1) wanting to look innovative to the public by offering a radically
different physics course, but at the same time, maintaining an aura of academic (traditional) excellence by
ensuring most students took regular physics; and (2) balancing teachers’ loyalties within the school:
loyalty to the radically new course and to the status quo course. Carlone (2003) pointed out, however, that
this isolation provided Mr. Stewart and Ms. Carpenter “the freedom to enact their visions of good science
education without having to coordinate their curriculum’s content and methods with other teachers who
may have had different ideologies” (pp. 325-326). Of the 11 physics teachers at the school, two were
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humanistic teachers, some were “pipeline” enthusiasts, and some were likely middle-of-the-road teachers
who chose to side with their status quo colleagues.
Carlone’s case study details the daunting challenges and political limitations facing educators
wishing to change the traditional science curriculum into a humanistic one, but it joins with others (e.g.
Aikenhead, 2000a; Gaskell, 2003; Elmore, 2003; Medvitz, 1996; Osborne et al., 2003; Roberts, 1988)
when it concludes that the powerful 19th century legacy of school science can be challenged successfully
on a small scale, but challengers must renegotiate the culture of school science and some social structures
of privilege and power along the way. Ms. Carpenter and Mr. Stewart became politicized at the school
level, but that was not sufficient to ensure “the virus” of innovation (Elmore, 2003) would infect the
whole system of the school. Yet, they simply did not have the time and energy to become politicized at
the regional or nation level, as Pedretti and Hodson (1995) proposed teachers do.
Conclusion
The challenge of change within a classroom is one issue. The challenge of a large-scale
implementation of humanistic school science requires an actor-network larger than two teachers. Political
reality dictates that an expanded actor-network would need to be formed in concert with socially powerful
groups, for example, a school system administration that embraces a concern for accountability (Elmore,
2002), or a much more pervasive group such as local or national industries and corporations (Dori & Tal,
2000; Gaskell, 2003). The challenge to enact a humanistic science curriculum at the school level comes
down to an issue of scale (moderate or ambitious), of resources to engage in the appropriate politics of
change (altering the curriculum’s status perceived by stakeholders, altering teachers’ loyalties, and
altering the assessment system), of finances and infrastructure (to support teachers and students), and of
the availability of science teachers who already have, or will develop, an orientation to such a curriculum.
These local issues must be placed in the broader context of curriculum policy development (reviewed
above) and placed on the political agenda to renegotiate the concept of status itself in school culture.
Teacher orientation is a dynamic entity that interacts with, and on occasion is modified to varying
degrees by, the politics of change and the many elements important to teacher development (Aikenhead,
2000b; Bencze & Hodson, 1999; Elmore, 2003; Fensham & Corrigan, 1994; Sáez & Carretero, 2002; Tal
et al., 2001; Tsai, 2001). One key dynamic is the impact the taught curriculum has on students’ learning, a
topic to which we now turn.
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Student Learning
The learned curriculum, planned or unplanned, is given high priority in arguments concerning
educational soundness. As is evident throughout this review, a humanistic science curriculum has various
interrelated expectations or outcomes, summarized here: (1) to make the human aspects of science more
accessible and relevant to students (e.g. its sociology, philosophy, and history, as well as its
interrelationships with society); (2) to help students become better critical thinkers, creative problem
solvers, and especially better decision makers, in a science-related everyday context; (3) to increase
students’ capability to communicate with the scientific community or its spokespersons (i.e. listen, read,
respond, etc.) in order to feel more at home in one’s culture, among other reasons; (4) to augment
students’ commitment to social responsibility; and (5) to generate interest in, and therefore, increase
achievement in learning canonical science found in the traditional curriculum. (Purposefully missing from
this list of outcomes are lofty and non-assessable aims such as an empowered citizenry, an enlightened
democracy, and wise and responsible decision makers.) Researchers engaged in summative assessment of
humanistic science modules and courses have operationalized and prioritized the above five common
outcomes differently. This makes comparisons among studies somewhat tenuous but renders the
instruction relevant to most students. One must live with this paradox because there is no such thing as a
standard, yet contextualized, humanistic science curriculum.
In the world of political reality (a world that accepts playing Fatima’s rules as legitimate learning),
the learned humanistic curriculum would be of interest to stakeholders only if there were a negative
assessment of canonical content acquisition for students enrolled in a humanistic science course.
However, when this assessment is shown to be equal or sometimes greater than the achievement in
traditional science courses (as is the case, reviewed above in “Curriculum Policy”), student learning
disappears from the agenda, to be replaced by other concerns with humanistic school science, such as the
need to retrain science teachers, the lack of widespread implementation, and an inability to sustain special
support (Walberg, 1991). Consequently, we can expect research on student learning to be of interest only
to curriculum policy makers and science teachers whose orientations are amenable to humanistic school
science. This narrow expectation concerning the importance of student learning is a political reality.
Research into the learned humanistic science curriculum is reviewed in the following sequence:
canonical science content acquired in humanistic science courses, evidence gathering techniques for
assessing humanistic content, summative assessment in quasi-experimental studies, other investigations in
humanistic science education, and student decision making.
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Canonical Science Content
As stated in expectation number 5 (above), researchers anticipated significantly increased
achievement in canonical science acquisition by students in a humanistic science course (e.g. Aikenhead,
1980; Eijkelhof & Kortland, 1988; Eylon & Linn, 1988; Häussler & Hoffmann, 2000; Walberg &
Ahlgren, 1973; Yager, 1983), yet these high expectations rarely materialized (e.g. Eijkelhof & Lijnse,
1988; Irwin, 2000; Kortland, 2001; Wiesenmayer & Rubba, 1990; Welch, 1973). This ubiquitous research
finding supports the conclusion that most students encounter extreme difficulty when they attempt to
learn canonical science meaningfully at school, no matter how relevant the humanistic context
(Aikenhead, 1996; Eijkelhof, 1990; Hennessy, 1983; Lijnse, 1990; Osborne et al., 2003; Solomon, 1983).
This finding was explained by Solomon (1987, 1988b) when she clarified how a relevant social context
(in which the canonical content is embedded) provokes affective and value-laden connections in students’
minds, thereby making the situation far more complex to think through, especially for less able students.
Research into student learning when engaged in socio-scientific decision making (reviewed below)
collaborates and articulates Solomon’s claim. More recently, researchers have drawn upon cultural
anthropology to describe this complexity further in terms of differing worldviews (Cobern, 1996) or in
terms of students feeling as if they are in a foreign culture that does not engage their self-identities
(Aikenhead, 1996; Aikenhead, 2000a; Aikenhead & Jegede, 1999). Moreover, as reviewed above in
“Curriculum Policy”, canonical science content is most often not directly useable in everyday situations.
Another paradox presents itself: the greater the social or cultural relevance associated with canonical
content, the greater the student motivation but the greater the complexity to learn it meaningful.
These two factors (motivation and complexity) may cancel each other out yielding null results in
achievement, that is, equal achievement in learning canonical science between students enrolled in
humanistic science courses and students in traditional scientific courses (Aikenhead [review], 1994b;
Banerjee, 1996; Blunck & Yager [review], 1996; Bybee [review], 1993; Cho, 2002; Eijkelhof & Lijnse,
1988; Galili & Hazan, 2001; Irwin, 2000; Kelly, 1981; Klopfer & Cooley, 1963; Pederson, 1992;
Wiesenmayer & Rubba, 1990; Welch, 1973). Motivation can overcome complexity occasionally and lead
to greater achievement favouring students enrolled in humanistic science courses (Blunck & Yager
[review], 1996; Häussler & Hoffmann, 2000; Mbajiorgu & Ali, 2002; Meyers, 1992; Poedjiadi, 1996;
Rubba & Wiesenmayer, 1991; Solomon et al., 1992, 1996; Sutman & Bruce, 1992; Wang & Schmidt,
2001; Winther & Volk, 1994). Other research (reviewed above in “Curriculum Policy”) suggested that
only when personal action is at stake (i.e. very high motivation) do most students or citizens work through
the complexity to learn enough content to take action; but then the content learned meaningfully is not
54
likely to be the “pure” science found in the traditional curriculum (Jenkins, 1992; 2002; Lawrence &
Eisenhart, 2002; Layton, 1991).
In short, humanistic science curriculum developers take on an extremely high, and likely
inappropriate, standard of excellence in learning canonical science when they expect meaningful learning
to occur and when they embed that learning in relevant everyday contexts.
Evidence Gathering Techniques for Humanistic Content
Over the past 50 years, the evidence gathering techniques for assessing student learning in the
domain of humanistic conceptual content (expectation number 1, above) have developed dramatically,
from a quantitative paradigm (Aikenhead [review], 1973; Cheek, 1992; Lederman [review], 1992), to an
interpretive (qualitative) paradigm (Aikenhead, 1979, 1988; Aikenhead, Fleming & Ryan, 1987;
Aikenhead & Ryan, 1992; Driver et al., 1996; Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell & Schwartz, 2002; Wade,
Lederman & Bell, 1997), and to a situated-cognition approach within the interpretive paradigm (Gaskell,
1994; Solomon, 1992; Welzel & Roth, 1998). The target content of each instrument or protocol varies
greatly from study to study. Content associated with the philosophy of science (i.e. epistemology,
ontology, and some axiology) became known as the “nature of science” (Lederman, 1992) while content
associated with various sociologies of science and societal contexts of science and scientists has had many
labels, such as the social aspects of science. Some researchers have expanded the category “nature of
science” to include some social aspects of science (e.g. Knain, 1997; Lederman et al., 2002; McComas &
Olson, 1997; Millar & Osborne, 1998). All of these categories are embraced as humanistic content in this
review of research.
More importantly, consensus has not been reached on what ideas represent the most acceptable or
defensible views, that is, what content is “correct” (e.g. Alters, 1997; Smith et al., 1997). Contested areas
of scholarship remain, for instance, the realism-constructivism debate, or the cultural nature of Western
science. The central issues here for researchers are validity and trustworthiness.
Moreover, many individual research studies have narrowly focused on only three or four
humanistic ideas (due to time and resource limitations) and these ideas varied from study to study.
Consequently, a plethora of instruments and protocols have been published over the years, representing
the full range of contested humanistic content. These instruments are not reviewed here (see, for example,
Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000; Aikenhead, 1973; Lederman, in press; Wade, Lederman & Bell,
1997), but their diversity is noted to draw attention to the potential problem of inconsistency among
research studies using different evidence gathering techniques.
55
Researchers working within the quantitative paradigm claim to have measured students’
attainment of humanistic ideas and have sorted students into philosophical categories or into dichotomies
of achievement (e.g. literate and illiterate). This paradigm is characterized by the judgment of students
based on external criteria, such as a panel of experts or theoretical positions accepted by scholarly
academic communities. These quantitative instruments generally suffer: (1) an ambiguity problem arising
from researchers erroneously assuming that their meaning ascribed to a statement is exactly the meaning
read into the statement by students (Aikenhead, 1988; Aikenhead et al., 1987); (2) a validity problem
caused by the “correct” responses varying as the developer’s viewpoint (Lederman et al., 1998); or
because when a panel of experts decides what is correct, there is often a problem with a panel selection
bias and a low inter-judge reliability (Manassero-Mas, Vázquez-Alonso & Acevedo-Díaz, 2001; Rubba et
al., 1996; Vázquez-Alonso & Manassero-Mas, 1999); or because in some cases, the validity and reliability
of instruments have not been substantiated adequately; and (3) an ambiguity problem arising from the
narrow scope of outcomes assessed by pencil and paper, multiple-choice type instruments, outcomes that
fail to capture the rich and diverse array of anticipated outcomes for humanistic science courses (Cheek,
1992), for example, those outcomes stated in expectation numbers 1 to 4, above.
Researchers working within the interpretive (qualitative) paradigm for their summative assessment
are primarily interested in clarifying and understanding a student’s view and conveying it to others. To
accomplish this task, a variety of protocols have been developed (Aikenhead et al., 1987; Aikenhead &
Ryan, 1992; Driver et al., 1996; Leach et al., 1997; Lederman, in press; Lederman & O’Malley, 1990;
Lederman et al., 2002; Solomon, 1992; Solomon et al., 1994). The varied characteristics of these
protocols are captured in the following three points:
1. Interviews (semi-structured to non-structured), versus written responses (open-ended to convergent,
i.e. using pre-established responses).
2. General questions posed without a context provided (e.g. Do scientists’ personal values ever affect the
research results they obtain?), versus contextualized questions embedded in clearly described
situations or in a particular task undertaken by students (e.g. learning about a particular scientific
controversy, such as the dispute surrounding Wegener’s continental drift hypothesis, and then
discussing specific focus questions in small groups).
3. Questions that make the humanistic content explicit for students such that students knowingly discuss
the explicit content, versus questions that leave the humanistic content implicit but is inferred by
researchers who analyze student responses.
Two further characteristics of interpretive protocols in general should be added to this list and are stated
here as dichotomies for the sake of clarity:
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4. Students’ personal knowledge about school science, versus students’ declarative knowledge about
science and scientists in their authentic workplaces (Gaskell, 1992; Hogan, 2000; Larochelle &
Désautels, 1991; Leach et al., 1997; Solomon et al., 1994).
5. Knowledge understood by students well enough to articulate in an interview, versus knowledge
understood and believed strongly enough by students to be guided by it implicitly as they participate
in a discussion or simulation (Dahncke, 1996; Driver et al., 1996; Gaskell, 1994; Solomon, 1992,
1994d; Welzel & Roth, 1998).
Research studies have often used various combinations of these protocol characteristics to augment the
trustworthiness of their data. In addition, several studies have combined the quantitative and interpretive
paradigms to achieve a balance of evidence gathering techniques to answer different sorts of research
questions; often interviewing a small sample of students after a large sample of students has responded to
a questionnaire, in order to reduce the inherent ambiguity in the survey data; but sometimes first
interviewing participants and then constructing a survey to determine the extent to which the participants’
views are shared by a larger sample of students.
The fifth characteristic of interpretive protocols (stated directly above) introduces a situatedcognition (ethnographic) approach, still within the interpretive paradigm. Based on their empirical
evidence, Welzel and Roth (1998) questioned the assumption that interviews capture students’ conceptual
ideas accurately. Three points were argued: interviews themselves are contrived because they are not
situated in the context of action; Welzel and Roth’s data suggested that students’ humanistic concepts are
not highly stable from context to context, contrary to what science educator’s had assumed; and ambiguity
can plague interviews, too (estimated at 5% by Aikenhead [1988]). Thus, to understand what students
have learned, researchers need to listen to student conversations, note the actions of students as they
engage in a meaningful task, or interview them about that specific task. (This research technique is similar
to analyzing videotapes of teachers in action, rather than interviewing teachers about their recalled
actions, reviewed above in “Teacher Orientation.”)
Sutherland (2003) illustrated Welzel and Roth’s recommendation when she had First Nations
students discuss critical incidents, from which she interpreted humanistic ideas about science held by the
students, over a number of different contexts represented in her different critical incidents. Sutherland
searched for consistency among contexts, unlike Leach et al. (1997) who found in their UK students a
tendency to treat each context as a separate case, causing inconsistencies to arise in students’ responses,
inconsistencies that, according to Leach and his colleagues, reflected the multifaceted domain of science.
Bell and Lederman (2003) found critical incidents to enhance their evidence gathering techniques in their
inquiry into the way university scientists came to a decision on science-related social issues.
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Ethnographic techniques for gathering evidence typically include students being observed during a
school science activity and their words and actions interpreted by researchers as manifesting certain
humanistic concepts about science. Leach and colleagues (1997) critiqued this technique as having a
school science context, and therefore concluded that observers may be detecting sophisticated versions of
Fatima’s rules, rather than humanistic concepts guiding practice. Solomon (1992) addressed these
problems when she showed students actual TV clips of science-based controversial topics (e.g. kidney
donation) and had students engage in free discussion in small groups. These discussions were
subsequently analyzed. Gaskell (1994) modified Solomon’s evidence gathering technique into two stages:
first, a socio-scientific issue (e.g. sun-tan parlours) was presented to students as a TV clip or as a
newspaper article; and secondly, a related story personalized the issue for them. Students were
interviewed on two occasions, once after the first presentation, and again after the personal story. During
the second interview, Gaskell challenged students’ original key ideas to determine how strongly students
held them and what other ideas supported their original key idea: “It is in the dynamics of coping with
challenges to their points of view that students articulate the array of elements that they associated with an
issue and also the strengths and weaknesses of the links between the various elements or points” (p. 312).
Gaskell’s and Solomon’s protocols yield trustworthy data and high transferability to everyday events
outside of school, and they afford insight into citizens making a decision on a socio-scientific issue (a
principal component to a humanistic science curriculum, reviewed below). On the other hand, the
protocols are labour intensive and limited to a few issues found in the mass media.
There is no one best technique or instrument for gathering evidence, each has advantages and
limitations. In the interpretive paradigm of research, for example, one of the most comprehensive
protocols, Views on Science-Technology-Society, VOSTS (Aikenhead, Fleming & Ryan, 1989)
catalogued humanistic content found in contemporary literature and transposed it into 114 novel multiplechoice items developed collaboratively with students (Aikenhead & Ryan, 1992). Each item
contextualized an issue about which students were asked to express a view, plus their reason for holding
that view. The development process itself established the instrument’s trustworthiness, while its test-retest
reliability was independently demonstrated (Botton & Brown, 1998). Although VOSTS was developed
within the interpretive paradigm of research, marking schemes have been constructed for studies in the
quantitative paradigm (Manassero-Mas, Vázquez-Alonso & Acevedo-Díaz, 2001; Rubba, SchonewegBradford & Harkness, 1996; Vázquez-Alonso & Manassero-Mas, 1999). But VOSTS is limited in at least
three specific ways: students typically can only respond to about 15 to 20 items in one sitting, thus,
choices must be made; VOSTS does not provide the flexibility to probe students’ responses as interviews
do, thus, student responses are constricted; and, similar to a humanistic perspective itself, VOSTS is not
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universal, therefore when it is used in settings culturally different than Anglo Canada, researchers must
empirically modify and validate the items for use in that culture (e.g. in Québec – Aikenhead, Ryan &
Désautels, 1989; in Portugal – Nunes, 1996; in Spain – Manassero-Mas & Vázquez-Alonso, 1998; in the
United Arab Emirates – Haidar & Nageeb, 1999; in Taiwan – Lin (1998); and in Nigeria – Mbajiorgu &
Ali, 2002), otherwise problems arise (e.g. in Lebanon – Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997).
Lederman and his colleagues (2002) designed the Views of Nature of Science (VNOS)
purposefully avoiding the response constrictions of VOSTS. VNOS-form C is a 10-item, open-ended
questionnaire, of which most items are decontextualized. Part of the protocol for using NVOS-form C is a
follow-up interview schedule to investigate students’ views further, for instance, to discover how students
spontaneously contextualized the items as students responded to them. Similarly, Driver and her research
colleagues (1996) avoided the constrictions of VOSTS and developed a complex protocol (Images of
Science Probes) that engaged students in a double task: a class presentation introduced students to, for
instance, a science-related dispute (e.g. the safety of irradiated food), and was followed by a small-group
discussion of some key questions about the dispute. Researchers then conducted semi-structured
contextualized interviews with pairs of students to focus on general humanistic concepts related to
(depending on which of the six research probes were used): science as a social enterprise (three key
concepts), the nature or status of scientific knowledge (five key concepts), and the purposes of scientific
work (one key concept). Six probes allowed researchers to check for consistency of students’ key
concepts from one context to another. The research team inductively developed interpretive girds to help
future researchers interpret students’ interview responses. Both the VNOS-form C (Lederman et al., 2002)
and the Images of Science Probes (Driver et al., 1996) provide flexible techniques for gathering evidence
in depth, even though the approach is labour intensive and the breadth of topics is necessarily restricted to
a few key humanistic concepts. However, given the marginalized status of a humanistic perspective in the
intended and taught curricula in most schools today, this restriction may not be a liability at the present
time.
The evidence gathering techniques reviewed above relate to conceptual understanding of
humanistic content (expectation number 1). Other outcomes have undergone assessment using:
standardized tests of knowledge about scientific processes, attitudes toward science, and creativity and
problem solving in science contexts (Yager & Tamir [review], 1993; Zoller, 1990); and novel methods
more tailored to the particular instructional setting, for instance: assessment embedded in the instruction
using everyday events (Thier & Nagle, 1994, 1996); assessment of students’ ability to pose questions and
engage in higher-order thinking (Zoller, 1994a, 1994b); formal case study assessment of student attitudes
(Dori & Tal, 2000); participant-observation and interviewing (Urevbu, 1994); formal compilation of
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relevant student actions within the parameters of computer simulations (Dahncke, 1996) or outside of
school in the real world (Dori & Tal, 2000; Jiménez-Aleizandre & Pereiro- Muñoz, 2002; Rubba &
Wiesenmayer, 1991, 1999); formal interviews with students (Tsai, 2000); interviews along with a
repertory grid (Shapiro, 1996); simple straight-forward questionnaires developed by the researcher (e.g.
Solbes & Viches, 1997); and informal assessment via interviews with students and parents (Dori & Tal,
2000).
Summative Assessment in Quasi-Experimental Studies
Researchers invariably design summative assessment studies by crafting educationally defensible
research questions, while at the same time, considering the political context of their work (Welch, 1979).
Given that humanistic perspectives are generally ignored or marginalized by traditional school science,
researchers who embrace a humanistic ideology will design their summative assessments to demonstrate
the advantages of their innovation over the status quo, and thereby attempt to sway policy makers and
science teachers oriented to “the pipeline” ideology. Because the implicit target audience of this research
tends to emulate experimental methods, a strong argument for humanistic science education must be
based on quantitative evidence derived from quasi-experimental research designs. This was particularly
true of studies prior to 1990, but since then, emphasis in the research literature has clearly shifted to
qualitative studies. Perhaps the research community heeded Welch’s (1969) warning about the pitfalls of
overly simplistic “horse race” evaluation studies (experimental versus control groups) and became more
concerned with understanding what was going on in humanistic science classes, an area of research, for
example, targeted by Eijkelhof and Lijnse’s (1988) fourth phase of their developmental research
(reviewed above in “Classroom Materials”), or underscored by their claim that not enough was known
about how to reach the expectations of a humanistic science curriculum (Eijkelhof et al., 1996).
By the 1900s it was evidently clear in a literature review by Aikenhead (1994b), and in two reviews of
the extensive Iowa Chautauqua Program by Yager (1996b) and Yager and Tamir (1993), that sufficient
summative evaluation studies had been published to warrant the following research synthesis:
1. Students in humanistic science classes (compared with traditional science classes) can significantly
improve their understanding of social issues both external and internal to science, and of the
interactions among science, technology, and society; but this achievement depends on what content is
emphasized and evaluated by the teacher. The teacher makes the difference.
2. Students in humanistic science classes (compared with traditional science classes) can significantly
improve their attitudes toward science, toward science classes, and toward learning, as a result of
learning humanistic content.
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3. Students in humanistic science classes (compared with traditional science classes) can make modest
but significant gains in thinking skills such as applying canonical science content to everyday events,
critical and creative thinking, and decision making, as long as these skills are explicitly practiced and
evaluated in the classroom.
4. Students can benefit from studying science from a humanistic perspective provided that: the
humanistic content is integrated with canonical science content in a purposeful, educationally sound
way; appropriate classroom materials are available; and a teacher’s orientation toward school science
is in reasonable synchrony with a humanistic perspective.
According to a number of science education researchers (e.g. Monk & Osborne, 1997; Schibeci, 1986),
the most compelling single summative assessment study was the complex, multi-faceted, randomized
research design for Harvard Project Physics (HPP), reviewed by Welch in 1973 who stated that compared
to their counterparts in non-HPP classes, “students in HPP find the course more satisfying, diverse,
historical, philosophical, humanitarian, and social; … the historical approach is interesting …” (p. 375).
Welch also reported that standardized measures of humanistic conceptual content achievement (i.e. preposttest gain scores on Klopfer’s “Test on Understanding Science” and Welch’s “Science Process
Inventory”) showed no significant difference between the HPP and non-HPP groups. However, as
Aikenhead (1974) discovered, Welch (1973) and Welch and Walberg (1972) reached their conclusion
based on compromised data that contained: (1) 3.5% frivolous responses by uncooperative students (e.g. a
few students penciled in the response boxes on the machine-scored answer sheet in a way that spelled out
an obscene expletive suggesting a physical impossibility), and (2) 12% incomplete responses that
dramatically skewed the pre-posttest gain scores. By deleting the frivolous and incomplete answer sheets,
Aikenhead recalculated the gain scores and found the HPP group had significantly out performed the nonHPP group (raw gain scores of 7.95 points and 3.39 points, respectively).
Aikenhead (1974) posited two conclusions about quantitative research. First, researchers need to
take the time to ensure they have “clean” data to analyze. This is particularly true today for data collected
digitally. Unfortunately, several publications concerning the effects of teaching the history of science (e.g.
Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000, p. 696) have claimed there is inconclusive evidence to support any
advantage to such an approach, citing the HPP null results (Welch, 1973; Welch & Walberg, 1972) that
were based on compromised data.
A second conclusion was posited by Aikenhead (1974, p. 23) when he rhetorically asked, “What
does it mean to a curriculum developer or teacher for group E [experimental] to score 3.77 points more
than group C [control]?” Such ambiguous summative data have moved many researchers into the
interpretive paradigm of research.
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Since the early 1990s, only a few studies have used a quantitative quasi-experimental design, and
their findings have reinforced the four conclusions stated above. For example, Solbes and Vilches (1997)
conducted several studies with 103 teachers over a three-year period when an STS curriculum was
introduced into Spain. Their conclusions highlighted improved student attitudes and interests in studying
physics and chemistry (questionnaire data) and the dramatic differences perceived by students between
the humanistic and traditional curricula. Based on student learning data, Galili and Hazan (2001) in Israel
documented various advantages attributed to teaching an optics course from an historical perspective. In
Taiwan, Tsai (1999, 2000) investigated the relative effect of STS and traditional science classrooms on
students’ cognitive structures. The results from a questionnaire and from a “flow map” analysis of indepth interviews delineated specific benefits that accrued from the STS classes, including more
“constructivist views of science” and a better understanding of “the importance of social negotiations in
the scientific community and cultural impact on science” (1999, p. 1201). Furthermore, Tsai’s (2000)
research suggested that students’ epistemic beliefs may influence their receptivity to humanistic science,
thereby helping to explain an earlier conclusion in this review (“Teacher Orientation”) that students could
inhibit the implementation of humanistic science, especially students with a positivistic or empiricist view
of science. A much different type of study by Wiesenmayer and Rubba (1999) focused on the citizenship
behaviours of grade 7 biology students in order to determine the effects of “STS issue investigation” and
“action instruction” on those behaviours. By combining quantitative and qualitative evidence gathering
techniques, the researchers were able to describe the extent and complexity of students making a decision
and then acting on that decision. The humanistic treatment enhanced students’ ability to take informed
action on science and technology-related societal issues, compared with the control group. This result was
associated with teachers being able to adapt the teaching strategies required of action instruction. A study
in Indonesia (Poedjiadi, 1996) assessed the effectiveness of an STS approach for lower secondary
students by analyzing pre and posttest scores between two experimental and two control classes (rural and
urban communities were represented in a 2 by 2 design). Videotapes of lessons and classroom visits
ensured an STS approach took place in the experimental classrooms. Significant findings were: greater
comprehension of humanistic content, a stronger attitude toward social responsibility, and a higher
interest in studying canonical science. A preliminary study in Nigeria by Urevbu (1994) involved two
teachers in different schools teaching a three-month author-developed STS module for the first time.
Daily participant-observations documented how the teachers treated the module as an integrated
curriculum but generally ignored teaching the relationships between science/technology and society, and
how each teacher approached the unit in idiosyncratic ways. Enthusiasm and interest by students were key
results to the research. Although this study may well have been grounded in educational soundness, its
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initiation may have been motivated by the political agenda to involve the teachers in action research to
implement a humanistic science module, thereby creating professional development possibilities for the
schools. The old deficit model of assessment continues to hold sway in quasi-experimental studies,
especially in the political arenas of curriculum policy and summative assessment, even though the model
can create false crises (Gibbs & Fox, 1999).
A number of small-scale quasi-experimental studies have been reported in the literature but are not
reviewed here because they contained insufficient information about their evidence gathering techniques
or their research design had a serious weakness.
Other Investigations in Humanistic Science Education
In an extensive 40-country study of science education, TIMSS included a cluster of humanistic
themes around the history, philosophy, and sociology of science (Wang & Schmidt, 2001). Using data
tabulated from several domains of inquiry within TIMSS (e.g. curriculum analysis, textbook analysis,
teacher questionnaire, and students’ scores on canonical science content), the researchers concluded that
the engagement of students in humanistic content was significantly associated with their general school
science performance, in the handful of countries that provided such a curriculum. Whether the humanistic
science instruction caused this increase in achievement is not known for certain, but the finding adds to
the growing evidence that time spent on humanistic content does not compromise students’ achievement
in canonical science, but on occasion will increase it modestly. Fensham (1994) suggested two reasons for
the paucity of humanistic items on TIMSS achievement tests: they are very difficult to compose due to
their contextualized nature; and they generally have low status among the 40 participating countries,
poignantly documented in Wang and Schmidt’s (2001) data.
Yet useful research findings have accumulated in the research literature to support and guide the
expansion of humanistic school science worldwide. With the development of each new evidence
gathering technique in humanistic science, a status report was often published to provide base-line data
for a general sample of students (Driver et al., 1996; Lederman et al., 2002; Ryan & Aikenhead, 1992).
These results can also provide politically useful data to highlight failures of the traditional science
curriculum (Leach et al., 1997), particularly when a humanistic perspective is being introduced, or reintroduced, into a country (e.g. Naider & Nageeb, 1999; Manassero-Mas & Vázquez-Alonso, 1998). For
instance, Leach and colleagues (1997, p. 161) concluded, “By the end of their compulsory science
education at the age of 16, many UK students tend to portray scientific activity as an individual inductive
process. This raises serious questions about the feasibility of promoting understanding of the nature of the
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scientific enterprise [a humanistic perspective] amongst students through the science curriculum as
currently formulated.”
UK students conceived science as a social enterprise in rather simplistic ways, for example (Driver
et al., 1996): disagreements between scientists were quickly explained by the biases of scientists or the
lack of facts (but students ignored, or did not know about, scientists’ different but legitimate value
positions or their different conceptual perspectives) (p. 131); scientific controversies were thought to be
resolved by empirical evidence alone (p. 128); scientists were expected to produce unambiguous and
incontrovertible facts, that is, conclusive evidence and not circumstantial evidence (p. 131); and students
showed little awareness of the internal and external social factors at play in the development and
extension of scientific knowledge (p. 133). The UK students did, however, have a rich enough
prerequisite knowledge of human nature and social institutions to apply that knowledge rationally to
scientific controversies (p. 133) but students needed the guidance of a humanistic science teacher
(“explicit curricular interventions,” p. 134) to help them apply their prerequisite general knowledge
instead of their simplistic preconceptions. Similar types of conclusions were reached by other status
studies using different instrumentation (e.g. Lederman, in press; Lederman et al., 2002; Ryan &
Aikenhead, 1992). For instance, VOSTS data in Canada (Aikenhead, 1997) indicated that 17 year-olds
held one of three different positions concerning the influence of national cultural norms and values on
science: a small majority acknowledged the influence of culture on science; a large minority questioned
the degree to which cultural influences override a scientist’s individuality; and a small minority embraced
a positivist-like posture, similar to many of their science teachers (Bingle & Gaskell, 1994). Students’
preconceptions were documented in a cross-national (Spain and Canada) VOSTS study by VázquezAlonso and Manassero-Mas (1994) who showed that 17-year-old students in both countries equally
valued the social responsibility of scientists and believed scientists are genuinely concerned about the
potential effects of their work. In addition, both groups of students felt that when those consequences
were unpredictable, society and individual users must share responsibility.
By analyzing answers to a national examination for an STS syllabus in the UK in the 1980s,
Solomon (1988a) concluded that explicit instruction had made a difference to students’ capability to
construct plausible arguments from opposing points of view on a science-related topic, although the
humanistic content in the syllabus was challenging to most students. About a decade later a new
humanistic syllabus appeared, “Science for Public Understanding” (Millar, 2000), and its impact on
students was assessed by Osborne and colleagues (2003). This integrated science course was designed for
post-compulsory students who wanted to broaden their understanding of science (generally enticed-toknow science, as described in “Curriculum Policy” above). The 78 teachers who participated in the study
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had exemplary credentials, by and large, and taught from a textbook especially developed for the syllabus
(Hunt & Millar, 2000). The research data came from questionnaires, examination papers, classroom
observations, and interviews with teachers and with students. “Science for Public Understanding” was
highly successful at attracting non-science students into the course, which they found interesting,
enjoyable, and equally difficult compared to examination results of other courses. This was a major
achievement for a senior high school level science course, according to the researchers, who were
particularly impressed by the students’ high degree of interactivity and their authentic engagement with
various aspects of the course.
Student interest was also cited as a major achievement in Häussler and Hoffmann’s (2000)
humanistic physics curriculum in Germany (primarily “functional science,” reviewed above in
“Curriculum Policy”). Graduates of the course perceived physics “more as a human enterprise and less as
a body of knowledge and procedures” (p. 704) and expressed an interest structure very similar to the
Delphi study’s results that established the course content in the first place. In short, these students and the
stakeholders participating in the Delphi study shared a similar understanding of relevance. Moreover,
students also valued the curriculum’s cultural relevance indicated by their increased self-esteem from
being successful achievers, a fundamental outcome to any learned curriculum.
Students’ ability to interpret the news media is another expectation of most humanistic curricula
(Fensham, 20000b; Thier & Nagle, 1994). Ratcliffe (1999) investigated the evaluation reports (critiquing
science articles in the New Scientist) written by three groups: school students (11 to 14 year-olds), college
science students (17 year-olds), and science baccalaureate graduates (22 to 35 year-olds). Although the
skills increased with formal training, years of experience, and self-selection into science, as one would
expect, Ratcliffe discovered that the skills of evidence evaluation (a component of “functional science”)
were evident across all three populations, and she suggested that these abilities could be developed further
in school science through explicit teaching.
The impact on student learning (11 to 14 year-olds) by history of science materials was
investigated by Solomon et al. (1992) in an 18-month action research project, in which data were gathered
by interviewing students after they completed an activity, by an open-ended questionnaire, and by a fouritem multiple-choice questionnaire. Classrooms were observed and teachers interviewed. Interestingly,
students’ facile, media-icon, image of scientists were not replaced by realistic images developed through
learning the humanistic content, but instead, these realistic images were added to the preconceptions in
students’ minds (i.e. concept proliferation rather than concept replacement). From a student’s point of
view, learning meant they now had a choice between two images, and the choice depended on context.
This result has implications for the importance of context in the assessment of student learning. Solomon
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and her colleagues’ evidence also suggested that learning scientific theories was more durable because
some students had learned the reasons for accepting one theory over another, and the stories from the
history of science smoothed the path for their own conceptual change.
In a follow-up one-year study, more focused on seven images of scientists and their experiments,
Solomon and colleagues (1994) confirmed earlier results and further concluded: “the stories of the actual
activities of scientists are memorable enough to create a valuable library of epistemological ideas” (p.
372), but the stories do not erase simplistic icon images of scientists. (This result was also found in Lin’s
[1998] research with pre-service teachers; reviewed above in “Teacher Orientation.”) Extending their
research program into a large-scale study of 1000 students (aged 13, 15, and 17 years), Solomon and
colleagues (1996) focused on the possible interaction between two domains of knowledge: ideas gained
through one’s own activities in school science, and ideas about the authentic activities of professional
scientists. Based on data from a six-item questionnaire, developed systematically over several stages, the
following findings were warranted: students were unfamiliar with scientific theories per se, students could
be categorized as being “explainers” or “imaginers” and each group was predisposed to different sorts of
learning, and a developmental sequence emerged in which students’ cartoon-like images of scientists
developed into more authentic or realistic images. Moreover, there was a highly significant correlation
between holding an authentic image of scientists and achievement on canonical science content.
Socially responsible action by students is a valued aspect of the learned curriculum for many
humanistic science curricula (Cross & Price, 1992, 2002; Hines, Hungerford & Tomera [review], 1987;
Solomon, 1994b,d; Ramsay, 1993; Rubba [review], 1987). Accordingly, Solomon (1990, 1992, 1996)
initiated a three-year study in which teachers infused humanistic content purposefully throughout their
science courses by using actual “news clips” from television to initiate open, informal, small-group,
student discussions on emotion-laden science-related topics (e.g. incidence of leukemia), with little
structuring from the teacher. By analyzing the transcripts of these discussions and pre/post questionnaires,
Solomon (1990) discovered, along with Fleming (1986b) and Levinson (2003), that only a simple
familiarity with scientific terms used in the news clips (i.e. enticed-to-know science) made participation in
the discussions easier and more effective, as well as being familiar with civic knowledge and moral
reasoning (e.g. Solomon, 1994b). The variety and complexity of students’ moral and ethical reasoning do
not usually include a student’s epistemology of science (Fleming, 1986a; Zeidler, Walker, Ackett &
Simmons, 2002), but did so for some students in Solomon’s study. Solomon also concluded that students
tended to become more cognizant of their civic responsibility to be self-reliant in making up their own
minds on an issue. But when analyzing the three years of student transcripts, she was unable to detect a
pattern of association between student knowledge or attitudes and their actual behaviours as recorded in
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the transcripts; a finding at odds with some modestly positive assessments of student action resulting from
specific humanistic science experiences (Pereira, 1996; Solomon & Thomas, 1999; Wiesenmayer &
Rubba, 1999). The relationship between student knowledge/attitude and responsible action is fraught with
complexity (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Quantitative syntheses of research described this relationship as a
meagre correlation (Posch, 1993) or a small effect size of 0.3 (Hines et al., 1987). Qualitative studies have
pointed to important militating circumstances on action (Dahncke, 1996; Kortland, 1992; Solomon,
1994d): social pressure, economic constraints, cultural factors, and students’ belief in their capacity to
bring about change (i.e. potential political potency). This last item has actually been used to criticize
humanistic school science: “Without the necessary freedom of access to information, and knowledge of
the politics of decision-making in the adult world, a focus on STS issues at school level could be nothing
more than a recipe for frustration, holding out the prospect of influence without providing the necessary
equipment and conditions” (Layton, 1986, p. 118). However, the research reviewed here suggests that
socially responsible action can be enhanced by a humanistic curriculum for some students with certain
teachers. A major component to this responsibility, as Layton pointed out, is one’s willingness to engage
in thoughtful decision making.
Student Decision Making
The wise use of knowledge, scientific or otherwise, enables people to assume social
responsibilities expected of attentive citizens or key decision makers employed in public service or
business and industry. Thus, decision making is often at the centre of relevance in a humanistic science
curriculum, and it serves as a classroom vehicle to transport students into their everyday world of: needto-know science, functional science, enticed-to-know science, have-cause-to-know science, personalcuriosity science, and culture-as-science. Generally the classroom objective is to create a sound
simulation of an everyday event, the type that led researchers to conclude (reviewed above in “Curriculum
Policy”): When people need to communicate with experts and/or take action, they usually learn the
science content required. That content will often be action-oriented science (citizen science), that is,
interdisciplinary canonical science deconstructed and then reconstructed to fit the unique circumstances of
the everyday event (Jenkins 1992, 2002; Lawrence & Eisenhart, 2002; Layton, 1991). But decision
making necessarily encompasses a wide scope of other types of knowledge: always values and personal
knowledge, and sometimes technology, ethics, civics, politics, the law, economics, public policy, etc.
(Aikenhead, 1980; Driver et al., 2000; Grace & Ratcliffe, 2002; Jiménez-Aleizandre & Pereiro- Muñoz,
2002; Kolstr, 2001a; Patronis & Spiliotopoulou, 1999; Thomas, 2000). In research into conflicting
testimonies of scientific experts on science-related controversial issues, for instance, even the scientific
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technical information itself was found to carry political-ideological baggage (i.e. values); and rather than
achieving a clear resolution on an issue, more scientific information invariably caused greater polarization
(e.g. Aikenhead, 1985; Gaskell, 1982; Graham, 1981; Longino, 1983). Fensham (2002, p. 16) concluded:
“The reason that different groups of scientists can often differ in their assessment of such issues is not so
much that one group is right and the other wrong; rather it is that both are right, but about different
aspects of the issue … [depending] on the wider value positions of the groups themselves.”
Several avenues of research into student learning have been pursued in the context of decision
making. Outside the milieu of school science, Fleming (1986a,b) meticulously examined how 17 year-old
students individually reached decisions on proposed socio-scientific issues, for example, accepting
employment in a nuclear power plant. Using multistage interviewing techniques, he came to the
conclusion that students made their decisions primarily by reasoning in the domains of “moral issues” or
“personal reasoning” (i.e. devoted to the maintenance of the self), rather than by evidence-based
reasoning endemic to scientific decision making (Duschl & Gitomer, 1996; Osborne et al., 2003; Thier &
Hill, 1988). (Adults sometimes reason in the domain of “social conventions,” but no evidence of this
surfaced in Fleming’s student data.) Fleming’s participants ignored relevant scientific information offered
to them because they perceived scientists as interested only in progress unrelated to human welfare. More
recent research adds weight to these results; most students’ worldviews of nature are dramatically
different from their science teacher’s (Cobern & Aikenhead, 1998), suggesting a more fundamental
reason (e.g. cultural self-identity) for the divide between Fleming’s students’ decision making and
scientific evidence-based decision making. Curriculum policy makers, of course, had assumed the latter
should be evident. Fleming’s research seriously questioned the importance of using scientific knowledge
when making a decision on a socio-scientific issue in the everyday world, a finding replicated many times
in the literature (e.g. Irwin & Wynne, 1996; Kortland, 2001; Layton et al., 1993; Ratcliffe, 1997b;
Solomon, 1988b, 1992; Tytler et al., 2001a).
Therefore, Fleming’s research challenged science educators to design relevant decision-making
events for the classroom in which students would learn how to use scientific ideas and data appropriately
rather than ignore them completely. Several researchers rose to the challenge. Their studies vary in terms
of: the focus of the research, the age of students, the socio-scientific issue’s emotional overtones, and the
use of a normative or descriptive models of decision making (Ratcliffe, 1997b). Related to this last item,
it was found that decision-making models from sociology and psychology failed to account for the
complexities of classroom decisions associated with socio-scientific issues (Aikenhead, 1989), thus,
different models needed to be developed.
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The PLON module “Ionizing Radiation” was designed to help high school students “make
decisions in matters of personal and social relevance related to the risks of ionizing radiation” (Eijkelhof,
1990, p. 166). The module’s scientific knowledge (have-cause-to-know science and have-need-to-know
science) was derived from a Delphi study, reviewed above in “Curriculum Policy.” R&D formative
evaluative data showed that students rarely drew upon this knowledge when they were engaged in riskassessment decisions (fairly high emotion-laden issues); this in spite of students’ high interest in the
module. In school science, relevant contexts alone did not overcome the powerful constraints of students’
preconceptions (“lay-ideas” or “undeveloped scientific ideas,” p. 140), according to Eijkelhof. In short,
and yet again, meaningful learning of canonical science concepts is very difficult for most students in
school science no matter what the context is. (Eijkelhof recommended that a relevant context be
accompanied by some type of instruction that pays “attention to lay-ideas and the dissimilarities between
scientific and lay-ideas;” p. 142.) In terms of a humanistic science curriculum, however, Eijkelhof (p.
166) questioned the efficacy of decision making as a viable aim for the unit “Ionizing Radiation,” but
suggested a more modest aim of teaching citizen science (e.g. learn to appreciate the effectiveness and
limitations of radiation safety measures, or learn how to be careful with ionizing radiation). Overt
instruction on how to make a reasoned decision was not part of the module.
Kortland (1992) extended an R&D project into a developmental research project for a PLON-like
module about sustainable development, “Garbage: Dumping, Burning, and Reusing/Recycling.” The
module emphasized helping 13 and 14 year-old students make better decisions by structuring the
decision-making process in particular ways, guided by a normative decision-making model. In just one
classroom, he investigated a scheme for assessing students’ decision-making skills by collecting data (i.e.
student work and transcripts of discussions and interviews) on the quality of their arguments: particularly
the range, depth, and explicit weighing of arguments. Kortland’s preliminary study concluded that
students were held back more by a lack of content knowledge about garbage management than by
“deficiencies” in decision-making skills. Based on Eijkelhof’s (1990) call to seriously consider students’
preconceptions (“lay-ideas”), on Lijnse’s (1995) teaching/learning model of “didactic structure,” and on
R&D evaluation data from the first version of the module, Kortland (1994, 1996) constructed a four-tiered
developmental, decision-making scheme to guide humanistic science educators in their own development
of curriculum materials aimed at enhancing students’ decision-making skills (i.e. their ability to present an
argued point of view). Applying this scheme to a second version of the module, Kortland discovered the
interplay between group decisions and individual decisions, and an improvement on some aspects of
argumentation by students (i.e. validity and clarity using criteria for evaluating alternatives) but not on the
range of criteria (e.g. personal interests, society’s interest, and interests of nature) considered by students
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when they formulated a decision on, for instance, buying milk in a glass bottle or in a carton container (a
low emotion-laden issue). Results from further in-depth research (Kortland, 2001) reinforced the crucial
role of the teacher in determining what students learn, and the necessity of conducting this type of
research after a trial teacher has practiced and polished the instructional methods (in this case, didactical
structuring of decision making). Moreover, the role of content knowledge (primarily citizen science, in
this case) became evident: “A small majority of the students expressed that, in order to be able to make a
choice, knowledge is needed about the contribution to depletion and pollution of the packaging materials
concerned” (p. 161). In addition to noting the effectiveness of his normative decision-making model,
Kortland pointed out an important methodological finding: students’ oral or written presentations of their
argued point of view often failed to communicate the quality of thinking that had actually gone into the
decision. He therefore recommended promoting his instructional decision-making model to the rank of
meta-cognition (the ability to regulate and control one’s own cognitive processes), to ensure greater
student improvement in persuasively articulating their own decision, that is, to become better decision
makers through overt instruction.
The research above suggests that the use of scientific concepts in a socio-scientific decision is
predicated on three factors: (1) the relevance of the concept to the decision issue (e.g. need-to-know
science of action science, not wish-they-knew science of canonical abstract science); (2) students’
meaningful understanding of the concepts; and (3) when the first two factors are fulfilled, students’ ability
to perceive the connection between the concept and decision issue (i.e. the context). Solomon’s (1987,
1988b) analysis of contextualized science being unpredictably value-laden for students is germane here.
Obviously, more research was required to shed light on these factors and others.
Ratcliffe (1997b) developed a descriptive model of small-group decision making, a model that
structured a series of decision-making exercises she embedded logically in a teacher’s regular science
course (two classes of 15 year-olds) over a period of several months. In addition to her interest in
students’ use of scientific ideas, Ratcliffe’s research focused on how students actually conducted their
decision making, and what values guided them. Data came from pre- and post-interviews, transcripts of
small-group discussions, and students’ written work handed in. The socio-scientific content represented
moderate to low emotion-laden issues, for example: What are you prepared to do to use energy more
efficiently? and Which materials would you choose for a replacement window frame? Ratcliffe observed
in students “an ability to identify suitable options” and “an ability to identify criteria at some stage in the
discussion but difficulty in using them systematically in reasoning” (p. 175). Although little scientific
information was overtly sought by students (the link to science was seldom obvious to students), a modest
amount of information was drawn from their science class. She also discovered that students who already
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possessed reasonable decision-making skills improved upon these skills through group argumentation, but
for students with low-level skills, peer discussions did not yield reasoned arguments. Ratcliffe empirically
identified the following key features of successful small-group decisions: “understanding procedures for
rational analysis of the problem; awareness and use of available information; clarification of the concerns
and values raised by the issue; recognition of how scientific evidence may assist in the decision;
motivation to engage fully in discussing the issue; and consideration of and respect for differing
viewpoints about the issue” (p. 167). Students were guided by different sets of values depending upon the
socio-scientific issue. For example, when deciding the issue of energy use, students talked mostly about
cost, effectiveness/reliability, and energy considerations; when deciding on replacement window frames,
students talked mostly about cost, effectiveness/reliability, energy considerations, environmental
considerations, selfishness, and aesthetics. Similarly, Fleming (1986a) mentioned an issue’s saliency
influenced the type of reasoning students used in reaching a decision. Ratcliffe expressed disappointment
over a lack of development in groups’ systematic reasoning over the course of the study. (No discussion
on the teacher’s role, or lack of role, was presented. Perhaps greater gains may have emerged from more
active direction and involvement by the teacher.) Underscoring Kortland’s (2001) conclusion about metacognition and decision-making models, Ratcliffe (1997b) concluded that the decision-making process
needed to become the object of overt reflection by students. She also concluded that 15-year olds were
able to begin to participate in thoughtful decision making, a finding shared by Driver et al. (1996) in their
research on students resolving scientific controversies, but not shared by Pedretti (1999) whose evidence
showed that 12 year-olds can reach a considered decision (on whether or not to cite a mine near a town)
when involved in the interactive Ontario Science Centre.
Ratcliffe (1997a) explored 15 year-old students’ systematic reasoning during decision-making
activities in five schools in the UK to test the efficacy of two taxonomies, one based on Piagetian stages
and the other based on normative and descriptive decision-making models. Both instruments were found
to be effective for quantitative research because they correlated with the study’s qualitative results. These
results, along with Koker’s (1996) related work in environmental education, led Reiss (1999) to conclude
that science teachers who lack specialized knowledge in moral philosophy can still assess students’ ability
to reason ethically on science-related social issues. For example, Solomon’s (1994b) categories of moral
statements proved to be very useful to Pedretti’s (1999) research into student decision making at the
Ontario Science Centre.
In an elaborate study involving a class of 38 grade 11 students (17 to 21 years of age) in authentic,
community-based activities conducted in a Spanish school, Jiménez-Aleizandre and Pereiro- Muñoz
(2002) explored the students’ scientific knowledge and argumentation skills required to reach socio-
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scientific decisions on environmental management, and compared these skills to those of scientific
experts. The researchers elaborated Kortland’s (1996) emphasis on argumentation, drew on Ratcliffe’s
(1997b) decision-making model, and followed Duschl and Gitomer’s (1996) notion of authentic problem
solving. The students’ success at applying canonical science and at approximating expert arguments was
attributed to the students becoming “a knowledge-production community” (as opposed to passive
consumers of knowledge), a role that judiciously combined values with scientific ideas and data. The
authenticity reached in this study mirrors the real-world case-study research into citizens acting upon a
science-related issue (reviewed in “Curriculum Policy,” e.g. Ryder, 2001). On the one hand, the study
exemplifies the conclusion repeated just above that when people believe they need to take action, they
tend to learn the science required. On the other hand, a unique feature of this study compromises its
transferability to other classrooms: the class was taught by one of the researchers whose orientation to
humanistic science would likely be unusually strong. Other studies reviewed here were conducted in
classrooms of regular humanistic science teachers or middle-of-the-road science teachers. Nevertheless,
Jiménez-Aleizandre and Pereiro- Muñoz’s (2002) excellent research design sets a high standard for others
to follow. A modest version on this research design was reported by Patronis and Spiliotopoulou (1999) in
which 14 year-old students’ argumentation was studied, as well as individual, small-group, and full-class
decision making on the authentic community-based issue of designing a local road in Greece. Thomas
(1985), Zeidler (1997), and Driver et al. (2000) investigated student difficulties with this type of
argumentation. Their research provides cautionary practical advice for humanistic science educators.
In a further study, Grace and Ratcliffe (2002) involved 15-16 year-old students (four classes in
different schools) making decisions about conservation management (elephants in Africa and puffins in
the UK, both endangered species but perhaps remote enough to be moderately low in emotional response
by most students). The researchers focused on students’ use of biological concepts and students’ values.
To ensure that the concepts taught to students in their science class were realistically relevant to the two
scenarios (elephant and puffin conservation), the researchers acquired a list of appropriate biology
concepts (mostly have-cause-to-know science) by interviewing 12 conservation expert managers and then
seeking the views of 34 experienced teachers via a questionnaire on the efficacy of teaching those
concepts (a less formal method than a Delphi study). As in Ratcliffe’s (1997b) previous study, both
scientific concepts and values were used by students. However, in spite of a greater use of scientific
concepts in this later study, students still weighted values more heavily than biological concepts. Perhaps
the biology concepts taught to the students in the Grace and Ratcliffe (2002) study may have represented
content whose scientific validity was highly secure (“ready-made science;” Kolstø, 2001a), whereas the
concepts critical to resolving the conservation issue from a student’s point of view may have had a much
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more tentative validity (“science-in-the-making,” Kolstø, 2001a). Scientists themselves will disagree over
the latter, creating more uncertainty, and thus by default, giving students more reason to emphasize values
when making a socio-scientific decision in the context of uncertain science. As quoted above, Fensham
(2002) recognized that salient features of a controversial socio-scientific issue relate differently to
scientists’ differing value positions (ideologies), thereby causing disagreement among scientists, and
hence, creating controversy.
How does a student (or teacher) make a decision in the context of conflicting expert advice from
scientists? Some researchers investigated epistemological aspects to this research question (Duschl &
Gitomer, 1996; Thier & Hill, 1888), noting the following three requirements of a student to communicate
effectively with others about a socio-scientific issue: (1) to learn to ask pertinent questions, obtain
evidence, and use it as the basis for decision making; (2) to understand the characteristics and limitations
of scientific evidence; and (3) to understand the nature of scientific inquiry in order to critique its resultant
knowledge. The disappointing results from the Driver et al. (1996) study in the UK, reviewed above,
demonstrate that traditional science curricula do not prepare students for these requirements. The research
question (How does a student make a decision in the face of conflicting expert advice?) was also
addressed on sociological and axiological grounds by Gaskell (1994) and Kolstø (2000, 2001a,b) who
concluded that students need to identify the value positions (ideologies) held by scientists on each side of
a debate, and need to have access to appropriate social criteria for judging credibility of scientists.
Identifying value positions turns out to be “a more important determinant of trust about the scientific
information than is their own knowledge of science” (i.e. canonical science content; Fensham, 2002, p.
16). In short, humanistic content (i.e. knowledge about science and scientists) is more relevant than
canonical science content in the context of conflicting expert advice (Aikenhead, 1980, 1985). The greater
the reliance on science-in-the-making, the greater the controversy and the greater the need to determine
the credibility or trustworthiness of the sources of scientific information, and consequently, the greater the
reliance on values. This point helps to explain the apparent low status, or non-existence, of canonical
science in decision making on science-related controversial issues. One extreme case is Levinson’s (2003)
research into student decision making on testing fetuses for certain medical conditions (e.g. Tay Sachs
and Down’s Syndrome). During class discussions, scientific conceptual confusions were not clarified and
greater scientific confusions may have ensued as a result, because the focus of the students’ discussions
was firmly on their value positions (ideologies) due to the high emotion-laden issues discussed (e.g.
abortion). Levinson, however, placed blame on the complexity and difficulty of addressing ethical issues
by teachers trained in science. Most researchers whose work is reviewed in this paper did recognize the
high pedagogical demands placed on teachers implementing socio-scientific decision making in their
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science classes (e.g. Gaskell, 1982; Osborne et al., 2003; Reiss, 1999). Researchers need to provide
appropriate support and coaching for teachers who collaborate in their research studies, for example, as
Pedretti (1999) did by drawing on Solomon’s (1994b) categories of moral statements.
Much more detail about students’ decision making came from Kolstø’s (2000, 2001a,b) research
that drew upon a bona fide international and local issue (in Bergen, Norway) concerning the location of
high voltage power transmission lines (above or below ground) and the degree of risk of childhood
leukemia from above ground lines. His research focused on (1) the strategies used by 15 and 16 year-old
students in their science class to resolve the problem of whose information to trust, and (2) how 22
diverse students in four high schools actually made their own decision individually. Similar to the design
employed by Driver et al. (1996) to investigate students’ reaction to scientific controversies, Kolstø’s
(2000a) four teachers took a class period to present information about the socio-scientific issue using local
media as well as excerpts from research reports. Then during the second day, students discussed the issue
in groups of four or five, made a group decision, and wrote down their arguments and the expected
counter arguments. Employing an intricate in-depth analysis of these students’ discussions, Kolstø
(2001b) mapped out the trust factor of students in terms of categories (and sub-categories) of strategies
they used (i.e. acceptance of knowledge claims, evaluation of statements, acceptance of authority, and
evaluation of authority). Unlike Kortland (1994) and Ratcliffe (1997b), Kolstø (2000a) purposefully did
not include a decision-making model to guide students because he wanted to investigate students’
untutored ways of making a socio-scientific decision. In-depth interviews with 22 students led Kolstø
(2001a) to discover five different ways individual students had made their decisions (i.e. five descriptive
decision-making models): relative risk model, play safe model, uncertainty model, small risk model, and
pros-and-cons model (a more normative prescriptive prototype for students, drawing upon the other four
models). Students varied in the importance they attached to canonical science knowledge (i.e. voltage,
electric current, magnetism, etc.), with some students saying it was desirable but not necessary to make
their decision on the location of the transmission lines (a finding repeated in most studies reviewed here).
Values, on the other hand, were a constant feature in each decision-making model. Students had discussed
the credibility of scientists, the degree of consensus among scientists, the epistemic nature of scientific
proof, and other considerations related to trustworthiness. Kolstø concluded that disagreements among
expert scientists made the activity more authentic though more difficult for students. Given the high
degree of student individuality discovered by Kolstø, humanistic curriculum developers and teacher
educators have a more detailed and realistic understanding of science-related decision making. In
addition, research from adjacent cognate areas outside the domain of socio-scientific decision making can
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be transferred to decision making, for instance, research into judging scientists’ knowledge claims from
an epistemological perspective (e.g. Norris, 1995; Norris & Phillips, 1994; Phillips & Norris, 1999).
In addition to the decision-making models used by Kortland (1994) and Ratcliffe (1997b), other
models have been explored in R&D studies by Aikenhead (1992, 1994a) and Dahncke (1996), and in a
synthesis study by Cross and Price (2002). In all cases, values clarification and science content (need-toknow science and canonical science) were integrated into a normative model for teaching students
decision-making skills.
The research on decision making reviewed here consisted of preliminary studies into a highly
complex field. It revealed: the influence of age (normally age 15 is a minimum); the influence of an
issue’s emotional level (low to high); the interplay among relevant scientific knowledge, values, and
decisions; the complex influence of activity authenticity on this interplay; and the influence of teachers’
overt instruction guiding students to follow a decision-making model that combines values with
appropriate scientific ideas and data. By knowing students’ pre-instructional ways of making a socioscientific decision, humanistic curriculum developers and teachers have clearer challenges to meet. The
research also uncovered useful distinctions, for example, between ready-made science and science-in-themaking. Such distinctions must become standard humanistic content for thoughtful decision makers,
otherwise cynicism toward all of science may result from students’ misunderstanding that science-in-themaking is as authoritative as ready-made science (Thomas, 2000).
Perhaps the most pervasive result from the research into student decision making is the priority
students gave to values over scientific evidence. This result may be due to the fact that values are more
important in our culture for deciding on most socio-scientific issues, even for science teachers and
scientists themselves. Lawrenz and Gray (1995) discovered that science teachers with science degrees did
not use science content to make meaning out of an everyday event, but instead used other content
knowledge such as values. Bell and Lederman (2003) investigated how 21 university research scientists
made socio-scientific decisions (e.g. fetal tissue implantations, global warming, and smoking and cancer).
Using questionnaires and telephone interviews, the researchers concluded that all participants considered
the scientific evidence, but they “based their decisions primarily on personal values, morals/ethics, and
social concerns” (p. 352). Should students be any different?
Conclusion
The research literature unequivocally demonstrates that student learning (defined by various
objectives) does occur to varying degrees as a result of a humanistic science curriculum. Science
educators’ early naivety about this learning has been replaced by a more realistically complex, intricately
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interconnected, series of paradoxes and trade-offs. Relevant contexts alone did not necessarily nurture
greater canonical science attainment (although nothing of significance is lost on this count, as well).
Values and self-identity necessarily play a large role in focusing students’ attention on both humanistic
and science content: the more emotional the context of instruction or the more uncertain the relevant
scientific information, the more important values become, and thus, the less attention paid to content.
Students tended to learn more humanistic content the more explicit it appeared in their classroom
instruction and assessment. Constructivist learning principles apply to humanistic content. However, the
more overt this humanistic content became, the greater disruption it caused to status quo teaching, and
thus, the greater challenge it was to teachers’ ability to achieve concordance among the intended, taught,
and learned curricula.
One ubiquitous research result from studies into student learning in humanistic school science was
the positive reaction of most students. Häussler and Hoffmann (2000) found the positive reaction
manifested itself as stronger self-esteem from being successful achievers. More studies should collect data
on students’ self-esteem or self-identity, because self-esteem and self-identity represent fundamental
outcomes of any science curriculum. Ramsden (1992) was surprised, however, to discover a different
reaction from her students who had enjoyed a relevant science curriculum. They seriously questioned
whether it was really proper school science. In general, the positive reaction of most students to
humanistic school science was likely due to a number of factors: a genuine interest on the part of students,
a happy diversion from teacher-centred instruction, and a selection bias in the research sample (favouring
the large majority of students who generally find the traditional curriculum boring and irrelevant). This
last point infers a cautionary note that the small minority of science-proficient students who embrace “the
pipeline” ideology for school science will likely not respond positively to a humanistic perspective in
their science courses. Similarly, students who equate school science with future earnings, even though
school science holds no intrinsic value for them, will likely resist a humanistic perspective (Désautels,
Fleury & Garrison, 2002).
Although constructivist learning principles do apply to humanistic content, more appropriate
principles are found in an emerging research methodology within the interpretive paradigm:
“phenomenography” (Erickson, 2000). At the centre of phenomenological research is a commitment to
understanding how students experience the world and learn to act in the world. Individual students are not
categorized, but instead their relationship to their immediate setting is clarified by this research. Affective
and cognitive components merge. The phenomenological research approach has not yet been used in any
science education study, but it offers a promising new avenue for future research.
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Discussion of the Research
This discussion does not summarize the conclusions posited throughout this review of research,
but it seeks to synthesize several interrelated salient points concerning the strengths, weaknesses, and
fruitful directions for further research.
Credibility
Since WW II, the renaissance of a humanistic perspective in the science curriculum encouraged
researchers to produce new knowledge in the attempt to establish credibility of this perspective in the eyes
of science teachers, science educators, and policy makers. The review of this research provides strong
evidence supporting the educational soundness of a humanistic perspective for the intended, taught, and
learned curricula. The good news is the issue of credibility need not monopolize research agendas in the
future.
The bad news is this educationally sound prepositional knowledge has had little impact on
classroom practice in particular or on the political reality of science education in general. The influence of
research on classroom practice was recently investigated by Ratcliffe and colleagues (2003, p. 21) who
concluded: “Unless research evidence, including that from highly regarded studies, is seen to accord with
experience and professional judgement [and ideology] it is unlikely to be acted on.” However, they also
concluded that research is more influential on the “development of national policy on science education.”
Again, the educationally sound defers to political reality. As mentioned above, Elmore’s (2002) cryptic
account of innovative projects explains this failure: small-scale studies have involved “the faithful” to
establish the soundness of a humanistic perspective, but researchers assumed that this “virus” (i.e. the
innovation) will populate the system because the evidence shows it is educationally sound. This strategy
has not worked. For researchers, therefore, the issue of credibility is now a political issue predominantly,
not an educational issue, and future research programs will need to reflect this reality.
Relevance
Two issues are considered here: canonical science content and humanistic science content. The
relevance of canonical science outside “the pipeline” is problematic for most students and for most
employers, and is specious for science educators. Ample research accumulated over the years has told us
exactly what students clearly exclaimed 30 years ago: school science (canonical content) is irrelevant to
their lives and their self-identities. Future research agendas that focus on students attaining canonical
science in any context are bound to simply repeat what is already well documented in the literature:
canonical science is all but irrelevant for most students, and any attempt to make it appear relevant will be
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undermined by students playing Fatima’s rules. In other words, learning canonical science meaningfully
when it is contextualized in an everyday event is an unrealistic and inappropriate objective for most
students. Yes, canonical science does have a place in humanistic school science, but that place is
subordinate to many types of relevant science (i.e. have-need-to-know science, citizen science, etc.). The
“mental training” argument supporting canonical science works equally well educationally when
supporting, for instance, functional science or personal-curiosity science. But within the ideology of
“pipeline” enthusiasts who place idealistic abstraction superior to pragmatic concreteness, the mental
training argument will be a political issue, not an educational one.
As for humanistic content, more research into the various types of relevant science will be helpful
to curriculum policy makers, as Millar’s (2000) and Law et al.’s (2000) work clearly suggests. Future
research questions might include: What understandings of science (all types of science) and journalism
are of critical value to consumers of the mass media? or How can school science engage students’ selfidentities, or is this not feasible?
Research into students’ learning humanistic content has established a wealth of warranted claims
that do not need further replication, unless a political reason surfaces. This is not the case, however, for
decision making and critical thinking, processes centrally relevant to a humanistic perspective. The
research programs of, for example, Kolstr, Kortland, Ratcliffe, and Zoller need to be extended so we can
better understand the complexities involved with teaching these key processes, complexities such as the
expression of arguments orally and in writing, and the interplay among values, knowledge, context, and
self-identities. The researchers’ recommendation for overt instruction of these processes will demand
meta-cognitive learning by students, a challenge in itself (Fensham, 1992). Resistance from students may
emerge from their feelings that socio-scientific issues are personally affective rather than publicly
cognitive (Solomon & Thomas, 1999), and therefore, ought not to be open to the scrutiny of rational
ideologies espoused in school science. The issue here is one of engaging students’ self-identities (e.g.
Brickhouse et al., 2000), self-efficacies (e.g. Lyons, 2003), or self-esteem (e.g. Häussler & Hoffmann,
2000). Community-based science curriculum and instruction holds promise here (e.g. Bouillion &
Gomez, 2001; Cajas, 1998; Dori & Tal, 2000; Jiménez-Aleizandre & Pereiro-Muñoz, 2002; Solomon,
1999b).
Because teachers are pivotal to creating a taught curriculum, continued research into
understanding their successes and failures at learning humanistic content and teaching science from a
humanistic perspective will be valuable (e.g. Bartholomew et al., 2002; Tal et al., 2001). The complexities
of teaching are no longer expressed as relationships among variables captured by statistical analysis (the
quantitative paradigm), but can now be better appreciated through heuristic models such as teacher
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practical knowledge, TPK (e.g. Duffee & Aikenhead), and teacher context knowledge, TCK (Barnett &
Hodson, 2001). Fine-tuning these types of schemes affords deeper insight into the taught curriculum and
into what is actually involved in changing the taught curriculum. Because pre-service apprenticeships in
schools are critical to a novice teacher’s loyalty to a humanistic perspective, R&D in this vulnerable area
would be particularly fruitful.
Although research related to the educational soundness of relevant school science is not yet
complete, it is sufficiently rich to encourage some researchers to look elsewhere for fruitful research
programs, for instance, in political arenas of research (discussed below) that address science content
relevant to the enculturation of students into their local, national, and global communities; for instance,
content described above as science-as-culture. The anticipated negative reaction of “pipeline” enthusiasts
to protect the “sacred cow” traditional curriculum will likely recast the humanistic political initiative as an
assault on science itself (Cross, 1997b). This negative reaction is not an educational problem but a
political one, which itself is ripe for research by science educators.
Research Paradigms and Methodologies
It is convenient to reflect on educational research in terms of three paradigms (Ryan, 1988):
quantitative, interpretive (qualitative), and critical-theoretic. A science educator trained in the natural
sciences may feel comfortable in the role of disinterested observer (quantitative paradigm), but most of
the research reviewed in this chapter emphasized the role of a curious empathetic collaborator
(interpretive paradigm). Yet, if curriculum researchers expect to effect significant changes in school
culture and classroom practice, they will also need to be seen as passionate liberators (critical-theoretic
paradigm) generating emancipatory knowledge/practice in the face of seemingly unchangeable
organizational structures, relationships, and social conditions (e.g. Barton’s, Hodson’s, Keiny’s, or
Solomon’s research programs: Barton & Yang, 2000; Keiny, 1996; Pedretti & Hodson, 1995; Solomon et
al., 1992).
Most of the research literature reviewed in this paper has reported on preliminary small-scale
studies necessarily comprised of a few volunteer science teachers to initiate or participate in a novel
humanistic project. One exception was the research on Harvard Project Physics (Welch, 1973), but it
occurred in the 1960s at a time when a good science curriculum was deemed to be a teacher-proof
curriculum (Solomon, 1999a), when in-service programs simply transmitted the new curriculum’s
philosophy to passive teachers (White & Tisher, 1986), and when research strictly conformed to the
quantitative research paradigm. This paradigm emphasized measurement of outcomes evaluated against
expert judgments or against criteria from academic theoretical frameworks.
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Research into humanistic science curricula has evolved dramatically since the 1960s. Increasingly,
teachers and now students tend to be collaborators in the development of curriculum policy and classroom
materials (e.g. Aikenhead, 1994a; Roberts, 1988, 1995), along with stakeholders other than university
science professors and professional science organizations. Successful in-service programs tend to be
transactional (e.g. the Iowa Chautauqua Project; Yager & Tamir, 1993) and transformational (typically
action research projects, discussed below). Today, research into humanistic science curricula most often
follows the interpretive research paradigm, in which researchers attempt to clarify and understand the
participants’ views and convey them to others or incorporate them into a curriculum or classroom
materials (e.g. Eijkelhof & Lijnse, 1988; Gallagher, 1991; Häussler & Hoffmann, 2000). Developmental
research (Kortland, 2001) as a methodology has promise, depending on the scale of the research agenda.
It will be fruitful to the extent that it encompasses a broad range of topics simultaneously (from preservice teacher preparation, to classroom materials development, to student outcomes such as change in
self-esteem), but it will be meagre to the extent that it focuses on students’ learning canonical science
content. Interpretive research studies have developed educationally sound knowledge and outcomes, but
they have not had the political impact needed for significant change in most science classrooms.
Often associated with the critical-theoretic paradigm of research, action research has combined
educationally sound knowledge with politicization to create classroom change towards a more humanistic
science curriculum (Hodson, 1994; Keiny, 1993), for example: Barton (2001b); Bencze, Hodson, NyhofYoung and Pedretti (2002); Geddis (1991); Ogborn (2002); Pedretti and Hodson, 1995; Solomon et al.
(1992); and Tal et al. (2001). Although these studies have established the effectiveness of action research
as a methodology, the studies are limited by their scale because they have usually involved only a tiny
proportion of excellent teachers (Solomon, 1999a).
Scale
As an alternative to small-scale studies that have dominated the research literature, Elmore (2003)
counselled researchers to treat a school jurisdiction as the unit of analysis through enacting large-scale
projects. However, a change from traditional to humanistic school science may require even a broader
context for research than just a school system, or a teacher education program, or a state curriculum.
Significant change requires a multi-dimensional context of scale that includes diverse stakeholders of
social privilege and power, over a long period of time (Anderson & Helms, 2001; Sjøberg, 2002). The
most effective curriculum research would explore the interaction of research, political power, policy, and
practice (Alsop, 2003), or at least combinations of these components. Research agendas associated with
classroom change have investigated the interaction between political power and practice at the school
80
level (e.g. Carlone, 2003) and have extended it into policy formulation (e.g. Gaskell, 2003; Gaskell &
Hepburn, 1998). These studies penetrated the political core of curriculum policy and they hold promise
for future R&D and developmental research.
If research into a humanistic curriculum is to be more than an academic exercise acted out on a
small scale, it must also reformulate itself into a framework of cultural change, because a humanistic
perspective will significantly alter the culture of school science and the culture of schools (e.g.
Aikenhead, 2000a; Brickhouse & Bodner, 1992; Elmore, 2003; Medvitz, 1996; Munby et al., 2000;
Pedretti & Hodson, 1995; Solomon, 1994c, 2002; Tobin & McRobbie, 1996; Venville et al., 2002;
Vesilind & Jones, 1998). Curriculum change can be nurtured and sustained only if the school culture is
changed. Change will entail renegotiating values and concepts related to the status of school subjects,
which in turn entails altering the school system’s administrative structures, expectations, beliefs, values,
and conventions. It is at this level that pre-professional training courses for science-proficient “pipeline”
students are conceptualized, administratively on par with auto mechanics or beautician courses. Although
school culture is a central feature of a research context, the national culture must be considered as well
(Solomon, 1997b; Walberg, 1991), because countries that embrace education stances Solomon (1999b)
classified as “humanism” and “naturalism” tend to be amenable to a humanistic perspective in science
education, while countries that embrace “rationalism” are not.
Implications for Future Research Studies
To investigate the interaction of research, political power, policy, and practice, with the expressed
purpose of facilitating changes to school culture and classroom practice, researchers must address the
politics of revisiting the aims of science education currently encased in 19th century ideologies. In doing
so, one fundamental dilemma must be resolved explicitly and continuously within each research project:
does the curriculum aim to enculturate students into their local, national, and global communities (as
some other school subjects do), or does it aim to enculturate students into a scientific discipline? Science
educators, who believe both are necessary to supply “the pipeline” with sufficient number of students,
seem to ignore the research that places responsibility for supply clearly on university undergraduate
programs, and seem to ignore the research on student achievement in those programs. One recognizes the
act of ignoring these evidence-based findings as more of a political act warranted by personal values and
ideologies than as a rational defence of a curriculum policy. Educational soundness gives way to political
reality.
Research into educationally sound knowledge by itself (i.e. most of the research reviewed in this
paper) may be necessary for political reasons from time to time, for instance, to re-invent the discovery
81
that the traditional science curriculum fails most students for various reasons (e.g. Reiss, 2000). Of
particular interest would be research into Fatima’s rules played by various types of students and science
teachers, related to high-stakes testing, educational politics, and ideologies. Future research into
humanistic science curricula, however, would best be served by amalgamating the educational with the
political, because educationally sound research by itself has had little political consequence, whereas
politically savvy actions by students can even be effective (Aikenhead, 1983; Eijkelhof & Kapteijn,
2000).
To achieve this amalgamation, research into consensus making on curriculum policy promises to
be a fruitful agenda for future research and development. Of all the policy formulation processes reviewed
in this paper, deliberative inquiry holds greatest potential for devising an educationally sound humanistic
perspective in the science curriculum, while at the same time providing a political forum for negotiations
among various stakeholders. During a deliberative inquiry meeting, research concerning major failures of
the traditional curriculum can be scrutinized, research concerning successes at learning science in nonschool settings can be debated, and research on relevance can help clarify participants’ values (e.g.
Orpwood, 1985). For instance, research on relevance might include: (1) studies (Delphi projects included)
into what science-as-culture is most worthwhile learning within a particular school system (e.g. Who is
engaged with science in the community? and How?); (2) studies into what science-related
knowledge/practice do local workers in science-related careers actually use on the job, day to day; (3)
studies into how science-proficient students use science in their everyday lives, compared with how
science-shy students cope with similar situations; and (4) studies into how professional scientists actually
use science in their everyday lives (e.g. Bell & Lederman, 2003). These research projects would be
politically more effective if they involved clusters of science teachers conducting the research (action
research or otherwise), and if they involved stakeholders representing many jurisdictions, especially those
currently holding greatest power over deciding curriculum policy.
Deliberative inquiry (i.e. consensus-making R&D) will have greater impact on classroom practice:
the larger the project’s scale (e.g. SCC, 1984), the more culturally transformational it is (e.g. Leblanc,
1989), and the more it embraces all three research paradigms appropriately (a feature of scale).
Worthwhile research would investigate the influence of participant-stakeholders in the consensus making
process; for example, the influence of: who they represent, their selection process, their assigned versus
enacted roles (the dynamics of deliberative inquiry), and the actor-networks they bring into the
deliberation and develop as a result of the deliberation (e.g. Carlone, 2003; Gaskell & Hepburn, 1998).
R&D on actor-networks themselves could be a primary focus of a deliberative inquiry, forging networks
to enhance a clearer and more politically endorsed humanistic perspective (e.g. Gaskell, 2003).
82
In short, the most promising but most challenging direction for future research is action research
on the grand scale of deliberative inquiry involving a large educational jurisdiction and a broad array of
stakeholders judiciously (i.e. politically) chosen so that the political elite is represented, but its status quo
science education is actually debated and renegotiated. This needs to take place over a several year period
while further research is conducted at the request of the deliberative inquiry group. Significant change to
school science must be measured by decades of ever increasing, deliberate implementation, as vicious
cycles favouring the traditional science curriculum are eroded by an evolving core of humanistic science
teachers.
In the future, preliminary small-scale research studies can still be worthwhile: “Rather than
viewing the powerful sociohistorical legacy of science as an oppressive structure that limits the potential
of reform, we can view the meanings of science in local settings as partially fluid entities, sometimes
reproducing and sometimes contesting sociohistorical legacies” (Carlone, 2003, p. 326). But small-scale
studies will lose significance unless they explicitly embed themselves in a larger, articulated, politicoeducational agenda for humanistic school science.
Future research programs will be strengthened by establishing alliances between researchers in
humanistic science education and researchers in educational cultural anthropology (e.g. McKinley, in
press). But caution is advised over becoming sidetracked by certain new research methods such as
“design-based research” (e.g. The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003) because their ultimate aim is
to refine theories of learning or didactical structures, aims that embrace educational soundness but
assiduously avoid political reality. Rather than focus on the question, “How do students learn?”, two
fundamental political questions must be posed: “Why would students want to learn?” and “Who will allow
them to learn it?”
83
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