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New trends in science education
Daniel Gil-Pérez a
a
Department de Didàctica de les Ciències Universitat de València, Spain
Online Publication Date: 01 December 1996
To cite this Article: Gil-Pérez, Daniel (1996) 'New trends in science education',
International Journal of Science Education, 18:8, 889 - 901
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INT. J. sci. EDUC.,
1996, VOL. 18, NO. 8, 889-901
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GENERAL ARTICLES
New trends in science education
Daniel Gil-Perez, Department de Didàctica de les Ciències
Universitat de València, Spain
I intend to review the main contributions from the impressive developments made in science education
research during the last decade. These developments have made the construction of a coherent body of
knowledge possible allowing us to expect a significant improvement in the science teaching/learning
process. I shall refer, in particular, to the new trends in science education research, both in the domain
of science learning and science teacher-training.
A new scientific domain
At the beginning of the 1980s, science education was still considered a preparadigmatic domain (Berger 1979, Klopfer 1983). Moreover, in many countries (France,
Italy, Spain), science education practically did not exist: there were no specific
journals, the number of PhD theses was small and the syllabus for science teachertraining did not include any reference to science education research.
Since then, science education has experienced, in my opinion, an impressive
development, becoming a specific domain of research. An indication of that development is, for instance, the evolution of the number of papers published. Duit
(1993) has shown that the number of studies on preconceptions follows an exponential pattern and I have found the same evolution for studies on science education in general (Carrascosa et al. 1993).
In the same way, if we analyse the evolution of research journals in science
education, we can see that almost 50 years pass from the appearance of Science
Education (USA, 1916) to that of Journal of Research in Science Teaching (USA, 1963),
and another nine years until the publication of Studies in Science Education (UK,
1972). From the beginning of the 1980s numerous journals have appeared and
continue to appear. Some titles are: European Journal of Science Education (UK,
1979), Ensenanza de las Ciencias (Spain, 1983), Australian Journal of Science
Education (1985), ASTER (France, 1985), Science and Technological Education
(UK, 1985), Revista de Ensenanza de la Fisica (Argentina, 1985), Revista de
Ensino de Fisica (Brazil, 1988), Didaskalia (France, 1993), Alambique: Didactica
de las Ciencias Experimentales (Spain, 1994).
We even begin to find journals focusing on specific aspects, for example,
Science and Education (1992), which studies the role of the history and philosophy
of science education. Additionally, journals focusing on scientific content (such as
American Journal of Physics, Journal of Chemical Education, Bulletin de I'Union des
Physiciens, La Fisica nella Scuola) are publishing, with increasing frequency,
0950-0693/96 $12-00 © 1996 Taylor & Francis Ltd
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D. GIL-PEREZ
research papers in science education. A similar trend is evident in journals of
general education.
We can obtain the same dynamic view of the development in science education
when we analyse those authors who are most often quoted: today's references
correspond, in general, to science education researchers who are our contemporaries, while 15 years ago the most often quoted writers were educational psychologists (Carrascosa et al. 1993).
Researchers themselves are aware of this development: if at the beginning of
the 1980s they qualified science education as a preparadigmatic domain (Klopfer
1983), today they conceive the possibility of constructing a coherent body of
knowledge on science education (Furio and Gil-Perez 1989, Hodson 1992, GilPerez 1994).
We can conclude that science education has effectively become a new field of
science, with a specific research community and a specific corpus of knowledge. I
do not intend to ignore, of course, the contributions of other scientific fields such
as educational psychology or the history of science. On the contrary, the very
existence of a specific corpus of knowledge makes the integration of those contributions possible (Linn 1987).
A review of the impressive developments of the last few years is essential in
order to get a complete picture of the whole field and profit from the advances
made during this period.
The origins
Emphasizing the qualitative leap experienced by science education during the
1980s, as I have done, I do not intend to minimize the work carried out during
the preceding period of much slower development. On the contrary, if we really
intend to show the emergence of a coherent body of knowledge, we need to show
the thread of its evolution. There is a real danger in viewing science education as a
simple question of finding 'the correct recipe'. As Linn (1987) has pointed out, 'To
develop and sustain the new thrust in science education research, we must avoid
the chronic amnesia that often characterizes research in education'.
We have to recognize the contribution of first attempts. We cannot completely
reject, for example, the learning by discovery movement as we have frequently done
(Gil 1983, Hodson 1985, Millar and Driver 1987) with an exclusive reference to its
failure, both in the field of conceptual learning and in the understanding of the
nature of science. The fact that a systematic process of research and curricular
reform has been initiated bears much more significance than any of the errors
made.
It is true that, when science teachers try to renew their teaching, they usually
fall into the same trap of the learning by the discovery paradigm: extreme induetivism, lack of attention to content, insistence on a completely autonomous activity
of pupils. The scientific treatment of problems is reduced to a linear sequence of
fixed stages, disregarding the most creative aspects. It is necessary, therefore, to
show clearly—as science education research has done—the limitations of this
orientation. It is, however, also necessary to recognize the significance of that
innovative intent, because, in spite of its flaws, it stimulates a process of questioning which will be the source of subsequent restructuring.
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891
The limitations of the learning by discovery model brought about a reappraisal
of learning by reception. Nevertheless, the reception learning paradigm (Ausubel
1968, Ausubel et al. 1978, Novak 1979) cannot be interpreted as just a return to a
valueless 'traditional teaching'. We must recognize some essential contributions as,
for instance, the idea of meaningful learning, instruments such as conceptual maps
and Gowin's epistemological Ve (Novak and Gowin 1989) and, particularly, the
attention given to pupils' previous knowledge. This attention is associated with the
importance acquired by the research on preconceptions, which rapidly became the
most widespread line of research during the 1980s.
Alternative conceptions
Research in science education during the 1980s has prioritised the study of what is
known by the terms such as preconceptions, alternative frameworks and pupils'
representations (Abimbola 1988). I have already mentioned the analysis by Duit
(1993) of the increasing importance of this research. Viennot (1989) has tried to
explain the reasons for this prioritisation. She refers to the importance given to
pupils' 'initial state' and to another and more pragmatic reason: research on misconceptions and preconceptions produces clearer and more convincing results than
other studies. So, given the need to show, in a reasonable period of time, the
relevance and interest of science education research, many researchers have
devoted themselves to this field.
Nevertheless, the most important questions are: What has brought about this
research on alternative conceptions? Which perspective has been opened? I shall
briefly summarize what I believe to be the main contributions that this research
has given.
In the first place, research on alternative conceptions has seriously questioned
the effectiveness of teaching by transmission of knowledge. In fact, this research
has contributed more to questioning the spontaneous teachers' conception of
teaching as 'something easy which demands only a certain knowledge of the subject and some experience' than any other study (Gil 1991).
This research has shown a high capacity for integrating studies on different
subjects, such as language (Ross and Sutton 1982, Solomon 1987), genetic epistemology (Driver 1981, Linn 1987) and, particularly, the history and philosophy of
science (Posner et al. 1982, Gilbert and Swift 1985, Matthews 1990).
It has facilitated the emergence of the constructivist approach, which is considered today as the most outstanding contribution to science education over the
last few decades (Gruender and Tobin 1991). Resnick (1993) has summarized the
characteristics of this new approach in three statements:
• Learners construct understanding. They do not simply mirror what they are
told or what they read. T o understand something is to know relationships.
• Bits of isolated information are forgotten or become inaccessible to memory.
• All learning depends on prior knowledge.
This summary is, as Resnick recognizes, a simplification but it allows us to
notice the importance given to preconceptions and, what is more important, the
undeniable similarity with the contemporary view of the construction of scientific
knowledge. This resemblance has been pointed out by many science education
researchers (Posner et al. 1982, Gil 1983, Gil and Carrascosa 1985, 1990,
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D. GIL-PEREZ
Hashweh 1986, Matthews 1990, Burbules and Linn 1991, Cobb, Wood and Yackel
1991, Duschl and Gitomer 1991, Gruender and Tobin, 1991) and appears as one of
the fundamental reasons to support the new trend.
This converging of research on alternative conceptions with the constructivist
approach has led to a growing consensus about how to orientate the teaching/
learning process. We can recognize a basic coincidence — in spite, of course, of
some nuances — in many teaching proposals presented as different models
(Nussbaum and Novick 1982, Posner et al. 1982, Osborne and Wittrock 1983,
1985, Driver and Oldham 1986, Hodson 1988, Giordan 1989, Pozo 1989). In all
of them we can find the view of science learning as a conceptual change in three
basic steps:
• An elicitation phase of pupils' ideas, making them conscious of the plausibility and productivity of those ideas.
• A restructuring phase, creating cognitive conflict, generating pupils' dissatisfaction with their current ideas and preparing them for the introduction
of scientific conceptions.
• An application phase which gives opportunities for using the new conceptions in different contexts and consolidating them.
The effectiveness of those conceptual change strategies has been supported by
much research undertaken in different fields of science education (Nussbaum
and Novick 1982, Anderson and Smith 1983, Hewson and Hewson 1984,
Minstrell 1984, Roth 1984, Osborne and Freyberg 1985, Zietsman and Hewson
1986, Viennot and Kamisnky 1991).
Towards the end of the 1980s, research on preconceptions has begun to pay
attention to teachers own conceptions about the nature of science and about
science teaching and learning, and their influences on the teaching/learning process (Gene and Gil-Perez 1987, Hewson and Hewson 1987).
We can conclude that research on preconceptions has been very fruitful. But
we should also consider the possible disadvantages of this almost exclusive attention to alternative conceptions.
Against conceptual reductionism
Although some isolated ideas had previously been voiced (Gil-Perez and
Carrascosa 1985, Hashweh 1986), in the 1980s researchers on science education
began to reject the serious reductionism of the conceptual change proposals (Duschl
and Gitomer 1991) which could explain the limitations of the conceptual change
strategies (Shuell 1987, White and Gunstone 1989). Duschl and Gitomer criticize
the hierarchical view of conceptual change that 'assumes that changes in central
commitments to a theory of science bring simultaneous changes to other ontological, methodological and axiological commitments within the conceptual framework'. This flawed version of how conceptual changes take place is given as the
cause for the insufficient study of the nature of procedural knowledge (Duschl et
al. 1990) and the partial inefficiency of conceptual change teaching strategies; 'if
we are to produce radical restructuring of concepts, the personal correlate of
Kuhn's revolutionary science, then it seems that we must also teach the procedural
knowledge involved'.
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This has given a new sense and purpose to research on practical work (GilPerez et al. 1991, Hodson 1993b) and pencil and paper problem-solving (Gil-Perez
et al. 1990). These activities are now seen as instruments of the methodological and
epistemological change which has to accompany the conceptual change. This
requires a profound change in those activities, from simple recipe and application
exercises into open problematic situations, capable of favouring pupils' research
(Gil-Perez et al. 1991, Wheatley 1991) and a similar transformation of evaluation
(Gil-Perez et al. 1991, Hodson 1992b): 'Innovations in the curriculum fail to
persist unless they are reflected in similar innovations in testing' (Linn 1987).
We have also begun to understand that the construction of knowledge has
axiological commitments: we cannot expect, for instance, that pupils will become
involved in a research activity in an atmosphere of 'police control' (Briscoe 1991).
This has stimulated research on classroom and school atmosphere (Welch 1985),
pupils' (and teachers') attitudes towards science (Schibeci 1984, Yager and Penick
1986) and STS relationships (Solomon 1990). T h e construction of knowledge has to
be associated with the treatment of problematic situations which are relevant and
interesting to pupils (Gil-Perez et al. 1991), enabling them 'to assume the social
responsibilities of attentive citizens or key decision makers' (Aikenhead 1985).
These different contributions are beginning to appear to be related components of an integrated body of knowledge (Linn 1987, Gil-Perez 1991, 1994,
Hodson 1992). I shall refer to this integration in the next paragraph.
Three propositions to summarize recent advances in science
education
If each one of us asks what the main contributions of science education research to
the science teaching/learning process have been, the answers will probably vary in
many ways, but they will also have certain points in common. In any case, a
discussion is provoked that can surely help us to get a more integrated vision of
recent advances in science education. T o contribute to this debate, I shall state
three propositions which, in my opinion, are generating a growing consensus. The
first proposition affirms that:
It is not possible to separate these three elements: learning science (acquiring conceptual and theoretical knowledge), learning about science (developing an understanding of the nature and methods of science and awareness of the complex
interactions between science and society) and doing science (engaging in and developing expertise in scientific inquiry and problem solving (Hodson 1992).
It is, in fact, possible to make this separation. Science teaching usually does so,
practising what we can call a conceptual reductionism (Duschl and Gitomer 1991)
which limits science education to learning science. The trouble is that this reductionism doesn't work and pupils don't experience the expected conceptual change.
They acquire deformed views of science and, particularly, of the interactions
between science and society. On the contrary, recent research in science education
shows that 'Students develop their conceptual understanding and learn more about
scientific inquiry by engaging in scientific inquiry, provided that there is sufficient
opportunity for and support of reflection' (Hodson 1992). In the same sense,
Driver (1993) writes: 'Learning science involves young people entering into a
different way of thinking about and explaining the natural word; becoming socialized to a greater or lesser extent into the practices of the scientific community'.
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D. GIL-PEREZ
It is true that this is an old intuition, as old as the learning by discovery
movement which, as has been repeatedly shown, did not work too well (Ausubel
1968, Gil 1983, Hodson 1985, Millar and Driver 1987).
However, today's proposals are different in two fundamental respects. In the
first place, and this constitutes my second proposition:
It is necessary to stress that I am not thinking of pupils as practising scientists,
working in frontier domains. This metaphor, used by several authors against the
treatment of pupils as simple receivers, has many limitations and cannot give a useful
view of how to organize pupils' work (Pope and Gilbert 1993, Burbules and Linn
1987). A metaphor that presents pupils as novice researchers (Gil-Perez 1993, GilPerez and Carrascosa 1994) gives, in my opinion, a better appraisal of the learning
situation.
In effect, any researcher knows that when someone joins a research team, she or he
can catch up quite easily with the standard level of the team. That does not happen
by verbal transmission, but through the treatment of problems in domains where
more experienced colleagues are experts. The situation changes, of course, when
problems which are new for every member of the team are taken into account. In
this case, the progress (if any) becomes slow and sinuous.
This is, of course, just a metaphor and I do not forget the grave differences
between a pupil and a real novice researcher; but it is a better metaphor, I think,
than those which present pupils as simple receivers or as practising scientists.
This metaphor is associated with three basic elements of what we can call a
'radical social-constructivist orientation' for science learning: open problematic
situations, scientific work in cooperative groups and interactions between the
groups and the 'scientific community', represented by other pupils, the teacher
and the text books (Gil-Perez and Mtnez-Torregrosa 1987, Wheatley 1991). This
social constructivist perspective is coherent with the work of Vygotsky on the role
of experts to support less experienced members (Driver 1993) and with the nature
of the scientists' training (Gil 1993).
In synthesis, the teaching strategy that appears to be the most consistent with
the constructivist cognitive approach and with the characteristics of scientific
reasoning, is the organization of learning as a treatment of problematic situations
that pupils can identify as worth thinking about. This strategy basically aims to
involve pupils in the construction of knowledge, giving to the pupils' activity the
characteristics of a well orientated investigation (Gil-Perez 1993, Gil-Perez and
Carrascosa 1994). It can be summarized as follows:
1. Conceive problematic situations that generate interest and provide a preliminary conception of the task, taking into account the ideas, world view,
skills and attitudes of pupils.
2. Propose the qualitative study of the problematic situations, taking decisions
(with the help of the necessary bibliographic researches) to define and delimit concrete problems, an activity during which pupils begin to make their
ideas explicit in a functional way.
3. Guide the scientific treatment of the problems, which implies, among other
things:
Invention of concepts and forming of hypotheses (opportunity for use of
alternative conceptions to make predictions).
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Elaboration of possible strategies for solving the problems, including,
where appropriate, experimental designs to check hypotheses in the light
of the body of knowledge.
Realization of the elaborated strategies and analysis of the results (checking
them with those obtained by other pupils and by the scientific community)
which can produce cognitive conflicts between different conceptions (taking
all of them as hypotheses) and can require the formation of new hypotheses.
4. Propose the application of the new knowledge in a variety of situations to
deepen and consolidate them, putting special emphasis on the STS relationships which frame the scientific development, and leading all this treatment
to show the construction of a coherent body of knowledge.
5. Favour particularly synthesis activities (schemes, reports), the elaboration of
products which help to give a purpose to the task and increase the interest in
it and the conception of new problems.
This leads to my third proposition:
The effectiveness of this orientation demands breaking many reductionisms and distortions of the nature of science transmitted by science teaching as a consequence of
teachers' spontaneous epistemology.
Here we are touching upon the second big difference between today's proposals
and the preceding essays of organizing science learning as scientific research: the
attention given to those reductionisms and distortions of the nature of science
transmitted by science teaching.
Transforming teachers' views about the nature of science
As Bell and Pearson (1992) have pointed out, it is not possible to change what
teachers and pupils do in the classroom without transforming their epistemology,
their conceptions about how knowledge is constructed, their views about science.
This is not just a question of the well known extreme inductivism denounced so
many times previously: we have to pay attention to many other distortions (Gil
1993, Hodson 1993, Meichstry 1993, Guilbert and Meloche 1993), as, for instance:
• Extreme inductivism, enhancing 'free' observation and experimentation ('not
subject to aprioristic ideas') and forgetting the essential role played by the
making of hypotheses and by the construction of coherent bodies of knowledge (theories). On the other hand, in spite of the great importance assigned
to experimentation, science teaching remains purely bookish, quite frequently with little practical work. For this reason, experimentation keeps
the glamour of an 'unaccomplished revolution'. This inductivist vision
underlies the orientation of learning as discovery and the reduction of science
learning to the process of science.
• A rigid view (algorithmic, exact, infallible, dogmatic). 'Scientific Method' is
presented as a linear sequence of stages to be followed step by step.
Quantitative treatment and control are enhanced, forgetting—or even rejecting—everything related to invention, creativity, tentative constructions.
Scientific knowledge is presented in its 'final' state, without any reference
either to the problematic situations which are at its origin, its historical
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•
•
•
•
•
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D. GIL-PEREZ
evolution or the limitations of this knowledge which appears as an absolute
truth not subject to change.
An exclusively analytical vision which enhances the necessary division and
simplification of the study, but neglects the efforts of unification in order to
construct wider bodies of knowledge, the treatment of 'border' problems
between different domains. Going in the opposite direction, today there is
a tendency to present the unity of nature, not as a result of scientific development but as a starting point.
A merely accumulative vision. Scientific knowledge appears as the result of a
linear development, ignoring crisis and deep restructurings.
A 'commonsense' view which presents scientific knowledge as clear and
'obvious', forgetting the essential differences between the scientific strategies
and the common-sense reasoning. This view is characterized by quick and
very confident answers, based on 'evidence'; by the absence of doubt or
consideration of possible alternative solutions; by the lack of consistency in
the analysis of different situations; by reasoning which follows a linear causality sequence. The 'conceptual reductionism' of most science teaching contributes to this commonsense view forgetting that a conceptual change can
not take place without a simultaneous and profound epistemological and
attitudinal change.
A 'veiled' and elitist view. No special effort is made to make science meaningful and accessible; on the contrary, the meaning of scientific knowledge is
hidden behind the mathematical expressions. In this way, science is presented as a domain reserved for specially gifted minorities, transmitting
poor expectations to most pupils and favouring ethnic, social and gender
discriminations.
An individualistic view. Science appears as the activity of isolated 'great
scientists', ignoring the role of cooperative work and of interaction between
different research teams.
A socially 'neutral' view. Science is presented as something elaborated in
'ivory towers', forgetting the complex STS relationships and the importance
of collective decision making on social issues related to science and technology.
In contrast to this vision of science out of context, today there is an opposing tendency, in secondary schools, towards a 'sociological reductionism',
which limits the science curriculum to the treatment of STS problems and
forgets the search for coherence and other essential aspects of science.
This teachers' spontaneous epistemology constitutes a serious obstacle to the
renewal of science teaching in as much as it is accepted acritically as 'commonsense evidence'. However, it is not difficult at all, in my opinion, to generate a
critical attitude towards these commonsense views. When teachers have the opportunity for a collective discussion about possible distortions of the nature of science
transmitted by science teaching, they easily become aware of most of the dangers
(Gil-Perez et al. 1991). In other words, the real danger seems to be the lack of
attention to what is given as common-sense evidence.
We can conclude, following this review, that research in science education has
experienced a particularly profitable development during the last decade, initiating
the construction of a specific body of knowledge on science teaching and learning
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problems. We can hope that this body of knowledge will be developed and consolidated during the years to come, making an effective displacement of the transmission/reception model by the constructivist approach possible, both in
classroom activity and in teacher training. That is, in my opinion, the general
perspective. I shall discuss it in more detail in the last paragraph.
New trends in science education
Reviewing the evolution of a certain domain, as I have tried to do here with science
education, has, as a fundamental aim, to favour the integration of the different
contributions and to provide perspectives for further development. Those perspectives become working hypotheses which will allow us to test the validity of
the analysis carried out and of the conclusions thereby obtained.
Nothing can guarantee, of course, that the results of those analyses will be
correct, but the explicitation of the perspectives makes criticizing them and stating
other predictions and recommendations possible.
We can remember, for example, the meta-analysis made by Welch, more than
ten years ago (Welch 1985), of the research carried out in different fields of science
education. Welch intended to answer the following questions, which show a clear
prospective approach: What do we know at present and what should we know?
Which are the most urgent investigations to be made? How can we improve science
teaching?
In his conclusions, Welch predicted (and recommended) a growing research
emphasis on some aspects scarcely studied at that point, like pupils' attitudes
towards science, environmental influences (classroom atmosphere) and types of
activities carried out by pupils. I agreed in a short note (Gil-Perez 1986) with
those predictions which, effectively, opened up new perspectives to our research.
But I rejected other predictions and recommendations: I was particularly surprised by Welch's lack of attention to alternative conceptions and I completely
disagreed with his insistent recommendation of disregarding teachers' behaviour
as a line of research. In fact, research has given a clear priority to the study of
preconceptions and the research focused on teachers' thinking has increased.
I insist, nevertheless, in the interest of Welch's recapitulation, which offered
some interesting suggestions and stimulated alternative predictions. I would wish
that the perspectives I am going to state now—based on the analyses undertaken in
the preceding paragraphs—could, at least, stimulate alternative predictions and
recommendations. Here are, then, my predictions for the development of the
research in science education over the next few years:
In the first place, concerning today's most developed line of research, I believe
that a displacement from the detection of preconceptions (using instruments
which, in general, give information about pupils' immediate answers and reactions) to the study of the 'zone of potential development' (eliciting what pupils
can think or do when we facilitate a reflexive and critical work) is necessary. In
other words, the abundant results from alternative conceptions show, in my
opinion, a student's superficial approach to the situations studied, facilitated by
the instruments used. In my opinion equally, as important as these results, are
those obtained when we put pupils in the situation of thinking in a more reflective
way. So we can expect that this approach will displace the simple detection of
alternative conceptions.
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D. GIL-PEREZ
T h e evolution of the research in alternative conceptions involves another
essential change: overtaking the conceptual reductionism which has characterized,
in general, this research and the derived teaching proposals. Taking both the
conceptual, procedural and attitudinal aspects into consideration will increase
the efficiency of the constructivist approach and facilitate the consensus on science
learning as an orientated research. We can expect, in the same sense, an increased
emphasis on technology education (Gilbert 1992).
Associated with this consensus on the constructivist approach, we can foresee
an important development in curricular innovation, orientated towards the production of programmes of activities, it is to say, programmes of research for the
construction of knowledge.
W e can expect, on the other hand, an extension of the constructivist approach
to teacher training. This means, firstly, a growing critical awareness of the
teacher's common-sense thinking about science and science teaching and learning
and, secondly, to transform teacher training into a research activity which enables
student teachers to (re)construct the science education corpus of knowledge.
W e can expect at the same time the extension of science education to the
university level, although this is more of a wish than a prediction. We know
that, in general, the university has not taken part in the renewal of science education. Nevertheless, the rapid increase of the student population and some problems
thereby created (rate of failure, student rejection of normal teaching methods, etc.)
are generating an incipient concern among university teachers. We can hope that
this concern will produce a growing awareness of the teaching and learning
problems at university level. In this way, the renewal of science education and,
particularly, the initial teacher training, would not continue to be hindered by a
teaching style at odds with the recommendations derived from science education
research.
All the aforementioned expectations and recommendations can be summarized
in a heightened search for global coherence, leading to the development and the
consolidation of a specific corpus of knowledge of science teaching and learning.
I do not intend to ignore the fact that these expectations can seem the expressoin of my wishes more than objective predictions. Nevertheless, what I have
learned about the nature of science shows me that there are no 'neutral'
approaches, that our hypotheses and even the selection of the problems we decide
to study are determined, not only by our knowledge, but also by our interests and
ideology. Without 'subjective' wishes and expectations, the advances I have predicted will not take place, but I believe that those expectations also have a solid
foundation in recent science education research and are generating a growing
consensus.
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