Université européenne d’été 2011
Science, culture, éducation :
des sociétés guettées par l’illettrisme scientifique ?
Professor Enshan LIU, Beijing Normal University
La position de la Chine sur l’éducation aux sciences. Les initiatives pour
développer une culture scientifique à l’école et en dehors
Mardi 30 août 2011
I will talk about the current situation of science education, a little bit about general culture
and scientific culture, as well as scientific literacy and illiteracy.
China is still a developing country. We have problems with poverty in many areas of China.
Scientific illiteracy is a serious problem in our country. We are really concerned about public
scientific literacy which is critical for democracy and the sustainable development of the
country. In the last 10 years, both the government and the science educators have done a
lot in developing the scientific cultures of the kids and the general citizens.
We have a quite good educational environment at the moment as China has set a policy
which makes education a priority and a strategic keystone in the national agenda. What does
that mean? It means that in the next 3 or 5 years, the funding of the government will put
more money into education. The funding of education will be almost doubled in the next few
years and will thus create better conditions for education.
China is the country with the largest population in the world. The idea is to maximize human
capacity to build a creative country. Science education plays an important role in those
changes; a great effort is made to improve scientific literacy, both for the pupils in schools
and for the citizens of the country.
In my presentation I will not talk much about scientific illiteracy but I would like to talk more
about what we have done to develop scientific literacy.
To begin with, I will talk a little bit about scientific culture and our general culture. From the
picture you can see there are 5 Chinese characters here, mean “benevolence”,
“righteousness”, “ritual”, “wisdom” and “faith”. And there are another 5 Chinese characters
there, meaning “gentle”, “virtuous”, “respectful”, “thrift” and “humility”. These 10 words are
the philosophy of Confucius. It is also a typical feature of the Chinese general culture. You
can also see the portrait of Confucius. Confucius is a great thinker and educator about 2000
years ago. He has done a great in education with heavy impact on our general culture. As a
great educator, he has 3,000 students during that time, and among those students, about
70, as a best, giving the great contribution to our education, and politics, and Chinese culture.
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Although Confucius had so many students, but none of his students study in nature and
science. So one research professor says that it is a pity that no of the student of Confucian
study science, study the nature! So in our traditional culture there is no science. That means
science is not a “native product” of local culture. So in my view, in Chinese civilization,
“science” is a foreign culture, it is a “foreign product” in China.
While science comes into China, there are great interaction between the traditional general
culture and the scientific culture. Chinese culture changes science culture quite a lot while it
came into China. And in another ways, scientific culture also changes our traditional culture.
So it’s a real interaction between the Chinese traditional culture and the scientific culture.
In our science classrooms, we can see the students have very good behavior; they respect
the teachers as respecting their parents. Our students are obeying and follow the direction
of the teachers with no question and argument. For quite a long time, parents and teachers
believe that obeying and following is the typical feature of a good student. So, in science
classroom, you can see how traditional culture changes the scientific culture. It has double
sides, positive impact and a negative impact.
The positive impact is that most of the science teachers will be no worry about the
homework of students. All of them follow the direction of the teachers. And for the science
teachers, they are very easily to complete their lesson plan in the classroom without
discipline problems. So the students respect the teachers, follow the teachers. The negative
impact is that the teacher dominates the classroom without students’ questioning and
critical thinking. This is typical science classroom culture with the teacher dominates the
classroom. It is not only the cases in the elementary and secondary school science
classroom, it is also happen in the university, and even in some research teams.
So what we can see in our science classroom, you can see also something in our research
teams. Quite often postgraduate students in the research teams will follow their supervisor
as a professor; will lead to almost no argument between the teachers and the students. This
is a typical characteristic that scientific culture embedded into traditional Chinese culture in
our scientific society, and in our science classroom.
In our school science classroom, before the year 2000, there will be almost no critical
thinking, no logical thinking, evidence-based decision-making, and question, and no
argument. Students just follow, listen, take notes, homework and retell what the teacher
says at the end of term for the paper-pencil examination.
So another way of interaction between our traditional culture and the scientific culture is
that quite a number of our science educators look science and take science as a body of
knowledge. Filtered with our general culture, science becomes just a body of knowledge. No
way of thinking and no way of investigation in science classroom. Some science teachers
think their task is just help the student to remember some science facts and definition or
terminology. In China, science is emerged in our traditional culture.
Talk about the current situation of scientific illiteracy in China, I talk about the scientific
literacy so you can also see the problems in scientific illiteracy. The recent report about
scientific literacy is based on a survey in China. The sample was about 70,000 people across
the country. The international approach was used for this survey. The result is that the
scientific literacy of a Chinese citizen is about 3.27%. What that means, the figure was almost
the same as developed country of 10 years ago. One example, Japan is 3% in 1991, which is
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about 20 years ago. And Canada in 1981 is 4%, and the Europe Union is 5% in 1992. This is a
figure about 10 or 20 years ago. We are still in a low level as the developed countries of 20
years ago. So while the European Union is concerned about the scientific illiteracy, we are
really worried about our problem of scientific illiteracy.
The good news is that in the last 5 years, our scientific literacy of Chinese people has
increased quite a lot. And the figure shows that in the year 2005, only 1.6%. And in the last 5
years the figure almost doubled, that’s a quick change. This is good news for changing in a
positive way. So we are a little bit happy about that. I hope that it can keep going this way.
This is the figure about the different population with urban workers and the farmers. You
can see the differences. In the left-hand side is the scientific illiteracy of urban workers (4.79%
in 2010). On my right hand is the scientific illiteracy of farmers (1.51% in 2010). You can see
the great difference between the workers and the farmers. And you can see that the figure
changes from 2005 to 2010. You can see the workers’ scientific literacy is almost doubled in
the last 5 years. And also for the farmers’ scientific literacy is also doubled. But it’s a great
difference between the city and the countryside. We are quite clear our problem is mainly in
the countryside.
This slide shows the scientific literacy among different population at different regions of the
country. You see the scientific literacy in eastern area is 4.59%, the central area is 2.60% and
the western area is 2.33%.
In China, the largest city and the most developed area at the east part of China where
economy goes quite well, and the education are quite well , such as Beijing, Shanghai,
Tianjin, Guangzhou, all of those large cities are located at the east part of China. Most of
area in the western part of China is rural area. You can imagine the difference in the
economy, the difference in the living standards, the difference in education, and the
difference in scientific literacy among those peoples.
On this slide, the figure shows citizen’s scientific literacy levels which seem to be related
with their education. With a bachelor degree or above, they have a quite high in their
scientific literacy, which is 13%. For the 2-year college students are 8%. These figures show
us the scientific literacy seems to be related to people’s education. So education, especially
school education, plays quite an important role in developing the people’s scientific literacy.
This slide show the difference on citizen’s scientific literacy levels among different ages. This
figure shows that the young people are about 5%. And the elder people of Chinese citizen
are quite low, which is 1.25%. We can see that trend that the young people have a much
high percentage of scientific literacy. This figure indicates that our school system play an
important role in developing students’ scientific literacy in the last 10 years. That is about
scientific literacy, the current situation in China.
I will talk a little about the National Action Plan. The science educators worry about the
problem of scientific illiteracy. The government does the same things. One example is that,
in the year 2006, there is a national document which is action plan called the “Outline of the
National Spectrum for Scientific Literacy, the year 2006 to the year 2020”. This is 15 year of
action plan.
This action plan shows that government will play a key role for the input. The government
will input quite a number of resources to developing scientific literacy among Chinese
people. And it will require educators or the different kind of the academic agency to take
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part in this program. So the mass participation means more and more scientists, educators,
and different resources will take part in that program in raising scientific literacy in China.
In the last 5 years, the total number of science museum in China was increased quickly.
More and more science museum was built just in the last 5 years after this action plan.
The action plan have quite details of the different actions, the main actions, objectives, and
the measurements. It is a very detailed action plan. Just a few examples, one action is about
school students’ scientific literacy action. The MOE will put much more resources in
developing school science curriculum, preparing science teacher, helping in their
professional development, and developing teaching material and science teaching resources.
Another action is for the farmers’ scientific literacy action, especially to help the farmers to
have an opportunity to improve their scientific literacy. Among this action there is a program
called “Help with Mother”, developing scientific literacy for mothers! Particularly concerns
the mothers, while the mother has a better scientific literacy, they can help their children.
This is particularly focus on the farmers. Although urban workers’ scientific literacy is higher
than farmers, there is another action focus on developing scientific literacy for the workers
in the city.
And there is another action focus on the decision-makers. In China we call them “leaders,”
common officials, developing their scientific literacy. One reason for that, if decision-makers
are scientific illiteracy, they might have a wrong decision about science and technologyrelated issues, that will mean that will have a highly impact on the society or environment.
So there is another action focus on the decision-makers, to developing their scientific
literacy. This was what government will play as a role, concern about, and will do for public
scientific literacy.
In the last 10 years, I was involved in since education reform in the schools, which is a part of
the action plan I just talk about. This is our belief. School science education should play key
role in developing scientific literacy of the will be citizen. Another belief is that scientific
culture needed to cultivate it in science classrooms. As I said, traditional culture and
scientific culture in China interact with each other, change each other. What we try to do is
cultivate scientific culture starting at science classroom, to change the culture in the science
classroom. We can change the general culture in some way with scientific culture in our
country.
This is factual information, just to give you a general picture about the current situation in
China. Our science education in schools is started at compulsory education, from grade 3 to
grade 9. Every kid needs to go to school and complete their 9-year education. And the grade
10 to grade 12 we called high school. One of efforts is, in the last a few years, tryimg to
extend the science education to the grade 1 and the grade 2. We still have a difficulty in
doing that currently. In the latest science curriculum, students start their science learning at
the grade 3 for science education. So from grade 3 to grade 6, there are elementary school
science classes.
Grade 7 to grade 9 is we call middle school or junior secondary school. There are two kinds
of science classes, one is integrated science classes. That happened in just one province in
China, which is Zhejiang Province. For most of the other provinces, the teacher, educators,
decision-makers, and the parents like to teach science as separate subjects. There are many,
many reasons for doing that. And it’s really a challenge to change that. Only one province
adopts teaching science as integrated one. For other provinces and Beijing, Shanghai, at
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grade 7, kids study biology and the geology. At grade 8, kids study biology and physics. And
at grade 9 is physics and chemistry.
In high school, every high school student need to study physics, chemistry, biology, and
geology. These are the core subjects. Every high school student must take at least 108 hours
of study in all the subjects of science, including mathematics. This is a general picture of our
school science curriculum in China.
In the year 2001, science education reform started from the compulsory education, grade 3
to grade 9. The Ministry of Education released the new science education standards, and
followed in the year 2004, high school science education standards was used and
implemented in high schools. This is an important signal to change our science education
and science teaching in the classroom.
The science education reform is based on the idea that science education program is aiming
to developing students’ scientific literacy, not just transfer knowledge from the teachers to
students.
There are some distinguished features in the science education reform. The number 1 is
“Science for all”. This idea comes from the States, and we use this idea in our science
education, science for all students in elementary, middle school and high school. In the past,
there are two tracks for the high school student, one is for science and the technology
emphasized, and another way is for liberal arts emphasized. Currently we require all the
students must take at least 108 hours of study in all subjects in science.
Another feature is inquiry-based teaching. Active learning was introduced in our school
curriculum and students are encourages to learn science in the active way. This is the most
challenging for our educators, especially for the teachers. While our teachers used to lecture
and demonstration-based science teaching approaches, this change is really challenging for
the textbook writers and school teachers.
The third feature is “learning science in real life context”. Science teachers are encouraged
to arrange teaching activities with students’ real life context, to give the students more
meaning and more motivation while they study science. Technology was embedded into
science curriculum. In science classroom, students are expected not only listening and taking
notes, but also some hands-on activities on science and technology, offering them a chance
to think about their future and their career planning.
The latest version of school science curriculum standard will be released by MOE at the end
of this year. After rewriting and revision, the new version of our science curriculum
standards is already to publish, at the last step for release. In the new curriculum standards,
biology for example, content knowledge is organized with “key concepts”. Little bit same, as
the big ideas, but we call them key concepts.
And follows education reform, there are intensive teachers professional development
programs, because the teacher is the critical factor for the success of the science education
reform in our schools. We have to do a lot about that.
The last sentence is, we really face many, many challenges. But I see quite a number of
challenges are the same internationally, so cooperation among the different countries could
help us to conquer all of challenges.
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