ROLE OF THE ACADEMY IN SCIENCE EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA
Federation of Asian Scientific Academies and Societies First International Conference on Science Education in the Asia Pacific
Bangkok, Thailand, 28 November 2007
As the President of the Australian Academy of Science, I’m here today to talk about the role of the Australian Academy of Science in science education in Australian schools.
Australian school students perform well on international science tests. However university enrolments in science have fallen by 30 per cent since the year 2000. A recent report from the Australian Council for Education Research in their journal The Australian Education Review by Professor Russell Tytler suggests that the disengagement with science may be because the way in which we teach science has remained static for decades. The world has changed but our teaching approach has not kept up with it.
The practice of science has also changed over the last century. A focus group of scientists interviewed by Tytler and Symington in 2006 was keen to point out that the text books their own children currently used looked much the same as those they themselves had used in the 1960s (although one informant pointed out that the diagrams were more colourful). They argued that the view of science contained in them did not reflect what they understood as the current practice of science. The curriculum is still compartmentalised into distinct disciplinary strands, with context considered subsidiary to abstract concepts which should be learnt. Whereas scientists are asked be imaginative, analytical, work in multi-disciplinary teams, communicate effectively to multiple audiences and to understand the social and ethical context in which they work.
Future demands and pressures on the youth of the nation are likely to be very different from those in the past. We live in an information rich world, where science is brought into the public arena with public debates on science-related issues. We cannot foresee what concepts citizens will require knowledge of in the future. Hence it is scientific literacy, such as understanding the development and use of scientific knowledge, which is important to future citizens. They need to be critical consumers of scientific information, to be able to distinguish fact from fiction and to judge the believability of evidence for scientific claims.
The Australian Academy of Science provides independent scientific advice to the community and policy makers. We are committed to promoting a scientific culture and a long-term scientific vision within Australian society. Our reason for involvement in science education is the importance of developing a scientifically literate society. Every student sitting in a class will need an understanding of science to make sense of their world, and make informed decisions. Also, a good quality science education will help ensure we do have the quality scientists we need in the future.
The Australian Academy of Science has had 40 years experience in producing and promoting quality programs for teachers and the public. The Academy’s website, for example, provides information for teachers that they can be sure has been verified by experts in the field.
- Through the Nova: Science in the news website, the Academy provides accurate and up-to-date information on contemporary issues in science, health, the environment, mathematics,and technology.
- A section called Back to Basics is a guide to web pages that explain basic science concepts.
- Through the Interviews with Australian scientists and Historical Records of Australian Science sections, the Academy provides a valuable resource to teachers and others interested in the history of science or in the people who have advanced science and technology in Australia.
Back in 1995, the Academy of Science reacted to a report that science was rarely taught in Australian primary schools. A hands-on approach was promoted through the publication of seven teacher and student resource books, known as Primary Investigations. This program aimed to make science and technology relevant to the students’ lives, and was taken up by about 40 per cent of our nation’s schools.
However in 2001, when the Department of Education, Science and Training undertook a survey to examine teaching in primary schools, it found that on average only half-an-hour per week was spent on science teaching. At least two hours each day were spent on literacy. The allocated budgets to science were also minimal compared to those of literacy education.
By 2004, the Academy made what has since been described as one of the most innovative and influential decisions it has ever made. Following consultation with a reference group comprising of representatives of all sectors and associations involved in primary teaching, the Australian Academy of Science decided to develop a programme which links science with literacy in schools. To emphasise the links that science has within the curriculum and with the students’ lives, the project was named Primary Connections.
Linking science with literacy seems obvious in retrospect. Scientists have always needed to be accountable for what they are doing, and how they achieved it. Representing their ideas in a variety of ways was essential to their thinking and for communicating their ideas. Primary Connections suggests that students keep a science journal, and communicate the results of their investigations to their peers and others such as parents.
Students learn that while learning new things is fascinating, conveying that learning to others is not only enjoyable, it is worthwhile. This takes literacy out of the ephemeral and into the real world, enhancing the learning experience in both science and literacy. By representing and re-representing their conceptual understanding, students engage with science concepts, enhancing learning in science. Students also are given the opportunity to understand the conventions of literacies used in science, such as bar graphs, labelled diagrams, timelines and tables.
The Primary Connections project is not just about linking science with literacy, it aims to change the status and quality of science education in Australian primary schools nationwide. How does it intend to do this? By giving teachers the knowledge of how to effectively bring inquiry-based science into the classroom, and the confidence to believe they can do it. Primary Connections has a professional learning programme for teachers, giving them the tools and resources they need.
As one teacher in Toowoomba remarked:
In most if not all schools I have taught in, there hasn’t been recognition of what science can offer children… I have always dodged teaching science as much as I could, as have many of my colleagues. What a shame that it’s the children who have missed out – if only I’d had the experience of [Primary Connections] early in my career.
The Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training recognised the potential of the project after a scoping phase had been completed by the Academy in 2004. They agreed to fund the development of the programme and have provided in total over $5 million Australian (which is approximately US$4 million) to the end of 2008. This allows the project to create quality training, and resources, while remaining cost-effective for schools across the nation. It also allows the project to have an ongoing research component, evaluating its effectiveness.
Through professional learning workshops, teachers are introduced to the Primary Connections approach to teaching and learning. They discover how to use a 5Es constructivist model of teaching to allow their students the opportunity for conceptual change. The five phases are:
- Engage: where teachers harness the natural curiosity of students and find out what they think they know about the topic.
- Explore: where students engage in hands-on activities of the phenomenon and describe it in their own words.
- Explain: where students make sense of their experiences, and scientific explanations are provided by the teacher.
- Elaborate: where students plan investigations to apply and extend their understanding.
- Evaluate: where students represent their understanding and reflect on their learning journey.
Professional learning helps teachers to understand how the 5Es uses assessment to inform each stage of the learning process.
Teachers learn how to encourage students to plan their own investigations, and lead discussions on issues such as fair testing. Student ownership of the investigations is promoted through using cooperative learning teams, where each member has a leadership role to fulfil. This mirrors what students may experience in the workforce, and the discussions around the investigation enriches their learning experience.
In practical terms the Academy is running workshops for educators so they can conduct professional learning workshops through the country.
We are receiving wonderful feedback such as this statement from Catherine Nikkerud and Chris Witt, both Academy-trained Primary Connections Professional Learning Facilitators:
“We have worked with the full range – beginning teachers, experienced teachers, “stuck in their ways” teachers, metropolitan, rural and remote teachers, highly disadvantaged sites, highly advantaged sites etc. The program works every time: engages staff, enthuses them to have a go, and gives teachers the confidence to believe they can be successful teachers of science.”
Previous initiatives have shown that even after participating in quality workshops, teachers may revert to the status quo in the classroom. Therefore the Academy is developing curriculum units that model the Primary Connections teaching and learning approach.
Teachers can pick up a unit, and run with it. There are step-by-step lesson guides, equipment lists and guides for introducing concepts and questions to guide inquiry. The learning outcomes for both science and literacy are identified for each lesson, enabling teachers and schools to be accountable for student learning. Background information specific to the unit is provided for teachers and is reviewed by a Fellow of the Academy to ensure the science content is accurate. These resources have won the Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing.
The Academy has chosen not to market Primary Connections yet since it is still being developed with only 8 of a projected 19 units being published, but word of mouth has spread like wildfire. In perhaps a fitting testimony to the timeliness of the project in an environment which desires change, almost 60,000 curriculum units have been sold already.
We have good reasons to be hopeful that our project will help change science education in Australian primary schools. In 2005, a study was conducted of our 56 trial schools, involving 106 teachers and over 3,000 students. The schools were from all jurisdictions and sectors, and included schools from metropolitan, regional and rural areas. Schools were asked to nominate both an experienced teacher of science and an inexperienced teacher of science.
Over the first two terms of teaching using the Primary Connections approach, the number of teachers with low belief in their capability of teaching science dropped from 22 to just one. 96 teachers of the 97 respondents indicated that their teaching had improved. They reported an increase in the teaching of the literacies of science and the use of hands-on activities. The amount of science being taught in the classroom also increased, with three quarters of the teachers teaching over an hour of science a week whereas only a third taught more than an hour before the trial.
Almost 90% of teachers indicated that students responded positively or very positively to the learning approach. One NSW year six student remarked:
“It is exciting, challenging and the lesson goes so quickly. It’s different to other classes; there are more hands-on activities and it gives us a chance to use things and see how they work.”
More than three-quarters of the teachers believed that their students had learned more science than previously, and that the quality of science learning was better using Primary Connections.
Work samples from year five students were evaluated against the Australian national scientific literacy progress map. The mean achievement score more than doubled over the course of the Plants in action unit, and at the end of the unit 78% of the year five students were working at or beyond level three, which is the national benchmark for year six students.
But the benefits of Primary Connections will be transient if a similar model for change in secondary schools is not addressed.
Australian Academy of Science developed a business plan for a comprehensive research-based initiative called Science by Doing to address the needs of the lower secondary school sector. The project has received initial funding for a pilot stage from the Australian Government from June 2007 to June 2008. The aim of Science by Doing is to promote a science curriculum relevant to the needs, concerns and personal experiences of students, where teaching and learning of science is centred on inquiry with students investigating, constructing and testing ideas about the world. The benefits will be twofold: improved scientific literacy of junior secondary students and more students continuing their science studies into senior secondary school with an increased potential for choosing science at a tertiary level.
