1.1 Attitudes to science
Attitudes to science and scientific knowledge are not fixed – they change over time and between different groups of people. Here you will consider how and why attitudes vary.
Activity 1 Popular views about science
Consider the following questions, and note down your thoughts. You don’t need to respond to every point, or to comment in great depth.
What is the popular media view about science? Has this changed over the last few decades, or even in recent years? How do you think general attitudes to science might affect science teaching and learning in the primary years? What about the attitudes of educational practitioners and children?
Consider your own position too. What is your attitude to science, and what has influenced this?
Many people view science as ‘difficult’, ‘boring’, ‘irrelevant’ and only for the ‘clever’ students. Why do you think people might feel this way about science?
Comment
Those who influence attitudes towards science and how scientific knowledge develops include researchers, government, industry and religious and lobby groups. Attitudes change – for example, over recent years there has been a growing interest about science related to medicine and the environment. There has also been much cynicism in some quarters about some scientific evidence and theories – for example, in relation to climate change. These attitudes impact on science teaching and learning: the topics that are included in the curriculum, how science is portrayed, children’s engagement and how children ‘do’ science.
Whatever the content and conception of science presented in the science curriculum, the role of adults in mediating the science curriculum and in engaging and enthusing young learners is critical. Your attitude to science will have been influenced by your own experiences including in:
- education (formally at school, and beyond that, informally through actions including visiting museums or sites concerned with environmental education, reading, watching television and using the internet, via finding out about health, diet and environmental issues)
- work (for example, in roles in education, medicine or in industry)
- hobbies (finding out about weather for holiday plans, the soil if you are a keen gardener, habitats and migration if you are a birdwatcher).
Some people associate science with high-level specialists and feel that science does not actively influence their lives (Metcalfe, 2014). Others may have been put off by lacklustre teaching that failed to engage them or help them to see the relevance of science to their lives and interests. When asked to describe ‘a scientist’, some trainee teachers depicted a scientist as a stereotypical ‘boffin’ – a bespectacled man with wild curly hair, dressed in a white coat and exhibiting eccentric behaviour – as shown in Figure 1 below!
A challenge for those working in primary education is to address these stereotypes, and to make science appealing and relevant to children who have different interests and views.