Teaching secondary science

Introduction

This free course, Teaching secondary science, is aimed at new teachers who are in training or embarking on their teaching career and working in school. It sets out to explore some of the key issues around teaching science in secondary schools. Engaging with these issues and debates will help you to reflect upon and develop your practice as a science teacher. You will also develop a greater awareness of the wider context of science education and how this affects science in the secondary school curriculum.

Section 1 examines how science is portrayed in and out of school before considering how such views impact on the teaching and learning of science. This sets the scene for the following sections. The second considers the purposes of school practical work and how it can be used more effectively to support students’ learning. This is developed in Section 3, which examines how students can be engaged in the nature of science through practical work and other experiences. The final section focuses on why dealing with controversial issues in science education is important and the approaches that teachers can take.

This course examines science education from a learner-centred approach to teaching, which is underpinned by a constructivist view of learning – that learners construct knowledge and understanding for themselves through activities, experiences, thought and discussion.

Now listen to an introduction to this course by its author, Sandra Amos:

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Transcript

Sandra Amos

Hello. I'm Sandra Amos, the author of this course.

I have a wealth of experience in science education both as a teacher in secondary schools and as a teacher educator in university.

Science is considered by many as a core subject in school curriculum, not only because of the need to produce the scientists of the future but also to empower students to make informed choices in their lives and enable them to take part in key debates confronting society today.

If these different goals for science education are to be achieved science teachers need to do more than focus on preparing students for examinations. Doing this alone will not portray science as the fascinating subject that it is.

Science education needs to inspire and motivate students to pursue science beyond what is merely compulsory. If we fall into the trap of focusing on content knowledge alone we do students and science a disservice. Science is so much more than a collection of facts and theories.

Students arrive at the school’s science lab with their own conceptions of science and views about whether science is for them or not. This is gained from their encounters with science outside school. These views and attitudes will also be influenced by the experience students have of science in school. Sadly too many students leave school feeling alienated from science so teachers need to engage their students in science by showing them what being scientific truly means and how science really works in society.

This course is aimed at secondary science teachers starting their careers. It examines how the way science is conceptualised, impacts on the teaching and learning of science in particular through the use of practical work. This key teaching approach is framed in terms of its purpose, and how it can be used more effectively to support students’ learning of and about science.

The final session of the course focuses on why dealing with controversial issues in science education is important and the approaches that teachers can take.

I hope you find it interesting and useful.

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As you work through the activities you will be encouraged to record your thoughts on an idea, an issue or a reading, and how it relates to your practice. Hopefully you will have opportunities to discuss your ideas with colleagues. We therefore suggest that you use a notebook – either physical or electronic – to record your thoughts in a way in which they can easily be retrieved and revisited. If you prefer, however, you can record your ideas in response boxes within the course – in order to do this, and to retrieve your responses, you will need to enrol on the course.

This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student teachers [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .