Authentic science and school science*

Abstract

Current concerns about inappropriate views that students have about science and suggested remedies such as more philosophy of science courses for science teachers are similar to those advanced during the 1960s curriculum reform movement. However, evidence from the ‘60s and the ‘80s is that additional courses in the philosophy of science have little effect on science teachers’ classroom behaviour or on their students’ views of science. This is understandable if school science is seen as a social construction. Suggestions for a more philosophically valid school science compete with suggestions to encourage students to see the utility and benefits of science and technology and their importance in increasing economic productivity in an internationally competitive marketplace. Science teachers as a profession have interests in maintaining the status, resources and territory of school science. An understanding of these interests helps to explain the reaction of physics teachers in British Columbia to an attempt to incorporate the social context of physics into the curriculum. Attempts to change school science, to make it more ‘authentic’, must take into account the social and political construction of school science and its need to satisfy a variety of stakeholders.