For conference in science education - Research Paper Example

Scientific education is viewed by many experts and scholars to involve social interactions among teachers of science and students. The scope of the cultural perspective of this social interaction involves giving substantial theoretical weight to its role: seeing it, as in the Vygotskyan tradition (Vygotsky, 1963; Leontiev, 1978; Cole, 1996), to be the most important necessity to learning. This implies that when we explore such cultural perspectives, we must try as much as possible to be skeptical and critical. The most basic belief here is that we do not know why we act as we do; we only know a few reasons on a certain time scale and within a limited range of contexts. Different communities have different cultural attributes and therefore we do not know all the other reasons that arise from the functioning of our actions in far larger and more distant contexts and on longer time scales. Our individual ways of living and making a meaning are different according not only to which communities we have lived in, but also to which roles we chose or we were assigned to us by others- how we presented ourselves and how we were seen and treated by others. That got me wondering what is happening to the new generation. Is it the mode of delivery of the science subject? Or the teachers of science have not discovered what works best of the new generation so that they can be able to internalize concepts in science that can be able to use to venture into the field of science and make contributions to the world. This is because science is the driving force to modernization. In my paper, I hope to point out and explore the cultural ways that the teachers of science and their students are used to in the transmission of knowledge. That is , am going to discuss the known methods of learning science , The gaps that have not been filled to equip students in the field of science to become competent professional and what needs to be done to fill the gap. The first portion of this paper will provide an overview of the study of science as well as the contributions and importance of studying science in the society. The second portion of the paper will detail how the study and learning of science has been done over the years. The third portion of the paper will discuss the gaps that have not been filled in the study of science and finally, on how to implement the identified gaps in the study of science The origin of the cultural perspective to Science Education The cultural perspective of science education in its contemporary form derived mainly from the developments in social and human sciences since the 1960s. The view that science represents a unique valid approach of knowledge, disconnected from social institutions, their politics, cultural beliefs and values was strongly challenged by research in the history of science (e.g. Shapin and Schaffer, 1985). However, eventually both science education and the new scientific studies more specifically in history and sociology took a linguistic turn and began to examine how people learned to talk and write the scientific language meaningfully and cooperatively engage in its wide range of culturally specific activities Scientific Education Every ...Show more