The changes in the statutory science curriculum specification for all students aged 14–15 in England and Wales in 2006 herald a shift in how curriculum content is organized, and the purposes for science learning. In a curriculum for scientific literacy the selection of social situations and scientific controversies determines the knowledge that is required. The goal for students' learning is to enable them to participate competently in a world permeated by science and technology. Such changes involve recognition of the situated nature of science and the situated nature of learning; hence authenticity is at the core of students' curriculum experiences. To support students as they learn about the nature of science and the communities and situations where science is created and used requires a wide range of primary and secondary sources. Energy Foresight1 is a set of multimedia resources to support the teaching and learning of ‘Radioactive materials’ in the new curriculum. The article describes and discusses the main evaluation findings of the impact of the Energy Foresight resources on students' engagement and learning, noting in particular the impact of the approach to authenticity in the resources. 279 students were involved in various aspects of the national implementation of the resources. The findings showed that students enjoyed the opportunities to engage with physics in the context of relevant social and personal issues and professional practices. The impact on girls' views of the relevance and interest of physics was dramatic, as was the increase in their learning. The impact on boys, though positive, was much smaller in effect. The findings also revealed some unintended effects, particularly for some boys and for students new to the approach, as they moved from certainty about what they believed they understood about science, to more reflective awareness of the complexity of using scientific evidence to make judgements about risks and benefits.
Since science became part of the core curriculum in England and Wales for children aged ve upwards, primary school teachers have moved from widespread dif dence to positions of some con dence and success in teaching it. In the process, their views of the nature of science and the purposes of teaching it can be expected to have developed. The importance of the teacher in relation to the quality of students' learning, and to the ideas about and orientations towards a subject that students develop, is well documented. There are good reasons to believe that teachers' views of the nature of science form part of a 'hidden curriculum' in their science teaching: thus, an understanding of them is necessary to an understanding of learners' experiences of science teaching. The research reported explored such views through both case study and survey methodologies. The case studies showed the depth and subtlety of some teachers' views of science. The survey data yielded six factors, explaining 82% of the variance in respondents' views of science, provisionally named scientism, naive empiricism, 'newage-ism', constructivism, pragmatism and scepticism. The views of science expressed by teachers in interview, and those inferred from and made explicit in their practice, were in most cases consistent with their positions on these factors. These enable interesting insights into the representations of science communicated by primary teachers in their science teaching, which could inform curriculum development in relation to the nature of science, at both primary and secondary levels.
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