Pedagogic Doublethink: Scientific Enquiry and the Construction of Personal Knowledge Under the English National Curriculum for Science
One of my publications is:
Taber, K. S. (2018). Pedagogic Doublethink: Scientific Enquiry and the Construction of Personal Knowledge Under the English National Curriculum for Science. In D. W. Kritt (Ed.), Constructivist Education in an Age of Accountability. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
D.O.I.: 10.1007/978-3-319-66050-9_4
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Abstract:
The English National Curriculum (for 5–16 year olds) for the science taught in English schools has had unintended as well as planned effects. There has been extensive government involvement in the professional work of teachers through inspection regimes, offering direction on the nature of formal assessment, and emphasising the outcomes of high status tests as public markers of educational quality. The chapter considers where these efforts have supported teachers in meeting widely accepted aims of science education, and where they have—often inadvertently—restricted good teaching practice and undermined efforts to teach in accordance with the principles of constructivist educational theory,: working against teachers' flexibility to respond to the needs of students, undermining meaningful enquiry teaching, and restricting effective teaching about socio-scientific issues.
"A characteristic of government in the UK in recent decades has been the establishment of quasi-independent agencies or non-ministerial departments to follow through on government policy, and which are from time-to-time rebranded, abolished, merged, and so on. These have included a Teacher Training Agency which became the Training and Development Agency for Schools, and a Qualification and Curriculum Agency, the Office for Standards in Education, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation, and a General Teaching Council for England. The latter was supposed to be a professional body for teachers, but was both established, and then later wound-up, by government decree."
Contents:
- Constructivism and Research in Science Education
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- Influences of Constructivist Research on Science Teaching Practice
- Influences from Science Studies Scholarship
- The Drive for Enquiry-Based Science Teaching
- Objections to Constructivist Science Education
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- The English Context
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- Government Guidance on Effective Science Teaching
- Recommendations for Teaching Informed by Students’ Ideas
- Recommendations to Teach About Scientific Enquiry
- Responses to a Progressive Curriculum
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- Coda
"It was suggested earlier that there is a sense of Orwellian doublethink in operation here. Teachers have to believe in constructivist educational principles, while believing that they can teach effectively in a context which does not support substantive constructivist teaching. Teachers have to believe that enquiry is at the heart of science, while also believing that good science teaching means covering copious content and offering algorithmic practical work that never moves away from what is clearly already known (so that outcomes can be expected and fitted to the appropriate assessment formalism). Many science teachers in England can show considerable ingenuity in producing lessons offering the expected indicators of constructivist pedagogy and enquiry learning while meeting all the myriad other expectations of the content-heavy curriculum, nominal enrichment for diverse groups, recommended pedagogical devices, and, in particular, teaching targeted on what they know is likely to be included in high stakes examinations. Just what these skilful, creative, science teachers could achieve if ever they were allowed to take full professional responsibility by prioritising their own aims for their students’ learning, and then teaching accordingly, is sadly, for the foreseeable future at least, likely to remain a matter for speculation."
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