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Georgios
TSAPARLIS
EXCERPTS: Scholarship in science education must be supported with suitable theory or theories, … otherwise it would not be different from journalism. … First, there was behaviourism, (which) however remained external to science teaching and learning. It only provided the means (that is praise or punishment) that facilitated or even enforced the transmission of intact knowledge. … Piagetian cognitive psychology caused a paradigm shift … (and) dominated science education research for about two decades …(It) became internal to science education; thus not only were students categorised as concrete or formal etc., but chemical concepts were also categorised in the same ways. Mention should be made here of some neo-Piagetian theories, such as (that of) 'mental operators' by Pascual-Leone, and the application to science education of this and other information-processing theories, such as the theory of working memory. Piagetian theory met with strong criticism by numerous psychological researchers at least with respect to its developmental-stage component. … (Science education) researchers turned to the systematic study of how students understood scientific concepts, … (which led to) the alternative frameworks or alternative conceptions or students' misconceptions movement…(This) movement … found a suitable and effective (theory) in constructivism. Constructivism (empiricism) is basically a philosophical-epistemological theory, which is in contrast to another theory, that of realism. … Realism and empiricism must be considered as two extremes in a continuum. In its early years, … science was closer to empiricism, but as time went past, it approached more closely the outlook of realism. Educational constructivism extended the realism-empiricism dichotomy into how individuals learn, and assumed two forms: (i) personal constructivism, which is associated with Piaget; and (ii) social-cultural constructivism which is linked to Vygotsky. … A vast literature on students' ideas at all school ages has built up during the eighties and the nineties…. (On the other hand), numerous attempts at correcting students' misconceptions have met with limited or no success… A criticism of contructivism as applied to science education has been initiated during the last few years… A major argument of critics is that constructivists pay attention to how students learn, but not to what knowledge they construct. In the opinion of the writer of this editorial, it may be that students' ideas are a necessary stage through which scientific concepts have to go before stabilising to the accepted scientific views. … Finally, during the last decade, a new movement has been initiated which pays special attention to the role of history and philosophy of science in science teaching. What is the moral of the above state-of-affairs in theories of science education? Certainly most theories are not complete or perfect. They need constant revision and improvement; they may even need replacement…. At any rate, … there is surely benefit to be gained from an exposure to, and a use of the successes of, each one of them. We must stand away from polemics and hostilities, but instead make efforts towards a compromise and even a combination of the theories. Surely, it is the business of science education researchers to move the field into various research directions…. What is more important however is that researchers working on non-trendy fields should not be considered out-of-fashion, or further, be looked down upon. Such an approach makes it imperative that journals in the field should be open to all research traditions and movements. CERAPIE is definitively consistent with such an attitude.
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