Defining an Identity: The Evolution of Science Education as a Field of Research

262 Pages·2004·1.15 MB·English

by  Peter J. Fensham (auth.)

DEFINING AN IDENTITY
Science & Technology Education Library
VOLUME 20
SERIES EDITOR
William W. Cobern, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA
FOUNDING EDITOR
Ken Tobin, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
EDITORIAL BOARD
Henry Brown-Acquay, University College of Education of Winneba, Ghana
Mariona Espinet, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
Gurol Irzik, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
Olugbemiro Jegede, The Open University, Hong Kong
Reuven Lazarowitz, Technion, Haifa, Israel
Lilia Reyes Herrera, Universidad Autönoma de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia
Marrisa Rollnick, College of Science, Johannesburg, South Africa
Svein Sj0berg, University of Oslo, Norway
Hsiao-lin Tuan, National Chanhua University of Education, Taiwan
SCOPE
The book series Science & Technology Education Library provides a publication forum
for scholarship in science and technology education. It aims to publish innovative books
which are at the forefront of the field. Monographs as well as collections of papers will
be published.
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Defining an
Identity
The Evolution of Science Education as a Field of Research
by
PETER J. FENSHAM
Emeritus Professor of Science Education,
Monash University, Australia
SPRINGER - SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A c.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-1-4020-1468-0 ISBN 978-94-010-0175-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0175-5
Printed an acid-free paper
AlI Rights Reserved
© 2004 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2004
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microf:tlming, recording
or otherwise, without written permis sion from the Publisher, with the exception of
any material supplied specificalIy for the purpose of being entered and executed on a
computer system, for exclusive use by the purchase of the work.
To Christine
With much gratitude for both the positive and the
critical ways you have responded over so many years
to my adventures in science education.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction xi
CHAPTER 1 Science Education: What Defines a Field of
Research? 1
CHAPTER 2 Origins 11
CHAPTER 3 The Researcher as Person 37
CHAPTER 4 The Significance of Research 61
CHAPTER 5 Major Influence on Research 76
CHAPTER 6 Asking Questions 93
CHAPTER 7 The Role of Theory 101
CHAPTER 8 Methodology 114
CHAPTER 9 Evidence of Progression 132
CHAPTER 10 Focus on Content 145
CHAPTER 11 Research to Practice 162
CHAPTER 12 Gender and Science Education 176
CHAPTER 13 Politics and Science Education 183
CHAPTER 14 Science Education, Technology and IT 191
CHAPTER 15 Conclusion: Language and Science Education 200
APPENDIX A Respondents’ Own Significant Publications 211
APPENDIX B Publications of Major Influence by Other
Authors 224
Name Index 238
Subject Index 243
vii
PREFACE
Peter Fensham has given the science education community a wonderfully
different book that I believe will attract many readers. This book about the
identity of science education research is a book for both new and veteran
science education researchers. Veterans reading the book will “identity” with
many of the experiences shared by other researchers. New researchers reading
the book will find help establishing their own personal identity as science
education researchers.
The book traces the evolution of science education as a field of research
hence the title but does so in no ordinary manner. By making use of exten-
sive conversations with established science education researchers in many
countries Fensham weaves a very personal narrative about both the growth
of the field and about the personal, professional growth of researchers. It is
a personal narrative in the sense that the reader hears from dozens of
researchers in their own words. The field of science education research
becomes the personal stories of the field’s many researchers, and the reader
feels invited to ask: Where do I fit in this field? What is lineage for my
research? Who are my research ancestors?
Peter Fensham’s book goes a long way toward helping researchers see
that they are part of a much larger and very worthy enterprise.
William W. Cobern
Series Editor
ix
INTRODUCTION
So it’s really in retrospect that you see these things. You
don’t always see them at the time.
Rosalind Driver, England
This book is about the emergence of science education as an international field
of research. from three perspectives: its identity as a research field, the
researcher as person, and trends in the research. The data on which it is
based are particularly suitable to address the phenomenon from these three per-
spectives.
The first two of these perspectives have not been discussed previously in
any detail, but the third one, trends in science education research, has been
approached in a number of ways, and I begin by referring briefly to some of
them. My friend and long term colleague at Monash University, Richard White
(2001), has addressed the phenomenon in terms of the trends in the research
over time in his chapter, Science Education, in the AERA’s Fourth Handbook
of Research on Teaching. He draws on two sources of data, research studies
listed in ERIC and the papers that have been published in several leading inter-
national journals for research in science education. In his analysis he compares
these studies by topic and type of study across three decennial reference points
– 1975, 1985, and 1995. The trends he reports are evidence that there have
been several shifts in the foci to which researchers have addressed their ques-
tions about science education, and in the methods they have used to attempt
answers.
Another approach to a study of trends in the research is to undertake some
form of citation analysis over an extended time period. Citations are a measure
of when and how relevant a published study has been to other researchers,
but they are not necessarily an indication of its relative influence on the
development of the research as a whole. In my own approach to these trends,
I endeavour to uncover both the relative importance of sources that have
influenced researchers in the field and which of their own publications they
see as contributing significantly to a trend in the research. Longitudinal
reviews, such as those in the decennial Handbooks of the American Education
Research Association also address the trends over time.
Eybe and Schmidt (2001) in Germany addressed a trend in the phenom-
enon in an interestingly different way. They focussed on how quality has been,
and is recognised in research in science education, and reviewed 81 research
publications in chemical education that were published over a period of years.
xi
xii INTRODUCTION
These were checked against the quality indicators the editors of these research
journals set out in their guidance to authors, and also against any such indi-
cators the authors themselves may have explicitly built into their research
designs at various points. Six categories for quality were established: theory
relatedness, the research question, the methods employed (in quantitative
and qualitative studies), presentation and interpretation of results, implica-
tions for practice and competence in chemistry. This study, although set in a
trend perspective, has as its focus an internal feature of the research, that relates
it more to my first perspective – the identity of science education as a field
of research.
To address the fascinating issue of the identity of science education as a
research field, I begin in Chapter 1 by identifying a number of criteria that
become my means of addressing this issue of identity. Each of Eybe and
Schmidt’s categories of quality is explicitly or implicitly involved in these
criteria.
The second of my perspectives, the science education researcher as person,
became possible through the approach I chose to gather the data to explore
the phenomenon. I set out to let the voices of persons, who have helped to
make the research in science education, tell its story. During my more than
thirty five years in this research area, I have had the opportunity to meet a very
large number of them, and I know that whatever this area now is, it is the
product of their efforts and of others like them. In talking with them in the
formal interviews, and from repeated contacts with many of them, I was aware,
as I was for myself, that research in science education is a reciprocal process.
As it evolves, so can its researchers evolve as persons.
This second perspective has, hitherto, not had much discussion in science
education, but Mason (1998) clearly identified it for the case of research in
mathematics education, when he answered the question, What are the most
significant products of research in mathematics? with ‘The transformations
in the being of the researchers themselves.’ ( p. 357, Sierpinska and Kilpatrick,
1998).
For myself, science education has been the most continuous of my career
research interests since I was invited by the newly established Monash
University to take up a post in 1967 as Professor of Science Education – the
first such professorial appointment in Australia. The intent was quite clear. The
Vice Chancellor and the Dean of Education wanted the university to estab-
lish itself quickly as a leading research university in a number of fields, and
they wanted science education – a hitherto unrecognised field in Australia –
to be one of these.
Why was I invited? By several odd quirks of the academic world, my dual
backgrounds in the physical and social sciences, and my interest in teaching
had become known to the Vice Chancellor of Monash. At that point of my
career I had been a staff member of the Chemistry Department of the University
INTRODUCTION xiii
of Melbourne for just over a decade. I had published a reasonable number
of papers in solid state and catalytic chemistry, one paper on assessment of
chemistry at the university level that could be described as science educa-
tion, and a sociological paper in which I had shown that the net effect of a
national scholarship scheme for senior secondary students was compounding,
rather than alleviating the disadvantages that existed in Australia’s school
systems. My other substantial academic publication was a book derived from
a three year, anthropological study of a textile company in a small town in
Britain that was undergoing very rapid technological change. This last pub-
lication was the outcome of my participation in the 1950s in an experiment
of the Nuffield Foundation in Britain to encourage physical scientists with a
doctoral degree to undertake a second education in one of the social sciences
and to carry out a research study in it.
As the anthropological study was drawing to a close, I applied for lec-
turing positions in both chemistry and social psychology. The offer that came
from the Chemistry Department at the University of Melbourne determined
that I would return to chemistry teaching and research at least for some time.
Ten years later, the quite unexpected offer from Monash University meant
that I could be in a position that combined both the disciplinary backgrounds
of my somewhat unusual undergraduate and post-graduate education.
In 1992 a young primary teacher who had just joined another university
in Victoria to teach in its Primary Science Methods course approached me
for help. As one member of the development team for a new distance edu-
cation course in science education, she had been allocated the job of putting
together the associated book of literature readings. She wondered how she
might do this, so I gave her an international list of a dozen or so names of
leading researchers, and suggested she ask these persons to choose one of their
papers to go in this volume. In due course, the book of readings appeared,
and I remember it attracted quite some interest, as a very interesting collec-
tion from various local and overseas visitors to my room at Monash. Months
later I met the young woman again, and told her how interesting her volume
had turned out to be. Off-handedly, I said what we need to know now is why
they chose the paper they did. This remark kept coming back to me as an
interesting question to pursue, if I ever had the chance.
In late 1994 I was in Chile with Reinders Duit and David Treagust as part
of a team to conduct workshops in science education and to participate in a
South American conference. On one free afternoon I was navigating for
Reinders as he drove along a road towards the Andes. I asked him to tell
me about two of his research papers that he regarded as significant. He was
silent for a minute or so and then, much to my surprise, proceeded to identify
and describe two papers by other researchers that had had an important influ-
ence on him. When he had finished I told him that what he said was very
interesting, but it was not what my question had been. When I repeated it,