Science is suffering as the literacy and numeracy push skews the primary curriculum, report David Bolden, Peter Tymms & Christine Merrell Durham.
This article outlines some findings from a Wellcome Trust-commissioned review of evidence from the past fifty years of science education in English primary schools (Tymms, Bolden & Merrell, 2008). We argue that the current approach to primary science and the drive to raise standards in literacy and numeracy could and should be improved through radical new approaches.
The teaching and learning of science in English primary schools has undergone many changes in the last sixty years. Immediately after World War II there was very little science taught in primary schools. Since then, teachers and pupils in English primary schools have been subjected to major changes in curriculum and assessment with respect to science.
Following concerns expressed in the 1950s about a shortage of scientists and the potential impact this was likely to have on the country’s economic prosperity, science in the primary curriculum became more prominent. In the 1960s and 1970s the work of Piaget had a considerable influence in primary education; this was encouraged by the wide spread involvement of psychologists in the education of teachers.
During the 1980s there was a general decline in the belief in fixed stages of development but the idea that children develop their own ideas was preserved in the notion of constructivism. At about the same time there was a shift in the focus of teacher education from a theoretical understanding of teaching to competence in practical skills. Psychologists became less involved in teacher education and there was a shift towards the more practical aspects of training teachers. The introduction of the National Curriculum in September 1989 heralded science as a ‘core’ subject but it brought with it statutory assessments and a rigid inspection system. Research across a number of indicators relevant to science education in English primary schools suggests that the current approach and the recent drive to raise standards in literacy and numeracy could be improved.