Research On The Relevance Of Science Curriculum

Science education plays an important role in the development process of social enlightenment and civilization. At the same time, science curriculums are of great value to improve students’ scientific literacy, and to cultivate students’ innovative spirit and practical ability. However, a key claim is that science education——particularly physics and chemistry, remains unpopular among students. Science education researches showed that one very important reason why students are insufficiently in science learning is that they perceive science education as“irrelevant” both for themselves and for the society where they live and operate. With the rapid development of global society, our society is facing with a series of negative consequences caused by population pressure, shortage of natural resources and environmental degradation. The challenge of social development and the frustrating situation in school education prompt us to re-examine science education. science curriculums shoulder the important mission in the process of globalization, thus cultivating students to become citizens who are responsible and have the ability to solve social crisis in the future is a major challenge to science education and science curriculums. Therefore, it is of very important significance to review and analysis the relevance of school science curriculum comprehensively and objectively from the vision of social development.Firstly, in the second chapter, the thesis summarized the development trend of the relevance of current international science curriculum, which made an in-depth exploration of the connotation, the relevant objects, the content dimensions, the basic characteristics, and the value orientation of the relevance. Then, in the third chapter, we reviewed the three wave of international science curriculum reform over the past half-century——in the late 50 s and 60 s,in the 70 s and the early 80 s, and in the 80 s to the present. In the concluding section, we summarized the general process that relevant curriculums established, the interaction between science curriculums and social development, and the development trend of the relevance of curriculum in the international science curriculum reform. It is suggested that science curriculum in the future must relevant to the student’s career planning and self-development in the background of social development, and students who grow up within this concept of talent cultivation will in turn be the future citizens that conform to the society’s expectations and requirements.In the fourth chapter, the thesis determined to explore the relevance of science curriculumfrom the perspective of social development. We expounded Marx’s philosophy criterion about the consistency of the “human development and social development” to demonstrated its rationality and necessity. we defined the term “the vision social development” and explained three perspectives — — socio-scientific, socio-cultural, and socio-political to analyze the relevance of science curriculum from the perspective of social development. After that, we examined the major issues of social development, as well as the citizens’ development requirements proposed by social development. Based on the above elaboration, we concluded that the relevant curriculums should mainly include three dimensions in theory of science curriculum from the vision of social development, which is socio-scientific topics, scientific abilities and values.On results of the above literature analysis and theoretical analysis, in chapter five, the famous future forecasting method — — delphi method are used to explore what contents should be included in the curriculums from the vision of social development. 33 experts who came from national institutions of higher education and scientific research institutes were invited to make effective decisions on the above topic through three iterated rounds based on the background of social development and students’ all-round development demand. In the end, we constructed a content model of the relevance of science curriculum from the perspective of social development, which mainly included seven level-one socio-scientific topics(environmental issues; health and safety; energy resources; eco-systems;bio-technology; new materials; the nature of science), seven scientific abilities(ability to find and ask questions; ability to search for, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and communicate information; innovation ability/thinking; ability to experimental inquiry; ability to scientific argumentation; ability to use scientific terminology; social participation and practice), and six values(scientific attitude of seeking truth from facts; critical attitude/thinking; social responsibility; moral and ethical consciousness; team participation, communication and cooperation; rule consciousness). These contents should be emphasized in science curriculum.Under the guidance of content model of the relevance of science curriculum, we conducted two empirical research. In the chapter six, a detailed analysis of high school physics,chemistry and biology curriculum standards was conducted based on the content model. The results provided the following advice and inspiration for the science curriculum reform and science teaching practice:(1) Science curriculum standards should focus on the social development and represent the overall awareness and global perspective.(2) The nature of science should be represented explicitly in science curriculum standards.(3) Innovation should not only be a kind of consciousness or spirit. It should be developed as an ability.(4)Science curriculum standards should enhance students’ moral and ethical consciousness and rule consciousness.(5) The representation of abilities and values should be strengthened and elaborated in science curriculum standards, striving hard to more in-depth, concrete and comprehensive.(6) Science curriculum standards should strengthen the horizontal linkages between disciplines, and give an overall consideration to the arrangements of science curriculum.The seventh chapter carried out a survey “the Learning Questionnaire about Secondary Science Curriculum”(A and B) with high school graduates in order to understand the relevance of current science curriculum on the whole. The results showed that:(1) Students’ understandings of new materials, the nature of science and some other important socio-scientific topics are relatively weak.(2) From the view of students, their scientific abilities and values are at good levels.(3) Science textbooks and science classroom teaching are the main way to high school students to understand the socio-scientific topics.The innovation of this study is:(1) The thesis explored the relevance of science curriculum from the vision of social development. It not only broke the existing perspectives which are more concerned about the students and the disciplinary, but also closely linked with the current requirements of social development and the international trends in science education reform.(2) The thesis employed a combination research method of quantitative and qualitative.Especially, the famous future forecasting method——delphi method is used to construct the content model, which achieved a breakthrough in research methods.(3) The thesis constructed a content model of the relevance of science curriculum from the perspective of social development. And based on this model, we conducted a detailed analysis of high school physics, chemistry and biology curriculum standards and carried out a survey on the students’ learning status about secondary science curriculum. The results with great value provided advice and enlightenment for the reform of science curriculum.