Assessing The Impact Of Social Constructivism On The Idea About Science Education

Social constructivism is a member of constructivism, Sociology of Scientific knowledge advocated by British Edinburgh School 70s in the last century is a typical representative, who borrowed Social constructivism to explore science knowledge. The essential of Social constructivism is to emphasize the social factors in the generation of scientific knowledge, and avers sociality of knowledge construction and dialectic of social construction's knowledge. The theory that is in the course of search about science knowledge emphasizes social factors' decisive effect in the sociology. Based on the creed of "knowledge's social construction", it deconstructs traditional Objectivism's knowledge view and denies the objectivity of science knowledge. It advocates science knowledge's sociality which is searched with belief and reveals condition of science knowledge by research in laboratory.Social Constructivism has caused obvious influence to our Country's basic Education and Science education especially. Social Constructivism puts much emphasis on knowledge actively building, and this building happens in a certain group and is finished through dialectical interaction between individual and group. That has active enlighten meaning for solving nowadays' science education problems , such as there is too antagonistic between subject and object, science rationality becomes rationalism to obstruct the development of students, students have little originality, believing text books and teachers , teachers use single teaching method and pay little attention to students' psychology, teacher-student relationship lacks of democracy, ignoring "dialogue" and "cooperation" and so on.Social Constructivism meets the needs of our science education reform, but because the theory exaggerates the scope of application on educational theory, it inevitably has brought many negative effects, such as because of excessive emphasis on subjectivity of knowledge, it results in the science education in the rejection of objective knowledge existence; because of too much attention on "Learning Community" in the generation of science knowledge and at the same time actively responding function of individual in the course of understanding is weakened; Relativism appears during the understanding of science knowledge because of too much adoration to belief, understanding and knowledge's condition; knowledge's sociality is make public but teachers' predominant function during the teaching is disregarded; and cherish the uniqueness of that experiencing knowledge while neglecting abstraction and system of science knowledge.Social Constructivism, imported from the West, emphasizes social construction of knowledge, so it emanates dense human flavor. But it denies objection and certain of knowledge. It come to extreme's Relativism and has tendency of anti-science, so we should have right attitude about it during the reform of science education, which should be based on the state of the nation and the fact of our country's development of science and science education's development. We must learn to carry on critique absorption about its theory, make it provide theoretical support for our country's reform of science education, and not copy it directly. Even it causes our country science education can't been developed normally because this theory is understood and used by mistake. We need to wisely reconstruct the idea about science education, based on Social Constructivism which is developed the useful and discard the useless reasonably, make our country's science education on knowledge view, based on moving reflection theory, achieve an uncertainty and certainty unity; on curriculum view, based on our country's practical situation, achieve the unity of inheritance and innovation; on teaching view, striving to cultivate the spirit of science, realize the unity of scientism and the humanism; on teacher and student view, based on "the teacher's predominance and the student's subjectivity", develop harmoniously and make benefit of both teachers and students.