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New trends in science educationDaniel Gil-Pérez aa Department de Didàctica de les Ciències Universitat de València, Spain

Online Publication Date: 01 December 1996To cite this Article: Gil-Pérez, Daniel (1996) 'New trends in science education',International Journal of Science Education, 18:8, 889 - 901To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/0950069960180802URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950069960180802

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INT. J. sci. EDUC., 1996, VOL. 18, NO. 8, 889-901

GENERAL ARTICLES

New trends in science education

Daniel Gil-Perez, Department de Didàctica de les CiènciesUniversitat de València, Spain

I intend to review the main contributions from the impressive developments made in science educationresearch during the last decade. These developments have made the construction of a coherent body ofknowledge possible allowing us to expect a significant improvement in the science teaching/learningprocess. I shall refer, in particular, to the new trends in science education research, both in the domainof science learning and science teacher-training.

A new scientific domainAt the beginning of the 1980s, science education was still considered a preparadig-matic domain (Berger 1979, Klopfer 1983). Moreover, in many countries (France,Italy, Spain), science education practically did not exist: there were no specificjournals, the number of PhD theses was small and the syllabus for science teacher-training did not include any reference to science education research.

Since then, science education has experienced, in my opinion, an impressivedevelopment, becoming a specific domain of research. An indication of that devel-opment is, for instance, the evolution of the number of papers published. Duit(1993) has shown that the number of studies on preconceptions follows an expo-nential pattern and I have found the same evolution for studies on science educa-tion in general (Carrascosa et al. 1993).

In the same way, if we analyse the evolution of research journals in scienceeducation, we can see that almost 50 years pass from the appearance of ScienceEducation (USA, 1916) to that of Journal of Research in Science Teaching (USA, 1963),and another nine years until the publication of Studies in Science Education (UK,1972). From the beginning of the 1980s numerous journals have appeared andcontinue to appear. Some titles are: European Journal of Science Education (UK,1979), Ensenanza de las Ciencias (Spain, 1983), Australian Journal of ScienceEducation (1985), ASTER (France, 1985), Science and Technological Education(UK, 1985), Revista de Ensenanza de la Fisica (Argentina, 1985), Revista deEnsino de Fisica (Brazil, 1988), Didaskalia (France, 1993), Alambique: Didacticade las Ciencias Experimentales (Spain, 1994).

We even begin to find journals focusing on specific aspects, for example,Science and Education (1992), which studies the role of the history and philosophyof science education. Additionally, journals focusing on scientific content (such asAmerican Journal of Physics, Journal of Chemical Education, Bulletin de I'Union desPhysiciens, La Fisica nella Scuola) are publishing, with increasing frequency,

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research papers in science education. A similar trend is evident in journals ofgeneral education.

We can obtain the same dynamic view of the development in science educationwhen we analyse those authors who are most often quoted: today's referencescorrespond, in general, to science education researchers who are our contempor-aries, while 15 years ago the most often quoted writers were educational psychol-ogists (Carrascosa et al. 1993).

Researchers themselves are aware of this development: if at the beginning ofthe 1980s they qualified science education as a preparadigmatic domain (Klopfer1983), today they conceive the possibility of constructing a coherent body ofknowledge on science education (Furio and Gil-Perez 1989, Hodson 1992, Gil-Perez 1994).

We can conclude that science education has effectively become a new field ofscience, with a specific research community and a specific corpus of knowledge. Ido not intend to ignore, of course, the contributions of other scientific fields suchas educational psychology or the history of science. On the contrary, the veryexistence of a specific corpus of knowledge makes the integration of those con-tributions possible (Linn 1987).

A review of the impressive developments of the last few years is essential inorder to get a complete picture of the whole field and profit from the advancesmade during this period.

The origins

Emphasizing the qualitative leap experienced by science education during the1980s, as I have done, I do not intend to minimize the work carried out duringthe preceding period of much slower development. On the contrary, if we reallyintend to show the emergence of a coherent body of knowledge, we need to showthe thread of its evolution. There is a real danger in viewing science education as asimple question of finding 'the correct recipe'. As Linn (1987) has pointed out, 'Todevelop and sustain the new thrust in science education research, we must avoidthe chronic amnesia that often characterizes research in education'.

We have to recognize the contribution of first attempts. We cannot completelyreject, for example, the learning by discovery movement as we have frequently done(Gil 1983, Hodson 1985, Millar and Driver 1987) with an exclusive reference to itsfailure, both in the field of conceptual learning and in the understanding of thenature of science. The fact that a systematic process of research and curricularreform has been initiated bears much more significance than any of the errorsmade.

It is true that, when science teachers try to renew their teaching, they usuallyfall into the same trap of the learning by the discovery paradigm: extreme indue-tivism, lack of attention to content, insistence on a completely autonomous activityof pupils. The scientific treatment of problems is reduced to a linear sequence offixed stages, disregarding the most creative aspects. It is necessary, therefore, toshow clearly—as science education research has done—the limitations of thisorientation. It is, however, also necessary to recognize the significance of thatinnovative intent, because, in spite of its flaws, it stimulates a process of question-ing which will be the source of subsequent restructuring.

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The limitations of the learning by discovery model brought about a reappraisalof learning by reception. Nevertheless, the reception learning paradigm (Ausubel1968, Ausubel et al. 1978, Novak 1979) cannot be interpreted as just a return to avalueless 'traditional teaching'. We must recognize some essential contributions as,for instance, the idea of meaningful learning, instruments such as conceptual mapsand Gowin's epistemological Ve (Novak and Gowin 1989) and, particularly, theattention given to pupils' previous knowledge. This attention is associated with theimportance acquired by the research on preconceptions, which rapidly became themost widespread line of research during the 1980s.

Alternative conceptions

Research in science education during the 1980s has prioritised the study of what isknown by the terms such as preconceptions, alternative frameworks and pupils'representations (Abimbola 1988). I have already mentioned the analysis by Duit(1993) of the increasing importance of this research. Viennot (1989) has tried toexplain the reasons for this prioritisation. She refers to the importance given topupils' 'initial state' and to another and more pragmatic reason: research on mis-conceptions and preconceptions produces clearer and more convincing results thanother studies. So, given the need to show, in a reasonable period of time, therelevance and interest of science education research, many researchers havedevoted themselves to this field.

Nevertheless, the most important questions are: What has brought about thisresearch on alternative conceptions? Which perspective has been opened? I shallbriefly summarize what I believe to be the main contributions that this researchhas given.

In the first place, research on alternative conceptions has seriously questionedthe effectiveness of teaching by transmission of knowledge. In fact, this researchhas contributed more to questioning the spontaneous teachers' conception ofteaching as 'something easy which demands only a certain knowledge of the sub-ject and some experience' than any other study (Gil 1991).

This research has shown a high capacity for integrating studies on differentsubjects, such as language (Ross and Sutton 1982, Solomon 1987), genetic episte-mology (Driver 1981, Linn 1987) and, particularly, the history and philosophy ofscience (Posner et al. 1982, Gilbert and Swift 1985, Matthews 1990).

It has facilitated the emergence of the constructivist approach, which is con-sidered today as the most outstanding contribution to science education over thelast few decades (Gruender and Tobin 1991). Resnick (1993) has summarized thecharacteristics of this new approach in three statements:

• Learners construct understanding. They do not simply mirror what they aretold or what they read. To understand something is to know relationships.

• Bits of isolated information are forgotten or become inaccessible to memory.• All learning depends on prior knowledge.

This summary is, as Resnick recognizes, a simplification but it allows us tonotice the importance given to preconceptions and, what is more important, theundeniable similarity with the contemporary view of the construction of scientificknowledge. This resemblance has been pointed out by many science educationresearchers (Posner et al. 1982, Gil 1983, Gil and Carrascosa 1985, 1990,

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Hashweh 1986, Matthews 1990, Burbules and Linn 1991, Cobb, Wood and Yackel1991, Duschl and Gitomer 1991, Gruender and Tobin, 1991) and appears as one ofthe fundamental reasons to support the new trend.

This converging of research on alternative conceptions with the constructivistapproach has led to a growing consensus about how to orientate the teaching/learning process. We can recognize a basic coincidence — in spite, of course, ofsome nuances — in many teaching proposals presented as different models(Nussbaum and Novick 1982, Posner et al. 1982, Osborne and Wittrock 1983,1985, Driver and Oldham 1986, Hodson 1988, Giordan 1989, Pozo 1989). In allof them we can find the view of science learning as a conceptual change in threebasic steps:

• An elicitation phase of pupils' ideas, making them conscious of the plausi-bility and productivity of those ideas.

• A restructuring phase, creating cognitive conflict, generating pupils' dis-satisfaction with their current ideas and preparing them for the introductionof scientific conceptions.

• An application phase which gives opportunities for using the new concep-tions in different contexts and consolidating them.

The effectiveness of those conceptual change strategies has been supported bymuch research undertaken in different fields of science education (Nussbaumand Novick 1982, Anderson and Smith 1983, Hewson and Hewson 1984,Minstrell 1984, Roth 1984, Osborne and Freyberg 1985, Zietsman and Hewson1986, Viennot and Kamisnky 1991).

Towards the end of the 1980s, research on preconceptions has begun to payattention to teachers own conceptions about the nature of science and aboutscience teaching and learning, and their influences on the teaching/learning pro-cess (Gene and Gil-Perez 1987, Hewson and Hewson 1987).

We can conclude that research on preconceptions has been very fruitful. Butwe should also consider the possible disadvantages of this almost exclusive atten-tion to alternative conceptions.

Against conceptual reductionism

Although some isolated ideas had previously been voiced (Gil-Perez andCarrascosa 1985, Hashweh 1986), in the 1980s researchers on science educationbegan to reject the serious reductionism of the conceptual change proposals (Duschland Gitomer 1991) which could explain the limitations of the conceptual changestrategies (Shuell 1987, White and Gunstone 1989). Duschl and Gitomer criticizethe hierarchical view of conceptual change that 'assumes that changes in centralcommitments to a theory of science bring simultaneous changes to other ontolo-gical, methodological and axiological commitments within the conceptual frame-work'. This flawed version of how conceptual changes take place is given as thecause for the insufficient study of the nature of procedural knowledge (Duschl etal. 1990) and the partial inefficiency of conceptual change teaching strategies; 'ifwe are to produce radical restructuring of concepts, the personal correlate ofKuhn's revolutionary science, then it seems that we must also teach the proceduralknowledge involved'.

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This has given a new sense and purpose to research on practical work (Gil-Perez et al. 1991, Hodson 1993b) and pencil and paper problem-solving (Gil-Perezet al. 1990). These activities are now seen as instruments of the methodological andepistemological change which has to accompany the conceptual change. Thisrequires a profound change in those activities, from simple recipe and applicationexercises into open problematic situations, capable of favouring pupils' research(Gil-Perez et al. 1991, Wheatley 1991) and a similar transformation of evaluation(Gil-Perez et al. 1991, Hodson 1992b): 'Innovations in the curriculum fail topersist unless they are reflected in similar innovations in testing' (Linn 1987).

We have also begun to understand that the construction of knowledge hasaxiological commitments: we cannot expect, for instance, that pupils will becomeinvolved in a research activity in an atmosphere of 'police control' (Briscoe 1991).This has stimulated research on classroom and school atmosphere (Welch 1985),pupils' (and teachers') attitudes towards science (Schibeci 1984, Yager and Penick1986) and STS relationships (Solomon 1990). The construction of knowledge has tobe associated with the treatment of problematic situations which are relevant andinteresting to pupils (Gil-Perez et al. 1991), enabling them 'to assume the socialresponsibilities of attentive citizens or key decision makers' (Aikenhead 1985).

These different contributions are beginning to appear to be related compo-nents of an integrated body of knowledge (Linn 1987, Gil-Perez 1991, 1994,Hodson 1992). I shall refer to this integration in the next paragraph.

Three propositions to summarize recent advances in scienceeducation

If each one of us asks what the main contributions of science education research tothe science teaching/learning process have been, the answers will probably vary inmany ways, but they will also have certain points in common. In any case, adiscussion is provoked that can surely help us to get a more integrated vision ofrecent advances in science education. To contribute to this debate, I shall statethree propositions which, in my opinion, are generating a growing consensus. Thefirst proposition affirms that:

It is not possible to separate these three elements: learning science (acquiring con-ceptual and theoretical knowledge), learning about science (developing an under-standing of the nature and methods of science and awareness of the complexinteractions between science and society) and doing science (engaging in and devel-oping expertise in scientific inquiry and problem solving (Hodson 1992).

It is, in fact, possible to make this separation. Science teaching usually does so,practising what we can call a conceptual reductionism (Duschl and Gitomer 1991)which limits science education to learning science. The trouble is that this reduc-tionism doesn't work and pupils don't experience the expected conceptual change.They acquire deformed views of science and, particularly, of the interactionsbetween science and society. On the contrary, recent research in science educationshows that 'Students develop their conceptual understanding and learn more aboutscientific inquiry by engaging in scientific inquiry, provided that there is sufficientopportunity for and support of reflection' (Hodson 1992). In the same sense,Driver (1993) writes: 'Learning science involves young people entering into adifferent way of thinking about and explaining the natural word; becoming so-cialized to a greater or lesser extent into the practices of the scientific community'.

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It is true that this is an old intuition, as old as the learning by discoverymovement which, as has been repeatedly shown, did not work too well (Ausubel1968, Gil 1983, Hodson 1985, Millar and Driver 1987).

However, today's proposals are different in two fundamental respects. In thefirst place, and this constitutes my second proposition:

It is necessary to stress that I am not thinking of pupils as practising scientists,working in frontier domains. This metaphor, used by several authors against thetreatment of pupils as simple receivers, has many limitations and cannot give a usefulview of how to organize pupils' work (Pope and Gilbert 1993, Burbules and Linn1987). A metaphor that presents pupils as novice researchers (Gil-Perez 1993, Gil-Perez and Carrascosa 1994) gives, in my opinion, a better appraisal of the learningsituation.

In effect, any researcher knows that when someone joins a research team, she or hecan catch up quite easily with the standard level of the team. That does not happenby verbal transmission, but through the treatment of problems in domains wheremore experienced colleagues are experts. The situation changes, of course, whenproblems which are new for every member of the team are taken into account. Inthis case, the progress (if any) becomes slow and sinuous.

This is, of course, just a metaphor and I do not forget the grave differencesbetween a pupil and a real novice researcher; but it is a better metaphor, I think,than those which present pupils as simple receivers or as practising scientists.

This metaphor is associated with three basic elements of what we can call a'radical social-constructivist orientation' for science learning: open problematicsituations, scientific work in cooperative groups and interactions between thegroups and the 'scientific community', represented by other pupils, the teacherand the text books (Gil-Perez and Mtnez-Torregrosa 1987, Wheatley 1991). Thissocial constructivist perspective is coherent with the work of Vygotsky on the roleof experts to support less experienced members (Driver 1993) and with the natureof the scientists' training (Gil 1993).

In synthesis, the teaching strategy that appears to be the most consistent withthe constructivist cognitive approach and with the characteristics of scientificreasoning, is the organization of learning as a treatment of problematic situationsthat pupils can identify as worth thinking about. This strategy basically aims toinvolve pupils in the construction of knowledge, giving to the pupils' activity thecharacteristics of a well orientated investigation (Gil-Perez 1993, Gil-Perez andCarrascosa 1994). It can be summarized as follows:

1. Conceive problematic situations that generate interest and provide a pre-liminary conception of the task, taking into account the ideas, world view,skills and attitudes of pupils.

2. Propose the qualitative study of the problematic situations, taking decisions(with the help of the necessary bibliographic researches) to define and deli-mit concrete problems, an activity during which pupils begin to make theirideas explicit in a functional way.

3. Guide the scientific treatment of the problems, which implies, among otherthings:Invention of concepts and forming of hypotheses (opportunity for use ofalternative conceptions to make predictions).

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Elaboration of possible strategies for solving the problems, including,where appropriate, experimental designs to check hypotheses in the lightof the body of knowledge.Realization of the elaborated strategies and analysis of the results (checkingthem with those obtained by other pupils and by the scientific community)which can produce cognitive conflicts between different conceptions (takingall of them as hypotheses) and can require the formation of new hypotheses.

4. Propose the application of the new knowledge in a variety of situations todeepen and consolidate them, putting special emphasis on the STS relation-ships which frame the scientific development, and leading all this treatmentto show the construction of a coherent body of knowledge.

5. Favour particularly synthesis activities (schemes, reports), the elaboration ofproducts which help to give a purpose to the task and increase the interest init and the conception of new problems.

This leads to my third proposition:

The effectiveness of this orientation demands breaking many reductionisms and dis-tortions of the nature of science transmitted by science teaching as a consequence ofteachers' spontaneous epistemology.

Here we are touching upon the second big difference between today's proposalsand the preceding essays of organizing science learning as scientific research: theattention given to those reductionisms and distortions of the nature of sciencetransmitted by science teaching.

Transforming teachers' views about the nature of science

As Bell and Pearson (1992) have pointed out, it is not possible to change whatteachers and pupils do in the classroom without transforming their epistemology,their conceptions about how knowledge is constructed, their views about science.This is not just a question of the well known extreme inductivism denounced somany times previously: we have to pay attention to many other distortions (Gil1993, Hodson 1993, Meichstry 1993, Guilbert and Meloche 1993), as, for instance:

• Extreme inductivism, enhancing 'free' observation and experimentation ('notsubject to aprioristic ideas') and forgetting the essential role played by themaking of hypotheses and by the construction of coherent bodies of knowl-edge (theories). On the other hand, in spite of the great importance assignedto experimentation, science teaching remains purely bookish, quite fre-quently with little practical work. For this reason, experimentation keepsthe glamour of an 'unaccomplished revolution'. This inductivist visionunderlies the orientation of learning as discovery and the reduction of sciencelearning to the process of science.

• A rigid view (algorithmic, exact, infallible, dogmatic). 'Scientific Method' ispresented as a linear sequence of stages to be followed step by step.Quantitative treatment and control are enhanced, forgetting—or even reject-ing—everything related to invention, creativity, tentative constructions.Scientific knowledge is presented in its 'final' state, without any referenceeither to the problematic situations which are at its origin, its historical

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evolution or the limitations of this knowledge which appears as an absolutetruth not subject to change.

• An exclusively analytical vision which enhances the necessary division andsimplification of the study, but neglects the efforts of unification in order toconstruct wider bodies of knowledge, the treatment of 'border' problemsbetween different domains. Going in the opposite direction, today there isa tendency to present the unity of nature, not as a result of scientific devel-opment but as a starting point.

• A merely accumulative vision. Scientific knowledge appears as the result of alinear development, ignoring crisis and deep restructurings.

• A 'commonsense' view which presents scientific knowledge as clear and'obvious', forgetting the essential differences between the scientific strategiesand the common-sense reasoning. This view is characterized by quick andvery confident answers, based on 'evidence'; by the absence of doubt orconsideration of possible alternative solutions; by the lack of consistency inthe analysis of different situations; by reasoning which follows a linear caus-ality sequence. The 'conceptual reductionism' of most science teaching con-tributes to this commonsense view forgetting that a conceptual change cannot take place without a simultaneous and profound epistemological andattitudinal change.

• A 'veiled' and elitist view. No special effort is made to make science mean-ingful and accessible; on the contrary, the meaning of scientific knowledge ishidden behind the mathematical expressions. In this way, science is pre-sented as a domain reserved for specially gifted minorities, transmittingpoor expectations to most pupils and favouring ethnic, social and genderdiscriminations.

• An individualistic view. Science appears as the activity of isolated 'greatscientists', ignoring the role of cooperative work and of interaction betweendifferent research teams.

• A socially 'neutral' view. Science is presented as something elaborated in'ivory towers', forgetting the complex STS relationships and the importanceof collective decision making on social issues related to science and technol-ogy.

In contrast to this vision of science out of context, today there is an oppos-ing tendency, in secondary schools, towards a 'sociological reductionism',which limits the science curriculum to the treatment of STS problems andforgets the search for coherence and other essential aspects of science.

This teachers' spontaneous epistemology constitutes a serious obstacle to therenewal of science teaching in as much as it is accepted acritically as 'common-sense evidence'. However, it is not difficult at all, in my opinion, to generate acritical attitude towards these commonsense views. When teachers have the oppor-tunity for a collective discussion about possible distortions of the nature of sciencetransmitted by science teaching, they easily become aware of most of the dangers(Gil-Perez et al. 1991). In other words, the real danger seems to be the lack ofattention to what is given as common-sense evidence.

We can conclude, following this review, that research in science education hasexperienced a particularly profitable development during the last decade, initiatingthe construction of a specific body of knowledge on science teaching and learning

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problems. We can hope that this body of knowledge will be developed and con-solidated during the years to come, making an effective displacement of the trans-mission/reception model by the constructivist approach possible, both inclassroom activity and in teacher training. That is, in my opinion, the generalperspective. I shall discuss it in more detail in the last paragraph.

New trends in science education

Reviewing the evolution of a certain domain, as I have tried to do here with scienceeducation, has, as a fundamental aim, to favour the integration of the differentcontributions and to provide perspectives for further development. Those per-spectives become working hypotheses which will allow us to test the validity ofthe analysis carried out and of the conclusions thereby obtained.

Nothing can guarantee, of course, that the results of those analyses will becorrect, but the explicitation of the perspectives makes criticizing them and statingother predictions and recommendations possible.

We can remember, for example, the meta-analysis made by Welch, more thanten years ago (Welch 1985), of the research carried out in different fields of scienceeducation. Welch intended to answer the following questions, which show a clearprospective approach: What do we know at present and what should we know?Which are the most urgent investigations to be made? How can we improve scienceteaching?

In his conclusions, Welch predicted (and recommended) a growing researchemphasis on some aspects scarcely studied at that point, like pupils' attitudestowards science, environmental influences (classroom atmosphere) and types ofactivities carried out by pupils. I agreed in a short note (Gil-Perez 1986) withthose predictions which, effectively, opened up new perspectives to our research.But I rejected other predictions and recommendations: I was particularly sur-prised by Welch's lack of attention to alternative conceptions and I completelydisagreed with his insistent recommendation of disregarding teachers' behaviouras a line of research. In fact, research has given a clear priority to the study ofpreconceptions and the research focused on teachers' thinking has increased.

I insist, nevertheless, in the interest of Welch's recapitulation, which offeredsome interesting suggestions and stimulated alternative predictions. I would wishthat the perspectives I am going to state now—based on the analyses undertaken inthe preceding paragraphs—could, at least, stimulate alternative predictions andrecommendations. Here are, then, my predictions for the development of theresearch in science education over the next few years:

In the first place, concerning today's most developed line of research, I believethat a displacement from the detection of preconceptions (using instrumentswhich, in general, give information about pupils' immediate answers and reac-tions) to the study of the 'zone of potential development' (eliciting what pupilscan think or do when we facilitate a reflexive and critical work) is necessary. Inother words, the abundant results from alternative conceptions show, in myopinion, a student's superficial approach to the situations studied, facilitated bythe instruments used. In my opinion equally, as important as these results, arethose obtained when we put pupils in the situation of thinking in a more reflectiveway. So we can expect that this approach will displace the simple detection ofalternative conceptions.

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The evolution of the research in alternative conceptions involves anotheressential change: overtaking the conceptual reductionism which has characterized,in general, this research and the derived teaching proposals. Taking both theconceptual, procedural and attitudinal aspects into consideration will increasethe efficiency of the constructivist approach and facilitate the consensus on sciencelearning as an orientated research. We can expect, in the same sense, an increasedemphasis on technology education (Gilbert 1992).

Associated with this consensus on the constructivist approach, we can foreseean important development in curricular innovation, orientated towards the pro-duction of programmes of activities, it is to say, programmes of research for theconstruction of knowledge.

We can expect, on the other hand, an extension of the constructivist approachto teacher training. This means, firstly, a growing critical awareness of theteacher's common-sense thinking about science and science teaching and learningand, secondly, to transform teacher training into a research activity which enablesstudent teachers to (re)construct the science education corpus of knowledge.

We can expect at the same time the extension of science education to theuniversity level, although this is more of a wish than a prediction. We knowthat, in general, the university has not taken part in the renewal of science educa-tion. Nevertheless, the rapid increase of the student population and some problemsthereby created (rate of failure, student rejection of normal teaching methods, etc.)are generating an incipient concern among university teachers. We can hope thatthis concern will produce a growing awareness of the teaching and learningproblems at university level. In this way, the renewal of science education and,particularly, the initial teacher training, would not continue to be hindered by ateaching style at odds with the recommendations derived from science educationresearch.

All the aforementioned expectations and recommendations can be summarizedin a heightened search for global coherence, leading to the development and theconsolidation of a specific corpus of knowledge of science teaching and learning.

I do not intend to ignore the fact that these expectations can seem the expres-soin of my wishes more than objective predictions. Nevertheless, what I havelearned about the nature of science shows me that there are no 'neutral'approaches, that our hypotheses and even the selection of the problems we decideto study are determined, not only by our knowledge, but also by our interests andideology. Without 'subjective' wishes and expectations, the advances I have pre-dicted will not take place, but I believe that those expectations also have a solidfoundation in recent science education research and are generating a growingconsensus.

References

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AIKENHEAD, G. S. (1985) Collective decision making in the social context of science. ScienceEducation, 69(4), 453-75.

ANDERSON, C. W. and SMITH, E. L. (1983) Childrens conceptions of light and color: devel-oping the concept of unseen rays. Paper presented at the annual meeting of theAmerican Educational Research Association, Montreal.

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