ABSTRACT
Perhaps the interest in content-centred issues in science education started with the curriculum reform movement of the 1960s, which brought into the field of education scientists who became interested in the nature of learning in their own subject areas. However, the result of the focus on content has been that this research has followed a clearly Baconian approach. Data related to thinking and learning in particular subject areas are collected, and then patterns and perhaps generalizations are looked for. The data collection and analysis are only rarely, or not at all, driven by any explicit theory about cognition.
