ABSTRACT
Science education in the UK in the 1980s is being shaped by demands for new structures of learning and assessment. The National Criteria for Science courses for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination, taken by pupils at age 16, require that pupils, in addition to gaining some knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and theories, should be able to ‘draw conclusions from, and evaluate critically, experimental observations and other data’ (my emphasis) and ‘recognise and explain variability and unreliability in experimental measurements’. They should be able to ‘make decisions based on the examination of evidence and arguments’ and ‘recognise that the study and practice of science are subject to various limitations and uncertainties’ (DES, 1985: 3–4). These aims, if they are taken seriously, imply a move away from the following of practical ‘recipes’ to ‘confirm’ the results presented in textbooks and their writing up in transactional prose. At present the idea of a ‘scientific theory’ is rarely explicitly raised; the aims and purposes of science and the nature of its theories are rarely discussed.
