ABSTRACT
In a recent report the US National Academy of Sciences defined learning progressions1 as the pathways “by which children can bridge their starting point and the desired end point” (National Resource Council [NRC], 2007, p. 214). We will adopt this open-ended definition to start with, since it does not define how progression happens and whether it is conceptual understanding or action competence that progress. This definition thus permits a discussion of alternative key characteristics about how progression could happen. During the last 50 years theories on the progression of learning have replaced one another. However, the idea that action is secondary to mental, conceptual representations dies hard. In the early 1960s the logical structure of the scientist’s academic understanding of science came to be used to model the progression of learning (see Bruner, 1996 for a review). Progression was believed to happen through making more and more advanced connections between the logical parts of current canonical knowledge. At about the same time progression came to be associated also with Jean Piaget’s stages, which were easily combined with the logical structure of the academic subject. Often certain scientific skills were also practiced as basic structures of thinking, but then separately from scientific subject content or any other context. Small children typically practiced their observation skills, whereas skills such as hypothesis testing and controlling variables were reserved for older children (e.g., Gagne, 1965). With the breakthrough of constructivism in science education and later its association with cognitivism as conceptual change (Driver & Easley, 1978; Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982; Vosniadou, Baltas, & Vamvakoussi, 2007), the stages of Piaget were very much abandoned as a basis for progression in science education. The structure and inner logic of the academic subject were still kept as the reference for building progression, although it was complemented by Piagetian studies of children thinking and alternative frameworks. Such understanding came to be analyzed largely in terms of children’s conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena in interviews. Although often complemented with some sociocultural reasoning, together these two kinds of conceptual structures-that of the young learner and the scientist, respectively-are still seen as the bedrock of progression in science education in many of the current curriculum reform efforts (e.g., NRC, 2007). Often children’s ways of learning are described as young scientists testing hypotheses of the world to improve their theories and understanding about how the world works (Gopnik, Meltzoff, & Kuhl, 1999). Accord-
ing to such a view concepts come first. These psychological theories of learning and progression have little to say about the role that language2 plays in communication as part of an activity in distinguishing certain things for specific purposes (Wickman, 2006). There is an epistemological emphasis on knowledge as getting reality right rather than “acquiring habits of action for coping with reality,” to quote Richard Rorty (1991, p. 1). Treating conceptual knowledge as basic has recurred over the years in many influential hierarchical taxonomies for learning, teaching, and assessing in school (Bloom, 1956; Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Typically the most basic form of knowing is referred to using terms such as “factual,” “knowledge,” or “remembering.” In these taxonomies remembering and the naming of phenomena is thus seen as basic knowledge. At the same time this kind of knowledge is regarded as the lowest form. The next step entails the construction of conceptual knowledge, which is usually referred to as “comprehension” or “understanding.” Factual knowledge is typically thought to be aimed at activities such as filling in blanks and answering questions like “What is the name of . . .?”, while conceptual knowledge means explaining in words or by using other representations how different things work. Both kinds of activities are common in school science and in text books (Östman, 1995; Aikenhead, 2006) and fall under the curriculum emphasis that Roberts (1982) called “the correct explanation.” However, outside school, such activities are rare. In seeing these two levels as the starting point for learning and at the same time as the lowest forms of knowing in assessing and grading students, science education risks leaving a lot of students with little useful knowledge. Those students that fail at the first level of remembering all the necessary facts will not be able to come to an understanding of the explanations. Even those that pass the first level may never reach the level of understanding and may thus be left with nothing but rote knowledge. Also those who understand most of the correct explanations may not see the point of these, as they never come to the level where they can apply or evaluate what they know, because these higher levels in this way of teaching are based upon the basic conceptual understanding. If this is the way we teach it should be no wonder if many students find science difficult, boring, and useless. Here we will argue that science is not primarily about learning the correct explanation, but learning to deal with nature and the material world in socially fruitful ways. There is actually little evidence that people develop new competencies according to this type of progression. So the finding that many students learn by rote does not demonstrate that they are not able to reach higher levels of learning; it just shows that our approach to teaching and learning has failed, as some students obviously have spent their time learning all the facts and concepts, without it being embedded in any activity that makes sense to them and that makes them more scientifically literate.
