ABSTRACT
Science has, over recent years, become an accepted part of the primary school curriculum in many countries. In England and Wales the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1989 identified science as a core subject, along with English and mathematics and required that it be taught to children from the age of 5. Curriculum requirements, however, must be translated into classroom practice. How this occurs depends on teachers and is influenced by, amongst other things, their views of teaching and learning, their knowledge of, and attitudes to, science and their feelings of confidence and competence about what is to be taught,
The majority of primary teachers in England and Wales do not have a strong personal background in science. Surveys of teacher knowledge of science reveal that ‘the majority of primary teachers in the sample…hold views of science concepts that are not in accord with those accepted by scientists’ (Summers, 1992, p. 26). Their ideas are more likely to correspond to those of the children they will teach (Carré, 1993; Webb, 1992). Teachers do, however, frequently have firm beliefs in the value of ‘hands-on’ experience for learning and of the role of the teacher as provider of opportunities for children to explore and investigate. Coupled with ideas that science knowledge is revealed by careful observation and investigation this has led to classroom practice which is frequently based on ‘discovery learning’. Teachers have developed a repertoire of activities which appear to be science based, and from which they expect children to learn science, though they often have difficulty in articulating the purpose of such activities in terms of precise conceptual aims. In countries other than Britain, primary school teachers may deal with their lack of subject
knowledge by relying heavily on other strategies such as lecture and text-based teaching approaches (Stofflett and Stoddart, 1994).
