Examinator

Try here:

http://www.acer.edu.au/documents/Mono63_MathsSciTechSept08.pdf

A few excerpts:

• Participation in senior secondary school science has declined over the 30-year period from 1976 to 2007. In 1976, 55 per cent of Year 12 students studied biology, 29 per cent studied chemistry and 28 per cent studied physics. In 2007 the corresponding percentages were 25 per cent, 18 per cent and 15 per cent.

• During the 1980s one interpretation of decline in science participation was that science subjects were continuing to attract similar numbers as previously but had not attracted an equivalent share of the expansion of the holding power of Year 12.

• However, since the mid-1990s school retention rates have stabilised and yet science participation has continued to decline.

• Analyses of longitudinal data show that the uptake of science-related studies at university is stronger amongst those who specialise in science studies in the final year of school which in turn is influenced by student’s proficiency in mathematics when they are in middle secondary school.

• It does appear that the roots of science-based study at university lie in what happens in secondary school and possibly at earlier stages of schooling.

• There are substantial variations among the States and Territories in the time allocated to science in the junior secondary years. Across all the jurisdictions very little time is given to science in the primary school years.

• Generating higher levels of participation in science-related studies at university appears to be partly dependent on strengthening science education in school.

• Strengthening school science education can come partly from organisation and curriculum by ensuring that more time is allocated to science in school programs and by enhancing curricula.

And so on ...

I think the current Australian government is trying to do the right thing, should have been done 10 - 20 years ago. In those days other priorities were seen to be more important - to such an extent that education was "dumbed down" - another travesty, imho.

Therefore, I disagree with the author - the proposed science curriculum is NOT a disgrace.

Some good points Graham. I am a primary teacher and I find it frustrating that little attention is paid to science at this end. Primary should be laying down a good understanding of natures systems to build on in secondary. Even a reasonably rigorous course in Nature studies would improve things. Although I believe that the Primary connections series goes someway to addressing the problem - but it has to be used imaginatively.

Time is critical - we are expected to do too much. If teachers do a minute by minute breakdown of the school day the problem is clearly perplexing. While younger children are clearly more exposed to mass media, have ideas etc there does need to be some serious attention paid to formal learning and expectations by curriculum designers. By this I do not mean tests, and more measuring but rather let teachers and learners slow down and do some real work rather than skimming over the tick boxes.

When were you at school Graham? I managed to get through school without ever seeing a periodic table. In fact I have spent a lifetime overcoming my non-government grammar school education of the 1960's early 70s. A time of acute teacher shortages which was a problem. I cannot believe there are people out there who think it was all so much better then!

I think part of the problem is that curriculum is developed by specialists in one area and they forget or are not concerned about the other KLAs or what ever you want to call them. Inquiry skills should be developed across all subjects for example. History of science could be incorporate and taught in history heaven forbid. Ethical and sociological questions could find there place in other areas of students study.

Rarely does the curriculum itself change things. A lot remains to be determined by teachers - that is the responsibility we have - and we need to argue for that.

It occurs to me too that we need to look at the larger social context.

New Age Self help pop everything Mumbo Jumbo denigrates scientific knowledge as the cause of all our social ills. Look at the madness of the catastrophic climate change green religion.

Look at the state of some of the scientists themselves, especially the top ones - on pharm boards, compromising independence themselves by collaborating with governments and politics, questionable peer review called back slapping, Copenhagen and the IPCC ....

we have senior political figures calling for action on the evidence and then in the same breath talk about Australian Saints and miracles

All
GY and others including me(!) have it wrong ,wrong, wrong.

At last some commonsense on the subject has been written here.

http://newmatilda.com/2010/03/03/purple-cravat-view-history

eat with a crisp white possibly a well wooded Chenin Plonk.

Loadeddog, we are contemporaries more or less. I finished high school in 1975 and as far as I remember at least one of our chemistry text books had a periodic table inside the back cover, and there was a periodic table in my Grade 8 or Grade 9 science classroom on a chart.

Can't see how anyone could teach chemistry beyond a very primitive level without the very handy chart which shows you the elements in ascending order of their electrons and their levels.

I know that one of my daughters was at least exposed to the table last year in Grade 10, because we did some homework in which it featured.

I also know that maths education in Queensland at least was superior then to what it is now - see http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10058 which has referece to test results.

So I'm not pining for the good old days. I'm making an observation based on omissions from the syllabus which I objectively do not think are good enough.

Those two things are that if they are to introduce the periodic table as late as indicated, then the curriculum is unsatisfactory, and if it is to include marks for undersanding the social context it is also unsatisfactory.

Interesting that in qanda's link to ACER it is the study of Maths that is the best predictor of whether someone will do science, not the study of maths and science in a social context!