Dr Jane Gilbert

Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Developing Narrative-based Approaches to Science Education:
Re-thinking an 'Old Discipline' for the 'Knowledge Age'

Abstract

School science education since its beginnings has had two key aims: to lay the foundations on which to develop the scientists of the future, and to produce a basic understanding of science in the general population. Research over the last 20 years or so shows that science education programmes in most countries are conspicuously unsuccessful in achieving either of these aims. Student uptake of science subjects at tertiary level continues to decline, while the developments now widely referred to as 'the knowledge age' are rapidly rendering irrelevant many of the assumptions, dispositions and values on which science education is based.

This paper reports on a project which, drawing on narrative theory and the 'critical literacy' literature, aims to develop an approach to science education which encourages students to enter into critical, deconstructive relationships with science: to 'play' with the ideas of science, and to use them - in conjunction with other forms of knowledge - in new ways. Such approaches, it is argued, are necessary if we are to equip students with the skills, dispositions and approaches to knowledge they will need if they are to participate successfully in 'knowledge age' developments of the future.

Bionote

Dr Jane Gilbert is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). She has previously worked in the Mathematics and Science Education Centre at Victoria University, in the School of Education at the University of Waikato, and as a secondary school teacher of biology and science. She teaches courses in the philosophy and sociology of education, and in science and technology education, and has research interests in issues of 'identity' and 'difference' in education, especially science education.

Presentation Type
30 min. Paper

Presentation Equipment and Other Requests

Speaking Date/Time Restrictions

Country
New Zealand