Sociocultural Studies and Implications for Science Education

Beginning 60 years ago, Thomas Kuhn has had a significant impact across the academy and on culture more widely. And he had a great impact on science education research, theorising, and pedagogy. For the majority of educators, the second edition (1970) of his Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1970a ) articulated the very nature of the science, the discipline they were teaching. More particularly, Kuhn’s book directly influenced four burgeoning research fields in science education: Children’s Conceptual Change, Constructivism, Science-Technology-Society studies, and Cultural Studies of Science Education. This paper looks back to the Kuhnian years in science education and to the long shadow they cast. The discipline of science education needs to learn from its past so that comparable mistakes might be averted in the future. Kuhn’s influence was good and bad. Good, that he brought HPS to so many; bad, that, on key points, his account of science was flawed. This paper will document the book’s two fundamental errors: namely, its Kantian-influenced ontological idealism and its claims of incommensurability between competing paradigms. Both had significant flow-on effects. Although the book had many positive features, this paper will document how most of these ideas and insights were well established in HPS literature at the time of its 1962 publication. Kuhn was not trained in philosophy, he was not part of the HPS tradition, and to the detriment of all, he did not engage with it. This matters, because before publication he could have abandoned, modified, or refined much of his ‘revolutionary’ text. Something that he subsequently did, but this amounted to closing the gate after the horse had bolted. In particular, the education horse had well and truly bolted. While educators were rushing to adopt Kuhn, many philosophers, historians, and sociologists were rejecting him. Kuhn did modify and ‘walk back’ many of the head-turning, but erroneous, claims of Structure. But his retreat went largely unnoticed in education, and so the original, deeply flawed Structure affected the four above-mentioned central research fields. The most important lesson to be learnt from science education’s uncritical embrace of Kuhn and Kuhnianism is that the problems arose not from personal inadequacies; individuals are not to blame. There was a systematic, disciplinary deficiency. This needs to be addressed by raising the level of philosophical competence in the discipline, beginning with the inclusion of HPS in teacher education and graduate programmes.

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The prospective ethnopedagogy-integrated STEM learning approach: science teacher perceptions and experiences

Abdurrahman

Ariyani

Nurulsari

et al. 2020

J. Phys.: Conf. Ser.

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Regarding the 4.0 industrial revolution, the STEM dimension is very important. Separately, the facts related to the development of ethnoscience in Indonesia are also very closely related to the student learning environment. STEM can play a role as an ‘engaging tools’ in local wisdom-based learning. However, there is no ‘something’ to integrate these dimensions. In this case, this study is focused on developing a preliminary form of product. We design the working framework of ethno-pedagogy-integrated STEM learning approach based on science teacher perception and experience. This study was carried out using a mixed method with a survey and analysis document on science teacher learning tools. The survey results showed that the teacher had utilized several ethno potentials that have developed in the community. The results of the document analysis have resulted in the finding that most teachers did not have a pattern yet for applying STEM learning that was related to local wisdom in their society. The ethnoscience facts that existed in the community from the survey results that had a big local potential to be integrated into STEM learning, for example, could be seen from the many traditional buildings and dances (Physics) and traditional food (Bio-Chemistry).

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Sociocultural Studies and Implications for Science Education

Cited by 3 publications

References 87 publications

Culturally Relevant Science Education and Critical Thinking in Indigenous People: Bridging the Gap Between Community and School Science

Culturally Relevant Science Education and Critical Thinking in Indigenous People: Bridging the Gap Between Community and School Science

Thomas Kuhn and Science Education

The prospective ethnopedagogy-integrated STEM learning approach: science teacher perceptions and experiences

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