Cultural Aspects of the Transfer of Scientific Knowledge - Research Paper Example

? Exploring Cultural Perspectives of Social Interactions among the Teachers of Science (scientists) and Introduction Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society(Edward Tylor, 1871).Hence ,the teaching of science is viewed as the transmission of culture and the learning of science is viewed as the acquisition of culture. The study of science started many years ago and has led to many discoveries in the fields of medicine ,physical sciences and applied sciences. These discoveries have changed the way the modern man thinks and goes about his daily activities. New discoveries are coming up in the field from those who mastered the subject long and not from the new graduants in the field of science. Scientific education is viewed by many experts and scholars to involve social interactions among teachers of science and students. The scope of the cultural perspective of this social interaction involves giving substantial theoretical weight to its role: seeing it, as in the Vygotskyan tradition (Vygotsky, 1963; Leontiev, 1978; Cole, 1996), to be the most important necessity to learning. This implies that when we explore such cultural perspectives, we must try as much as possible to be skeptical and critical. The most basic belief here is that we do not know why we act as we do; we only know a few reasons on a certain time scale and within a limited range of contexts. Different communities have different cultural attributes and therefore we do not know all the other reasons that arise from the functioning of our actions in far larger and more distant contexts and on longer time scales. Our individual ways of living and making a meaning are different according not only to which communities we have lived in, but also to which roles we chose or we were assigned to us by others- how we presented ourselves and how we were seen and treated by others. That got me wondering what is happening to the new generation. Is it the mode of delivery of the science subject? Or the teachers of science have not discovered what works best of the new generation so that they can be able to internalize concepts in science that can be able to use to venture into the field of science and make contributions to the world. This is because science is the driving force to modernization. In my paper, I hope to point out and explore the cultural ways that the teachers of science and their students are used to in the transmission of knowledge. That is , am going to discuss the known methods of learning science , The gaps that have not been filled to equip students in the field of science to become competent professional and what needs to be done to fill the gap. The first portion of this paper will provide an overview of the study of science as well as the contributions and importance of studying science in the society. The second portion of the paper will detail how the study and learning of science has been done over the years. The third portion of the paper will discuss the gaps that have not been filled in the study of science and finally, on how to implement the identified gaps in the study of science The origin of the cultural perspective to Science Education The cultural perspective of science education in its contemporary form derived mainly from the developments in social and human sciences since the 1960s. The view that science represents a unique valid approach of knowledge, disconnected from social institutions, their politics, cultural beliefs and values was strongly challenged by research in the history of science (e.g. Shapin and Schaffer, 1985). However, eventually both science education and the new scientific studies more specifically in history and sociology took a linguistic turn and began to examine how people learned to talk and write the scientific language meaningfully and cooperatively engage in its wide range of culturally specific activities Scientific Education Every intellectual work receives diverse views from varying perspectives by different people depending on how the concept is brought out by the respective scholars and authors of the work. This therefore results in the development of varying questions in an attempt to evaluate the content under study. For example, we might ask ourselves, to what extent do students acquire frameworks within which to critically think about the sciences, in general and in details, in the absence of cultural perspectives of science? However much we may teach our students about scientific concepts, how much better does this really make them to decide when they should trust the experts’ opinion and when they should be skeptical of it? The most sophisticated view of knowledge available to us today says that it is a falsification of the nature of science to teach concepts outside their social, economic, technological and historical contexts. This is so because concepts taught without considering the above mentioned aspects are regarded to be relatively useless in life however well they may appear to have been understood by the students. A cultural approach necessitates us to ask ourselves a variety of tough questions about what kinds of personal identity and cultural values our science teaching aspects are compatible with and relevant to. . The cultural perspective of Science Education In order to understand the cultural perspective of social interactions between science teacher and their students, I feel it’s important to briefly highlight the assumptions that science education is founded on: 1. Western science is a cultural entity itself, one of many subcultures of Euro- American society. 2. People live and coexist within many subcultures identified by, for example, language, ethnicity, gender, social class, occupation, religion and geographic location. 3. People move from one subculture to another, a process called “cultural border crossing;”. 4. People’s core cultural identities may be at odds with the culture of Western science to varying degrees. 5. Science classrooms are subcultures of the school culture. 6. Most students experience a change in culture when moving from their life-worlds into the world of school science. 7. Learning science is a cross-cultural event for these students. 8. Students are more successful if they receive help negotiating their cultural border crossings. 9. This help can come from a teacher (a culture broker) who identifies the cultural borders to be crossed, who guides students back and forth across those borders, who gets students to make sense out of cultural conflicts that might arise, and who motivates students by drawing upon the impact Western science and technology have on the students’ life- worlds. The highlighted assumptions are discussed in detail by Aikenhead (1996, 1997 and 1998), Jegede and Aikenhead (1999). These assumptions underlie a cross- cultural approach to science teaching; “two-way learning” (Fleer, 1997) or “both-ways education” (McTaggert, 1991). A cultural approach to teaching and learning engages students in cultural negotiations (Christie, 1991, 1997; Stairs, 1993/94). Negotiation occurs in a context where learning science is experienced as “coming to knowing,” a phrase borrowed from Aboriginal educators (Ermine, 1998; Peat 1994). Coming to knowing is reflected in participatory learning: “If the living, experiencing being is an intimate participant in the activities of the world to which it belongs, then knowledge is a mode of participation” (Dewey, 1916, p. 393). The world in which most science students participate is not a world of Western science, but another world increasingly influenced by Western science and technology. Coming to knowing engages science students in their own cultural negotiations among several sciences found within their school science. Four such sciences were identified by Ogawa (1995). First, students reflect on their own understanding of the physical and biological world. Second, students come to know the Aboriginal commonsense understanding held by their community. Third, students may encounter ways of knowing of another culture, including other Aboriginal peoples. Fourth, students are introduced to the norms, beliefs, values and conventions of Western science — the culture of Western science. Negotiating among these four sciences in school science is known as “multi-science education” (Ogawa, 1995). Cross-cultural science teaching facilitates these negotiations. Coming to knowing is about developing cultural identity and self-esteem (Cajete, 1999; McKinley, 1998; McKinley et al., 1992; Richie & Butler, 1990). METHODS OF LEARNING SCIENCE Just like any other scholarly field of knowledge, various scholars and authors attempt to provide better understanding on how sciences should be taught in schools by teachers and how students should assimilate the taught concepts and be able to apply them to real life situations. To this effect, various models on how to teach and learn science have emerged over the years. For example, O’Loughlin (1992) proposed a cognitive-model of teaching and learning in an attempt to clarify social power and privilege in science classrooms. Based on the social cognitive work of Delpit (1988), Lave (1988), and Wertsch (1991), O’Loughlin persuasively claimed: To the extent that schooling negates the subjective, socio-culturally constituted voices that students develop from their lived experience... and to the extent that teachers insist that dialogue can only occur on their terms, schooling becomes an instrument of power that serves to perpetuate the social class and racial inequities that are already inherent in society. (p. 816) O’Loughlin’s model provides an effective alternative to the widely assimilated method of disclosure, or rather classroom discourse, of scientific knowledge to students by most science teachers. O’Loughlin narrows down his scope to focus on “dialogical meaning making” in the context of social power, (Freire, 1970). Dialogical meaning making occurs when the learner is stimulated to act by the textual content presented to him and at the same time is also allowed the space to play an active role in developing a personally constructed understanding of the author’s or teacher’s message through a process of dialogue interchange. (O’Loughlin, 1992; p. 813) This model should be used by most contemporary teachers of science in delivering scientific knowledge to students as it advocates for a more reasonable approach towards making the learning of scientific content more enjoyable and therefore more applicable to the modern day life. This helps in the deviation from the previously considered effective modes of delivery of science in schools. Science students should be given opportunities to change their minds by their teachers but at the same time this should not be done unaware of the fact that they are being invited to join a particular sub-culture and its system of beliefs and values. Student interest in attitudes toward science and student willingness to particular conceptual accounts of phenomena depending on community beliefs, acceptable identities and the consequences for a student’s life outside the classroom of how respond to our well-intentioned but often un-informed efforts at directing their ; UN informed in as far as that we do not take into account that learning is not just a matter of whether we can understand a scientific account but also of whether our social and cultural options in life make it in our interest to do so The learning of science refers to the acquisition of scientific knowledge or skills through experience, practice, study or by being taught. School science whose main goal has been cultural transmission of the subcultures of science (Stanley & Brickhouse, 1994) this means that scientific knowledge has also been impacted through various modes of teaching and learning .This should always start from the lowest level of education to the highest level of education. The most commonly known modes of learning science include observation, experimentation, measurement, inference, explanation and modeling. While the educational programs explicitly assert that students construct knowledge in the absence of more knowing others, a number of perspectives suffer from this assumption, often under various banners such as learning, discovery or radical constructivism (Kelly, 1997) In the classroom environment the study and learning of science require active participation from the students. Learning science cannot be compared to the humanities where the teachers do ninety percent of the whole class work and all the student has to do is to take notes. In fact in science the student has to do more than the teacher in order to master vital concepts that will enable them to be very serious researchers in the field of science. Observation as a method of learning science has been used for the study of science began. It takes place in any serious science class where the teacher or the scientist will demonstrate to the students a procedure in class and all the students have to do is observe what the teacher is doing and then later in the course of the lesson, the students will be asked to write down whatever they have seen and what they think of the outcome. Observation as a method of learning and mastering science is the cornerstone in science education and hence when used appropriately can enable us produce competent and creative scientists. Learning science entails more than learning the final-form knowledge of scientific communities (Schwab, 1960; Duschl, 1990). While conceptual knowledge (knowing that) is important, knowing how to engage in scientific practices and how to make epistemic judgments ought not to be neglected. Therefore, science learning should include conceptual, epistemic, and social goals (Duschl, 2008; Kelly, 2008) Experimentation as another method of learning and teaching science is also a must process in any science class regardless of the level of education one has achieved .This is because all the scientific inventions today in the world were made possible through tireless experimentation of many failures before the earlier scientists could realize success. Experiments in class make the learning and teaching science interesting and has always acted as a motivational tool on the part of the students .Remember when you were in high school that you could not wait for your science teacher to take you people to the laboratory for science experiments and getting the data and results was always satisfactory. Experimental in class has always been done in such a way that the teacher would always be the first one to enter the laboratory in front of the students and set up the apparatus and select the reagent and instruments to be used on that day. The students would then be placed into groups depending on the number and the teacher would then guide them throughout the process by giving them instructions .The students would then be told to record their findings for later calculations and be able to draw conclusions. Experiments made students be able to appreciate the scientific knowledge that was discovered by the early scientists. Getting these results has always been a great encouragement to students but the question still remains, are the students produced in our institutions able to conduct their own scientific experiments soon after graduating? Measurement is also another method teacher of science use in classrooms to impact scientific knowledge to their students. In any science class it was always said that for one to be a good scientist one must be able to know how to measure accurately. Measurement has always been the first lesson in any science class. For any scientific experiment to be successful, measurements must be very accurate. For example in chemistry, for one to record accurate results he or she must measure the appropriate amount of reagents .This is only achievable through accurate measurement. Measurement as a way of learning science may seem very easy but many students have failed to master the concept. This leaves one wondering is it the mode of delivery in teaching or is it that the students lack motivation in the learning of science. Explanation as a mode of learning science has always been very useful where the teacher of science will always demonstrate a procedure in class and will then tell the students to explain why the procedure has ended in such a way. Explanation helps the students to express their own understandings of a scientific procedure or experiment. This enables them to gain deeper understanding of the subject and hence aspire to be greater scientists since the more they gain understanding of the subject the more would want to venture into that area of study. Modeling is also another method of learning science .This is commonly used in the biology where the students who aspire to venture into medical science. Medical science is the most demanding and the most sensitive of the scientific field since it involves dealing with human life. Students who aspire to take medical science as careers are always taught on how to model and label various parts of the human anatomy and organs. All the teacher always does is to model human body parts alongside their students and label the parts. This process requires repetition and daily practice until the students will have learnt to draw the various body parts off the head. This always comes in handy when the students are being taught to dissect animals. This will enable those interested in surgery to be able to identify the various parts of the body. RELEVANCE TO ADVANCING SCIENCE In my paper I have emphasized on the importance of advancing science education through teacher-student interaction in class to enable the society produces competent scientists who can be the driving force for growth and advancement in the society. This is because science impact on our society in the following ways: Discovery and knowledge in science have eliminated ignorance. For example, before the exploration and the discoveries in the solar system, many people believed that the earth was the center of the solar system with the other planets revolving around it. Many people believed that myth for a long time until the scientific inventions that shed light on the whole solar system. Scientific knowledge also led to discoveries in the health sector. For example, Andreas Vesalius discovered the human anatomy in 1538.He did this through dissecting a human corpse and correcting earlier views. He also published De Humani Corporis Fabrica in 1543. Again, William Harvey discovered blood circulation and named the heart to be the organ responsible for pumping blood. Karl Landsteiner also discovered the blood group system by grouping blood into four categories. Scientific knowledge also led to discoveries in the engineering .This is seen through the constructions of bridges, skyscrapers, and also the invention of motor vehicles and airplanes which have now become the fastest modes of transportation. What is missing from learning methods? There are a number of issues that are a factor contributing to the gap in learning science in our various institutions today. This includes the following The students are not given adequate time to express themselves in class. This involves giving the student ample time to elaborate, demonstrate and illustrate what they have learnt in their own understanding. Participatory learning enhances memory of the student. It breaks the monotony of teacher illustration. It also encourages activeness and reduces boredom. Additionally, allowing students to express their views on the topic learned enhances their confidence in owning the knowledge acquired. Thus boosts the learning process. Understanding of the scientific vocabularies is posing a challenge to students. The student should improve in English first as a gateway to deeper understanding of the scientific terms. The English thus should be considered as a step in understanding science. Discovery is a problem in learning science .The concept of discovery saturates school science textbooks, even surfacing as a method for teaching science. However, sociologies of science make the concept of discrete scientific discoveries problematic. For instance, in writing an intellectual history of scientific development, the use of discovery accounts demonstrates discrepancies in discovery as a method of learning science. A discovery can only be interpreted retrospectively. It is a reconstruction of previous activity a process, not a point in time. Its scientific status is determined socially. The sociology of scientific knowledge demonstrates that important components of scientific knowledge are, in practice, socially mediated. Scientific discovery and the logic of science are products of the negotiation of the community of scientists (Kelly, Carlsen & Cunningham 1997). Standard pace of learning is missing to ensure that all students are at par with the teacher. This is due to varied learning potentials among students. This group of students encompasses one, potential scientist. This group of students smoothly and naturally understands across the borders of science. They manage their border crossing so well that the boarders appear invisible. To include other smart students. This group of students manages their border crossing so well that few express their sense of science being a foreign subculture. Third are students with the I don’t know attitude. They confront hazardous border crossing but learn to cope and survive. Fourth, are the outsiders who tend to be alienated from the school itself and so boarder crossing is in school science is virtually impossible. Therefore due to this varied learning pace teachers should understand their students to enhance learning science. Bridging the gap There are various problems that have been highlighted above that when effectively implemented , science can become a very interesting field for students. One significant intersection occurred during a focus on constructivist learning in science education. Constructivism entered science education through a focus on students’ ideas and understandings, building initially on Piaget (for review, see Kelly, 1997). The teachers should give their students enough time to express their understanding and ideas in class. This means that the teachers should be less active in the classes. They should only be there to guide and direct. Language should also act as a cornerstone for learning and acquiring scientific skills. This can only be achieved when students are given a good background in English. Fluency in communicating ideas will enable the students to express their ideas vividly and precisely. Communication skills will not only help them with verbal communication but also written .This will make the learning of science easy. The scientists also confuse students in the discoveries that they make on various related subjects. This is because various scientists have different opinions on different topics. They should harmonize their discoveries by working together to come up with a common finding and objectives. CONCLUSION The purpose of this paper explores the cultural perspective of social interaction among teachers of science and students .Exploring the various methods teachers employ in the classrooms to impact scientific knowledge to their students, the methods have been their since learning of science began, nothing much has changed. Teachers have become more proactive more than the students .This case has led to our institutions producing incompetent professionals who are used to being shown what to do. Such individuals cannot get anything done and hence are used to getting things being done for them. Debates regarding science education go through various stages of reform, perceived change, and more reform (DeBoer, 1991). Teachers of science ought to come up with more interactive methods of learning. They should slowly move away from gestures , chalkboard diagrams and what was written in the textbook (Lemke, 1987). The learning process should be very interactive and entertaining .For example when in class the students should be given more time to talk and express their points and ideas. The teacher should not do most of the talking. Again, for effective communication to take place in class, the students should also be equipped with appropriate communication skills. This entails being fluent in English. 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