School Science: An Approach to Rethinking What Students Learn and How They Might Be Better Engaged
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| Title: | School Science: An Approach to Rethinking What Students Learn and How They Might Be Better Engaged |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Connie Cirkony (ORCID |
| Source: | Science Education. 2025 109(5):1149-1176. |
| Availability: | Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 28 |
| Publication Date: | 2025 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Education Level: | Elementary Secondary Education |
| Descriptors: | Science Education, Learner Engagement, Curriculum Evaluation, Science Curriculum, Core Curriculum, Elementary Secondary Education, Scientific Concepts, Fundamental Concepts |
| DOI: | 10.1002/sce.21949 |
| ISSN: | 0036-8326 1098-237X |
| Abstract: | For decades, two critical challenges have plagued school science in the years it is compulsory for students in many educational contexts across the globe: how best to identify what science is meaningful for all students to learn during their formal school science education, and how to keep these students engaged in the learning of this science. Diverse science curriculum movements over these decades and throughout the English-speaking world have provided different conceptualizations about the science content and process students should learn, and suggested many pedagogical practices to engage students in that learning. However, the two intertwined challenges of specific concern for this article clearly remain: what science to include and how to foster student engagement with that science. In this paper, we first seek to provide insights relevant to these two challenges via reviews of extant research in three quite broad and important areas of scholarship: (a) the concepts of imagination and creativity, considered particularly through current cultural-historical approaches to early years science learning; (b) the long-standing support around the globe for a range of inquiry-based approaches; and (c) the German constructs of "Didaktik" and "Bildung" as existing paths from a non-Anglo context that assist the determination of choices of science for curriculum inclusion or rejection. We then consider how these three discussions can lead to considerations of school science curriculum that better address the two challenges. Though simple solutions for these complex and multifaceted challenges are unlikely and beyond the aim of this paper, interrelated aspects of our three discussions point to curriculum-focussed initiatives focussing on "big ideas" as a way to determine content. We conclude by briefly illustrating these considerations via the example of school science curriculum structured via the "big ideas" of science: that is, those that are argued to be fundamental to the learner over the course of their compulsory science education. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2025 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1483001 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwG1-t-UKD81jFhTZDz6sCgxAAAA4zCB4AYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHSMIHPAgEAMIHJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDNHvfnoIqC4A6drNLwIBEICBm5XUBe1yRiPmF50NFkG3jacoaJVH-Kkx_8Tyo6cK9XM6j1OWeQcxmoI60JuWXV2zjn_AQrerbQZwdlM027q0lsPS-NB-ZfZs-62gZrykIhjOl7pxvuir2dGNwZy0rrsjWN40DXlCLeeh_9i1aznzN7jbzyQd3S3-gEjSgMM6uE6cyp7aja6mqiu2IXNtvgxl-0BJv74gBwb6CSsk Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0187844678;sed01sep.25;2025Sep11.06:39;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0187844678-1">School Science: An Approach to Rethinking What Students Learn and How They Might be Better Engaged </title> <p>For decades, two critical challenges have plagued school science in the years it is compulsory for students in many educational contexts across the globe: how best to identify what science is meaningful for all students to learn during their formal school science education, and how to keep these students engaged in the learning of this science. Diverse science curriculum movements over these decades and throughout the English‐speaking world have provided different conceptualizations about the science content and process students should learn, and suggested many pedagogical practices to engage students in that learning. However, the two intertwined challenges of specific concern for this article clearly remain: what science to include and how to foster student engagement with that science. In this paper, we first seek to provide insights relevant to these two challenges via reviews of extant research in three quite broad and important areas of scholarship: (a) the concepts of imagination and creativity, considered particularly through current cultural‐historical approaches to early years science learning; (b) the long‐standing support around the globe for a range of inquiry‐based approaches; and (c) the German constructs of Didaktik and Bildung as existing paths from a non‐Anglo context that assist the determination of choices of science for curriculum inclusion or rejection. We then consider how these three discussions can lead to considerations of school science curriculum that better address the two challenges. Though simple solutions for these complex and multifaceted challenges are unlikely and beyond the aim of this paper, interrelated aspects of our three discussions point to curriculum‐focussed initiatives focussing on "big ideas" as a way to determine content. We conclude by briefly illustrating these considerations via the example of school science curriculum structured via the big ideas of science: that is, those that are argued to be fundamental to the learner over the course of their compulsory science education.</p> <p>Keywords: big ideas; Bildung; curriculum; Didaktik; imagination; inquiry; school science</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-2">Introduction</hd> <p>Worldwide, governments have for decades reported consistent decline in student engagement with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) during their transition from primary to secondary school and throughout the secondary years (American Association for the Advancement of Science [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref1">9</reflink>]; European Commission [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref2">52</reflink>]; Freeman, Marginson, and Tytler [<reflink idref="bib80" id="ref3">80</reflink>]; Harlen and Allende [<reflink idref="bib102" id="ref4">102</reflink>]). Yet, diverse science curriculum movements have provided different conceptualizations about the science content students should learn and suggested several pedagogical practices to engage students in their science learning. However, there remain the serious ongoing challenges of identifying what science is meaningful for students to learn from the beginning of their science education experiences until the end of the compulsory years of their schooling, and how to keep students engaged in this learning throughout these years. Despite the rapid pace of societal changes and the many and varied science curriculum movements, much of mainstream approaches to science education, particularly the science specified in a curriculum, has often remained essentially unchanged since at least the 1950s (Gunstone [<reflink idref="bib86" id="ref5">86</reflink>]; Harlen and Bell [<reflink idref="bib103" id="ref6">103</reflink>]). This is commonly reflected in curriculum design and at times in pedagogies.</p> <p>Science curricula are typically organized into disciplinary strands (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics), covering a broad range of topics (Schweingruber, Keller, and Quinn [<reflink idref="bib165" id="ref7">165</reflink>]). Though a depth versus breadth debate about school science has resulted in consistent advocacy for in‐depth curricula design (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref8">9</reflink>]; Bransford, Brown, and Cocking [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref9">21</reflink>]; Shouse, Schweingruber, and Duschl [<reflink idref="bib166" id="ref10">166</reflink>]), science textbooks still tend to present a broad collection of information as an "encyclopedic curriculum" in response to committee‐influenced development teams (Schwartz et al. [<reflink idref="bib164" id="ref11">164</reflink>], p. 799). This in turn has tended toward presenting science as a series of disconnected facts and skills (Biggers and Forbes [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref12">20</reflink>]; Duschl and Grandy [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref13">46</reflink>]). Indeed, school science has long been described as a "rhetoric of conclusions" (Schwab [<reflink idref="bib163" id="ref14">163</reflink>], p. 24), with content that is considered largely irrelevant to everyday life (Aikenhead [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref15">6</reflink>]; Johnstone [<reflink idref="bib121" id="ref16">121</reflink>]).</p> <p>Pedagogies have typically been based on authoritarian and teacher‐centered approaches (Osborne and Hennessy [<reflink idref="bib156" id="ref17">156</reflink>]), and heavily based on textbooks (Harlen and Bell [<reflink idref="bib103" id="ref18">103</reflink>]; Lyons [<reflink idref="bib134" id="ref19">134</reflink>]). Further, such approaches are often evident in practical or laboratory investigations, including some which draw on formal templates used to write scientific publications for journals, a practice that has been propagated by textbook writers (McComas [<reflink idref="bib136" id="ref20">136</reflink>]). Further, laboratory activities tend to focus on a single so‐called "scientific method" that involves recipe‐like validation approaches, and so with predetermined findings that students are expected to replicate (Hofstein and Lunetta [<reflink idref="bib113" id="ref21">113</reflink>]; Osborne and Dillon [<reflink idref="bib155" id="ref22">155</reflink>]; Schweingruber, Keller, and Quinn [<reflink idref="bib165" id="ref23">165</reflink>]). Moreover, these activities do not help students make conceptual links (Abrahams and Millar [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref24">3</reflink>]; Hofstein and Lunetta [<reflink idref="bib113" id="ref25">113</reflink>]) or encourage meaningfulness in student learning (Crawford [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref26">32</reflink>]). Though there have been some improvements in the uptake of student ideas and the provision of feedback, there still often appears to be a high incidence of copying notes as a class activity and few opportunities for students to investigate topics in which they are interested (Lyons [<reflink idref="bib134" id="ref27">134</reflink>]).</p> <p>Consequently, students often continue to associate school science with memorizing disconnected and irrelevant facts and terminology and as a single method for understanding the world (American Association for the Advancement of Science [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref28">9</reflink>]; Lyons [<reflink idref="bib134" id="ref29">134</reflink>]; Schweingruber, Keller, and Quinn [<reflink idref="bib165" id="ref30">165</reflink>]). The prevalence of this transmissive approach to science education is often argued to contribute to student disengagement or their limited confidence in engaging with science, their lack of understanding of the broader nature of scientific thinking, their persistence of alternative conceptions, and an inability to understand how science relates to their lives or their futures (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref31">9</reflink>]; Harlen and Bell [<reflink idref="bib103" id="ref32">103</reflink>]; Lyons [<reflink idref="bib134" id="ref33">134</reflink>]). Osborne and Dillon ([<reflink idref="bib155" id="ref34">155</reflink>]) assert that the overwhelming conclusion is that school science, as described above, has failed.</p> <p>The use of inquiry‐based approaches as an antidote for transmissive teaching has received long‐standing support around the globe (e.g., DeBoer [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref35">35</reflink>]; Dewey [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref36">37</reflink>]). In this paper, we draw on the research literature concerning inquiry‐based approaches as one of the three key perspectives that help address the interrelated challenges of "what science and how to foster student engagement with that science.</p> <p>Though inquiry is one possible way forward, there is a need for multifaceted reform to address these issues with science education. One such reform involves addressing the highly significant but very rarely considered problem of "curriculum overload."</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-3">Curriculum Overload</hd> <p>There is one significant factor in the common and continuing problems of the science curriculum being "encyclopaedic" or a "rhetoric of conclusions" and teaching that is too transmissive to engage students that is rarely discussed. This is the very common absence of a sufficiently clear rationale for decision about what content to include and exclude. In new curriculum, we seemingly always add content, but rarely have any logic to indicate what could or should be removed.</p> <p>This problem of what is sometimes termed "curriculum overload" has been explicitly commented on for decades, at least as far back as the early 1990s when a major figure in school physics curriculum development noted that "new concepts may be added [to a new curriculum] but hardly any are skipped" (Lijnse [<reflink idref="bib132" id="ref37">132</reflink>], p. 46). More recently, the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development ([<reflink idref="bib152" id="ref38">152</reflink>]) has presented a review of research and commentary from this century about the problem of curriculum overload across many school subjects, including science. This document makes it clear that the problem is indeed widespread, ongoing, and exists across many countries around the globe.</p> <p>To highlight this point, we elaborate on an American example of a curriculum reform with a clear rationale for content inclusion <emph>and exclusion</emph> to prevent curriculum overload: The Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC), which was the very first major curriculum project in the 1950s. PSSC was of a form that indicates its decade of creation: "it has been said that the [science] curriculum movement of the 1950s/1960s took place as if science and science classrooms were in a historical and social vacuum" (Fensham [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref39">54</reflink>], p. 793).</p> <p>While the impact of PSSC on school physics in its country of creation, USA, was certainly less than its developers hoped for, "(t)he original PSSC program was translated into at least 15 languages other than English (Haber‐Schaim [<reflink idref="bib89" id="ref40">89</reflink>]), was adopted in at least 35 countries other than USA (Schoene [<reflink idref="bib162" id="ref41">162</reflink>]), and has left a lasting legacy" (Gunstone [<reflink idref="bib85" id="ref42">85</reflink>], p. 27). It has been widely argued that the essence of this remarkable global impact was that "PSSC had structure and cohesion that existing programs did not" (e.g., Gunstone [<reflink idref="bib85" id="ref43">85</reflink>], p. 27).</p> <p>The heart of the PSSC structure and cohesion was in the curriculum content. All the content linked to the central point of the program as it was developed in the latter 1950s—developing student understanding of wave‐particle duality (Finlay [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref44">61</reflink>]). And that central point was used because it was seen by the initiators of PSSC to offer the best possible way of achieving their central motivation in its development: the desire to attract more high‐ability students, particularly females, into high school physics.</p> <p>The curriculum focus on wave‐particle duality demanded the inclusion of content rarely seen in senior high school physics programs around the world at that time. Critically, it also demanded the exclusion of content that was universal around the globe because the excluded content was irrelevant to the central point of the program. Examples of this exclusion included all content related to the topic of sound and most of the usual content related to direct current electricity.</p> <p>Whether or not PSSC was a "good" physics curriculum or not is irrelevant to the point we seek to illustrate with this example. Rather, it remains the most obvious and powerful example of the extent to which a clear and specific rationale for the curriculum that is consistently applied can ensure that curriculum overload is avoided through explicit content inclusion and exclusion. Whatever its other drawbacks, the logically based reduction in content in PSSC allowed time for the development among its learners of the complex concepts that were introduced. It was a rare example of the practice of the often‐used aphorism of "less is more."</p> <p>In this paper, we draw on what are perhaps the lesser known German curricula constructs <emph>Didaktik</emph> and <emph>Bildung</emph> as way to assist with curriculum inclusion or exclusion, as another key perspective to help address the two challenges of "what science and how." We now turn to a final consideration in science reform that we think addresses the heart of scientific inquiry and engagement.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-4">Imagination and Creativity in School Science</hd> <p>There has been an increased awareness of the role of creative thinking in the school curriculum, including science education (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [<reflink idref="bib151" id="ref45">151</reflink>]). The Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development ([<reflink idref="bib151" id="ref46">151</reflink>]) defines creative thinking as "the competence to engage productively in the generation, evaluation, and improvement of ideas, that can result in original and effective solutions, advances in knowledge and impactful expressions of imagination" (p. 8). Thinking creatively in science is a complex process, socially and culturally generated and oriented, that begins in the early years and continues throughout life. Even from the infancy period, children are able to initiate their own inquiries and creatively combine elements to generate understandings of the natural and technical world (e.g., Fleer, Fragkiadaki, and Rai [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref47">69</reflink>]; Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl [<reflink idref="bib83" id="ref48">83</reflink>]; Keil [<reflink idref="bib124" id="ref49">124</reflink>]). They are able to use their imagination in science to form meanings and concepts. Despite the increased awareness of the role of creative thinking in the science curriculum, less is written about the fundamental concept of imagination in the early engagement with school science and its critical role in developing an authentic interest and in‐depth understanding that is personally meaningful and ongoing for young learners in science. In this paper, we draw on the concepts of imagination and creativity in early science learning and their dialectal interrelationship through a cultural‐historical approach.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-5">The Purpose of the Article</hd> <p>We see an important symbiosis in bringing together the three different research perspectives very briefly outlined above, in our attempts to advocate a rethinking of approaches to decisions about science content and the placing student engagement at the center of science teaching and learning. We now review in some detail each of the three perspectives in turn, beginning with the role of imagination and creativity in learning science, before later exploring some possibilities for bringing at least aspects of the three perspectives together in the service of reimagining school science in the concluding section of the article. In doing this we certainly are not seeking to propose some simple and easy solution to the ongoing dilemma of the continued failure to foster greater student engagement, both intellectual and affective, with science. We are clear that such profound and unsolved and long‐standing problems are not amenable in any way to any form of disarmingly simple solution. Rather our purpose in this article is to first describe our three perspectives and to then identify ways that, when taken together, these perspectives can collectively point to the likely significance of a different approach to rethinking what students learn and how they might be better engaged with that learning.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-6">First Perspective: The Role of Imagination and Creativity in Learning Science</hd> <p>Recent research in early childhood and primary science education provides several approaches aiming to capture, study, and unpack scientific engagement, learning, and development as a process framed by the child's social and/or cultural reality. These approaches can be seen as falling into three groups, each driven by diverse theoretical and methodological standpoints and each derived from different socially and culturally oriented perspectives (Ravanis [<reflink idref="bib158" id="ref50">158</reflink>]). First, there are <emph>sociocognitive perspectives</emph> where the child's environment is conceptualized as a factor that may, or may not, influence the child's experience in science. In line with this perspective, emphasis is given to the social interactions between the child and adults or the child's peers during a science learning experience (e.g., Ravanis and Bagakis [<reflink idref="bib159" id="ref51">159</reflink>]). Second, there are <emph>sociocultural perspectives</emph> where social and cultural reality is understood as the critical framework that shapes the process of the child's learning and development in science. From this perspective, the emphasis is given to the social‐mediated activities and the mediating cultural artifacts through which the child makes sense of their natural and technical world (e.g., O'loughlin [<reflink idref="bib148" id="ref52">148</reflink>]; Robbins [<reflink idref="bib160" id="ref53">160</reflink>]). Third, <emph>cultural‐historical perspectives</emph> conceptualize learning and development in science as a dialectical interrelation between the child and their social and cultural environment (e.g., Fleer and Pramling [<reflink idref="bib70" id="ref54">70</reflink>]; Fragkiadaki, Fleer, and Ravanis [<reflink idref="bib75" id="ref55">75</reflink>]; Fragkiadaki, Fleer, and Rai [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref56">71</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref57">72</reflink>]; Roth, Goulart, and Plakitsi [<reflink idref="bib161" id="ref58">161</reflink>]). This perspective emphasizes how scientific thinking forms, changes, and develops as a social relation.</p> <p>The arguments we advance in this article draw particularly on and follow a cultural‐historical perspective in order to theorize the significant concepts of <emph>imagination</emph> and <emph>creativity</emph> in children's science engagement, learning, and development. We also discuss the critical role of these concepts in science education and the child's science experiences within diverse formal educational settings over their life.</p> <p>A cultural‐historical approach in learning and development is largely based on the theory and methodology initially developed by Vygotsky ([<reflink idref="bib183" id="ref59">183</reflink>]) and Leontiev ([<reflink idref="bib130" id="ref60">130</reflink>]). The core idea of this theorizing is the social and cultural genesis of the higher psychological functions and the conceptualization of the person and their environment as an unseparated and dynamic unit that develops as a whole. From this theoretical standpoint, development relates to the systemic transformation and the qualitative changes in this unity. Learning is conceptualized and understood as a dialectic interrelation between the child and the social and cultural reality the child is experiencing in a personalized and unique way. In other words, the environment is not considered just as a factor that affects development, following a cause‐and‐effect relation, but as the source of development (Vygotsky [[<reflink idref="bib185" id="ref61">185</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib182" id="ref62">182</reflink>]]). In this dialectical framework, the child is studied as they are engaging in different societal practices and participating in different social settings, institutions, and cultural contexts, such as family, school, peer groups, and the wider community (Hedegaard [<reflink idref="bib108" id="ref63">108</reflink>]; Hedegaard and Fleer [<reflink idref="bib109" id="ref64">109</reflink>]). Central to this framework are the concepts of imagination and creativity as dynamic elements in understanding children's learning and development. The essence of these concepts and the way they can be interrelated with children's engagement, learning, and development in science are now discussed in turn.</p> <p>Vygotsky ([[<reflink idref="bib181" id="ref65">181</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib186" id="ref66">186</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib184" id="ref67">184</reflink>]]) conceptualized imagination as a higher mental function with an essential and critical role in the process of a child's learning and development. In his fundamental writing <emph>Imagination and Creativity in Childhood</emph> he argued</p> <p>[...] imagination takes on a very important function in human behavior and human development. It becomes the means by which a person's experience is broadened, because he [sic] can imagine what he has not seen, can conceptualize something from another person's narration and description of what he himself has never directly experienced. He is not limited to the narrow circle and narrow boundaries of his own experience but can venture far beyond these boundaries, assimilating, with the help of his imagination someone else's historical or social experience. In this form, imagination is a completely essential condition for almost all human mental activity.</p> <p>(Vygotsky [<reflink idref="bib184" id="ref68">184</reflink>], p. 17).</p> <p>Following Vygotsky's conceptualization, imagination is understood as an abstract and intellectual means that allows us to transform reality, create new meanings and new ways of thinking as well as new ways of activity. In line with Vygotsky's conceptualization, as discussed by Zittoun ([<reflink idref="bib192" id="ref69">192</reflink>]), imagination is also understood as a means to expand reality beyond a given space, time, convention, or norm (e.g., Zittoun and Cerchia [<reflink idref="bib193" id="ref70">193</reflink>]). Thus, rather than being a barrier to forming understandings about the world, imagination is understood as a key aspect of a child's conceptual thinking that amplifies learning and boosts development.</p> <p>Although imagination is widely studied as a developed function, less is known about the onset and early development of imagination. However, special attention is being given currently in the literature to the early genesis of imagination (Fleer, Fragkiadaki, and Rai [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref71">69</reflink>]; Fragkiadaki, Fleer and Ravanis [<reflink idref="bib76" id="ref72">76</reflink>]; Fragkiadaki and Ravanis [<reflink idref="bib77" id="ref73">77</reflink>]). The main outcomes of these recent studies are that imagination, as a higher mental function, begins during infancy and the genesis of imagination has a social and cultural character. In contrast to Vygotsky's conceptualization of the onset of imagination later in the individual's life, significant evidence (Fleer, Fragkiadaki, and Rai [<reflink idref="bib69" id="ref74">69</reflink>]; Fragkiadaki, Fleer, and Rai [<reflink idref="bib71" id="ref75">71</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib72" id="ref76">72</reflink>]) shows that imagination is present in the very early years, that is pre‐1–3 years, and develops over time as the child grows up becoming a toddler and a preschooler. These new understandings allow us to think of imagination as an ongoing and ever‐changing psychological process that develops throughout the child's overall developmental pathway, and has important implications for formal school science in later years.</p> <p>Vygotsky interrelated the psychological function of imagination with the function of creativity. He defines creativity as "any human act that gives rise to something new is referred to as a creative act, regardless of whether what is created is a physical object or some mental or emotional construct that lives within the person who created it and is known only to him [sic]" (Vygotsky [<reflink idref="bib184" id="ref77">184</reflink>], p. 7). Creativity is conceptualized as the synthesis of elements in a way that gives an insight into new ways of thinking and new ways of acting. That is why Vygotsky argued that "creativity is seen as an essential condition for existence" (Vygotsky [<reflink idref="bib184" id="ref78">184</reflink>], p. 11). Like imagination, creativity constitutes a shift from the concrete and present forms toward the more abstract, developed, and ideal forms. Thus, creativity is also understood as a fundamental aspect for learning and development.</p> <p>As psychological functions, imagination, and creativity are dialectically interrelated with each other and so their development is intertwined. One cannot be separated from the other. In order to imagine, you need to synthesize elements in a new way that does not already exist in one's reality. In order to be creative, you need to go beyond the given and reconceptualize what is available in a new way. This dialectic interrelation is as critical for everyday life as it is critical for learning and development in educational settings.</p> <p>To position children as active students and critical thinkers, this interrelation is critical. If the essence of learning and development is to generate and sustain new types of thinking and more advanced understandings, this cannot come into praxis without imagining and being creative. Thus, what lies behind quality learning experiences over time is neither the accumulation of knowledge nor the experience of a wide range of diverse activities. Quality learning experiences require imagination and creativity to disconnect thinking from the specific and make knowledge and activities meaningful and feasible in different contexts, and thus sustainable and engaging over time. This is the key point we will revisit later in this paper as we apply the three perspectives to address the issue of "what science and how to foster student engagement with that science."</p> <p>The value of imagination in education and the context of formal school systems, as well as the interrelation between imagination and school science, were first introduced and discussed by Egan (see e.g., Egan [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref79">49</reflink>]). Egan's theorizing on imagination as part of the broader educational experience of the child challenged public education agendas in which</p> <p>imagination seems something of a frill; containing value, no doubt, but a value left to 'the arts' rather than to the more central purposes of a public system that is paid for by people who often have objectives for their investment in mind that are more specific.</p> <p>(Egan, Stout, and Takaya [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref80">50</reflink>], p. 4).</p> <p>Hadzigeorgiou ([<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref81">93</reflink>]) also has highlighted the central and critical role of imagination and creativity in teaching and learning approaches in science education and school science. His main argument emerges through the conceptualization of the nature of science per se. He argues that "science learning should reflect the nature of science, and therefore be approached as an imaginative/creative activity" (2016, p. 1). Elaborating further on the above argument, Hadzigeorgiou ([<reflink idref="bib96" id="ref82">96</reflink>]) position imaginative skills and creativity as a pivot in science teaching and learning processes. They argue that "[g]iven that imagination and creativity are considered central to the nature of science, a good science education cannot help but foster students' imaginative skills and creativity" (Hadzigeorgiou [<reflink idref="bib96" id="ref83">96</reflink>], p. 609). In line with these arguments, three key features for imaginative approaches in science emerge (see also Hadzigeorgiou [<reflink idref="bib93" id="ref84">93</reflink>]).</p> <p>First is the feature of "wondering." Hadzigeorgiou ([<reflink idref="bib96" id="ref85">96</reflink>]) argues that wonder, understood as a complex sense of conscious curiosity, doubting, excitement, surprise, astonishment, and awareness, can lead to increased degrees of involvement, and conscious and sustainable learning in science, especially for students considered as outsiders or underachievers.</p> <p>Second is the feature of "romantic science" (Hadzigeorgiou [<reflink idref="bib90" id="ref86">90</reflink>], as originally argued by Egan [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref87">49</reflink>]). Hadzigeorgiou ([<reflink idref="bib90" id="ref88">90</reflink>]) and Hadzigeorgiou and Schulz ([<reflink idref="bib95" id="ref89">95</reflink>]) touch upon this aspect of science in order to introduce an approach to science based on a personalized relationship between the individual and the conception of science that allows the student to connect science with their reality in a meaningful way. As Hadzigeorgiou and Schulz ([<reflink idref="bib95" id="ref90">95</reflink>]) argue, introducing the main ideas inspired by the movement of Romanticism</p> <p>can make school science more engaging, more holistic, and more in line with a science dedicated to the study of nature in a morally acceptable way. And most importantly, it is these ideas that can help both science teachers and students to look at science through many more lenses than through the mathematical or the utilitarian lens.</p> <p>(p. 1999).</p> <p>This is how students can be deeply and truly engaged with science through authentic, real life, and meaningful experiences.</p> <p>Third is the feature of "storytelling." Hadzigeorgiou ([<reflink idref="bib91" id="ref91">91</reflink>]) also introduced storytelling as a teaching practice to approach science in a way that becomes engaging and meaningful to children. He argues that "storytelling can be considered a way to humanise the teaching and learning of science, and physics in particular. The ideas to be learned can be incorporated into the plot of a story" (2006, p. 42). This teaching‐learning practice allows students to construct understandings for science and knowledge of the nature of science as well as creating the conditions for their social and emotional development through the esthetics of storytelling. The core idea that lies behind the aforementioned three key features of wonder, romantic science, and storytelling, is that quality learning and teaching experiences in science require the actuation and utilization of the higher psychological functions of imagination and creativity.</p> <p>But how can imagination be incorporated into everyday educational reality from the very early beginnings of a child's school life, and how can this be connected with young learners' reality and needs? Fleer ([[<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref92">65</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref93">67</reflink>]]) has introduced a teaching and learning model of practice created to support young children's learning and development in science and in STEM through play‐based settings. Known in the literature as the <emph>Fleer's Conceptual PlayWorlds</emph> model, the model guides children and teachers through experiences that are playful and meaningful for the participants, and are experiences designed to create amplified conditions for the formation of science and STEM concepts. According to Fleer's model (Fleer [<reflink idref="bib65" id="ref94">65</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib66" id="ref95">66</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib67" id="ref96">67</reflink>]), there are five key characteristics of a <emph>Conceptual PlayWorld</emph> (Monash University [<reflink idref="bib144" id="ref97">144</reflink>]).</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. <emph>Selecting a story for the imaginary play:</emph> a story inspired by a children's book, a myth, or an oral narration, acts as the baseline for a <emph>Conceptual PlayWorld</emph>. Selecting a story that engages children in emotionally charged situations and scenarios is critical. Drama is a key asset for an engaging story, thus allowing tensions and crises to emerge in the plot. The dramatic aspect of the story can stimulate children's interest, create empathy for the characters, and activate children's imagination. It is important that the story is relevant to the children's age, their interest, and their overall experiences in everyday and school life.</item> <p></p> <item> 2. <emph>Designing the imaginary spaces:</emph> children and their teachers design a space where their imaginary play, as inspired by the chosen story, is developed. The space can be physical or/and symbolic, indoors or/and outdoors, based in one room or/and a whole early childhood center/section of a school. The space could be extended, expanded, and transformed throughout children's play.</item> <p></p> <item> 3. <emph>Entering and exiting the imaginary situation</emph>: children and the teachers select a character from the story. Both children and the teachers enter the imaginary play pretending they are these characters.</item> <p></p> <item> 4. <emph>Planning a problem to be solved:</emph> children and the teachers are searching for the resolution key in the drama of the story. In this framework, a need to explore, form, and use STEM concepts emerges. The use of these concepts could provide answers to the problematic situations the characters are experiencing.</item> <p></p> <item> 5. <emph>Planning the role the teacher will take in the imaginary play:</emph> the teachers join the children's imaginary play as play partners. They follow and support children's investigations, and/or they investigate with the children as co‐explorers, and/or they are leading an inquiry posing critical questions and making suggestions.</item> </ulist> <p>There is a now wide variety of available resources about the Conceptual PlayWorld (e.g., text, videos; see Monash University [<reflink idref="bib144" id="ref98">144</reflink>]). This range includes a number of specific examples already developed and successfully used in preschool settings and a sequence designed for those who want to learn more about the approach and its implementation.</p> <p>This model of practice provides a flexible and well‐supported learning environment for young children to form science and STEM concepts using their imagination and creativity. At the same time, it provides a pedagogical framework for the teachers to approach and teach science in a way that is related to what matters for the children and what is relevant and meaningful to their real life.</p> <p>The learning environment led by imagination and play should not be conceptualized as contradictory to inquiry‐based approaches. On the contrary, it creates a framework that allows children to connect inquiry‐based approaches with their world in a way that is socially oriented, culturally charged, and personally meaningful.</p> <p>We now turn to our second perspective as a way to address "what science and how to foster student engagement with that science."</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-7">Second Perspective: Inquiry‐Based Approaches</hd> <p>The case for inquiry‐based approaches to re‐engage students in school science education is considered in the following six sections. To begin, we introduce the idea and history of inquiry. We then consider issues of student engagement in school science, the continuum of inquiry‐based approaches, and the potential and actual implementation of inquiry in school science classrooms, in relation to enabling imagination and creativity throughout K‐12 school science education.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-8">What Is Inquiry?</hd> <p>Science inquiry has been an essential feature in many science classrooms for well over a century. In science education, it is a term that has been broadly applied to refer to both a content‐specific instructional approach (e.g., skills, procedural knowledge), and an active discipline‐specific learning process (e.g., Abd‐El‐Khalick, Lederman, and Schwartz [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref99">1</reflink>]). In contrast to recipe‐like approaches, inquiry involves a more open approach to exploration, where students learn by collecting and using evidence, and engaging in activities to test ways of explaining the phenomenon under study (Harlen and Bell [<reflink idref="bib103" id="ref100">103</reflink>]). Throughout this process, students draw on direct experience, refer to resources, including experts, and engage in discussions and debates to develop reasoning skills (Harlen and Allende [<reflink idref="bib102" id="ref101">102</reflink>]).</p> <p>This iterative process is more reflective of how science is actually practiced, drawing on the provisional and collaborative nature of knowledge, and justification through evidence‐based reasoning (American Association for the Advancement of Science [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref102">9</reflink>]; Cirkony [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref103">28</reflink>]; Schweingruber, Keller, and Quinn [<reflink idref="bib165" id="ref104">165</reflink>]). In general, this approach involves the teacher guiding an exploration of a phenomenon through a series of open‐ended questions and facilitating class discussions and activities (Harlen and Allende [<reflink idref="bib102" id="ref105">102</reflink>]). The inquiry‐based approach challenges the more transmissive methods that view science exploration as a single prescribed method.</p> <p>Drawing on DeBoer ([<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref106">35</reflink>]) and Abd‐El‐Khalick, Lederman, and Schwartz ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref107">1</reflink>]), we distinguish the four key facets of inquiry: scientific inquiry, inquiry teaching, inquiry learning, inquiry as content:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. Scientific inquiry describes how scientists conduct their practice as they explore the natural world.</item> <p></p> <item> 2. Inquiry teaching encompasses the instructional approaches (i.e., pedagogy) used to facilitate science content learning.</item> <p></p> <item> 3. Inquiry learning involves an active process of learning where students construct understandings in ways similar to how scientists develop claims to scientific knowledge.</item> <p></p> <item> 4. Inquiry as content encompasses the skills, procedural knowledge, habits of mind, and subject matter associated with school science.</item> </ulist> <p>With this backdrop, we briefly outline the history of inquiry in school science.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-9">History of Inquiry</hd> <p>As early as 1864, there were calls to include inquiry‐based science in the school curriculum: "Children should be led to make their own investigations, and to draw their own inferences. They should be told as little as possible, and induced to discover as much as possible" (Spencer [<reflink idref="bib173" id="ref108">173</reflink>], p. 124–125, as quoted in DeBoer [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref109">35</reflink>]). Since then, there have been pendulum swings between inquiry as content versus inquiry as process (Abd‐El‐Khalick, Lederman, and Schwartz [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref110">1</reflink>], p. 513). In the 1900s, school science inquiry was considered a general method that can be applied to a broad range of social problems that could be studied in the classroom (DeBoer [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref111">35</reflink>]). American philosopher, psychologist, educational reformer, and polymath, John Dewey ([<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref112">38</reflink>]) was an advocate for the social applications of science, as part of a democratic society, and a proponent of child‐centered approaches with cooperative group inquiry. He proposed that scientific knowledge should be learned alongside inquiry practices (Dewey [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref113">37</reflink>]). Along similar lines, Smith and Hall ([<reflink idref="bib170" id="ref114">170</reflink>], in DeBoer [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref115">35</reflink>]) argued for the practical need for guided discovery approaches.</p> <p>In the 1950s, the focus school science was influenced by national security and economic development, resulting in an emphasis on content. During this period, science pedagogy was characterized by direct teaching or teacher‐led inquiry intended to support scientific content understanding, with investigations focusing on that content (DeBoer [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref116">35</reflink>]). Around this time, Schwab ([<reflink idref="bib163" id="ref117">163</reflink>]) proposed that scientific content and scientific processes were interconnected and inseparable, though the former was given priority. Further, he emphasized the tentative nature of science and the fluid nature of scientific investigations.</p> <p>In the 1970s, there was a shift back to school science focusing on socioscientific issues. The notion of scientific literacy was characterized by the Science‐Technology‐Society (STS) framework (DeBoer [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref118">35</reflink>]). School science emphasized the development of broad and practical understandings. Student‐led inquiry focused on socioscientific issues (e.g., global warming), and involved problem‐solving and decision‐making at the classroom and community level. In the 1990s, Project 2061 produced <emph>Science for All Americans</emph> (American Association for the Advancement of Science [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref119">9</reflink>]), a long‐term research and development initiative proposing a comprehensive approach to school science and highlighting key concepts for science curricula, skills that were more reflective of authentic science practices, as well as approaches for assessment.</p> <p>Recent global policy developments have advocated the development of scientific literacy, an idea widely seen to involve students' ability to engage as a reflective citizen with science‐related issues, and with the ideas of science (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [<reflink idref="bib150" id="ref120">150</reflink>]). According to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [<reflink idref="bib150" id="ref121">150</reflink>]), scientific literacy involves three competencies: <emph>explaining phenomena scientifically</emph> (content knowledge), <emph>evaluating and designing scientific enquiry</emph> (procedural knowledge), and <emph>interpreting data and evidence scientifically</emph> (epistemic knowledge).</p> <p>Three additional knowledge areas have been proposed: socioenvironmental systems and sustainability, the development of scientific knowledge and its misuse, and informatics (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [<reflink idref="bib153" id="ref122">153</reflink>]). These developments are consistent with the calls to re‐orient science education reform as "science for society instead of science for economy" (Avraamidou [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref123">16</reflink>], p. 415). Further, these policy directions highlight the need for school science to integrate authentic science inquiry, creativity, and critical thinking (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [<reflink idref="bib153" id="ref124">153</reflink>]), and provide domain‐specific assessment strategies (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [<reflink idref="bib151" id="ref125">151</reflink>]). These ideas are also consistent with the notion of "authentic science inquiry," which involves flexibility and imagination, the application of multiple methods and approaches for difference purposes, the provisional and collaborative nature of knowledge, and the use of evidence‐based reasoning to justify claims (e.g., Cirkony [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref126">28</reflink>]; DeBoer [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref127">35</reflink>]; Harlen [<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref128">97</reflink>]; Osborne and Hennessy [<reflink idref="bib156" id="ref129">156</reflink>]; Schweingruber, Keller, and Quinn [<reflink idref="bib165" id="ref130">165</reflink>]).</p> <p>We agree that process (i.e., nature of science) and product (i.e., scientific knowledge) are interconnected (DeBoer [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref131">35</reflink>]; Harlen [<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref132">97</reflink>]; Schwab [<reflink idref="bib163" id="ref133">163</reflink>]). To support this interconnection, we suggest an important role for inquiry‐based pedagogies that seek to emulate scientific inquiry. Next, we discuss the impact of such approaches.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-10">Impact of Inquiry‐Based Approaches</hd> <p>There has been a relatively long‐standing support for inquiry‐based approaches to support learning and improve student engagement in science (Harlen and Allende [<reflink idref="bib102" id="ref134">102</reflink>]; Furtak et al. [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref135">82</reflink>]). Large‐scale studies have reported that such approaches have a positive impact on student engagement with and attitude toward science (e.g., Furtak et al. [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref136">82</reflink>]; Kang and Keinonen [<reflink idref="bib123" id="ref137">123</reflink>]; Minner, Levy, and Century [<reflink idref="bib142" id="ref138">142</reflink>]; Potvin and Hasni [<reflink idref="bib157" id="ref139">157</reflink>]). A meta‐analysis of 37 experimental and quasi‐experimental studies on the impact of inquiry‐based reforms on student learning indicated an effect size of 0.50 for guided‐inquiry‐based teaching approaches (Furtak et al. [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref140">82</reflink>]). Another study involved an analysis of the effect of student‐centered approaches on student interest and achievement, drawing on the 2006 Finnish student‐level PISA data. The findings indicated that students become more interested in science when experiencing more guided inquiry learning and a connection between school science and their real‐life situation (Kang and Keinonen [<reflink idref="bib123" id="ref141">123</reflink>]).</p> <p>In a research synthesis of 138 studies of inquiry‐based science education, most studies showed positive impacts of inquiry science instruction on student content learning and retention (Minner, Levy, and Century [<reflink idref="bib142" id="ref142">142</reflink>]). Similarly, in a systematic review of 17 studies, the effect of inquiry‐based learning on student interest, motivation, and attitude toward science and technology was investigated (Potvin and Hasni [<reflink idref="bib157" id="ref143">157</reflink>]). Their analysis showed that most inquiry‐based or problem‐based interventions had positive effects on student interest, motivation, and attitude, while hands‐on activities which did not require as much reflection did not.</p> <p>However, other studies have reported a mixed impact of inquiry‐based approaches on student achievement (e.g., Cairns and Areepattamannil [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref144">22</reflink>]; Hattie [<reflink idref="bib107" id="ref145">107</reflink>]; McConney et al. [<reflink idref="bib137" id="ref146">137</reflink>]). A synthesis of meta‐analyses of over 50,000 studies on the impact of inquiry‐based teaching indicated an effect size of 0.31, where a minimum of 0.40 is usually accepted as needed in order to claim an improvement (Hattie [<reflink idref="bib107" id="ref147">107</reflink>]). Another large study involved an analysis of the impact of inquiry‐oriented learning on student scientific literacy and interest, drawing on the 2006 PISA data from over 40,000 students from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Students who reported high levels of inquiry‐oriented learning activities in science were reported to have above‐average levels of interest in learning science, and above‐average engagement with science, but below‐average levels of science literacy (McConney et al. [<reflink idref="bib137" id="ref148">137</reflink>]). Further, a very large study involving 170,474 15‐year‐old students from 4780 schools in 54 countries across the globe examined the relations of inquiry‐based science teaching to science achievement and dispositions toward science (Cairns and Areepattamannil [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref149">22</reflink>]). A hierarchical linear modeling analysis indicated improved dispositions but decreased achievement (Cairns and Areepattamannil [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref150">22</reflink>]).</p> <p>These studies indicate that while inquiry‐based teaching leads to improved student dispositions toward science, it does not necessarily translate to improved cognitive learning. Achievement tends to be associated with the epistemic domains of inquiry (Minner, Levy, and Century [<reflink idref="bib142" id="ref151">142</reflink>]; Furtak et al. [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref152">82</reflink>]) or with approaches that provide greater levels of teacher guidance (Furtak et al. [<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref153">82</reflink>]). These discrepancies are suggestive of the complexities of this approach and the challenges with measuring its impact on students' learning.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-11">Understanding the Impact of Inquiry‐Based Approaches</hd> <p>Rather than using the studies just discussed to discount the impact of inquiry, it is important to acknowledge the complexities involved with learning through such pedagogies. The mixed impact of inquiry‐based approaches is likely due to issues in research design, the evaluation of student learning, and implementation. Research designs need to specify the nature (and quality) of such approaches in order to make relevant comparisons. For example, in the meta‐analysis carried out by Furtak et al. ([<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref154">82</reflink>]) considered above, the level of teacher guidance varied, from teacher‐led instruction to fully student‐led activities (e.g., discovery). Further, some studies evaluated different conceptual elements or domains of inquiry‐based teaching, likely impacting the quality of instruction students are experiencing and hence raising serious issues about the validity of their conclusions. Thus, the level of teacher guidance (e.g., scaffolding) is one important factor when discussing the effectiveness of inquiry‐based teaching. In a more consistent approach, Jiang and McComas ([<reflink idref="bib120" id="ref155">120</reflink>]) divided student inquiry activities into five levels based on the level of autonomy given to students in conducting activities, designing investigations, drawing conclusions, and asking questions. Others, such as Kang and Keinonen ([<reflink idref="bib123" id="ref156">123</reflink>]) distinguish between guided and open‐inquiry learning when comparing student achievement and interest.</p> <p>A second issue associated with the impact of inquiry‐based approaches concerns how to assess the quality of student learning in response to these approaches. Harlen ([<reflink idref="bib98" id="ref157">98</reflink>]) has pointed out that there is limited quantitative evidence on the impact of inquiry on student learning, and that the assessment of learning through inquiry‐based approaches is underdeveloped. Further, she contended that approaches are difficult to assess by conventional methods in the classroom because they have a range of goals, are context dependent, and require the demonstration of active student engagement in inquiry skills/practices, along with science sense‐making processes (Harlen [<reflink idref="bib98" id="ref158">98</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib101" id="ref159">101</reflink>]). Thus, assessing inquiry involves multiple sources of evidence over time, such as performance, observations, and portfolios (Harlen [<reflink idref="bib101" id="ref160">101</reflink>]). In essence, the lack of consistency in understanding and applying inquiry‐based approaches likely impacts how the learning is assessed, leading to discrepant outcomes across the studies.</p> <p>A third issue concerns the skill‐level of those who implement inquiry in their classrooms. Inquiry‐based approaches have been shown to be demanding on teachers (Tytler et al. [<reflink idref="bib180" id="ref161">180</reflink>]; Xu, Prain, and Speldewinde [<reflink idref="bib191" id="ref162">191</reflink>]). For example, teachers need to facilitate learning and engagement in science practice rather than direct instruction (Eberbach and Hmelo‐Silver [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref163">48</reflink>]). Such approaches require appropriate professional development and resources for teachers, including clear definitions of inquiry‐based teaching, scaffolds for approaches and questioning, and the time to implement it in their classroom (Fitzgerald, Danaia, and McKinnon [<reflink idref="bib64" id="ref164">64</reflink>]; Melville [<reflink idref="bib139" id="ref165">139</reflink>]).</p> <p>In summary, inquiry‐based approaches show promise in improving student interest and engagement in science. Guided approaches, rather than open inquiry, tend to be correlated with improvement in student achievement, while more open forms of inquiry tend to lead to increased student engagement with science. However, issues in research design, the complexities of assessing student learning through inquiry, and the quality of teacher implementation may all impact our current understanding of such approaches. The following considers some practical approaches to inquiry‐based pedagogies.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-12">Science as a Continuum of Inquiry</hd> <p>At the beginning of this section, we referred to inquiry approaches involving the teacher guiding an exploration of phenomena. We now elaborate what we mean by "guidance." Here, we draw on Schwab ([<reflink idref="bib163" id="ref166">163</reflink>]), who outlined four levels of teacher guidance: confirmation (involving the most strongly guided by the teacher), structured, guided, and open inquiry. Confirmation inquiry involves providing students with the task and procedure, with the results known in advance. Structured inquiry involves providing students with the question and procedure, where they have to generate an explanation supported by the evidence they have collected. Guided inquiry involves providing students with the research question and they then design a procedure to test the question and generate explanations. Open inquiry requires students to derive questions, design and carry out investigations, and communicate their results; that is, there is no prescribed target or result.</p> <p>Along similar lines, Furtak et al. ([<reflink idref="bib82" id="ref167">82</reflink>]) describe inquiry‐based teaching "as part of a continuum of guidance" of teacher‐led and student‐led activities (p. 306). According to Melville ([<reflink idref="bib139" id="ref168">139</reflink>]) the complexity of a student task is determined by the amount of information provided to students, the level of teacher guidance, and the ability of the students. At one end of the continuum, students are provided with limited choice in a closed investigation. That is, they are given the question, the materials, and the expected results. At the other end, the activities are open, where students are expected to develop their own question and design their own investigation. In between these extremes, guided approaches involve students developing their own investigation in response to a question provided by the teacher. The guided approach is often claimed to be most suitable for school settings (Eberbach and Hmelo‐Silver [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref169">48</reflink>]) because students require scaffolding to become proficient (Melville [<reflink idref="bib139" id="ref170">139</reflink>]).</p> <p>Importantly, all levels of inquiry have a role in preschool and school classroom settings (Eberbach and Hmelo‐Silver [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref171">48</reflink>]). Each level helps to prepare students' knowledge and skills to negotiate the more authentic aspects of scientific inquiry, including imagination, creativity, and knowledge construction processes. The final section highlights how guided approaches support these aspects of authentic science inquiry.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-13">Imagination and Creativity in Authentic Inquiry Approaches</hd> <p>In contrast to much of school science, authentic scientific inquiry does not involve a series of fixed set of steps that all scientists follow, nor is knowledge static: scientific knowledge is dependent on available evidence and as such may change as new evidence emerges (American Association for the Advancement of Science [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref172">9</reflink>]). Authentic inquiry requires imagination and creativity, draws on the provisional and collaborative nature of knowledge, and uses evidence‐based reasoning to justify claims (Harlen [<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref173">97</reflink>]; Schweingruber, Keller, and Quinn [<reflink idref="bib165" id="ref174">165</reflink>]). Imagination and creativity are considered central to science (Hadzigeorgiou, Fokialis, and Kabouropoulou [<reflink idref="bib94" id="ref175">94</reflink>]; Osborne and Hennessy [<reflink idref="bib156" id="ref176">156</reflink>]) and are needed in all stages of scientific investigations (Wong and Hodson [<reflink idref="bib190" id="ref177">190</reflink>]). Thus, science is thought to involve the interplay of creativity and rationality (Kind and Kind [<reflink idref="bib125" id="ref178">125</reflink>]), as a blend of logic and imagination (American Association for the Advancement of Science [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref179">9</reflink>]). According to Gunstone ([<reflink idref="bib86" id="ref180">86</reflink>]), science is both empirical and nonempirical, both logical and speculative, and both methodical and creative. Educational researchers today are reaffirming the need for classroom curriculum reform that emulates the creativity and dynamic interactions inherent in authentic scientific inquiry (Cirkony [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref181">28</reflink>]; Eberbach and Hmelo‐Silver [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref182">48</reflink>]; Osborne and Dillon [<reflink idref="bib155" id="ref183">155</reflink>]).</p> <p>Thus, inquiry‐based teaching requires a balanced approach where science teachers make informed judgments about the nature of guidance their students need to be able to undertake activities within practical time and resource constraints, while retaining the authenticity, flexibility, and creativity that can represent scientific inquiry. The implementation of such active approaches requires careful consideration of the content. According to Harlen ([<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref184">97</reflink>]), "identifying big ideas in science is a natural, and indeed necessary, accompaniment to promoting inquiry‐based science education" (p. 3).</p> <p>As part of the multifaceted reform required to address the challenge of content and engagement in science education, inquiry‐based approaches have shown promise. However, to do this well also requires a rethinking of curricula. We turn now to our third perspective, one rather different approach which we believe can point to ways curricula may be organized to better accommodate inquiry‐based approaches, and embrace creativity and imagination, along with student intellectual and affective engagement with science.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-14">Third Perspective: Curriculum, Didaktik, and Bildung</hd> <p>Central to any form of education are decisions about what those who are to learn should learn, and how those who are to teach should enable learners to learn that which has been decided. In the English‐speaking world, both the whole of the process adopted for making such decisions and the results of these decisions are ubiquitously described with some form of labeling that includes, or very often is solely, the single‐word <emph>curriculum</emph>. However, and as has been elaborated by many scholars from the English‐speaking world in the past, curriculum is not the only way of fundamentally conceptualizing and implementing decisions about what to teach to learners and how to teach this. Of particular importance to the arguments we now advance is the European construct of <emph>Didaktik</emph>, in particular the extensive German articulation of <emph>Didaktik</emph> and the closely associated and also extremely well‐developed and still complex construct of <emph>Bildung</emph>.</p> <p>In choosing to discuss these constructs we are conscious that while the construct of <emph>Didaktik</emph> is widely used throughout continental Europe, it is used there with variations in meanings in different European countries (and with mildly different spellings). Duit et al. ([<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref185">44</reflink>]) make this point about variations in meanings strongly, and also observe that "[t]he tradition that has developed in the German‐speaking countries has been rather influential, at least in continental European countries" (p. 435). This greater impact of the German interpretation has also been influential on one of us for many years, both through reading and direct contact with German researchers in science education, and it is this interpretation (and spelling) that we now consider. It is also relevant for our subsequent discussion here that, as Duit et al. ([<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref186">43</reflink>]) further note, "[t]he German terms <emph>Bildung</emph> and <emph>Didaktik</emph> are difficult to translate into English" (p. 16). Duit et al. ([<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref187">43</reflink>]) then elaborate this point.</p> <p>There have been many English‐language analyses and other discussions of curriculum and <emph>Didaktik</emph> over the last three decades (e.g., Fensham [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref188">57</reflink>]; Tahirsylaj, Niebert, and Duschl [<reflink idref="bib174" id="ref189">174</reflink>]; Westbury [<reflink idref="bib187" id="ref190">187</reflink>]). A review of these many and extensive analyses is not the core purpose of this article. Instead, we give a brief outline of a few of the issues central to our subsequent short separate discussions of each of <emph>curriculum, Didaktik</emph>, and <emph>Bildung</emph>.</p> <p>As an early exploration of some of these issues, Fensham ([<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref191">53</reflink>]) interviewed a number of those who had worked on the development of large‐scale school curriculum projects in the sciences in each of USA, Europe, and Australia. He concluded that the <emph>determining authority</emph> for the curriculum in practice in these specific countries was, respectively, the textbook (USA), the teacher (Europe), and the particular education system's curriculum committee comprising academic scientists and their acolytes, and other leading science teachers (Australia). The significance of his findings was that in Europe, the determining authority for the curriculum in practice was essentially internal to the school/classroom (e.g., the teacher). Whereas, while the determining authority were explicitly external to the school/classroom, and so the curriculum was effectively imposed on school/classroom. In the 1990s, Fensham ([<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref192">57</reflink>]) notes, the location of curriculum authority was thoroughly explored in discussions between academics from North America and Germany about the role of subject content in each of the "curriculum" and "Didaktik/Bildung" traditions (e.g., Hopmann and Riquarts [<reflink idref="bib116" id="ref193">116</reflink>]). He observed:</p> <p>[w]ith respect to the locus of authority for curriculum and its teaching, these two traditions have some significant differences. For convenience, they can be labelled Anglo‐American and Germanic. In the Anglo‐American tradition, schooling is primarily about inducting the learner into authoritatively established bodies of knowledge and their ways of thinking and behaving, whereas in the Germanic tradition, schooling draws on similar knowledge sources but is primarily concerned with the development (<emph>bildung</emph>) of the whole personality of the learner.</p> <p>(Fensham [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref194">57</reflink>], p. 1082)</p> <p>Fischler, a prominent German physics education researcher, wrote in 2011 that there had been a marginalization of content in the perceptions of teachers and in the activities of science education researchers, and that three factors had contributed to this marginalization. The first of these factors, he argued, derived from "the Anglo‐American curriculum tradition" (Fischler [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref195">62</reflink>], p. 31), a descriptor he used in a manner completely consistent with the two traditions quote from Fensham ([<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref196">57</reflink>]) above. Fischler ([<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref197">62</reflink>]) describes the central feature of the curriculum tradition that has had this effect of contributing to the marginalization of content: "In this curriculum tradition a division of labour takes place in which curriculum experts formulate content standards independently of the practitioners responsible for the teaching and learning of the content" (p. 31).</p> <p>He goes on to describe the role of teachers in this "Anglo‐American" model as being to effectively implement a curriculum of content in ways he describes with a quote from Westbury ([<reflink idref="bib188" id="ref198">188</reflink>]): a role "as an agency for the institutionalised teaching of a 'content', seen unproblematically in terms of this or that view of and selection from a subject matter" (p. 62). Doyle ([<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref199">39</reflink>]), in writing a reflective account of the subsequent consequences in the United States of the discussions two decades earlier between academics from North America and Germany about the different role of content in each of the two traditions (Hopmann and Riquarts [<reflink idref="bib116" id="ref200">116</reflink>]), is much more direct:</p> <p>In the US [i.e. Anglo‐American] tradition, content is often seen as (a) a given that does not need to be analyzed and (b) inert, i.e., unchanging as it passes from curricular documents through classrooms to pupils (and even to standardized tests). Within this frame, school leadership need not be centrally concerned with the content of curriculum. In didaktik, content is fundamental and regulation is ideally normative and intellectual, i.e., it provides tools for teachers to come to pedagogical terms with the contents they teach.</p> <p>(p. 219).</p> <p>The ways content is differently perceived in each of the two traditions, and the locus of authority for determining content to be taught and learned, are central issues for this article and thus for even the brief consideration of each of <emph>Curriculum</emph>, <emph>Didaktik</emph>, and <emph>Bildung</emph> to which we now turn.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-15">Curriculum</hd> <p>The Latin word <emph>curriculum</emph> refers to a <emph>course</emph> or <emph>track</emph>to be followed. In the context of education, where learning is the central activity, the most obvious interpretation of the word curriculum is then to view it as a course or "plan for learning."</p> <p>(van den Akker [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref201">7</reflink>], p. 2; emphasis added)</p> <p>This broad description of curriculum is consistent with the points made above about the role of teachers in the Anglo‐American tradition—in this tradition teachers usually follow a prescribed course. Perhaps as a consequence of this long history of such a meaning many researchers and commentators very helpfully refer to three different forms of curriculum: the <emph>intended</emph> (or planned) curriculum, the <emph>implemented</emph> (or enacted or taught) curriculum, the <emph>attained</emph> (or realized or learned) curriculum (e.g., Orpwood [<reflink idref="bib154" id="ref202">154</reflink>]; van den Akker [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref203">7</reflink>]). Two further forms of the curriculum are also often considered as significant (e.g., Aikenhead [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref204">5</reflink>]; Hildebrand [<reflink idref="bib110" id="ref205">110</reflink>]): the <emph>hidden</emph> and <emph>null</emph> curriculums. The hidden curriculum is the "outcomes from teaching‐learning activities that are not part of the explicit intentions of those responsible for the planning of those activities" (Smith and Lovat [<reflink idref="bib171" id="ref206">171</reflink>], p. 34, as cited by Hildebrand [<reflink idref="bib110" id="ref207">110</reflink>], p. 47). The null curriculum is "what is systematically excluded, neglected or not considered" (Joseph et al. [<reflink idref="bib122" id="ref208">122</reflink>], p. 4, as cited by Hildebrand [<reflink idref="bib110" id="ref209">110</reflink>], p. 47). We note here that each of the hidden and null curricula can arise from the nature and consequences of any of the intended, implemented, or attained curricula.</p> <p>While there are assertions that it is only the intended curriculum that is ever seriously considered, and this was often clearly the case until, at the earliest, immediately post‐World War II, this has become less clear cut over the last three decades. For example, Doyle ([<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref210">40</reflink>]) argued that by that time "curriculum theory has evolved in two directions" with only "[t]he first [having] maintained a separation of curriculum and pedagogy, and so curriculum as no more than the content to be taught, a perspective that is the 'traditional purview of philosophers and specialists in academic disciplines'" (p. 492). Or, as Tanner and Tanner ([<reflink idref="bib176" id="ref211">176</reflink>]) note "Traditionalists [have] continued to see the curriculum as a distillation of the cumulative tradition of organized knowledge" (p. 189).</p> <p>The points made in both the previous paragraphs are quite consistent with the central concerns with the curriculum tradition we express in this article: insufficient attention is given to quite <emph>how</emph> the specific content of the intended curriculum is determined, or the extent to which this content is problematic, or to quite how different approaches to the teaching of that content interact with the specific nature of the content itself. Fensham ([<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref212">55</reflink>]) has, from a different perspective, reinforced this point with his arguments that while approaches to science education research represented in Anglo‐American research reports have placed strong emphasis on learning and improving the ways science is taught, these have mostly failed to recognize (and, therefore, failed to respond in any way to) the problematic nature of the content itself.</p> <p>Benade ([<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref213">19</reflink>]) is one of many authors to observe that this dominant Anglo‐American paradigm "emphasises learning outcomes, achievement objectives, and economic success in a global market" (p. 344), and that a clear alternative is captured by the concepts of <emph>Didaktik</emph> and <emph>Bildung</emph>.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-16">Didaktik</hd> <p>Hopmann ([<reflink idref="bib115" id="ref214">115</reflink>]), writing for a special issue of the <emph>European Education Research Journal</emph> focussed particularly on Didaktik, provides a brief outline of the history and evolution of <emph>Didaktik</emph> (from the origins of the word in classical Greek to the then current day). He also describes the basic differences between the construct and both the Anglo‐American curriculum paradigm and the French construct of <emph>transposition didactique</emph>—a brief account of this French construct is given by Tiberghien and Sensevy ([<reflink idref="bib179" id="ref215">179</reflink>]). Hopmann ([<reflink idref="bib115" id="ref216">115</reflink>]) is clear that the complexities embraced by <emph>Didaktik</emph> and the shades of and variations in meanings for the construct in different contexts mean that "no comprehensive description of Didaktik is intended [in the paper], only a rough sketch of what could be said to be the common core of Didaktik." (p. 110). Hopmann describes this common core as originating in Socrates' <emph>Meno</emph>.</p> <p>The whole argument of the Meno is about whether and how teaching is possible by restraint, and Socrates' well‐known answer is built around the concept of student activity as recollection. The teacher does not overpower the student with knowledge, but helps him [sic] to develop his [sic] own access.</p> <p>(Hopmann [<reflink idref="bib115" id="ref217">115</reflink>], p. 110)</p> <p>Hence, Hopmann characterizes the common core of <emph>Didaktik</emph> as "restrained teaching," with that core "being based on (a) a commitment to Bildung, (b) the educative difference of matter and meaning, and (c) the autonomy of teaching and learning" (Hopmann [<reflink idref="bib115" id="ref218">115</reflink>], p. 109).</p> <p>Duit ([<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref219">42</reflink>]), in his final paragraph of a science education‐focused discussion of <emph>Didaktik</emph>, points more specifically to one critical difference between the curriculum and <emph>Didaktik</emph> traditions in the ways content is considered in each.</p> <p>It seems that attempts to improve science teaching and learning usually put a strong emphasis on improving the way science is taught. There is no doubt that this is essential. However, the Didaktik tradition points out that also the science content itself needs to be seen as "problematic." A content structure for instruction needs to be developed that addresses students' learning needs and capabilities as well as the aims of instruction.</p> <p>(Duit [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref220">42</reflink>], p. 327)</p> <p>Earlier in his discussion from which the quote immediately above comes, and in strong reinforcement of Hopmann's characterization, Duit notes both the breadth of the construct and its symbiotic dependence on <emph>Bildung</emph>.</p> <p>Didaktik as discussed here stands for a multifaceted view of planning and performing instruction. It is based on the German concept of Bildung which refers to the formation of the learner as a whole person. It concerns the analytical process of transposing (or transforming) human knowledge (the cultural heritage) into knowledge for schooling that contributes to Bildung. Clearly, this transposition viewpoint is a key feature of thinking about science instruction in terms of Didaktik.</p> <p>(Duit [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref221">42</reflink>], p. 325–326)</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-17">Bildung</hd> <p>Sjöström et al. ([<reflink idref="bib169" id="ref222">169</reflink>]) have provided a recent and detailed review of the range of meanings that have been given to <emph>Bildung</emph> over the more than 250 years since such ideas were first proposed. The thrust of the review is well represented by the first three sentences of its abstract.</p> <p> <emph>Bildung</emph> is a complex educational concept that emerged in Germany in the mid eighteenth century. Especially in Germany and Scandinavia conceptions of <emph>Bildung</emph> became the general philosophical framework to guide both formal and informal education. <emph>Bildung</emph> concerns the whole range of education from setting educational objectives in general towards its particular operation in different school subjects, among them science education. In more recent years, the concept of <emph>Bildung</emph> has slowly begun to be used in the international science and environmental education literature.</p> <p>(Sjöström et al. [<reflink idref="bib169" id="ref223">169</reflink>], p. 165)</p> <p>It is unquestioned that <emph>Bildung</emph> is a most complex construct, with meanings that have some variance both across different countries and over time. As with <emph>Didaktik</emph>, the ways in which we use <emph>Bildung</emph> in this article are intended to be the ways in which these are used in Northern Europe, in particular by German science educators. Among the work of one of these science educators, Fischler, are two pieces written for Anglo‐American audiences that have been particularly influential on our developing understanding. One of these (Fischler [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref224">63</reflink>]), includes a succinct and valuable account of the evolution of the construct and its beginnings in the writing of Immanual Kant on Enlightenment in the late 1700 s. It is the other, more elaborated, piece from Fischler ([<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref225">62</reflink>]) that we use to present our current understanding.</p> <p>In the German‐speaking countries, and to some extent also in the Northern European countries, Bildung is the central notion describing the process of personal development and the result of this development process. Bildung is more than education; therefore, no English term denotes the concept of Bildung appropriately. Some scholars translate Bildung as "formation," covering the forming of a personality and the product of this formation. It may be helpful for readers who come from the Anglo‐American curriculum tradition to read what an American educational researcher proposes as a valid description after having struggled with numerous attempts to clarify the meaning of Bildung:</p> <p> <emph>Bildung</emph> is a noun meaning something like "being educated, educatedness." It also carries the connotations of the word <emph>bilden</emph>, "to form, to shape." <emph>Bildung</emph> is thus best translated as "formation," implying both the forming of the personality into a unity as well as the product of this formation and the particular "formedness" that is represented <emph>by</emph> the person.</p> <p>(Westbury [<reflink idref="bib189" id="ref226">189</reflink>], p. 24 as cited by Fischler [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref227">62</reflink>], p. 33)</p> <p>Fischler ([<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref228">62</reflink>]) also notes that "[e]ven in the German language it is not possible to find a clear and brief definition of Bildung," and uses the words of Klafki, "the most prominent exponent of a modern conception of Bildung" (p. 33), to elaborate his conception of the nature of the construct.</p> <p>For Klafki, the terms "<emph>self‐determination, freedom, emancipation, autonomy, responsibility, reason</emph>, and <emph>independence</emph>" are crucial notions denoting Bildung (Klafki [<reflink idref="bib127" id="ref229">127</reflink>], p. 87). This set of concepts describing qualities individuals should strive for could be misinterpreted as a portrayal of Bildung as an individualistic conception, but Klafki goes on to say: "... the basic concept of subject‐ or self‐determination is anything but subjective!" (Klafki [<reflink idref="bib127" id="ref230">127</reflink>], p. 88). Bildung is also characterized by a second group of determinants: "<emph>humanity, humankind</emph> and <emph>humaneness, world, objectivity, the general</emph>" (Klafki [<reflink idref="bib127" id="ref231">127</reflink>], p. 88). Bildung, therefore, develops in the interplay between individual attributes, achievements and expectations on the one hand and the conditions a person has to cope with on the other. These conditions are results of societal processes and comprise different kinds of social life as well as systems of norms and beliefs that pertain to the fields of politics, arts, science and other domains.</p> <p>(p. 33)</p> <p>Like Westbury, quoted above by Fischler, Fensham ([<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref232">56</reflink>]) has grappled with seeking an English‐language way of validly representing <emph>Bildung</emph>.</p> <p>To understand the <emph>Didaktik</emph> tradition in Germany it was quickly evident that an appreciation of the German word <emph>Bildung</emph> in relation to education was important, but it is not simple to translate into English. <emph>Bildung und Erziehen</emph> makes sense in German, and carries discriminatory meanings that my simple dictionary translation into <emph>Education and Education</emph> failed to convey. I found the metaphors associated with <emph>Bildung</emph> more helpful. They include <emph>the formation of a learner as an individual character or whole personality</emph>, and <emph>the cultivation or nurturing of a plant from, seedling to mature plant, bearing flower or fruit</emph>.</p> <p>(p. 147, original emphasis).</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-18">Reconsidering Curriculum Through the Lenses of Didaktik and Bildung</hd> <p>Our thinking about such a reconsideration of the construct curriculum has been substantially influenced by the many contributions about aspects of the science curriculum (and <emph>Didaktik</emph> and <emph>Bildung</emph>) over more than half a century by a thinker we have already cited several times in this article—the late Peter Fensham. (For two different perspectives on the remarkable breadth and depth of Fensham's relevant writings on science curriculum see Gunstone, Rennie, and Cooper [<reflink idref="bib88" id="ref233">88</reflink>], and many chapters in Cross [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref234">33</reflink>]).</p> <p>While Fensham is far from the only person to observe our fundamental beginning point for our reconsideration of curriculum through the lenses of <emph>Didaktik</emph> and <emph>Bildung</emph>, we start with his relevant direct and precise and very important observation: "the disciplinary knowledge of the sciences is not automatically appropriate for school science" (Fensham [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref235">55</reflink>], p. 40). Over decades Fensham gave many elaborations of this fundamental proposition, successively indicating the ways his thinking advanced and contexts, both specifically education and in the broader sociocultural evolution of societies, changed and how he saw these two (thinking and contexts) interacting. More recently Fensham explored with great insight the ways the disciplinary knowledge most appropriate for school science needed to embrace the complexity that is increasingly central to contemporary science and socioscientific issues (Fensham [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref236">58</reflink>]), the need to help school students develop trust in science and so "become not experts in science but <emph>connoisseurs of science</emph>" (Fensham [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref237">59</reflink>], p. 57, original emphasis), and the ways a spectrum of lessons gained from decades of past attempts at school science curriculum change can, and should, inform potential future curriculum reforms (Fensham [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref238">60</reflink>]).</p> <p>We do not explore the details of these Fensham positions here, though we certainly recommend them to readers. Rather we discuss our view of the central essence of the positions and the need to consider school science in terms broader than and different to the disciplinary knowledge of science <emph>per se</emph> by using our interpretation in this context of the terms <emph>logical meaning, psychological meaning,</emph> and <emph>meaningful learning</emph>. This troika of terms was originally laid out by the American educational psychologist David Ausubel to have quite specific meanings in his research and development, meanings focussed on school cognitive learning. Through Ausubel, the terms acquired considerable currency in wider discussions of school learning, particularly in the 1970s. Ausubel set out his meanings for the terms in a number of publications in the 1960s (e.g., Ausubel [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref239">12</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref240">13</reflink>]) and later further elaborated his meanings (see Ausubel [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref241">14</reflink>]). In our similar but not identical use of these terms, as indicated below, we also take as a significant point the single statement by which Ausubel has been most widely known for more than half a century: "If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him <emph>(sic)</emph> accordingly" (Ausubel [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref242">12</reflink>], p. vi).</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-19">Logical Meaning</hd> <p>In 2000 Ausubel wrote a short and precise statement about what he meant when he used the term logical meaning: "In short, logical meaning depends only on the 'nature of the material' per se, independent of its relationships to the learner's cognitive structure" (Ausubel [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref243">14</reflink>], p. 73). In our argument here, we use logical meaning in a quite similar way: we take logical meaning to indicate the logic of the discipline, and so very commonly the meaning assumed by those who have written a conventional intended curriculum for the specific content they have included in the curriculum. A meaning laid out in such an intended curriculum almost universally has no concerns with anything idiosyncratic that research has shown that the learner may already know and/or believe about specific content, or what is known from research about how a teacher can foster student learning and understanding of that content. With logical meaning no consideration is given relevant to any specific content in such an intended curriculum to ascertaining either what learners already know or what educators know about student learning issues associated with that specific content, and so on; that is, essentially no attention is paid to how to <emph>educationally</emph> respond appropriately to this specific content.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-20">Psychological Meaning</hd> <p>In the same writing in 2000, Ausubel describes his idea of psychological meaning as the "actual or phenomenological meaning ... [that] emerges when potential meaning becomes transformed into new, differentiated, and idiosyncratic cognitive content within a particular individual" (p. 73; original emphasis).</p> <p>The meaning we seek to convey when we use the term here is very similar: we take psychological meaning to be the specific form of understanding that the learner has developed as a consequence of attempts to have them learn a particular concept or explanation. In terms of curriculum, full consideration, importantly including current understandings, is given to ascertaining what learners already know and responding appropriately to this; that is, in curriculum statements that is, essentially full attention is paid to how to <emph>educationally</emph> respond appropriately to specific content laid out in the curriculum.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-21">Meaningful Learning</hd> <p>The term meaningful learning became prominent in science education through Ausubel's work, in particular, his use of this label in the 1960s to specifically designate learning that is in total contrast to rote learning.</p> <p>At its core this usage can be characterized as suggesting that, in most contexts most of the time, "rote learning is bad; meaningful learning is good." Such usage has become widespread, so that "meaningful learning" serves as a label for learning seen to be of worth, of real purpose, in a wide variety of contexts. These range from academic discussions of alternative conceptions and the need to pursue conceptual change to popular debates of educational fads (e.g., "does [some specific fad] actually lead to any meaningful learning?").</p> <p>(Gunstone [<reflink idref="bib87" id="ref244">87</reflink>], p. 625).</p> <p>The meaning we seek to convey when we use the term in this article is essentially the same; we take meaningful learning to be learning of real worth, learning with purpose, learning that links with individual psychological meaning and thus also, we argue, with student engagement with this learning.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-22">Reconsidering Curriculum</hd> <p>Far too commonly the nature of the "curriculum" approach to determining the educational experiences a learner of science will have derived only from the logical meaning of the science involved (or, more precisely, the logical meaning as specifically interpreted and understood by those constructing the curriculum) and gives no attention to what we term above as psychological meaning. Such an approach to the intended curriculum demands a very great deal from an individual teacher, and provides no support or guidance for that teacher, particularly if the teacher seeks to implement the curriculum in a manner that is primarily focused on developing psychological meaning among the teacher's students. Again far too commonly, and as shown by extraordinary numbers of research studies of the learning of science, an intended curriculum determined solely by logical meaning often results in rote and not meaningful learning (i.e., we have used the labels rote and meaningful learning to state one of the overwhelmingly common conclusions drawn in the now literally tens of thousands of studies of student alternative conceptions). Consideration of psychological meaning enables the potential blending of intended and implemented curriculum, and gives the possibility of also including the learned curriculum.</p> <p> <emph>Didaktik</emph> and <emph>Bildung</emph> offer alternative approaches to considering the what and how of determining the nature of the science education experiences to be provided for learners, approaches more likely to foster the development of both appropriate psychological meaning and learner engagement with that learning. This is certainly not a novel observation. For example, Westbury ([<reflink idref="bib188" id="ref245">188</reflink>]) observed that <emph>Didaktik</emph></p> <p>seeks to model forms of teacher thinking that might direct the teacher to systematic hermeneutic reflection about the ways in which classroom environments might support a personal subjective encounter, or relationship, with the educative 'content' represented in the curriculum, the ultimate forms of social life, and the like.</p> <p>(p. 57)</p> <p>Fischler ([<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref246">62</reflink>]) observed that</p> <p>[d]idaktik can be a corrective, bridging content‐related issues on the one hand and pedagogical aspects on the other. Didaktik provides a teacher with a language and intellectual scaffolding with which he/she becomes able to scrutinize the content topics of the curriculum mandated by the state in terms of their contributions to a value‐oriented education of students. The teacher as a professional practitioner has to embed the topics into an educational context.</p> <p>(p. 32)</p> <p>Klafki, noted above as the most prominent exponent of a modern conception of <emph>Bildung</emph>, has taken his conceptions of <emph>Bildung</emph> and sought to connect these with their significance for teachers' daily work via a <emph>Didaktik analysis</emph> with a starting question relating to a teacher's situation at the beginning of their lesson planning: "What questions, therefore, should a teacher ask in the preliminary phase of instructional preparation....?" (Klafki [<reflink idref="bib127" id="ref247">127</reflink>], p. 151, as reproduced in Fischler [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref248">62</reflink>], p. 35). Klafki then lays out "five questions that mirror the wide range of reflections teachers are requested to make" (Fischler [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref249">62</reflink>], p. 35).</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. What wider or general sense or reality does this content exemplify and open up to the learner? What basic phenomenon or fundamental principle, what law, criterion, problem, method, technique, or attitude can be grasped by dealing with this content as an "example"?</item> <p></p> <item> 2. What significance does the content in question, or the experience, knowledge, ability, or skill to be acquired through this topic already possess in the minds of the children in my class? What significance should it have from a pedagogical point of view?</item> <p></p> <item> 3. What constitutes the topic's significance for the children's future?</item> <p></p> <item> 4. How is the content structured (which has been placed in a specifically pedagogical perspective by questions I, II, and III)?</item> <p></p> <item> 5. What are the special cases, phenomenal, situations, experiments, persons, elements of esthetic experience, and so forth, in terms of which the structure of the content in question can become interesting, stimulating, approachable, conceivable, or vivid for children of the stage of development of this class? (Klafki [<reflink idref="bib127" id="ref250">127</reflink>], pp. 151–155, as quoted by Fischler [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref251">62</reflink>], p. 35).</item> </ulist> <p>Now that we have elaborated on the three perspectives in turn we now discuss their common thread that is central to the challenges of "what science and how to foster student engagement with that science."</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-23">The Relevance of the Three Perspectives</hd> <p>An edited book presenting original research and research syntheses (Corrigan et al. [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref252">29</reflink>]), all from contexts where curriculum was the universal mode of determining what science to present to students, was focussed on science learning. And, as the introductory chapter makes clear, the considerations of learning in this book make serious attempts to present the perspectives of "the learners rather than the perspectives of teachers and other adults" (Corrigan et al. [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref253">29</reflink>], p. 2).</p> <p>Corrigan et al. ([<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref254">29</reflink>]) lay out an assertion that represents well the extremely important common thread we see in the three perspectives we have discussed above, the thread that is our reason for discussing these specific three perspectives:</p> <p>The continued general failure of curriculum change to impact on student engagement with science, student acceptance of the importance of science, and student learning of science as it is undertaken in the 21st Century, remains a profound and multifaceted problem.</p> <p>(p. 3)</p> <p>The failure of school students to <emph>engage</emph> with science, affectively or intellectually or in terms of the broad and deep social importance of science, as stated in the quote above, has been of great concern to both governments and major science and science education bodies around the globe since at least the 1950s.</p> <p>Rather than summarizing the arguments we have already advanced in our discussions of three relevant perspectives on this critical issue we now outline the relevance of each of these three perspectives to the continuing and profoundly important major science education concerns of content selection for curriculum and fostering student engagement.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-24">Imagination</hd> <p>The centrality of imagination in the development of science itself has been increasingly widely accepted over the last century, both by scholars of the philosophy of science (e.g., Libby [<reflink idref="bib131" id="ref255">131</reflink>]; Holton [<reflink idref="bib114" id="ref256">114</reflink>]; Murphy [<reflink idref="bib145" id="ref257">145</reflink>]) and, more rarely, by investigators of processes involved in the development of new science ideas (e.g., Ho et al. [<reflink idref="bib111" id="ref258">111</reflink>]). The now widely accepted role of imagination in enabling the emergence of new science ideas/concepts/frameworks/paradigms has been summarized thus:</p> <p>Imagination in science, as the ability to form mental images and visualize and/or to think in terms of various possibilities, has been directly or indirectly linked to scientific creativity. Indeed, scientific creativity presupposes the imagination (e.g., one can be imaginative without being creative, but one cannot be creative without being imaginative). This is so whether one considers the scientists' imaginative leaps, like those resulting in original ideas that contribute to scientific progress (e.g., Planck's mental leap to move from radiation itself to the radiating atom), or simply such thinking skills as problem‐solving and inquiry, which scientists use in their daily work.</p> <p>(Hadzigeorgiou [<reflink idref="bib92" id="ref259">92</reflink>], p. 481)</p> <p>Despite this wide acceptance of imagination in the processes of science it is extremely rare to see reference to "imagination" in the science education literature, either in accounts of the learning of science or in accounts of the processes of science that are laid out in documents and textbooks as a curriculum component for school science. However, we do recognize that the related act of "creativity" is more prevalent in school science curriculum statements and documents, but even this act is extraordinarily rarely mentioned in school science textbook accounts of the nature of science.</p> <p>Even in researcher accounts of the learning of science, "imagination" is very rarely even mentioned. For example, "Imagination" does not appear in any of the indexes of the existing handbooks of research in science education (the two volumes edited by Abell and Lederman [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref260">2</reflink>] and Lederman and Abell ([<reflink idref="bib128" id="ref261">128</reflink>]), and the two editions of the handbooks edited by Fraser and Tobin [<reflink idref="bib78" id="ref262">78</reflink>] and Fraser, Tobin, and McRobbie [<reflink idref="bib79" id="ref263">79</reflink>]). Further, we have conducted a word search of the complete text of the unique book by Fensham ([<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref264">56</reflink>]) in which he reports and discusses his individual interviews with 79 experienced science education researchers across 16 countries. These interviews explored each researcher's perceptions of their own research and their personal research motivations for and influences on their decisions to research the areas they had. The search reveals that "imagination" is only mentioned once—and that is a mention that is unequivocally and specifically referring only to science itself (p. 57).</p> <p>We argue the dearth of "imagination" from accounts of the processes of science, in curriculum documents and in school science textbooks, to be indicative of the inadequate treatment of imagination in the teaching of science; we return to this point in the section on Inquiry that follows immediately below.</p> <p>Before that, it is important to note that the more relevant issue for our core concern in this article is the role we assert imagination can play in <emph>engaging</emph> students with science. This assertion is much more than conjecture; it is immediately strongly supported by the visual evidence of the consequences of explicitly engaging student imagination in science teaching of the very young (see in particular videos of classes of young children being taught science in this way at https://<ulink href="http://www.monash.edu/conceptual-playworld;">www.monash.edu/conceptual-playworld;</ulink> see also many of the references cited in the earlier section on Imagination). Further, the teaching approach shown in these videos and discussed in the other references just noted is derived directly from research (e.g., Fleer and Pramling [<reflink idref="bib70" id="ref265">70</reflink>]; Fragkiadaki, Fleer, and Rai [<reflink idref="bib74" id="ref266">74</reflink>]), which in turn is deeply rooted in the theory of Vygotsky and others, for example:</p> <p>Imagination, as the basis of all creative activity, is an important component of absolutely all aspects of cultural life, enabling artistic, scientific, and technical creation alike. In this sense, absolutely everything around us that was created by the hand of man [sic], the entire world of human culture, as distinct from the world of nature, all of this is the product of human imagination and of creation based on this imagination</p> <p>(Vygotsky [<reflink idref="bib184" id="ref267">184</reflink>], pp. 9–10, as cited by Fleer and Pramling [<reflink idref="bib70" id="ref268">70</reflink>], p. 41).</p> <p>We suggest there are substantial reasons to believe that the engagement seen in young children with this informed and semidirected use of imagination in the research and videos noted above will essentially differ with older children only in terms of the nature of the explicit demonstrations of student enthusiasm from the students.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-25">Inquiry—and Significant Links With Imagination</hd> <p>Previously, we have established the role inquiry‐based approaches can play in fostering imagination and supporting student engagement. Here we extend these points by outlining related issues to "inquiry," and then expand on the symbiosis between "inquiry" and "imagination" as manifested in the particular context of school science laboratory activities.</p> <p>The strongest and most influential advocate of "inquiry" as the focus of school science laboratory work in England before World War 1, and likely in all the English‐speaking world, was the academic chemist H. E. Armstrong. His advocacy was for an extreme approach to what we would today describe as "discovery learning," an approach that was totally focussed on a belief that he wrote in the late 1890s: "the beginner [i.e. the school science student] not only may but must be put absolutely in the position of an original discoverer" (quoted by Jenkins [<reflink idref="bib119" id="ref269">119</reflink>], p. 44). There are many problems with this simplistic approach to laboratory work and inquiry. Tamir's ([<reflink idref="bib175" id="ref270">175</reflink>]) succinct and tabular comparison of who does what in typical "discovery learning" school laboratory classes, and who does what in typical research laboratories, presents a strong case that the student actually does very little of what the scientist does.</p> <p>Even today, the most common classroom approach to the mode of inquiry advocated by Armstrong (and others then and since) has been to provide students with a worksheet that lays out the steps to follow to supposedly put them in the "position of an original discoverer." But we have had direct evidence for at least more than four decades that commonly very little learning of anything occurs with such an approach. For example in New Zealand, Tasker ([<reflink idref="bib177" id="ref271">177</reflink>]) interviewed numbers of school science students individually as they were undertaking an inquiry task of this sequential steps worksheet form. His core intention in this interviewing was to see what students understood to be the purpose of the task they were undertaking at the time Tasker talked to them. He reports many verbatim examples of student responses, all with the same clear message as the one we reproduce here:</p> <p> <emph>Tasker</emph>: What have you decided it [the task] is about?</p> <p> <emph>Pupil</emph>: I dunno, I never really thought about it <emph>[pause]</emph> just doing it—doing what it says <emph>[pause]</emph> its 8.5 <emph>[pause]</emph> just got to do different numbers and the next one we have to do is this <emph>[points in worksheet to 8.6]</emph></p> <p>(Tasker [<reflink idref="bib177" id="ref272">177</reflink>], p. 34)</p> <p>This clear implication of the rote following of a recipe by at least many students in this mode of "inquiry," and the necessary consequence of essentially none of the learning intended by the initiating teacher or curriculum occurring, has been shown in other contexts and via other approaches by many further studies since (e.g., Friedler and Tamir [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref273">81</reflink>]; Hart et al. [<reflink idref="bib104" id="ref274">104</reflink>]; Millar and Driver [<reflink idref="bib141" id="ref275">141</reflink>]).</p> <p>These studies have also demonstrated that, unsurprisingly, in closed laboratory tasks (i.e., laboratory activities where the goal of the activity is highly specified), recipe‐like completion of the task is the overriding focus of many students. Students who have none of the knowledge assumed to be prerequisite for doing the task usually still complete it by using visual checks of other students to guide their own "progress." Much more unexpected is what has been found with the extreme opposite form of task: open laboratory tasks with open endpoints (i.e., activities where the goal of the activity neither determines an approach or in itself indicates when the task can be considered to be completed). After having determined an approach to the task, the usual first step for students with open laboratory tasks, many students then proceed in the same recipe style so typical of closed tasks. One particularly common form of laboratory work that is very clearly a closed task is confirmation tasks (i.e., collecting data to "prove" [sic] a given relationship between variables; these are often characterized by an experimental aim given to students of the form "Aim: To verify xxxx"). Significantly, Duschl and Grandy ([<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref276">47</reflink>]) observe about the confirmation role of laboratory work in that "science education becomes final form science (Duschl [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref277">45</reflink>]), in line with Schwab ([<reflink idref="bib163" id="ref278">163</reflink>]) 'rhetoric of conclusions'" (p. 28–29). That is, in the terms we use above that have been taken from Ausubel ([[<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref279">12</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref280">14</reflink>]]), the confirmation role of laboratory work reinforces science education as focussing only on "logical meaning," and ignores the pedagogically very important "psychological meaning."</p> <p>Whether students are given recipe‐style experiment approaches or confirmatory experiences or other form of laboratory tasks, it is still relatively common for school science laboratory work to be seen as introducing students to a particular view of the methods of science, including a particular view of science procedural and epistemological knowledge. This view is of the broad form of beginning with making observations, then seeking patterns in these observations, then suggesting and evaluating explanations of these patterns and that it is appropriate for laboratory work in school science to be conducted along these lines. Millar ([<reflink idref="bib140" id="ref281">140</reflink>]) refers to this view of the methods of science and the consequent form of laboratory work as the "standard science education view" (p. 39). As an account of the actual methods of science itself this view is often appropriately termed "Naïve Inductivism" (e.g., Chalmers [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref282">24</reflink>]). Clearly the evidence of approaches such as recipe‐following behaviors by students in their inquiry activities in science laboratory work is inconsistent with what is assumed by many teachers and curriculum developers to be some form of educational value in the approach. We believe the evidence is strong (e.g., Friedler and Tamir [<reflink idref="bib81" id="ref283">81</reflink>]; Hart et al. [<reflink idref="bib104" id="ref284">104</reflink>]; Millar and Driver [<reflink idref="bib141" id="ref285">141</reflink>]; Tasker [<reflink idref="bib177" id="ref286">177</reflink>]) that little of value derives from this naïve inductivist approach.</p> <p>One particular aspect of this "standard science education" view of science that is particularly problematic is the implied, but demonstrably incorrect, unquestioning assumption of a uniformity of student observations in laboratory exercises, and the ways the students then derive meaning from the observations. More specifically, clear and substantial evidence of the theory‐laden nature of observation has been given by many science educators, from at least Driver's ([<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref287">41</reflink>]) conclusion from her data that "'Looking at' is not a passive recording of an image like a photograph being reproduced by a camera" (p. 11). The same conclusion has often been drawn by others, and from a wide variety of data sources (e.g., Gunstone [<reflink idref="bib84" id="ref288">84</reflink>]; Champagne, Klopfer, and Anderson [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref289">26</reflink>]; Hodson [<reflink idref="bib112" id="ref290">112</reflink>]). This characteristic of observing is in stark conflict with the naïve inductivist view of science, and with school science approaches to the use of inquiry that assume the naïve inductivist view of science.</p> <p>A related issue that is also in conflict with naïve inductivist approaches to school science inquiry is the inability of students to distinguish between observation and inference. For example, a study of Grade 10 science students and their teachers involved participants being individually interviewed about a piece of chocolate (Haslam and Gunstone [[<reflink idref="bib105" id="ref291">105</reflink>]]). Each was asked if relevant statements about the piece of chocolate given by the interviewer were "observations" (e.g., "the chocolate is brown") or "not observations" (e.g., "the chocolate was made in Australia"). While most could discriminate correctly between statements that were or were not "observations," few students had any name at all for the "not‐observation" statements they identified. When specifically asked, almost no students even knew the meaning of the word "inference." Surprisingly, some of the teachers did not know the meaning of the word "inference." We have located only one study about inference in school science inquiry that has been reported since those cited above (Teo and Goh [<reflink idref="bib178" id="ref292">178</reflink>]). This is in stark contrast with investigations of student ideas about the meaning of and learning about "inference" in other curriculum areas. There has been a recent surge in studies focused on aspects of student learning of <emph>statistical</emph> inference (e.g., Case and Jacobbe [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref293">23</reflink>]; Makar and Rubin [<reflink idref="bib135" id="ref294">135</reflink>]) and literally decades of research about inference and teaching/learning about inference in the context of students learning to <emph>read</emph> (e.g., Kispal [<reflink idref="bib126" id="ref295">126</reflink>]; McIntosh [<reflink idref="bib138" id="ref296">138</reflink>]).</p> <p>As we have sought to make clear in the inquiry section of this article, and as is widely recognized by science education researchers, inquiry in science classrooms is much more complex than is often assumed in curriculum statements and some common teaching practices involving laboratory‐based inquiry. One less emphasized consequence of this multifaceted complexity of "inquiry" is that its strong potential for both intellectually and emotionally <emph>engaging</emph> science learners with science is significantly diminished by false assumptions of there being some form of validity in naïve inductivism and the "standard science education view."</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-26">Student Engagement and Inquiry</hd> <p>Throughout this article, we use the term "student engagement" to specifically refer to engagement by the student with the intended focus of their learning (i.e., science). Research about this construct, and about related constructs such as academic motivation and achievement motivation by psychologists since at least the time of Henry James, consistently concludes that student engagement with their learning has both intellectual (cognitive) and emotional (affective) components. Some science education researchers have concluded that both cognitive and affective needs must be considered for genuine engagement (e.g., Baird and Penna [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref297">18</reflink>]). We briefly now consider the cognitive component of engagement in the context of inquiry. These considerations are just as relevant to any other modes of the learning of science.</p> <p>When Ausubel (e.g., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref298">12</reflink>]) used the terms "logical" and "psychological" meaning, as we have above, he also extended these ideas to his conception of "meaningful learning," something that he contrasted specifically with "rote learning." He asserted that "<emph>[m]eaning</emph> itself is the product of a meaningful learning process" (Ausubel and Robinson [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref299">15</reflink>], p. 54) and that "the meaning elicited by any given symbol or group of symbols will depend on the ideas that exist in a particular learner's mind" (Ausubel and Robinson [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref300">15</reflink>], p. 54). Ausubel emphasized that "rote" and "meaningful" learning were not a dichotomy, but existed on a continuum, and that learning would be increasingly rote to the extent that:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> what is to be learned lacks any logical meaning when it is taught,</item> <p></p> <item> the learner's existing ideas and beliefs (her/his existing psychological meaning) lack any ideas that are a relevant beginning point for the intended learning, and</item> <p></p> <item> the learner lacks motivation to learn in a nonrote manner (something Ausubel termed a "rote," rather than "meaningful," learning set). (Ausubel and Robinson [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref301">15</reflink>], p. 54).</item> </ulist> <p>That is, the "potential meaningfulness" for any specific learner of ideas to be learned depends on the availability of relevant beginning ideas for that learning in this learner's existing psychological meaning (Ausubel and Robinson [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref302">15</reflink>], p. 56).</p> <p>The affective component of engagement is widely understood to be of great importance in science learning and teaching, by both researchers (e.g., Alsop [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref303">8</reflink>]; Sinatra, Heddy, and Lombardi [<reflink idref="bib168" id="ref304">168</reflink>]) and by science teachers (e.g., Abrahamsson, Malmberg, and Pendrill [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref305">4</reflink>]). It is also a most complex construct that is taken to embrace numbers of other overlapping but also discrete constructs that are each complex in their own right (e.g., attitudes, interests, beliefs, feelings, values). Further, there does not appear to be convincing evidence that any one of the multiple component constructs embraced by "affect" in this context is more important than others, an observation that is hardly surprising given how variable are the many definitions of the component constructs and how overlapping these are. Hence we do not attempt to be in any way as specific in our comments about how to respond to fostering positive affective engagement in science as we were above for cognitive engagement. However, we share two important observations about affect and engagement.</p> <p>First, there is considerable and clear evidence of strong interactions between the cognitive and affective components of engagement, that these two are most certainly not independent of each other (e.g., Azevedo [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref306">17</reflink>]; multiple chapters in the <emph>Handbook of Research on Student Engagement</emph> [Christenson, Reschly, and Wylie [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref307">27</reflink>]]; Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [<reflink idref="bib149" id="ref308">149</reflink>]).</p> <p>Second, the impact on student engagement of seeking to pedagogically use the imagination of students has been both demonstrated to be a remarkably powerful dimension of inquiry with younger children by researchers (Fleer [<reflink idref="bib68" id="ref309">68</reflink>]; Fragkiadaki, Fleer, and Rai [<reflink idref="bib73" id="ref310">73</reflink>]) and convincingly (and frequently) argued to be of great benefit for older students (Hadzigeorgiou [<reflink idref="bib92" id="ref311">92</reflink>]). We believe another issue involving imagination is just as important for inquiry in school science, and points just as strongly to the serious need to embrace this matter in curriculum—including the intended curriculum.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-27">Curriculum Documents and the Nature of Science and Imagination</hd> <p>Increasingly over the last half century, school science curricula have sought to move beyond being solely focussed on science content and to include aspects of "the nature of science" and/or "the processes of science." Today essentially every national curriculum or framework for school science devotes considerable attention to "the nature of science" and/or "the processes of science," often including aspects of the evolution of science knowledge <emph>per se</emph> which move well beyond some of the earlier attempts at more simple descriptive statements about science. An exploration of the aspect of the evolution of new science knowledge and of great potential in the teaching and learning of science in our focus here, imagination, has given interesting results. We now give some detail of this for our analysis of the United States <emph>A framework for K‐12 science education</emph> (National Research Council [<reflink idref="bib146" id="ref312">146</reflink>]), and of the quite different approach adopted in the Australian Science Curriculum for K‐10 (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref313">11</reflink>].). We then also make very brief comment about a number of other national documents.</p> <p>In a careful reading and then word search of the document <emph>A framework for K‐12 science education</emph> (National Research Council [<reflink idref="bib146" id="ref314">146</reflink>]) for the word (and idea of) "imagination" we found no instance. With the same approach, we found 11 places at which the words (and idea of) the related but not identical "creative" or "creativity" or "create" appear. The first of these related to the approaches used by the team of developers in a valuable account of the processes involved in developing the document. The next six instances are all in the context of important discussions of the creative aspects of the work of scientists and engineers and their development of these disciplines, and the eighth (p. 249) a really significant description of how narrow and diminished the teaching of science and engineering is when it occurs without indications of the importance of creativity and others "humanistic" characteristics.</p> <p>The ninth and tenth uses of "creative" are in indicating the characteristics needed for assessment developers as they generate valid approaches to gathering evidence about students' progress in science. The final instance is unfortunately very limited in what we assume was an oversight. The index to this document contains only one reference to "creative"—"creative process" is given as a subentry to "Engineering design." There is no link in the index between "Science" and "creative."</p> <p>The most significant observation for us, however, is that there is no place in this Framework where "imagination" (or "creativity") is considered in terms of fostering student engagement in their science learning. Yet it is the profound matter of student engagement in their science learning, and the importance of using student imagination in particular, that we are considering at this point.</p> <p>We have undertaken similar if less rigorous explorations of other national frameworks or policy documents and come to similar conclusions; "imagination" does not appear to be a term used in discussions of science and its processes, but "creative" (or related) certainly is. For example, the <emph>Canadian K‐12 Common Framework of Science Learning Outcomes</emph> has three other "foundations" in addition to content knowledge: "Science, Technology, Society and the Environment," skills (e.g., procedural, collaboration), and attitudes (Council of Ministers of Education Canada [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref315">31</reflink>]). In the USA, the <emph>Next Generation Science Standards</emph> (NGSS Lead States [<reflink idref="bib147" id="ref316">147</reflink>]) sets out "Three Dimensions" (Practices, Cross Cutting Concepts, Disciplinary Core Ideas). The Australian Science Curriculum (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref317">11</reflink>].) has "Three Strands" (Science Understanding, Science as a Human Endeavour, Science Inquiry Skills). In a quite different approach the Australian Curriculum has also detailed seven "general capabilities." These are to be developed through the content of the learning areas (i.e., the more usual subjects of the curriculum). One of the seven general capabilities is "creativity." This approach does make it rather more difficult to get a sense of the extent to which the Australian Science curriculum considers student creativity (and imagination) in terms of student engagement with their science learning. However, across all the science curriculum frameworks we have looked at there are no specific instances of considering student imagination as a significant approach to fostering student engagement.</p> <p>Importantly, while the <emph>Belonging, Being &amp; Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia</emph> (Department of Education [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref318">36</reflink>]) does not explicitly refer to the diverse aspects of engaging with science during the early years, it does highlight the importance of creating cultures of learning where young children use play, creativity, and imagination to investigate the surrounding world, set up experiments, test hypotheses, and explore ideas and concepts through shared learning experiences. These, we suggest, are developments with great potential for enhancing student engagement with inquiry and science.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-28">Didaktic and Bildung—and Links With Inquiry and Imagination</hd> <p>Before we outline how this third perspective can make positive contributions to a common thread to address our two concerns on which this article is focussed, we need to be clear about one relevant matter: we do not in any way advocate that "curriculum" should be replaced by "Didaktik" as a means of elaborating what it is intended that teachers teach and students learn. We do certainly recognize how much an exercise in tilting at windmills this would be. Further, that while such a shift might very well have some impact on the extent to which the science to be learned has increased meaningfulness to the learner, there is little convincing evidence that such replacement alone would lead to dramatic positive changes in student engagement with the science they are learning.</p> <p>However, we believe there is one fundamental and critical central feature of Didaktik and Bildung that it is both possible as realistic change and most beneficial to student learning and engagement to "overlay" onto/into curriculum. This is for the documenting of what we want students to learn in science (the intended curriculum) to also explicitly embrace core issues of both what students likely already know/believe and what is known about how this existing knowledge needs to shape how we approach teaching. This, we argue, has considerable potential to enable a much clearer and stronger focus on developing student understanding of the science <emph>and</emph> on genuinely engaging students with that developing understanding (i.e., something rather more of the form of an implemented curriculum statement, although not in any completely prescriptive sense that this might be taken to imply).</p> <p>Much of what we have argued in the section <emph>Student Inquiry and Engagement</emph> just above, particularly that relating to the cognitive component of engagement, also has very strong relevance for this central feature of Didaktik that we argue has great value for enhancing the notion of curriculum. In essence, this central feature would involve approaches such as:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> explicitly moving from a view of the Nature of Science embedded still in misleading notions of a complete objectivity as characteristic of science to embracing what scientists actually do, and thus embracing imagination and creativity as features of science. It seems clear that as well this will have motivational benefits that will give greater student engagement (intellectual as well as affective) and greater learning with understanding; and,</item> <p></p> <item> elaborating some of the existing knowledge and beliefs of learners and considering these as important components of pedagogies to develop these knowledges and beliefs to evolve to become the refined and final forms of science knowledge that scientists of the past have evolved over time.</item> </ulist> <hd id="AN0187844678-29">Conclusion: Some Thoughts About an Approach to Reconceptualising Curriculum</hd> <p>In the first paragraph of this article, we sought to be clear about the two ongoing and widespread concerns for those in science education around the globe that drove what we have written: the need to find better approaches to (i) the identification of what science is meaningful for students to learn from the beginning of their science education experiences until the end of the compulsory years of their schooling, and (ii) better keep students engaged in this learning throughout these years. These remain as serious and widely recognized ongoing challenges to school science education. Worldwide, governments and many others have for decades reported consistent decline in student engagement with science (and also technology, engineering, and mathematics), particularly during their transition from primary/elementary to secondary school and through the compulsory secondary years. Further, as we have already noted above, despite the rapid pace of societal changes and the many and widely varied science curriculum movements over the last 65 years, much of the mainstream approaches to science education, particularly the science specified in a curriculum, has just increased the amount of content and otherwise remained essentially unchanged.</p> <p>We begin our brief descriptions of the ways the ideas already advanced in this article might inform the continuing interrelated concerns of "what science" and "how to really engage students" with a general observation.</p> <p>We reiterate the points made early in this article about curriculum overload, and the distinction we have already advanced between logical meaning and psychological meaning. In the context of curriculum, the logical meaning (i.e., what almost all intended curriculum statements give) is essentially a set of refined "endpoint" science statements, statements of the conceptual matters scientists arrived at after experimenting and thinking and debating. In the case of the very gradual construction of a concept like "conservation of energy," for example, this was a period of more than half a century (e.g., Elkana [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref319">51</reflink>])—indicating the complexity of the observations and evolving thinking scientists were grappling with! In the common situations where the rationale[s] for the science curriculum result in additional content the increasing numbers of statements of only logical meaning very commonly result in necessarily rushed teaching and hence superficial and too often rote student learning (and, therefore, increased disengagement by students) (Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development [<reflink idref="bib152" id="ref320">152</reflink>]). A clear curriculum rationale for both content inclusion <emph>and exclusion</emph> is a critical component of any attempts to reduce the content in a crowded curriculum, and so reduce the need for rushed and superficial teaching. Such reduction is a critical prerequisite for attempts to fostering student understanding of and engagement with this curriculum. The same critique of ever‐increasing amount of content with little if any reduction leading to more and more rushed teaching and more and more inadequate (rote) student learning is made in other areas and even higher levels of learning, such as university medical education (e.g., D'Eon [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref321">34</reflink>]; Jamshidi and Cook [<reflink idref="bib118" id="ref322">118</reflink>]).</p> <p>We contend more specific and clear rationales for the selection of what content to include in a science curriculum so as to also enable reduction of content is a fundamental issue to be addressed in order to allow learning that is not rote (and thus also encourage assessment that does not reward rote learning alone). This in turn makes more possible the tackling of the critical need to better identify what science is meaningful for students to learn and how to help students better engage (intellectually and affectively) with that learning. We accept that when first discussing curriculum overload above we have offered only one example of such a more specific curriculum rationale and its consequences for reduction of content, the PSSC curriculum from six decades ago, but that is because such a specific curriculum rationale is sadly so very rare. Now we turn to some thoughts about an approach to reconceptualising the curriculum in response to the issues of what science and how to engage students in that science. We then give an outline of one existing specific approach, a set of teacher resources for school science, that has used a beginning of this approach, albeit a little differently described, and so serves as a form of existing illustration of some of our arguments. The article concludes with a broad overarching comment.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-30">Example of an Approach That Enables a Reconceptualising of Curriculum</hd> <p>Dewey ([<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref323">37</reflink>], as quoted and discussed and elaborated by Smith and Girod [<reflink idref="bib172" id="ref324">172</reflink>]) argued that "rich and engaged learning" (Smith and Girod [<reflink idref="bib172" id="ref325">172</reflink>], p. 295) required that the content to be taught first be "psychologized" (p. 295) to create something essentially of the form we have described above—to again use the terms used by Ausubel, something having psychological rather than logical meaning. As a simple example, an introduction to ideas of force and motion in a science class can very profitably begin with the common everyday observation already often made by middle school students that we need to continually push or pull things to keep them moving, an observation that is effectively for students at this broad level a psychologizing of the relationship between forces and motion at a constant speed.</p> <p>Dewey was unequivocal that it was teachers who must psychologize the content, a position that Smith and Girod ([<reflink idref="bib172" id="ref326">172</reflink>]) lay out in detail, including with similar arguments and relevant research over the decades between Dewey's writings and their article. To restate in the manner we have argued earlier in this article, it is in effect an argument that what we currently know as the implemented curriculum is critical to the developing of psychological meaning for the learners of school science, an assertion consistent with Dewey ([<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref327">37</reflink>] and many other publications).</p> <p>It is demonstrable that, despite Dewey's passion, logic, and determination, and that of many others since, today the school science curriculum, in all its intended and implemented and, particularly and highly assessed forms, remains overwhelmingly (and often exclusively) concerned with logical meaning. It also appears clear to us that, in the increasingly complex and demanding world of teaching today, with the increased and multiple demands on teachers in comparison to well over a century ago, the assertion that it is teachers who must psychologize the content is no longer even vaguely realistic unless there is substantial assistance provided to teachers. And, given that the detail of how one might approach the psychologizing of curriculum content depends on the specific content to be psychologized, the most obvious beginning point for the provision of at least a helpful outline of this assistance is as a new component of the intended curriculum documentation.</p> <p>In the last three decades, there has been a clearly increasing use of the term <emph>big ideas</emph> in a range of contexts related to school science curriculum and teaching, from curriculum frameworks and discussions (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref328">10</reflink>]; Chalmers et al. [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref329">25</reflink>]) to research contexts such as seeking to detail the particular big ideas in a broad field of science (e.g., Lelliott and Rollnick [<reflink idref="bib129" id="ref330">129</reflink>]) and as a means to explore the pedagogical content knowledge of science teachers (e.g., Loughran, Berry, and Mulhall [<reflink idref="bib133" id="ref331">133</reflink>]). We see <emph>big ideas</emph> as an approach to curriculum that is more likely to enable responses to the issues we have raised: content reduction, the incorporation of imagination, approaches to inquiry that foster student intellectual engagement, and approaches to teaching that consider existing student knowledge and how the content to be learned impacts on teaching approaches. Hence, we now use <emph>big ideas</emph> as the context for our example of an approach that enables the form of reconceptualising of curriculum we have just outlined.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-31">Big Ideas</hd> <p>As one might expect with an idea of such breadth and depth that it can be quite central to such an extensive and varied array of contexts, there are at times different shades of meaning in the specific use of <emph>big ideas</emph> in some of these different contexts. These shades of meaning do not distract from the critical common features of the use of the term, features that particularly over the last decade include issues relating to student engagement. In the remainder of this short discussion, we initially take the meaning of <emph>big ideas</emph> adopted by Harlen ([<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref332">97</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib99" id="ref333">99</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib100" id="ref334">100</reflink>]), for reasons indicated immediately after the following quote.</p> <p>[S]cience education fails to prepare young people for a world rapidly being transformed by applications of science in technology and engineering. One way to begin to address these problems is to conceive the goals of science education as progression towards key ideas—called big ideas because they explain a range of related phenomena—rather than a collection of facts and theories.</p> <p>(Harlen [<reflink idref="bib99" id="ref335">99</reflink>], p. 97)</p> <p>While we certainly and wholeheartedly agree with this statement from Harlen ([<reflink idref="bib99" id="ref336">99</reflink>]) we reiterate that our primary motive for now discussing the notion of "big ideas" as a basis for a science curriculum is the likely nature of the consequent specific rationale for content inclusion and <emph>exclusion</emph>, the specific "big ideas" adopted, in the selection and construction of the nature and sequence of curriculum content.</p> <p>The report by Harlen ([<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref337">97</reflink>]), developed with a group of ten international experts in science education, sets out "the principles that should underpin the science education of all students" (p. i), and</p> <p>argues that students should be helped to develop 'big ideas' <emph>of</emph> science and <emph>about</emph> science that will enable them to understand the scientific aspects of the world around and make informed decisions about the applications of science. For this understanding students need learning experiences that are interesting and engaging and seen as relevant to their lives.</p> <p>(Harlen [<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref338">97</reflink>], p. i)</p> <p>This 2010 report then lays out significant detail about the logic of taking big ideas, of principles underpinning essential science education, and of selecting and working with big ideas. It begins with a preface that presents "Ten principles and fourteen big ideas of science education" (Harlen [<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref339">97</reflink>], p. ii). Examples of the principles are that science education should "develop and sustain learners' curiosity about the world," and "should promote cooperation among teachers and engagement of the community." Harlen's big ideas include both ideas <emph>of</emph> science (e.g., "objects can affect other objects at a distance") and <emph>about</emph> science (e.g., "science assumes that for every effect there is one or more causes").</p> <p>In a subsequent document from the same group (Harlen [<reflink idref="bib100" id="ref340">100</reflink>]) the discussions in the earlier document are updated and elaborated, particularly in light of continuing rapid and dramatic changes in the world of work and the increasing urgency and relevance for students of global issues such as climate change. We also note the considerable extent to which the "rich and engaged learning" arguments advocated by Dewey that we have described above are closely aligned with the broad central ideas embraced by the two short quotes from Harlen we have just given.</p> <p>Of course, the adoption of a big ideas approach to deciding the content and its sequence and structure will not automatically result in content reduction just because big ideas have been chosen. But the more detailed nature of the rationale for these decisions makes reduction much more possible, provided there is some real will to remove content in a systematic and justified way. Then, as well as the specific science content that now has clear justification to be learned, it is the classroom time now available for less rushed teaching that allows for the specific use of age‐appropriate approaches, including via embracing student imagination (a feature, we reiterate, that is part of understanding the nature of science as practised by research scientists as well as increasing student intellectual and affective engagement). Similarly, less rushed teaching allows for greater consideration of what specific forms of inquiry can be used in the service of student learning and engagement, and diminishes the extent to which students see inquiry activities as the unthinking recipe‐like approaches described above. And, in seeing student learning and teacher pedagogies as the ways the formal science curriculum can appropriately embrace two of the perspectives we have focussed on in this article, we have also embraced what we have argued to be the centrally important issue for curriculum to come from considerations of our third perspective, Didaktik and Bildung: that is, inclusion in curriculum of what students likely already know/believe and what is known about how this existing knowledge needs to shape how we approach teaching.</p> <p>In a reflective article based on a number of their relevant research and development activities involving practising school teachers and discussions about and uses of big ideas, Mitchell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref341">143</reflink>]) describe their conceptualization of a big idea as "<emph>a unifying principle that connects and organises a number of smaller ideas or concepts and multiple experiences</emph>" (p. 599, emphasis in original). This is in the same broad spirit as the ways Harlen ([<reflink idref="bib97" id="ref342">97</reflink>] and other reports cited above) is conceptualizing big ideas, albeit that Harlen is doing so on a very much larger scale (i.e., 14 big ideas for a whole science curriculum). While both views share the same fundamental characteristics of integration and generalization across contexts and/or wide applicability and relevance, Mitchell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref343">143</reflink>]) extend their perspectives on the more detailed nature of big ideas in ways consistent with our arguments about the potential of big ideas to foster greater student understanding and engagement. These extensions are summarized in their abstract as follows:</p> <p>... big ideas should be framed in ways that are richer, more generative of teaching ideas and more pedagogically powerful than topic headings. This means framing them as a sentence, with a verb, that provides direction and ideas for teachers. We posit three different kinds of big ideas: big ideas about content, big ideas about learning and big ideas about the domain; the last two result in teachers having parallel agendas to their content agendas.</p> <p>(Mitchell et al. [<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref344">143</reflink>], p. 596)</p> <p>and then elaborated and illustrated throughout their article.</p> <p>In reinforcement of both the proposition that a big ideas‐based curriculum enables more ready inclusion of concerns with learning and pedagogy within the curriculum and the concerns that curriculum statements given as formal meaning are often unhelpful for learners and teachers, we point to Newton's Third Law. This example is also used for these same purposes by Mitchell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref345">143</reflink>]) and has been part of the physics teaching approach of one of us for several decades. The significance of the example is that the very common formal statement given in textbooks and traditional science and physics curricula is "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." This statement is a clear example of expression of a science principle using only logical meaning that, because of what it omits, is so misleading that there are many examples of school science or physics textbooks that distort the Third Law to the point of total error with the diagram they give to illustrate the law. This common and erroneous diagram shows arrows representing two equal and opposing forces (usually labeled "action" and "reaction") acting on the same object. This ignores a critical part of Newton's Third Law that is not mentioned in the expression of the law via only formal meaning: that the action and reaction forces act on different objects. Hence this diagrammatic depiction becomes worse than incorrect—it is nonsensical as it clearly implies the resultant force on any object interacting with another object is zero and so cannot move. Framing this example of a big idea as a statement of psychological meaning, or as a statement generative of teaching ideas (Mitchell et al. [<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref346">143</reflink>]; Shulman [<reflink idref="bib167" id="ref347">167</reflink>]) is an obvious approach to avoiding something that results in such erroneous distortion.</p> <p>Among the many points that Mitchell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref348">143</reflink>]) conclude about big ideas as a curriculum structure is that the framing of big ideas is not in any way a simple process. They observe that "[o]ur experience shows that if big ideas are to be framed differently and not merely extricated from curriculum documents, textbooks or even research papers, then teachers need to be supported in developing these big ideas" (p. 601). This central importance of teachers, essentially suggesting something in the form of an implemented curriculum in the context of a science curriculum innovation based on this interpretation of big ideas, is reinforced and elaborated in several ways by Mitchell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref349">143</reflink>]). They "argue the case that big ideas are pedagogically powerful because they offer direction and advice to teachers in ways that enhance teaching and student learning" (p. 597) but that "the significance of big ideas in classroom practice is underappreciated while their implementation in teaching is perceived as 'unproblematic'" (p. 596).</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-32">An Example That Illustrates Some of Our Arguments—the Science Continuum</hd> <p>One of the previous projects from which Mitchell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref350">143</reflink>]) draw on is the "Science Continuum" project. This project involved a large group of science educators at Monash University, including Mitchell and one of us, developing science curriculum resources to support teachers in implementing the then science curriculum mandated by the responsible jurisdiction of the Australian state of Victoria. This curriculum was for all 7 years of primary/elementary education in Victoria and all secondary years to Year 10, the final year of compulsory science education in this jurisdiction. Although the resource was prepared specifically to support the teaching of a specified curriculum that was essentially in the traditional form of an intended curriculum, we assert it would have been a small step to have taken the resources into the curriculum document itself. That is, we see the Science Continuum project as a form of example in practice of much of what we have argued here, and to, therefore, also be a significant example of reconceptualising of the documentation of a curriculum somewhat in the form we have argued above. We now outline our justification for these assertions and give a brief illustrative example of one of the 52 "focus ideas" (the descriptor used for the 52 big ideas that form the structure of the Continuum).</p> <p>The resources that are the Science Continuum had a core aim to connect science teachers with the large body of existing research on science learning, including what was then known about common age‐related student everyday experiences (often but not only from research on alternative conceptions) and with appropriate pedagogies that have a strong emphasis on fostering student understanding and engagement. The science content of the curriculum was framed by generalizations at the level of the form of big ideas described by Mitchell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref351">143</reflink>]), as noted above. Some of these generalizations were written in the manner of the Mitchell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib143" id="ref352">143</reflink>]) big ideas: for example "Living things don't exist in isolation" (for Years 1 or 2) and "All rocks are recycled" (for Years 7 or 8). Each of these generalizations then has a series of elaborations relevant to learning, teaching, and engagement.</p> <p>The first elaboration was "Student everyday experiences." For the living things big idea these included "Younger students tend to think of animals as individuals rather than focusing on populations or interactions," "Younger students interpret animal behaviour in terms of human emotions and motivations," "Young students can understand simple food links involving two organisms, yet they often think of organisms like family pets as independent of each other, but dependent on people." References to relevant research were given. In the context of our arguments in the present article this was then an attempt to lay out the existing psychological meanings (in the Ausubelian sense we have detailed above) likely to already be held by many students as they began their formal learning of the particular focus idea.</p> <p>The second elaboration was the "Scientific view." While this was as indicated a statement of the science, it was not expressed in the common manner of most curriculum statements and textbooks. Rather it was expressed in language and ideas likely to be more meaningful to a teacher at the intended level for the teaching of the specific big idea. The developers' intention was that this would be, for these teachers, closer to a statement of psychological meaning for them than a standard formal textbook statement could ever be (while, of course, remaining scientifically valid). It, therefore, included highly relevant material too often not included, as in the Newton's Third Law example already given. For the "all rocks are recycled" focus idea examples of these extra inclusions were "All exposed rocks have been made from older rocks by processes involving either sedimentation or significant heat and pressure. Many may have been recycled numbers of times," "The most common geological classification of rocks is based on the way the rocks are formed," and "not all rocks go through the same series of changes as they are recycled, for example not all rock is eroded before it forms a new rock."</p> <p>Then, "Critical teaching ideas" are listed, intended as statements of the foci appropriate for the teaching and learning activities. For the "all rocks are recycled" focus idea these included "Rocks are recycled in different ways and factors such as erosion, heating and chemical reaction create rocks with different properties" and "Rocks can be classified in different ways; the classification used by geologists is based on how they were formed—this is only one way to classify rocks and other people use different classifications."</p> <p>Then, the listed "Teaching activities" gave specific age and big idea relevant details for some of the 13 so‐called "Purposeful Teaching Activities" that were described more generically elsewhere in the Science Continuum details. These more generic Teaching Activities were all designed to support teachers in working "from students' existing ideas to build rich understandings of the currently accepted science." The generic form of each activity had been previously evolved over long periods of collaborative work involving researchers and teachers.</p> <p>Most focus ideas then conclude with listing of other relevant resources for teachers, again with the year level given careful consideration.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-33">A Brief Outline of One Focus Idea—"Living Things" (Year 1)</hd> <p>Among the many "Student everyday experiences" relevant for this early level that are given and referenced are "things are living if they move or grow," "plants and some animals are seen as non‐living," "trees, vegetables and grass are often not seen as plants."</p> <p>"The scientific view" is expressed as two propositions: "Living things are distinguished from non‐living things in their ability to carry on the following life processes: movement, metabolism" and "This is a view of science appropriate at this age but has some limitations as this view can lead to the alternative conceptions above [student everyday experiences]."</p> <p>Two "Critical teaching ideas" are given; "Most living things need food, water, light, temperatures within certain limits and air" and "Living things have a variety of characteristics that are displayed to different degrees: they respire, move, respond to stimuli, reproduce and grow and are adapted within a complex of living things situated in an environment."</p> <p>This focus idea concludes with detailed descriptions of four possible "Teaching activities."</p> <p>For further detail about the intention and development of the Science Continuum see, for example, Corrigan, Dillon, and Gunstone [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref353">30</reflink>]; Isaacs, Corrigan, and Mitchell [<reflink idref="bib117" id="ref354">117</reflink>]. The full set of materials and additional elaborations was only ever published electronically. A single document version of all these multiple webpages is available, open access, at https://<ulink href="http://www.monash.edu/science-education/projects/science-continuum-f-10/resources">www.monash.edu/science-education/projects/science-continuum-f-10/resources</ulink>.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-34">A Final Comment</hd> <p>Our quest to address the quintessential and interrelated problems of school science education—content and student engagement—has involved us drawing on three perspectives, each a line of research associated with creativity and imagination, or meaningful inquiry, or the student‐focussed perspectives of <emph>Didaktik</emph> and <emph>Bildung</emph>. As we noted early in our reflections on taking the three perspectives together, we see it as clear and logical that any simple solution to such longstanding and intractable major problems is at best extraordinarily unlikely and beyond the aim of this paper. Instead, we have sought to show how our three perspectives relate to the existing curriculum‐focussed initiative of "Big Ideas" as a basis for determining content (both what content to include and what to exclude) that was not or had not (yet) been widely adopted but that has real potential for approaches to more effectively tackle the intertwined problems of student learning of science and student engagement with science.</p> <p>Learners find it very difficult to learn with understanding from tasks which have no meaning that is apparent to them. They learn more effectively when they can link new experiences to what they already know and are motivated by curiosity to answer questions. Activities should, therefore, enable students to engage with real objects and with real problems. Programs of teaching and learning need to be sufficiently flexible to allow for differences in experiences and in what particular localities have to offer, so that students' interests and questions are used as starting points in working toward common goals. Science should be experienced by students as aiming for understanding, not as a collection of facts and theories that have been proven to be correct. Scientific knowledge should be conveyed as a set of explanations for natural phenomena that are generally agreed to provide the best account of the available evidence. It should be recognized as the result of human endeavor involving creativity and imagination as well as careful collection and interpretation of data (Harlen [<reflink idref="bib100" id="ref355">100</reflink>], p. 8). Correspondingly, teachers also struggle to teach tasks that are not pedagogically contextualized and in line with the everyday educational reality in both early childhood and school settings. Teaching science should also enable teachers to draw on their creativity and imagination and to find meaning in the way they teach science in their classrooms. The three perspectives presented in this paper, taken together, can be seen as a starting point for introducing a new science culture in educational settings that also includes teachers as active learners and citizens of science. As well as shaping early childhood and school practice such a science culture has to be widely reflected in resources for teachers and families, tertiary courses, and policies.</p> <p>We reiterate that we do not see successful approaches to the ongoing problem of student learning and engagement as being in any way simple (see e.g., the extensive literature on educational change written over many decades). But we do see considerable promise in approaches that holistically address all of the intended, implemented, and attained curriculum from the perspectives argued in this article: that is, the framing of <emph>big ideas</emph> in science as the essence of making selection decisions about what content based on the needs of current and future citizens that school science ought to be meeting, and the approaches to fostering student learning <emph>and</emph> engagement that are implied in these needs.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-35">Ethics Statement</hd> <p>The authors have nothing to report.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-36">Conflicts of Interest</hd> <p>The authors declare no conflicts of interest.</p> <hd id="AN0187844678-37">Data Availability Statement</hd> <p>The authors have nothing to report.</p> <ref id="AN0187844678-38"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref99" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Abd‐El‐Khalick, F., N. G. Lederman, and R. Schwartz. 2015. 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| Header | DbId: eric DbLabel: ERIC An: EJ1483001 AccessLevel: 3 PubType: Academic Journal PubTypeId: academicJournal PreciseRelevancyScore: 0 |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: School Science: An Approach to Rethinking What Students Learn and How They Might Be Better Engaged – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Connie+Cirkony%22">Connie Cirkony</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7438-7960">0000-0002-7438-7960</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Glykeria+Fragkiadaki%22">Glykeria Fragkiadaki</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7280-783X">0000-0001-7280-783X</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Richard+Gunstone%22">Richard Gunstone</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0827-2663">0000-0002-0827-2663</externalLink>) – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Science+Education%22"><i>Science Education</i></searchLink>. 2025 109(5):1149-1176. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 28 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2025 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Evaluative – Name: Audience Label: Education Level Group: Audnce Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Elementary+Secondary+Education%22">Elementary Secondary Education</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Science+Education%22">Science Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Learner+Engagement%22">Learner Engagement</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Curriculum+Evaluation%22">Curriculum Evaluation</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Science+Curriculum%22">Science Curriculum</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Core+Curriculum%22">Core Curriculum</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Elementary+Secondary+Education%22">Elementary Secondary Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Scientific+Concepts%22">Scientific Concepts</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Fundamental+Concepts%22">Fundamental Concepts</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1002/sce.21949 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0036-8326<br />1098-237X – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: For decades, two critical challenges have plagued school science in the years it is compulsory for students in many educational contexts across the globe: how best to identify what science is meaningful for all students to learn during their formal school science education, and how to keep these students engaged in the learning of this science. Diverse science curriculum movements over these decades and throughout the English-speaking world have provided different conceptualizations about the science content and process students should learn, and suggested many pedagogical practices to engage students in that learning. However, the two intertwined challenges of specific concern for this article clearly remain: what science to include and how to foster student engagement with that science. In this paper, we first seek to provide insights relevant to these two challenges via reviews of extant research in three quite broad and important areas of scholarship: (a) the concepts of imagination and creativity, considered particularly through current cultural-historical approaches to early years science learning; (b) the long-standing support around the globe for a range of inquiry-based approaches; and (c) the German constructs of "Didaktik" and "Bildung" as existing paths from a non-Anglo context that assist the determination of choices of science for curriculum inclusion or rejection. We then consider how these three discussions can lead to considerations of school science curriculum that better address the two challenges. Though simple solutions for these complex and multifaceted challenges are unlikely and beyond the aim of this paper, interrelated aspects of our three discussions point to curriculum-focussed initiatives focussing on "big ideas" as a way to determine content. We conclude by briefly illustrating these considerations via the example of school science curriculum structured via the "big ideas" of science: that is, those that are argued to be fundamental to the learner over the course of their compulsory science education. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2025 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1483001 |
| PLink | https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1483001 |
| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1002/sce.21949 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 28 StartPage: 1149 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Science Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Learner Engagement Type: general – SubjectFull: Curriculum Evaluation Type: general – SubjectFull: Science Curriculum Type: general – SubjectFull: Core Curriculum Type: general – SubjectFull: Elementary Secondary Education Type: general – SubjectFull: Scientific Concepts Type: general – SubjectFull: Fundamental Concepts Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: School Science: An Approach to Rethinking What Students Learn and How They Might Be Better Engaged Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Connie Cirkony – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Glykeria Fragkiadaki – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Richard Gunstone IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 09 Type: published Y: 2025 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0036-8326 – Type: issn-electronic Value: 1098-237X Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 109 – Type: issue Value: 5 Titles: – TitleFull: Science Education Type: main |
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