Hands-on learning: in Namibia, students test the resistance of mudbricks.
During an in-service training workshop in the Philippines, teachers build a bridge
model using local materials.
Through activities like sorting garbage, protecting certain endangered animal
and plant species and conserving water resources, science education can help train
citizens to be aware of their social responsibilities.
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An experiment
on density
Lemon, water, salt and a glass
are all that Mexican secondary school teachers need to prove that bodies float in
denser liquids. A lemon is denser than water, for instance, which means that it sinks
to the bottom if put in a glass of water. By adding salt, the density of the solution
gradually increases until it is greater than that of the lemon, which thus rises
to the surface.
(El Libro para el maestro. Quimica. “Teacher’s chemistry manual”, Educacion
secundaria, Public Education Secretariat, Mexico, page 64, 1994).
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Chemistry in the
community
ChemCom is a chemistry curriculum written
for secondary school students by the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 1980. It
attempts to enhance science literacy by emphasizing chemistry’s impact on society.
Despite being the world leader in science and technology, the U.S. still records
generally unsatisfactory levels of scientific education—a fact which has worried
government, teachers and parents alike. Since the late 1990s, the programme has been
used in schools in many other countries, from the suburbs of Buenos Aires to towns
in Siberia. It has been translated into Japanese, Russian, Italian and Spanish, and
a French version will shortly be completed.
One 14-year-old student from Krasnoyarskii Krai in Siberia describes ChemCom’s methods
as follows: “First, the teacher introduces a problem, for example the pollution of
a river, then we students try to find out what kind of scientific knowledge is needed
to solve the problem. But the most important thing is that we consider several possible
approaches and discuss them before making a final decision.”
The subject of one of the ChemCom course units, “Petroleum: To build? To burn?” is
based on details from the U.S. context. But that was no obstacle to students from
a rural Siberian school, the Bolshoi Ului, who made full use of the course for their
own region—an oil-rich area like Texas. Two students went with their parents to gather
information on local oil production from the Environmental Protection Committee in
the nearest town, Achinsk. Not only did they get the facts they wanted, but the local
media launched a campaign to collect and donate newspapers and magazines to the students
for their project, which has since been titled: “Natural Resources in Bolshoi Ului:
preserve them or use them?”
ChemCom’s internet site
is at http://lapeer.org/chemcom
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Teachers must prepare
not only future scientists, but also citizens who will confront unprecedented technological
and ethical challenges in their lifetime
 When Mexican teacher Jose Antonio
Lopez Tercero was a student, he regarded as quite plausible the idea that velocity
and potential energy are like two machines that can be stored in a cupboard. Back
in those days, he was led to believe all kinds of outlandish things. His innocence
was caused not by reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magic realist novels, but by dozing
through abstract physics classes. “They were awful,” recalls Lopez Tercero, who now
teaches chemistry at the Escuela del Sur Institute, a secondary school in Mexico
City.
Today he tries to teach science in the way he would liked to have learnt it. As often
as possible, he uses everyday objects to help his students grasp abstract concepts.
A washing machine can illustrate dispersion by centrifugal force; clothes show how
to distinguish natural and synthetic fibres; plastics aid the study of oil derivatives;
lemon juice and red cabbage bring acids to life, while television helps explain how
electromagnetic waves work.
This approach represents a huge qualitative change, at least in comparison to what
Lopez Tercero had to go through as a pupil. Back at secondary school, he remembers
that “the teacher would arrive, announce a concept, write down a formula, and teach
us how to solve problems using the latter. All I did was work through the formulas
by replacing letters with numbers.”
This traditional teaching method, based on the transmission of a body of knowledge
and the study of problems with little relevance to many students, is still practiced,
and not just in Mexico. According to Jacob Bregman, a specialist in science education
at the World Bank, “science education in developing countries often relies too much
on memorization of facts and not enough on learning to understand the relevance of
knowledge and its application in the local context.” In the industrialized countries
there is much greater emphasis on the problem-solving approach, decision-making,
and developing the ability to analyze and work in a team.
Failings in the educational systems of Third World countries are particularly alarming
because economic development is increasingly linked to scientific and technological
knowledge. But there is now a widespread desire for change, reflected in a wave of
reforms in scientific education that have taken place around the world in the last
few years.1 And though the reforms differ from country
to country, they have certain common features.
One of them is relating science to everyday life, as Lopez Tercero does in Mexico.
As well as improving the learning process, this method makes students more enthusiastic
and genuinely interested in science. In recent years, half of the graduates from
the Escuela del Sur Institute have embarked on scientific careers, 30 per cent more
than the Mexican school average.
Unearthing
the practical end of knowledge
Relating science
to everyday life also means anchoring teaching more firmly in the local context.
Using problems that affect the community, teachers endeavour to show the practical
value of scientific knowledge in determining the causes of specific phenomena. They
encourage students to come up with ways of possibly preventing environmental catastrophes.
Teachers are making “huge efforts in their classes to treat problems which are relevant
to the students instead of using abstract examples from textbooks,” says Bettina
Walther, the co-ordinator of a science education project in Tanzania’s secondary
schools. Launched in 1997, the project involves maths teachers from 27 schools, who
focus lessons on development projects in the towns where they teach. For example,
geometry courses might be based on the practical case of installing electricity and
telephone lines to explain concepts while applied maths lessons look to using fertilizers
and pesticides for learning various operations.
Even while looking at the stars, these teachers base their classes on widely held
local beliefs. Peter Lesala, a science education adviser to Lesotho’s secondary schools,
is writing a course on astronomy that will feature in his country’s curriculum. “The
first thing I did,” he explains, “was to do some research into Basotho beliefs about
the stars. My course will start with a discussion of those beliefs.”
Some science education projects might be inspired by a foreign model. In this case,
the key lies in adapting themes to local conditions, as some teachers and students
have done in a highly creative way using “ChemCom: Chemistry in the community”, a
secondary school course drawn up by the Washington-based American Chemical Society,
an organization dedicated to advancing knowledge and research in the field of chemistry
and related sciences (see box).
Science
for all
Underlying
this reform trend is the conviction that far more young people should have access
to scientific education. Sylvia Ware, author of several reports on science education
in developing countries for the World Bank and director of Education and International
Activities at the American Chemical Society believes in science for all, not just
for future scientists. “Those involved in reforming science education believe that
science is too important to be left up to scientists alone. The general public must
have a much broader and more subtle understanding of science than they have at the
moment. Problems of developing countries such as water supply, health, industrial
development or land use have to be addressed by people who understand the science
and technology involved.”
In other words, the goal is to provide basic scientific literacy so that citizens
can take an active part in crucial debates on issues ranging from environmental protection,
to the use of genetically modified organisms, to the new ethical dilemmas posed by
modern biological discoveries.
Through activities like sorting garbage, protecting certain endangered animal and
plant species and conserving water resources, science education can help train citizens
to be aware of their social responsibilities. One example is the Globo project in
Costa Rica, whose goal is to make students aware of environmental protection by studying
the El Niño climatic phenomenon. Young Costa Ricans measure temperatures and
record rainfall levels in their communities. This data, gathered by relatively complex
instruments, is then used in maths courses to draw graphs, in the social sciences
to study the impact of floods on communities and in biology classes to explain life
cycles.
Ware says the issue of “science for all” has been debated “from Argentina to Zimbabwe”.
The big question is how to make scientific knowledge more accessible to more students
without lowering standards in courses for those who will become the scientists of
tomorrow. The answer is complex, requiring a system that is flexible enough to offer
more precise and in-depth knowledge to those planning to follow a scientific career,
while at the same time giving everybody else scientific training that allows them
to function in society.
Although developing countries are far from having solved this issue, nations like
Argentina, Brazil and Chile have chosen the route of specialization. In Chile, students
in the first years of secondary school follow the same programme. The aim is to give
them a grounding for becoming well-rounded, socially responsible citizens. In the
last two years, a streamed system offers two specializations: a technical and professional
kind, aimed at training future employees able to compete in the world market; and
a more theoretical scientific course that stimulates analytical thought and strives
to instil higher levels of conceptual understanding. This stream is more specifically
geared at students interested in pursuing a scientific career. Using this mix, the
Chilean model aims to ensure the creation of a highly trained workforce that can
respond to rapid changes in the labour market, while at the same time establishing
a scientific community which can carry out the technological innovations needed to
modernize the country’s economy.
Investing
in teachers
These sorts
of innovations may well be major advances, but according to Ware “you can’t just
change the curriculum and expect things to change in the classroom. You have to work
with teachers and help them become familiar with the new material and new ways of
teaching.” Unfortunately, teachers in developing countries are in a precarious position,
and are thus unable to assume natural leadership in the reform process.
In Chile, teachers work between 33 and 44 hours a week in two or sometimes three
different schools. In Mexico, students—numbering up to 60 per class—are generally
taught by dentists or doctors retrained for the purpose, or by teachers with more
knowledge of classroom technique than the subject they are supposed to be covering.
Neither students nor teachers stray far from the textbook. “The main problem with
science education in Mexico is no longer the issue of programmes or of textbooks;
the weak point lies in teacher training, which is practically left up to fate,” declares
Vicente Talanquer, a chemistry professor at Mexico’s Autonomous University. What
he qualifies as a “big gap” still divides educational plans and study programmes
from the abiding reality of the classroom.
In Ware’s opinion, there is only one way to fill this gap: “invest as much as possible
in teachers’ professional development.” While adapting the ChemCom course for use
in Russia, the American Chemical Society, supported by unesco, has also offered training
workshops for teachers, even for those from the most far-flung towns in Siberia.
As a result, the teachers get to know the educational materials and methods, as well
as new evaluation tools that enable them to find out whether a student has simply
learnt concepts by rote, or if on the other hand he or she has understood the ideas
and is able to apply them in different situations.
Enormous public investment and resolute political will are required to guarantee
this training in the long term. Given that the reform of scientific education in
Mexico began only seven years ago, and involves 200,000 secondary school teachers
and 600,000 teachers in primary school, it is clear that the radical changes everyone
is seeking will not happen overnight.
1. Sylvia A. Ware (editor):
Science and Environment Education, Views from Developing Countries, The World
Bank, Washington D.C., 1999.
Paul Black and Myron Atkin (editors): Changing the Subject, London: Routledge
with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 1996.
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