The lost moral purpose of science education

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21392721
AutoresJohn L Rudolph (0000-0001-9103-9653, Departments of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies University of Wisconsin–Madison Madison Wisconsin, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen104
Número5
Páginas895-906
Fecha de publicación2020-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaScience Education (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0036-8326 • E-ISSN: 1098-237X
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/sce.21590
OpenAlexW3041603717
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas50

Since the rise of mass schooling in the 19th century, Americans have advocated for the teaching of science at nearly every level of the educational system. The reasons for its inclusion in the school curriculum, though, have varied over the years. The argument in the mid 1800s, for example, centered on the utilitarian value of scientific knowledge for industry and everyday affairs, while in the 1950s the study of science was viewed as important for building public support for research in the United States. Towards the end of the 19th century there was a period of time when the predominant argument for science instruction rested on a moral purpose—the building of character and personal virtue. For early proponents of science education, moral uplift came from student engagement in the process of science—in coming to face the facts of the natural world that were the basis for the discovery of truth. This essay explores whether such goals for teaching science might once again have a place at a time when scientific expertize and knowledge are increasingly being minimized or dismissed

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Curriculum · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Natural (archaeology) · Nature of Science · Pedagogy · Period (music) · Philosophy of science · Science education · Science, technology, society and environment education · Scientific Literacy · Social science · Social science education · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Value (mathematics) · Virtue · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Educational Strategies and Epistemologies · History · Philosophy · Science Education and Pedagogy