Studies in Science Education in the Asia-Pacific Region

May Hung Cheng, Alister Jones, Cathy Buntting, May May Hung Cheng, Alister Jones, Cathy Buntting

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317510697
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

Consistent with international trends, there is an active pursuit of more engaging science education in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim of this book is to bring together some examples of research being undertaken at a range of levels, from studies of curriculum and assessment tools, to classroom case studies, and investigations into models of teacher professional learning and development. While neither a comprehensive nor definitive representation of the work that is being carried out in the region, the contributions—from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand—give a taste of some of the issues being explored, and the hopes that researchers have of positively influencing the types of science education experienced by school students.

The purpose of this book is therefore to share contextual information related to science education in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as offering insights for conducting studies in this region and outlining possible questions for further investigation. In addition, we anticipate that the specific resources and strategies introduced in this book will provide a useful reference for curriculum developers and science educators when they design school science curricula and science both pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes.

The first section of the book examines features of science learners and learning, and includes studies investigating the processes associated with science conceptual learning, scientific inquiry, model construction, and students' attitudes towards science. The second section focuses on teachers and teaching. It discusses some more innovative teaching approaches adopted in the region, including the use of group work, inquiry-based instruction, developing scientific literacy, and the use of questions and analogies. The third section reports on initiatives related to assessments and curriculum reform, including initiatives associated with school-based assessment, formative assessment strategies, and teacher support accompanying curriculum reform.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315717678, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1 Learning, teaching, and assessing science in the Asia-Pacific context

May May Hung Cheng, Alister Jones, and Cathy Buntting

DOI: 10.4324/9781315717678-1

The Asia-Pacific context: worthy of attention

The Asia-Pacific region is well known for its wide range of geographical, political, economic, and religious diversity, both among and within the countries in the region. There are countries with vast landmasses (e.g., Russia, China, and India) and also tiny island countries (e.g., the Maldives and Pacific Island countries), there are some of the world’s richest economies (e.g., Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia) and some of the poorest (e.g., Bangladesh and Burma), there are societies administered under feudal, communist, and capitalist political systems, and there are a huge number of believers of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Education is by its nature socio-culturally embedded. Given the abundant variety among and within the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, research in both classical areas of science learning and teaching and analysis of trends in the latest curriculum reforms in this region is not only of value to local educators, curriculum designers, and policymakers, but to their counterparts elsewhere who can also gain insights from this highly complex and diversified context.

In particular, the consistent excellent performance of students in parts of the Asia-Pacific region in large-scale international comparisons such as the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) has generated intense curiosity among local and global scholars regarding how science is being learned and how science learning is supported. According to the PISA 2015 survey (OECD, 2015), nine of the top 15 economies with the highest performance in science assessment are in the Asia-Pacific region, namely Singapore, Japan, Chinese Taipei, Macao (China), Vietnam, Hong Kong (China), B-S-J-G (Beijing-Shanghai-Jiangsu-Guangdong, China), Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. Similar results are also found in the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) 2009 report, in which five of the six aforementioned (excluding Taipei) are among the top ten. The OECD (2015) report highlights the importance of providing opportunities for students to learn to “think like a scientist” and the quality of science teaching at the classroom level, promoting thinking as a 21st century skill regardless of whether students will pursue science-related careers or not. The report also reveals an association between student science performance and science teaching strategies, such as the frequency of opportunities for students to “explain scientific ideas”, “discuss their questions”, or “demonstrate an idea”. In addition, students’ science scores tend to be higher when teachers “adapt the lesson to their needs and knowledge” or “provide individual help when a student has difficulties understanding a topic or task”.

Consistent with international trends, there is an active pursuit of more engaging science education in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim of this book is to bring together some examples of research being undertaken at a range of levels, from studies of curriculum and assessment tools, to classroom case studies, and investigations into models of teacher professional learning and development (PLD). It is by no means a comprehensive or definitive representation of the work that is being carried out in the region. Rather, the contributions – from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand – give a taste of some of the issues being explored, and the hopes that researchers have of positively influencing the types of science education experienced by school students.

In addition, we anticipate that the specific resources and strategies introduced in this book will provide a useful reference for local curriculum developers and science educators when they design school science curricula and science teacher education or development programmes. The purpose of this book is therefore to share contextual information related to science education in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as offering insights for conducting studies in this region and outlining possible questions for further investigation. The first section examines features of science learners and learning, and includes studies investigating the processes associated with science conceptual learning, scientific inquiry, model construction, and students’ attitudes towards science. The second section focuses on teachers and teaching. It discusses some innovative teaching approaches adopted in the region, including the use of group work, inquiry-based instruction, developing scientific literacy, and use of questions and analogies. The third section reports on initiatives related to assessments and curriculum reform, including initiatives associated with school-based assessment, formative assessment strategies, and teacher support accompanying curriculum reform.

Science learners and learning

While policymakers tend to compare students’ performance in science learning, an extensive corpus of academic literature in science education reports on students’ attitudes towards and processes of learning science, many with the aim of identifying strategies and mechanisms for improvement. The chapters in this section are consistent with recent research and debates related to students’ interest, science learning attitudes, science inquiry, and the development of models in science classrooms.

Two chapters in this section report on students’ understanding of science concepts. In Chapter 2, Wheijen Chang reports on a Taiwanese study with high school students, showing that the students encountered serious difficulties in understanding and applying the concept of equilibrium in relation to Newton’s first and second laws. The influence of everyday understandings on the development of science concepts was evident. Chang chose to investigate this topic based on the importance of these laws in the study of physics. The gaps in students’ understanding were attributed to “sociocultural perspectives in terms of the socially invented nature of physics tools, and students’ understandings of scientific ways of seeing and reasoning”. Moreover, students from the more prestigious schools did not have any advantages in terms of their responses to the assessment task. Chang chose these concepts based on the importance of these laws in the study of physics. While equilibrium may seem simple to understand, developing a scientific understanding involves making known to students how the ideas may be counter-intuitive to everyday understanding, and helping them to adopt scientific thinking. As argued by Chang, there are likely to be “many more apparently simple terms that significantly confuse students and impede their fluency in physical reasoning. Being aware of the challenges is a first step towards enhanced teaching and learning.”

In Chapter 3, Winnie So and her colleagues report on Hong Kong primary school students’ use of scientific evidence in the science inquiry process. Specifically, 30 well-structured reports (appropriately 26% of the 115 reports) from the fourteenth Primary Science Inquiries event were randomly selected and analysed according to an analytical framework showing the relationship between the seven concepts of evidence and the quality of the science inquiry. This research is relevant, since students need to apply concepts of evidence in science inquiries, and science projects involving inquiry elements are common at the primary level. Findings showed that students were better able to apply the concepts of identifying variables, carry out fair tests, choose appropriate research instruments, incorporate repeats, and effectively use graphical representations. Choosing measurement values and interpreting results were more challenging for students, these concepts being least embedded in the students’ reports. These findings suggest the need to include explicit teaching of procedural aspects within the primary curriculum.

In South Korea, Chan-Jong Kim and colleagues investigated junior high school students’ learning processes when co-constructing scientific models (Chapter 4). The teaching strategy, developed by teachers in collaboration with the research team, involved four phases: exploration, small-group modelling, whole-class modelling, and model deployment. The focus of the learning was to use the concept of annual parallax to explain how to measure the distance between close stars. Findings show that the model construction, including the generation, evaluation, and modification of the model, is an evolutionary process. Despite working in small groups, the students’ reasons for model modification were shown to often be implicit, although the use of tangible resources, such as table tennis balls, can create links between internal and external representations. Drawing on the findings, the authors discuss how teachers might stimulate student participation in large classes where students tend to be dependent on other students and the teacher, and are less ready to state their own opinions (Lee, 2013). The authors believe that model construction will support the achievement of the curriculum goals, though further work is needed to explore effective implementation strategies.

Stepping back from a detailed analysis of students’ learning in relation to specific science concepts, Yau Yuen Yeung and May May Hung Cheng consider some of the reasons underpinning Hong Kong students’ good science performance in international comparative tests (Chapter 5). Apart from identifying implications from socio-political changes, curriculum reform, medium of instruction policy and the Confucian-Heritage Context (CHC), findings from the large-scale international ROSE (Relevance of Science Education) survey were analysed. In particular, strong support from parents and family for children’s education seems to be a significant factor driving Hong Kong students’ performance in science education. However, findings from the ROSE survey showed that Hong Kong students had comparatively few science-related experiences compared with students of other countries, except in relation to the use of hand tools and computers. They also preferred jobs with a high degree of autonomy and independence rather than jobs requiring creativity in S&T. The authors call for further systematic investigations to identify factors or evidence associated with good student performance in science.

Science pedagogy

Recognizing the critical role of the teacher in scaffolding students’ engagement and learning in school science, the second section of the book brings together examples of pedagogical strategies constructed to facilitate students’ science learning. In many cases, these chapters acknowledge the education and curriculum reforms implemented in the relevant education contexts in order to support the development of more competitive future generations. Since the 1990s, an increasing amount of content related to Science, Technology, and Society (STS) has been integrated in Taiwanese school science textbooks (Tsai, 2000). The nature of science, which has been explicitly articulated and emphasised in curriculum documents in North America and Europe over the last 20 years is now starting to be integrated into Asian science education (Wong, Hodson, Kwan, & Yung, 2009). The goal of developing students’ scientific literacy has been promoted in science curriculum reform documents such as the Thailand Office of the National Education Commission (2003), the Chinese Ministry of Education (2001), the Australian Education Council (1994), the Bangladesh Ministry of Education (2000), and the Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council (2002). Corresponding to the emergence of this newly articulated objective, considerable changes have been required in relation to the content and methods of science teaching, and inquiry-based science pedagogies have been promulgated among educators in the Asia-Pacific region (Hofstein, Navon, Kipnis, & Mamlok-Naaman, 2005).

There is, in fact, an active area of research on pedagogical innovations in the Asia-Pacific region, and the second section of this book includes six chapters related to science teaching pedagogies with contributions from Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and Australia. In Chapter 6, Hsiao-Lin Tuan and Chi-Chin Chin consider how science inquiry is addressed in primary and secondary curricular goals and classroom settings in Taiwan. Research findings from the last 20 years are reviewed. They illustrate how Taiwanese science teachers have addressed inquiry-based instruction in school science class settings and teacher education programmes, with findings related to student learning of science inquiry skills, attitudes towards learning science, and students’ creativity, argumentation and problem-solving skills. Given the curriculum directions and efforts of science teachers to improve their inquiry-based instruction, the authors conclude that inquiry-based instruction is likely to continue to play an important role in science education in Taiwan.

Kok-Siang Tan introduces the shifts towards a focus on the holistic development of students in Singapore schools and reports on the use of ‘reversed analogies’ in school science (Chapter 7). This approach, called a ‘cognitive-affective integrative’ pedagogy, uses science concepts (as the analogue) to illustrate an appropriately identified social value or life skill (the target). Such an approach is considered to infuse affective learning opportunities into the school science curriculum without significantly changing how science is taught in class. Of course, as with analogies, appropriate selection of the reverse analogies is required, and the chapter provides some useful examples. The project suggests on ways to support students to develop positive social values and life skills through using ‘reversed analogies’. The challenge remains how to ensure students’ learning of scientific concepts while at the same time achieving these affective learning targets.

The use of group work in primary science classrooms was the theme of two chapters. In Chapter 8, Dennis Fung first provides an overview of group work in science from an international perspective before reporting on relevant policy shifts to support group work in Hong Kong primary schools. In order to investigate the impact of group work in science classrooms, four Grade 5 classes from two primary schools participated in a quasi-experimental research project. The participating science teachers attended professional development workshops and designed teaching interventions in their science lessons. Data were collected from both intervention and control classrooms. Students in the intervention classes participated in problem-solving activities, including discussions, debates, presentations and reflection, whereas students in the control class worked independently. Teachers described the atmosphere in the intervention classrooms as interactive and supportive, with students motivated to engage in the group activities and gains in terms of the students’ performance in both cognitive and affective areas. Students reported that group work increased both the collaborative and competitive atmosphere within their classrooms, with a shift in focus from individual success to group success. Fung points to the importance of teachers’ understanding of their roles in facilitating group work and how this may support student learning.

Staying with group work but investigating its impact on supporting inquiry-based pedagogies in Singapore, Joanna Oon Jeu Ong and her colleagues sought Year 4 students’ accounts of their science learning experiences using co-generative dialogues (Chapter 9). The study therefore focuses on student views of what it means to be a learner of science in their classrooms. A key finding was that interpersonal interactions were more memorable to the students than the actual science content – and that sometimes these interactions, while looking like ‘off-task’ behaviours, were actually important in helping students to recall their conceptual learning. The study calls for attention to student-teacher relationships and teacher professional development opportunities highlighting this particular aspect.

The important role of teacher professional development and learning (PLD), highlighted by Ong et al. is picked up by John Loughran in Chapter 10. Specifically, this chapter describes a lo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the authors
• 1 Learning, teaching, and assessing science in the Asia-Pacific context
• Part I The science learner and learning
• Part II Science pedagogy
• Part III Assessment and curriculum reform
• Index