Chapter 1
Introduction
The Upper Secondary Tier and the Place of Science Therein
Barend Vlaardingerbroek, Neil Taylor, and Terry Lyons
Upper Secondary: A Distinctive Tier
UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLING ARGUABLY PREDATES MASS BASIC educational provision by centuries. Until well into the nineteenth century, the sons of the European aristocracy and the wealthier mercantile class, after completing a period of home schooling by private tutors, were dispatched to schools that drilled them in all the eminently useful things a young gentleman needed to know, such as Latin and the Greek classics, in preparation for university study. In functional terms, upper secondary schooling could be regarded as having existed well before the term secondary schooling entered the educational lexicon.
Mass public schooling took off in the nineteenth century with a principal view to instilling the â3 Rsââreading, writing, and arithmetic. Until the early decades of the twentieth century, most Europeans did not progress beyond primary schooling. Then came the working-class emancipatory movements and the meritocratic notion that education is the key to success in life for anyone regardless of social class at birth, fuelling a social demand for postprimary and, subsequently, upper secondary schooling. The evolution of school systems thus has two historical starting pointsâone at the top and one at the bottom of what was to become the formal schooling pyramid.
Echoes of the âelitistâ nature of upper secondary schooling remain in various education systems today, especially where learners are assigned to âtracks,â including prestigious academic programs operating alongside âgeneralâ and vocational parallel tracks, and where examination filters control the transition of students from the lower to the upper secondary tier and/or allocate learners to one of these tracks. The existence of technical/vocational tracks raises the issue of delineating the upper secondary tier, given that some authorities categorize the latter as upper secondary programs while others do not.
Upper secondary schooling is about more than just an extra two or three years of schooling: it has retained an aura of distinctiveness in most, if not all, formal education systems. It almost invariably involves attendance beyond the minimum legal school-leaving age, although, in some countries, this practice may be on a part-time rather than on a full-time basis. Not that legislation is needed to keep many students at school: given the loss of appetite among developed economies for unskilled youth labor, the stark choice facing many 16- to 19-year-olds is between attendance and unemployment.
However, even if universally accessible, upper secondary schooling is not universal in any society to date; on average, around three-quarters of young people in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries attend upper secondary schooling. The remainderâamong whom young people from the humbler socioeconomic strata are usually disproportionately representedâbeing unable or unwilling to do so, often siphon off into career pathways associated with the more menial occupations.
In the continental European systems, upper secondary schools are traditionally institutionally separate from the lower secondary, while in some others, particularly the British system and its numerous offshoots, the entire secondary education cycle usually occurs under the same roof, although Sixth Form Colleges have become part of the educational landscape in parts of Britain.
Whichever is the case, there is a discernible âgear changeâ in the transition from lower to upper secondary school, as the emphasis on the âbroad, general curriculumâ characteristic of the basic education cycle gives way to either specialized packages of subjects in the tracked systems or what may be a dazzling variety of curricular offerings, mainly in the British-derived systems.
At the end of it all there often looms a cycle of public examinations that represent prominent milestones in a young personâs life: the BaccalaurĂ©at, Maturita, Abitur, A-Levels, or whatever crowning certification the system has evolved, often instrumental in determining his or her life prospects by mediating the transition to higher education. For despite the upper secondary stratum having to now cater for the disparate abilities, aptitudes, and aspirations of a wide spectrum of emerging adults, the upper secondary level remains the preparation ground for entry to higher education, particularly university.
The connection between upper secondary schooling and the transition to higher education has been a strong one since its inception, and it remains so. A major feature of the nineteenth-century French reforms that directly or indirectly influenced the structure of most continental European education systems was the alignment of upper secondary with university education, mediated by the terminating examination system. In Britain, matriculation likewise became a function of the final years of public-sector schooling, but somewhat later. However, an upper secondary exit certificate was, for a long time, also a valuable job-market entry ticket in its own right, particularly for the public service and for private-sector white-collar positions that involved on-the-job training.
Where entry to upper secondary school is selective, there may remain a considerable market premium on it. However, changes in the labor market and in enrollment patterns in postsecondary education and training, accompanied by credential inflation, have brought about over the past few decades an emphasis on the transitional functions of the upper secondary experience at the expense of its terminating certification functions in their own right.
Upper secondary curricula tend to reflect the âspecializedâ nature of upper secondary schooling, particularly in the continental European systems. While there may be âgeneralâ or âcomprehensiveâ tracks, these exist alongside specialized tracks that may include programs intensive in humanities, social sciences, science and mathematics, and classical studies, not to mention technical and vocational tracks.
The assigning of students to tracks often corresponds to their scholastic ability, and it is frequently the case that the mathematics/science specializations are the most competitive; it could be argued that advanced science and mathematics have usurped Latin and Greek as the âeliteâ subject concentrations in numerous systems. In systems with more open subject choice at the upper secondary level, we see this new elitism in the enrollment of students in âpureâ sciences and advanced mathematics subjectsâsubject combinations leading to entry to programs such as biomedical science and engineering at universityâto the point of having highly competitive-entry science-intensive programs such as those in several Asian and African countries, sometimes delivered in specialized âscience upper secondary schools.â
It is against this backdrop that the current volume casts the spotlight on science in the culminating secondary school years. Mathematics has been a component of upper secondary schooling from the days when Euclidean geometry formed a part of the classical studies canon; science entered formal schooling in the late nineteenth century and blossomed into a major aspect of secondary education only after the Second World War. Newly independent developing countries were generally enthusiastic about science education, seeing in it the promise of an indigenous scientific and technological cadre that would address development problems. In numerous systems, in both the industrialized and developing worlds, upper secondary science education is a prominent investment area in human capital formation. At the same time, science education at this level needs to cater for the majority of students, who will not be entering engineering, biomedical science, or other science specializations. The ensuing balancing act is a theme running as an undercurrent through the pages of this book.
Issues in Upper Secondary Science
Upper secondary science does not exist in a vacuum; it needs to be contextualized with reference to input factors and output goals and destinations.
Preparation
The global norm is that school students are taught science as part of their basic curriculum from primary through to the end of lower secondary schooling. Quality issues at these levels manifest themselves through the science-related competencies students bring to the upper secondary level, not to mention their attitudes toward science and science study.
A worrying finding from numerous developed countries is that of a widespread deterioration of interest in science among many youngsters, a result of which has been a waning of the desire to pursue science courses voluntarily into the upper secondary years. However, it should be added that this generalization applies mainly to the physical sciences; biology, particularly human biology, tends to fare much better with respect to perceived relevance. It would indeed be surprising if adolescents were to award the balancing of chemical equations and the Haber Process the same ârelevance rankingâ as human health and reproductive biology. In the context of open subject choice, however, this âpreferenceâ often results in students being poorly prepared for tertiary biology courses owing to their deficiencies in physical sciences, particularly chemistry.
Enrollments in Science Subjects
There is increasing concern in many countries about future shortages of skilled workers in the technical- and scientific-orientated industries as a result of the low interest among students to engage in senior science programs. Evidence regarding young peopleâs decisions about studying science is unsurprisingly mixed, with some studies suggesting that this decision is often made at an early age and other studies finding that the decision comes toward the end of lower secondary schooling.
There seems little doubt that many younger adolescents feel alienated in science classrooms. Whether through free subject choice or track assignation, a common feature of upper secondary enrollment patterns is a numerical bias disfavoring specialized science subjects, particularly physical sciences. The selection of physics and chemistry tends to be prompted more by intended postschool destinations than by interest or enjoyment, and parental attitudes toward the outcomes of formal education have also been shown to enter the equation. We should also not overlook the strong ties between physical science and mathematics: students who lack confidence in their mathematical ability are unlikely to enroll in physics subjects at the upper secondary level and may indeed be advised against doing so by the school.
Curricula
European research by Tiberghien et al. (2001) indicated that the science undertaken at the upper secondary and lower tertiary levels of the education system of several European countries was strikingly similar in terms of approach and thrust. This is hardly surprising given the traditional tertiary preparatory nature of European upper secondary schooling. At the same time, multilevel science offerings at the upper secondary level enable students to enroll in either theoretically oriented tertiary-preparatory courses or more âappliedâ courses.
Associated with the broad issue of curriculum is pedagogy. The ascendancy of the constructivist paradigm in academic educational circles does not always fit in well with content-laden courses principally aimed at preparing students for university study. Science courses at the upper secondary level are often perceived to be conceptually difficult, with an emphasis on abstract theoretical ideas. Senior science, especially in examination-driven systems, tends to be taught in a traditional way using the transmission model, dominated by teacher explanation and demonstrations, with students copying notes. The practical work often tends to be verification oriented, with students required to follow specific instructions to achieve known results.
Assessment Issues
Terminating certification looms over upper secondary education as a whole, and all subjects are affected by it, including the sciences. A perennial bone of contention in many examination-oriented systems is âteaching to the test,â whereby classroom teaching degenerates into examination coaching at the expense of student interest and individual discovery and creativity. But in systems where school-based internal assessment is prominent, students and teachers may become preoccupied with continuous assessment at the expense of the very same desired attributes of science education.
The balance between teaching for the sake of learning and teaching for the sake of assessment presents a tension that has long been problematic at the upper secondary level, whatever the summative assessment regime. The pressure on teachers and students is particularly acute in the context of limited opportunities for transition to tertiary study, as is the case for many developing countries. However, it may be just as acute for students in Western countries hoping to make the transition from school into competitive-entry university programs such as biomedical. Itâs little wonder, then, that the more nebulous goals of science education such as âdiscoveryâ and âcreativityâ end up playing a muted second fiddle to the demands placed on the system by the intricacies of terminating assessment.
Science across the SecondaryâTertiary Interface
As noted before, the demands of the secondaryâtertiary transition tend to loom over upper secondary schooling and largely determine what happens in upper secondary classrooms. Given the global trend toward increasing enrollments at the tertiary level, the bridging function of upper secondary schooling has become paramount. Science, especially specialized science courses in the context of science-intensive programs, arguably enjoys a higher profile in this regard than any other discipline, associated as it is with entry to high-prestige university programs and their associated occupations.
In addition to considerations relating to the determinative role studentsâ performance in upper secondary science plays in selection for competitive-entry tertiary offerings, particularly in the European systems and their derivatives, is the question of whether the upper secondary sector furnishes the tertiary sector with the quality of students it demands.
In the United Kingdom, the evidence appears to suggest that the secondaryâtertiary interface for science is often problematic. A report commissioned by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2000 (Gadd 2000) highlighted a large number of problems facing students moving from schools or colleges to first-year undergraduate courses. Many science departments within universities claimed to have modified their courses to reflect the increasingly diverse backgrounds of their intakes. There was a consistent view among lecturers that students were now starting science degrees with a poorer factual knowledge base and fewer practical skills than ever before. Furthermore, students were viewed as increasingly assessment focused rather than learning focused. The situation appeared to be compounded by a lack of awareness on the part of lecturers as to what was occurring in senior secondary science classrooms; they commonly assumed their students had little or no prior knowledge.
Overall, however, when assessing the literature, it is difficult to determine whether it is senior secondary science that is failin...