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J Sci Teacher Educ (2010) 21:1–5
DOI 10.1007/s10972-009-9156-5
Author's personal copy
One Size Fits None?
Charles R. Ault Jr.
Published online: 17 November 2009
Ó Springer Science+Business Media, B.V. 2009
Vexation
A zoologist friend of mine once remarked, ‘‘The science is in the debate.’’ He was
referring to community process—to scrutiny of contested claims in a public forum,
with resolution dependent about judging the quality of inquiry. Those debating hold
stature according to their expertise while aspiring to achieve explanatory ideals,
which may be, in turn, under debate. Presumably, debate and scrutiny promote the
progress of understanding as well as uphold standards of reasonable discourse.
These ends (progress and reason) depend upon how a community of practice (Lave
and Wenger 1991), in pursuit of shared purposes, organizes its patterns of
interaction and communication. These patterns ought to restrain the irrationality of
individuals and thus contribute to the common good.
In large measure, the existence of the profession of science educators depends
upon translating and transforming patterns characteristic of ‘‘what scientists do’’
into school science. This shared purpose permeates science educators’ community
of practice and leads to educational as well as explanatory ideals. Among these are
introducing science to novices as a culture—with distinctive patterns of discourse,
methods of investigation, and approaches to adjudicating disputes made explicit.
The science education community, in concert with political processes and policies,
has codified this aim into various state and national standards for teaching and
learning science. These standards function to hold students (and schools)
accountable to prescribed ends; these ends embodying what scientists do and
know. Central to this codification for the sake of accountability is the depiction of
what patterns of communication and interaction among scientists promote progress
in understanding and the achievement of explanatory ideals.
C. R. Ault Jr. (&)
Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling, Portland, OR, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
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What notions of scientific culture(s) do school science standards embody? Are
these depictions valid? Are they educationally sound? The most enduring word
subsuming depictions of science for the sake of guiding and improving school
science is ‘‘process.’’ The notion that a small set of abstract processes unify the
sciences appears endemic within standards documents. Among these processes are
observation, inference, and the pursuit of controlled experiments.
My vexation, over the course of 30 years, is that the over-generalization of
process and de-contextualization of content in school science misrepresents what
different scientists in different disciplines do in solving particular problems. It
diverts attention away from actual expertise—from how the work of scientists, in
keeping with distinctive purposes and interests, actually happens. As a consequence,
science standards (whether national, state, or district) tend to bifurcate between
depicting science as generalized processes and science as content in three,
traditional domains (earth/space, physical, and life science).
Process-dominance encourages the integration of particular subjects with generic
methodologies in order to abstract general principles about the nature of science—
focusing, for example, on observing and inferring, whatever the topic. The precise
ways in which inferences unfold within a purposeful context remains backstage, if
not off stage. For example, paleontologists in attempts to draw inferences about
fossil dinosaur footprints invoke analogies: to bipedal birds in some instances and
fighting hippos in others. Such imagery powers inference-making specific to the
discipline, a clear indication of the intellectual capital the paleontological research
community depends upon.
Assessment of learning in science, bifurcated by the content-process distinction,
often emphasizes the content (typically expressed in propositional form) students
ought to know while simultaneously valuing their ability to design and carry out
scientific investigations—or at least to appreciate the qualities that distinguish
scientific investigation from other approaches to inquiry. However, first separating
content from process, then reuniting them with different content areas serving as
interchangeable parts illustrating universal features of inquiry, discounts how
knowledge of a particular phenomenon functions as a tool of inquiry, molding and
shaping appropriate methodology—methodology judged effective at achieving
particular insights, important within a community of shared purpose.
The quest for universal aspects of science—for the one size that fits all—obscures
how methods of investigation and conceptual understandings mutually interact in
productive and distinct ways. In contrast to asking, ‘‘How do paleontologists
interpret fossil footprints in order to figure out how dinosaurs behaved?’’ curriculum
design, as promoted by Science for All Americans (American Association for the
Advancement of Science 1989), emphasizes the common themes and habits of mind
spanning all the disciplines—a clear case of one size fits all thinking.
For some time science educators have embraced this quest for generic
abstractions or common themes and habits of mind (‘‘the’’ method, process, or
nature of science) that might subsume all subjects in science, with instruction in
process skills being the path to understanding the nature of science (Bell 2008) or
recognizing science as a culture (Settlage and Southerland 2007). This embrace
merits a skeptical response and consideration of an alternative aim: casting content
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areas themselves as different ways of conducting inquiry, as potential ‘‘social
capital’’ (Dika and Singh 2002). Flows of information, ways of communicating,
commitments to explanatory ideals, and methods of investigation constitute, in a
word, expertise. Rather than integrate a generic conception of inquiry with specific
content, the aim becomes to see understanding itself (root metaphors, trusted
propositions, the heritage of disciplined thinking within particular contexts) as
inquiry’s primary resource.
Recasting the essential questions of curriculum design away from the generic and
toward the particular follows from this change in perspective. Asking, ‘‘How do
geologists use the concept of time?’’ might replace, ‘‘What themes and habits of
mind are common to all the sciences?’’ Instead of trying to determine ‘‘Which
processes define inquiry as scientific?’’ perhaps science educators might ponder,
‘‘What is the value of understanding geologic time?’’ The geologic time scale, for
example, organizes the rock record of the past and thus enables asking questions
about extinction rates. Rather than worrying about ‘‘What aspects of the nature of
science should all students learn?’’ attention might better focus on ‘‘How does a
paleontologist figure out the behavior of extinct beasts from fossil footprints?’’ This
last question, at first glance almost painfully specific, does allude to a general idea:
science is what scientists do. In this respect, particular questions are quite general in
nature.
Here is another question of similar type from a different content area: ‘‘Which
protocols yield reliable measures of the scale of invasion of habitats by non-native
species?’’ Ways of measuring species diversity carry implications for how to sample
such diversity; conceptualization and investigation work in tandem. Questions that
get at expertise—the combination of knowledge and know-how needed to pursue
inquiry in particular contexts—makes what scientists do interesting and important.
Such questions aim to integrate concepts about phenomena of interest with how
these phenomena are investigated: geologic time with extinction rates; non-native
species with habitat degradation, for example. The ideas themselves are tools of
inquiry—understandings recycled in order to learn more.
These questions keep attention focused on phenomena of interest (fossil
footprints and behavior) within a context of importance (the fossil record and
extinction). Particular methods of inquiry are deemed appropriate if adapted to the
purpose of deepening understanding of both the phenomenon and its context.
Particular methods of inquiry, from this perspective, are very important, but not
because they unify the sciences. Quite the opposite point of view emerges: the
diversity of the sciences as distinct, ‘‘epistemic cultures’’ (Knorr Cetina 1999) or
loosely allied enterprises (Cartwright 1999) consisting of diverse ideas and methods
engineered to conduct particular inquiries.
Ultimately, the quest for unification fades to the status of misplaced myth—a
myth that functions to justify inculcation of a worldview in which scientific inquiry
as a unified enterprise produces objective truth. Thus, in my view, the processcentric approach wanders far afield from the aim of crafting experiences and
constructing ideas useful to the conduct of particular inquiries. ‘‘We need to help
students understand the variety of methods and techniques that scientists use to
explore the diverse phenomena in the world—that is, the process of knowledge
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construction as it’s actually practiced (in all its localized instances) rather than the
facile stereotype of some non-existent, singular scientific method’’ (Rudolph 2007,
p. 3).
Venture
A physics teacher once shared with me, ‘‘Scientists don’t do labs, they design
investigations.’’ Classroom teachers tend to gravitate to this principle, especially
those eager to promote scientific inquiry in their classrooms. Often they instruct
their students in the processes of science as a way to prepare them to design
investigations—yet all too often find student confusion, disinterest, and avoidance
of risk a common response. The students may be saying that there is too much
uncertainty for them to tolerate, especially in a climate of accountability. Perhaps
they do not trust that what they are being asked to do will serve them well.
This past spring I met with a small number of science teachers at a local high
school who were anxious to promote inquiry in their classrooms. I listened carefully
to their own views on scientific processes, accountability, and subject-specific
problem solving. The first meeting produced a desire to meet again on the topic—a
very satisfying result, given the reality of looming layoffs and class-size increases
expected for next year. I wondered, however, will my perspective—and framing of
the debate (one-size-fits-all versus tools-of-the-trade) be embraced or resisted,
comprehended or misunderstood?
I would like to collaborate with them to examine differences among students’
responses to instruction in generalized processes of inquiry versus particularized
methods of investigation. Does emphasis on the particular—on attention to
representational form and protocol design informed by appreciation of purpose and
recognition of explanatory ideals—amplify interest in science and diversify its
appeal to students? What difference does the representation of science as unified
versus the representation of science as diversified make to teachers and students?
How does one investigate such a question in real classrooms, under the umbrella of
accountability to state benchmarks and standards? I realize that various exercises for
students must lead, in the teachers’ minds, toward instructional aims they value—
and that the district has mandated.
Instead of a quest in search of the habits of mind common among all sciences and
the processes judged universal to inquiry, the journey I espouse seeks appreciation
of particular explanatory ideals adapted to specific purposes and in keeping with the
nature of different phenomena, to the demands characteristic of solving particular
kinds of problems (Toulmin 1990). Yet such an investigation perplexes me because
it begins with skepticism towards widely accepted ends for teaching science and
doubts the value of a fundamental distinction between content and process.
Dwelling on trying to figure out what works in order to achieve aims that seem to
contradict state mandated ends may find little traction in a school worried about
measuring up to its Annual Yearly Progress goals.
The current arc of reform and accountability in science teaching seems to
discourage such fundamental questions—questions that challenge the field’s
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underpinning assumptions and canonical objectives, codified into state frameworks
as the bifurcation between propositional knowledge and generic inquiry skills. The
research the field might most need—skeptical inquiry about inquiry—seems
constrained, if not altogether precluded. The challenge is to implement and study an
alternative (an emphasis symbolized by the phrase ‘‘tools-of-the-trade’’) that
conflicts with mandated requirements, such as scoring samples of student inquiry
work annually with a ‘‘one-size-fits-all’’ (or perhaps ‘‘none’’) rubric.
Acknowledgments I would like to thank John Settlage and Adam Johnston for encouraging me to
frame this issue first as a ‘‘vexation’’ and secondly as a ‘‘venture’’ for the 2009 Science Education at the
Crossroads conference in Portland, Oregon. Crossroads, funded in part by the National Science
Foundation, encourages ‘‘genuine and sustained exchanges of ideas’’ (Settlage and Johnston 2009) among
science educators across a spectrum of career pathways and stages.
References
American Association for the Advancement of Science. (1989). Project 2061: Science for all Americans.
Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Bell, R. (2008). Teaching the nature of science through process skills. Boston, MA: Pearson.
Cartwright, N. (1999). The dappled world: A study of the boundaries of science. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Dika, S. L., & Singh, K. (2002). Applications of social capital in educational literature: A critical
synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 72(1), 31–60.
Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York, NY:
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Rudolph, J. L. (2007). An inconvenient truth about science education. Teachers College Record.
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September 9, 2009, from http://www.tcrecord.org.
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