Learning in science as the
development of big ideas
Wynne Harlen
Learning as progressive understanding
• Understanding seen as developing bigger ideas
from smaller ones
• Students working out their own ideas, needing
help
– to test ideas in a scientific way
– to try alternatives when their own ideas are found not
to be consistent with evidence
• When ideas are shown to explain further
experience, they become ‘bigger’, more
encompassing, and more useful.
Questions about big ideas
1. Why big ideas?
2. Who needs them – everyone, or just future
scientists and technologists?
3. Should they include ideas about scientific
activity as well as ideas that result from
scientific activity?
4. Are they the only goals of science education?
5. What criteria should guide the selection?
Why big ideas?
Some pragmatic reasons
• There is an enormous range of possible content; there has to
be some way of selecting the most relevant
• The facts about the material world that science has provided
need to be placed in a bigger picture that informs the
development of the curriculum
• Students and teachers need to know where they are going
and how what they are doing helps to explain things they find
important
• The more that is explained, the more powerful the idea.
• A smaller number of more powerful ideas can explain current
– and future – experience better than a larger number of
small ideas
Why big ideas?
Some principled reasons
• Science education should aim to develop
– learners’ curiosity about the world, enjoyment of scientific
activity and understanding of how natural phenomena can
be explained
– to enable every individual to take an informed part in
decisions, and to take appropriate actions, that affect their
own wellbeing and that of society and the environment
– understanding of a set of ideas of science and about
science
– scientific capabilities concerned with gathering and using
evidence
– scientific attitudes
Questions about big ideas
1. Why big ideas?
2. Who needs them – everyone, or just future
scientists and technologists?
3. Should they include ideas about scientific
activity as well as ideas that result from
scientific activity?
4. Are they the only goals of science education?
5. What criteria should guide the selection?
Selection criteria for big ideas
• Ideas that:
• have wide-ranging explanatory power
• facilitate understanding of current issues that
affect human health and wellbeing, the
environment, the use of energy, etc
• provide pleasure in understanding and satisfy
curiosity about the natural world
• have cultural significance in relation to human
activity and its impact on the environment.
Big ideas of science
• All material in the world is made of very small particles
• Some objects can affect other objects at a distance
• Changing the movement of an object requires a net force to be acting on
it.
• Energy is needed to make things happen
• The composition of the Earth and its atmosphere shape the Earth and its
climate
• The solar system is a very small part of one of millions of galaxies in the
Universe
• Organisms are organised on a cellular basis
• Organisms require a supply of energy and materials for which they are
often dependent on other organisms
• Genetic information is passed down from one generation of organisms to
another
• The diversity of organisms, living & extinct, is the result of evolution
Big ideas about science
• Science assumes that for every effect there is a
cause or multiple causes
• Scientific explanations and theories are those
that best fit the facts known at a particular time
• Models are created to derive and test
explanations
• The knowledge produced by science is used in
technologies to create products to serve human
needs
• Applications of science often have social, political
and ethical implications
Progression and the curriculum
• The (national) curriculum document should set out
– what is to be learned, and why, but not how
– a clear progression towards to development of the big
ideas from primary through secondary education
– what ought to be achieved at various points based on
research and understanding of how learning takes place
• Schools and teachers should decide
– the content most appropriate (interesting, engaging, seen
as relevant) to help their students in their progress, with
the big ideas in mind
– the pedagogy