KEY POINTS:
As a science teacher educator and parent, I have been concerned about the lack of science in primary schools for many years. My concerns have been confirmed in the new National Education Monitoring Project 2007 Science report about the state of science education in our schools.
It does not paint a rosy picture. The project reports that Year 4 students are generally positive about studying science at school (64 per cent) but, by Year 8, this has dropped significantly (24 per cent).
This pattern is common in other subject areas and can be explained by Year 8 students becoming more critical and realistic about their own abilities, but it still raises serious concerns.
I work with student teachers to prepare them to teach science in primary schools. We know that children are endlessly fascinated by all things scientific.
From an early age, they are avid, budding scientists. They are motivated to explore and make sense of their world - just ask any frazzled parent at the end of the school holidays.
So what is happening to that enthusiasm? Many of the students at Year 4 and Year 8 say they would like to do more science at school.
In fact, 16 per cent of Year 8 students in 2007 reported that they "never" did experiments with everyday things or with science equipment, compared with 8 per cent in 1999.
The science that children do get is predominantly group work, research and projects - not experiments, practical work, field trips and visits that they might have rightfully anticipated science was all about.
Why isn't science the rich and varied learning experience that it could be? Why are our children being taught "about" science, rather than "doing" science?
Those are questions well worth asking next time you get the opportunity at a parent-teacher or board of trustee meeting. I suspect you will be told that the priorities are numeracy and literacy.
These subjects have dominated the curriculum to the extent that teachers are hard-pressed to snatch more than a couple of afternoons a term to teach science. With so little time and so much to do, of course science is going to be reduced to bookwork.
How much more manageable and effective to use a computer or the library to find out the answer to curly questions?
At the University of Auckland's Faculty of Education, we expect our students to graduate ready to teach all of the subjects in the New Zealand curriculum. Science is just one of eight curriculum areas in which they have to be able to teach from day one.
Student teachers come into our science education course thinking "How hard can it be to teach science to a Year 4 student?" But every year we find our student teachers don't know as much as they think they do.
They hold as many unexamined and inaccurate beliefs as the children they will teach. Some of the classic misconceptions I have heard from student teachers include the sun circling the earth daily; grass not being a plant because it doesn't have flowers; and the little bubbles that form in boiling water being hydrogen and oxygen.
We have, however, become increasingly effective at making science an engaging and relevant subject for our teachers in pre-service education. They leave university much more enthusiastic about teaching science than when they enrol (the opposite of the children in the report) but are also far more aware of what they don't know.
What I find most promising is that beginning teachers are graduating confident in their ability to teach science and committed to including it in their teaching programmes in meaningful ways.
While it would be foolish to suggest we will reverse children's attitudes towards science in primary schools overnight, there are signs teacher education is moving in the right direction, by focusing less on how to teach science concepts and more on knowing about science education and the nature of science.
I hope that the next cycle of the National Educational Monitoring Project gives us some clear evidence that children in primary schools are moving in the same direction.
* Dr Dawn Garbett is associate dean teaching and learning, Faculty of Education, University of Auckland.
