市民の科学リテラシーと学校教育(<特集>公教育とリテラシー)

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This paper is about school education for fostering scientific literacy. Scientific literacy is one of the most important abilities for average people in order to make their own, rational decisions about how they are going to run their lives. school education, especially compulsory education is the first and probably the last opportunity for many citizens in Japan to receive organized science education. The concept of scientific literacy is examined in action using cartoon and joke. Scientific literacy can be defined as the multi-faceted concept which is related to not merely the science disciplines, but also politics, economics, sociology, philosophy and so on. The school science curricula in Japan mainly consist of teaching the body of science knowledge. The other aspects of scientific literacy have been treated in the curricula as mere additional contents. Teaching the body of science knowledge in Japan is highly regulated with the national education standard and the authorized school textbooks. In every revision of the science education standard since the 1970s, the educational contents have been steadily reduced. As a result of such reduction, some fundamental science concepts have disappeared from the school textbooks, especially in the field of compulsory education. This serious situation means that teaching science at many average public schools can not assure many future citizens of their scientific literacy. The intellectual foundation of science education is strongly connected to our historical, philosophical and sociological view of the nature of science. The national science education standards are infused with just such elements implicitly and explicitly. In this paper, the deflected view of the nature of science described on the published guidebook for the national science education standard in Japan is considered by illustrating what happened to the drafts of the national science education standard for grades K-12 in the U. S. Teachers have the important role in enhancing scientific literacy at school. There are many optional subjects in the high school science curriculum in Japan. The high school curriculum tends to provide only fragmentary treatment of some fundamentally important educational contents. Such fragmentary science education in high school threatens scientific literacy of many future school teachers. Similar difficulties have already been pointed out in 1957 on the governmental report. Universities and colleges of teacher education and training must deal with this situation. The general education curriculum for teacher education and training is discussed in this paper.
日本教育学会の論文
2003-09-30

市民の科学リテラシーと学校教育(<特集>公教育とリテラシー)

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