Science orientation

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Under science orientation is in education , the principle understood learning processes of content and methods of science to align. Orienting education to the various sciences is part of the trend towards a general scientification of social life and a greater professionalization of educational content and working methods.

The principle of science orientation is by no means self-evident, since education historically tends to focus on z. B. has oriented traditions, religious value systems and everyday experiences. Only with the ever deeper penetration of everyday life by scientific disciplines has this principle become established. In Germany, the German Education Council, in its " Structural Plan for Education" published in 1970, called for a scientific orientation for all educational levels. This also resulted in a greater theoretical orientation in teacher training for secondary and primary school teachers. In the meantime, it is also used for educator training .

Skeptics see this trend negatively as a "belief in science" of a pseudo-religious character. They include scientific theorists such as Paul Feyerabend or critical philosophers such as Jürgen Habermas , who in some cases already sees a new ideology in the “cult of rationality”. Also some “practitioners” among the teachers defend themselves against the scientification of the lessons often with the argument that the affected pupils derive no advantage from it, especially if it concerns very young learners or pupils who do not intend to study. Long discussions were held as to whether pedagogy was even a science.

high school

For the higher education system as preparation for the university, a science orientation has basically always applied and was also expressed in the training of high school teachers at universities. For this type of school, however, it also meant a new quality that, in addition to aligning the subject-related content with the current state of the relevant sciences, the learning process itself must be planned and carried out according to educational, psychological , didactic , etc. scientific criteria . Furthermore, in the preparatory upper secondary level , the students should consciously and specifically learn how to deal with science in the form of science propaedeutics. In this type of school, however, some see a current danger of transferring the scientific structure uninterrupted to the school or to those who are too early, and of implementing a purely pictorial didactics regardless of the learning age of the students.

primary school

The principle of the science orientation was - besides learning to learn  - one of the few concrete didactic-methodical settings that the structure plan has made for future primary school lessons. This term became the guiding formula for developments in general science , especially in the 1970s. But at the same time as the frequent use, it becomes clear that this principle has been and is comprehensively understood.

Martin Wagenschein even described the child as science-oriented in principle, while other educators consider science orientation to be too much for children. Discovery learning or research-based learning is more likely to be accepted, although almost congruent with science orientation. The activities of discovery learning fulfill the central activity that science, at least in principle, defines. Even the German Education Council did not consider science orientation to be a principle that contradicts children's interests. He understands science orientation to mean that children, like scientists, have questions that they are looking for solutions and that they want to search thoroughly for answers and discover new things.

Science-oriented, research-based learning is primarily about the principles of science: the focus is on clarity of description, revision of explanations and terms. The German Education Council understood a conceptual triad under science orientation:

  1. Learning to learn / methods of gaining knowledge,
  2. Discovering, justifying, applying / knowledge for problem solving
  3. Structure in a spiral curriculum .

In practice, content was selected from the sciences, so that the curricula were overloaded with material, only in individual projects were the methods of the sciences tested as methodological teaching goals or structural terms from the sciences were used to structure the curriculum.

In everyday consciousness, variants of scientific orientation are still widespread, which understand them to be a collection of materials from the related sciences or use technically correct designations. A narrowing only to natural sciences is also represented. Such a reduced understanding of science orientation dominates especially in worksheet collections and copy templates. For this reason, science orientation was rated negatively in everyday consciousness by students and teachers for many years, while learning by discovery was intuitively rated positively.

Methodically, however, science-oriented learning is learning that starts with the students' questions and looks for solutions to problems. This understanding of science orientation can be found in the New Introduction to the Didactics of General Education by Astrid Kaiser and Martin Wagenschein.

literature

  • Kaiser, Arnim and Ruth: Study book pedagogy, basic and examination knowledge, Berlin 1991, pp. 250–253
  • Wagenschein, Martin u. a .: Children on the way to physics, Weinheim 1997 (2nd edition)
  • Kaiser, Astrid: New Introduction to the Didactics of General Education, Baltmannsweiler 2006, pp. 216–219
  • Glöckel, Hans: From teaching, textbook of general didactics, Klinkhardt 2003 (4th edition), p. 282f

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