Design to understand curriculum: Epistemic practices, teaching, and learning in science

Abstract

Current science curriculum emphasizes the knowledge, skills, and epistemic practices of science. Scientific practices usually involve asking questions, developing models, investigating, constructing explanations, and negotiating meanings. Students are not only expected to acquire more relevant science knowledge, but also to develop the ability to think and reason about phenomena and, furthermore, to take actions and solve problems. However, science teachers utilizing published textbooks and focusing on coverage and neglecting the epistemic practices aspect of science curriculum would restrain the enactment of reformed curriculum. This chapter draws on the paradigm of understanding curriculum and gives examples to illustrate to what extent Taiwanese science teachers enhance their understandings o f curriculum, teaching, and learning in science through designing science curriculum modules. We also compare and contrast the approaches of designing professional developing programs in literature and those emerging from the case teachers’ design experiences. Furthermore, we illustrate how teachers’ knowledge about curriculum, teaching, and learning in science interacted with each other and mediated teachers’ learning process. This chapter helps readers understand the trend of curriculum reform in Taiwan, as well as ways science teachers learn under the reform context.