Scientific Skills in Secondary Education: A Study of Curriculum Expectations and Teachers’ Thinking

Abstract

Considering that the Mexican secondary science curriculum incorporates scientific process skills among other traditional content, the teachers already face the challenge of teaching scientific skills as part of scientific practice. This study combines document analysis identifying curriculum expectations, and an empirical study exploring the representations of 22 secondary science teachers of scientific skills. A hypothetical pedagogical scenario was used to include descriptions of actions, and teachers were asked to argue whether they would consider them an example of scientific skills in a science lesson, providing arguments to do so. Their responses were incorporated and explored in detail through individual semi-structured interviews. The documentary analysis provided evidence for a lasting presence of problems regarding the development of skills by students. The qualitative analysis of teachers’ responses revealed a tendency to consider the provided descriptions as examples of the use of some scientific skills. To argue whether a scientific skill was involved, teachers referred to the scientific or nonscientific domain and the investigative or noninvestigative purpose. The use of disciplinary knowledge to illustrate their responses was infrequent. Data suggest that teachers’ representations point toward an image of scientific skills as mechanical actions, independent of context. The authors argue that teachers’ representations inevitably interact with curriculum innovations and that a characterization of them as the one provided in this study can suggest some implications for teacher education.