The he origin of the system of education which is prevalent in India today can be traced to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The system was designed to prepare for subordinate white collar jobs in Government. It was verbally oriented. Periodically attempts were made to modify the curriculum and science became one of the basic components in some states, especially in the south, but not in all.
At the national level, science was recognized as one of the essential subjects in the school curriculum only a few decades back. The unexpected developments in the field of science and technology in the twentieth century have carned a place for science in the school curriculum.
During this century science teaching has gone through several major phases. Developments in the USA and the UK have influenced the pattern of science education at least in the southern states of our country and in certain patterns of schooling organised at an all India level.
In the United States, prior to 1920, science teaching followed the precepts of faculty psychology and was considered primarily as an aid in developing the mind. Around 1920, the nature study movement came into vogue. The emphasis on nature study was not only to help children explore the environment, but also to keep young people down in the farm. In the nineteen thirties science followed the progressive education movement in teaching for social utility and for problem solving competencies applied in life situations. Science for everyday life was the keynote of this approach. In the forties, the emphasis shifted to technology - the "How do things work?" approach. The fifth major shift came in the middle nineteen fifties. Scientists thought that secondary science programmes did not truly reflect current knowledge in science and did not provide the students with the ideas, attitudes and skills necessary to deal with increasingly complex problems encountered in everyday life and in advanced scientific work. To remedy this situation, scientists worked to develop elementary and secondary courses that would provide the students with up-to-date scientific knowledge and equip them to deal with new scientific ideas.
The Soviet sputnik directed the interest of the western world to the high achievements in science education in the Soviet Union. The responses to the situation from the USA, UK, France and even many developing countries were far-reaching. Innovative programmes in the content of science and mathematics began to appear, bringing portions earlier taught at colleges to the high school and even to the elementary school. Upgradation of the school curricula on a mass scale became common. Distortions were not uncommon when exogenous innovations in science education were attempted to be diffused at a faster pace than what could be accepted or digested by the school system.
The last two decades have seen the upgradation and modernisation of the school science syllabi throughout the world. Perhaps in resonance with the world trend there have been sweeping changes in the science syllabi of Kerala schools. Kerala was the first state system to respond quickly to the upgradation in developed systems following the sputnik challenge. In fact it went farther than the national system, by attempting to compress NCERT's eleven year curriculum taught in central schools by relatively highly qualified teachers into a ten year system manned by ordinary teachers and engineered by local experts not very much trained in curriculum construction. But the tendency which started in the early seventies, has been mainly one of increasing the "science load" rather than of emphasising the scientific spirit which has characterised similar changes in developed school systems. The result is that the learning process in schools has become a heavy load instead of being a joy, an adventure, a challenge.
The field of science education is comparatively new. "While science is expanding at a terrific pace, till very recently, even in the educationally advanced countries, little attention was paid to any serious improvement and innovation in the teaching of science." In the last two or three decades the US National Science Foundation, the Soviet Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, and the French National Institute of Pedagogical Research and Documentation have made pioneering contributions towards initiating a revolution in the teaching of science and mathematics. A significant contribution has also been made by the Nuffield Science Foundation which has developed new curriculum materials at the school level with teachers taking a participant and innovating role on a large scale. In PSSC and other curriculum working groups, university teachers and researchers have been working in close relationship with school teachers.** The movement is now spreading to many countries.
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