Science and Education: Notions of Reality, Theory and Model

Abstract

It was argued in Chapter 1 that science education and technology education should both be as ‘authentic’ as possible and that modelling and models, for which a typology was proposed, can form a bridge between the two. However, modelling and models must be seen within a broader context, that of the relationship between notions of ‘reality’, ‘theory’ and ‘model’, for two reasons. First, science education, which aspires to be authentic, must be based on an historically and philosophically valid view of the nature of science, in which these three notions play important parts. Second, it can be argued that perhaps, to some extent and in some way, the development of ideas by an individual parallels (or can be seen as a metaphor for) the development of ideas in science. The treatment of the reality/theory/model relationship given in this Chapter, which is of importance in its own right, is set within the second of these two reasons because it subsumes the first.