Abstract
Our experiences as teachers and educational researchers indicate a general enthusiasm amongst science teachers for constructivist-based teaching practices aimed at improving the quality of student learning. However, even when teachers believe that constructivism is an appropriate epistemology (or way of knowing), they struggle to implement and maintain teaching practices informed by constructivist theory (Taylor, 1996; Tobin, Davis, Shaw & Jakubowski, 1991; Vance & Miller, 1995). We believe that the difficulties experienced by science teachers in instituting constructivist-inspired changes in their classrooms can be explained, in large part, if school science is viewed as a cultural activity which is constrained by powerful and ubiquitous cultural myths.
These are the days that must lay a new foundation of a more magnificent philosophy, never to be overthrown, that will Empirically and Sensibly canvass the Phenomena of Nature, deducing the causes of things from such Originals in Nature as we observe are producible by Art, and the infallible demonstration of Mechanicks: and certainly this is the way, and no other to build a true and permanent Philosophy…. [T]o find the various turnings and mysterious process of this divine Art, in the management of this great Machine of the World, must needs be the proper Office of only the Experimental and Mechanical Philosopher. (Henry Power, 166410
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Milne, C.E., Taylor, P.C. (1998). Between a Myth and a Hard Place: Situating School Science in a Climate of Critical Cultural Reform. In: Cobern, W.W. (eds) Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Science Education. Science & Technology Education Library, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5224-2_3
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