Technical Knowledge in Science Teaching

Abstract

The issues involved with learning are varied, but a central concern is the increasing use of technical knowledge to understand the world. This concern leads us to question the nature and conceptualization of knowledge and moves us into the philosophical areas of ontology and epistemology - the meaning and grounds of knowledge. We are also moving into a sociocultural area where justification of knowledge becomes important. In education, constrained as it is by curriculum guidelines and procedures for bureaucratic and administrative accountability, we also discover that the conceptualization of knowledge involves sociocultural constraints as to what counts as a viable understanding of the world. Technical knowledge has come to gain social and cultural predominance, both as an aim of education and as a means of educating. Thus, the place of technical knowledge in science teaching involves both an implicit philosophical world view and, indirectly, a sociocultural milieu which condones that view. It is the combination of these two factors that estranges students from scientific knowledge and helps reproduce technical knowledge.