Science Education in Three-Part Harmony: Balancing Conceptual, Epistemic, and Social Learning Goals

Two major reform efforts in K-12 science education have taken place during the past 50 years. The first was the 1950-1970 curriculum reform efforts motivated by the launching of Sputnik and sponsored by the newly formed National Foundation (NSF) in the United States and by the Nuffield Foundation in the United Kingdom. The signature goal for these reformed programs was to produce courses of study that would get students to think like scientists, thus placing them in a pipeline for science careers (Rudolph, 2002). The second U.S. and U.K. reform effort in science education began in the 1980s and continues to this day as part of the national standards movement. Referred to as the for All movement in the United States and the Public Understanding of Science in the United Kingdom, here the education goal was and is to develop a scientifically literate populace that can participate in both the economic and democra tic agendas of our increasingly global market-focused science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) societies. In addition to the economic and democratic imperatives as a purpose for science education, more recent voices of science education reform (Driver, Leach, Millar, & Scott, 1996; Millar, 1996; Millar & Hunt, 2002; Osborne, Duschl, & Fairbrother, 2002) have advocated that the proper perspective for science education in schools ought to be the cultural imperative. The cultural impera tive perspective sees STEM disciplines, knowledge, and practices as woven into the very fabric of our nations and societies. What the cultural imperative provides that the democratic and economic imperatives do not is recognition of important social and epistemic dimensions that are embedded in the growth, evaluation, representation, and communication of STEM knowledge and practices. New perspectives and under standings in the learning sciences about learning and learning environments, and in science studies about knowing and inquiring, highlight the importance of science