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Curriculum and Syllabus

Science Education in Queensland

Queensland Curriculum F-10 ‘Essential Learnings’ National Curriculum (ACARA)

– which we will focus on almost exclusively

Relevant Science Syllabuses – Queensland

You need to really know your way around the syllabuses for the grades you intend to teach

(There would also be considerable value for you in having a sense of the syllabuses in the other grades)

This course

The document included on the course web site is a very restricted subset of the overall National Curriculum, Science, losing a lot of the ‘preamble’ with more explanatory material

I urge you to spend time on the full ACARA site for the current version of the Australian Curriculum

Science Understanding (SU)

Scientific Inquiry Skills (SIS)

Science as a Human Endeavour (SHE)

Strands in the National Curriculum, Science

The Science Inquiry Skills and Science as a Human Endeavour strands are described across a twoyear band. In their planning, schools and teachers refer to the expectations outlined in the Achievement Standard and also to the content of the Science Understanding strand for the relevant year level to ensure that these two strands are addressed over the twoyear period. The three strands of the curriculum are interrelated and their content is taught in an integrated way. The order and detail in which the content descriptions are organised into teaching/learning programs are decisions to be made by the teacher. - Australian Curriculum, Science

This strand is the ‘science content knowledge’ or ‘conceptual understanding’ strand

It is divided into biological, chemical, physical and earth and space sciences

Science Understanding

This is the ‘nature of science’ and ‘social contexts of science’ strand of the syllabus

It is divided into ‘Nature and development of science’ and ‘Use and influence of science’

Links to the STSE approach, socioscientific issues and the ‘curricular emphases’ model

Science as a Human Endeavor

This is the ‘process skills’ strand of the syllabus

It is divided into ‘Questioning and predicting’, ‘Planning and conducting’, ‘Processing and analysing data and information’, ‘Evaluating’ and ‘Communicating’

The links to Bloom’s Taxonomy are clear

Science Inquiry Skills

Curricular emphases

One possible approach to integrating socioscientific issues (SSIs – the new language) or Science, Technology and Society (STS – the old language) or Science, Technology, Society and Environment (STSE – the middle language) issues in science classrooms without taking much more time

Developed by Doug Roberts and refined by Frank Jenkins

Involves planning teaching units with a particular ‘curricular emphasis’ chosen (to match the content) from among: Nature of Science Technology Science and Society

Units with a ‘nature of science’ emphasis include the history and philosophy of science and some of the epistemological ‘rules of the game’ as a way of complementing and contextualising the scientific content

Units with a ‘technology’ emphasis explore the complex and dynamic relationships between science and technology

Units with a ‘science and society’ emphasis look at the social impacts, benefits and consequences of the associated science, and also address the ‘environment’ element

Serves the purpose of allowing teachers to honour the goals and aspirations of the students they teach and of the students’ parents.

Any approach to teaching science for all that fails to also deliver high quality science education for future scientists and excellent outcomes on high stakes tests is doomed

Curricular emphases offer teachers a way to achieve ‘both-and’ outcomes, rather than to be placed on the horns of an ‘either-or’ dilemma

Curricular emphases for planning

Using a variety of different curricular emphases across the year leads to balance in all the goals of science education