Is the crisis in science education continuing? Current senior secondary science enrolment and tertiary entrance trends in Western Australia

Abstract

In May 2007 an issue of the "Australian Education Review" was released reporting on the state of science education in Australia. The report argued that we are in the advanced stages of a crisis in school science that threatens the future of Australia as a technologically advanced nation, and we need to change the way we think about the purposes and practice of school science--we need to re-imagine it--if we are to turn this crisis around. The author of that report, Professor Russell Tytler, argues that we need to develop a new and fresh approach to school science if we are to recapture the imagination of students and do justice to the enormous range of ideas and practices of contemporary science. An account of this report was published in "Teaching Science," December 2007 and readers invited to respond; the following is one such response. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.) Show more