Primary Science Education A Teacher's Toolkit

This chapter presents foundational ideas and discussion around the notion of worldviews, including how they develop, how they are influenced by education and how they impact learning. There is a focus on identifying the features of worldviews that incorporate science perspectives with an emphasis on strategies for nurturing and developing students’ scientific dispositions, such as their ‘science identity’ and ‘science capital’. The contributing role of primary science education through the Australian Curriculum will be examined. As we work through these ideas, you will examine your own worldviews about science and use evidence from the science education research literature to explore current views about the purposes of science education in primary schools.