Design of a social constructivism-based curriculum for primary science education in Confucian heritage culture

Abstract

This study is about the application of social constructivism in primary science curriculum in Confucian heritage culture. It was found that the implementation of social constructivism in Confucian heritage culture was low and influenced by cultural divergences between Confucian cultural philosophy and Western educational philosophy. From a social constructivist perspective, primary science education in Confucian heritage culture is characterized as: teaching and learning was textbook-based and teacher centered, lessons were focused on factual knowledge, knowledge was transmitted by the teacher and reproduced by students, hands-on complex tasks were absent, students’ personal aspects were discounted, and hierarchical interactions remained in science classes. To address educational science problems and improve social constructivism in Confucian heritage culture, a social constructivism-based curriculum was designed to be appropriate with Confucian heritage culture. Applying a design-based approach, the curriculum design was formed with four learning phases: engagement, experience, exchange, and follow-up. Corresponding with each of the learning phases are educational functions, learning settings, and educational expectation. The first enactment revealed that the designed curriculum can encourage Confucian heritage students to be interested in and curious about scientific subject matter, active and interactive in learning of science. However, the designed curriculum was not effective enough in supporting students in scientific argumentation. Scientific argumentation was considered as bottleneck for the implementation of social constructivism in primary science education in Confucian heritage culture. The design was adjusted by the application of an adapted model of the learning placemat for argumentation and by the formulation of concrete teaching-learning activities which are articulated with the application of the adapted learning placemat. The second enactment revealed that the adjusted curriculum can support Confucian heritage students in practicing scientific argumentation and in attaining consensually agreed knowledge. Nevertheless, the study showed that Confucian heritage teachers and students do not pay attention to the activities of qualifying and rebutting in scientific argumentation. The study showed that the social constructivism-based curriculum design can be applied into and contribute to primary science education in Confucian heritage culture. In addition, the study recommended that further design-based research should deal with issues of qualifying and rebutting to empower social constructivism and scientific argumentation in primary science education in Confucian heritage culture.