Agency in the Anthropocene and science education

Associate Professor Chris Eames (University of Waikato) and Associate Professor Peta White (Deakin University) delivered a keynote address on their report Agency in the Anthropocene at the national summit Science Education: Fit for Purpose. The report takes an environmental education perspective looking at the need for science education to empower learners with the tools to understand and act on issues such as climate change¹, misinformation² and inequality.

“We’re looking to create citizens who can understand science, use science and actually create a better world for us.”
Associate Professor Chris Eames, University of Waikato

“Young people are now more politically active, more politically savvy. And they’re interested in engaging directly with what’s going on in the greater context of their world, thinking specifically about their futures and what that might mean.”
Associate Professor Peta White, Deakin University

Prompting questions

• What do the concepts Anthropocene³ and polycrisis⁴ mean to you?
• Climate change is the biggest existential threat facing humanity – how does science education need to respond?
• In what ways do you support ākonga⁵ to develop their action competence⁶?

Related content

• Agency in the Anthropocene
• Climate change – classroom competencies
• Understanding the basics of climate change
• Exploring climate change education in secondary schools
• Exploring climate change education in primary schools
• Teaching futures thinking

Transcript

Chris Eames

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā hau e wha; ki te mana whenua, tēnā koutou katoa; e mihi ana mātou ki a koe, Cathy, mō tāu mihi, tēnā koe. Karanga mai, whakatau mai ki a mātou ō te whānau Pūtaiao. Nō reira, Tēnā koutou, Tēnā koutou, Tēnā koutou katoa.

Ko Pirongia te maunga e rū nei taku ngākau. Ko Waikato te awa e mahea nei taku māharahara. Kei te Whare Wānanga o Waikato e mahi ana. Ko Chris Eames toku ingoa.

Peta White

Sherbrooke Forest breathes life into me

The Monbulk River flows through the forest.

I work at Deakin University.

My name is Peta White.

I acknowledge the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and my homelands of the Kaniyang people of the Noongar Nation.

Chris Eames

We would like to acknowledge and extend our grateful thanks to the Science Learning Hub and to the Royal Society for our invitation to speak to you this morning and for all the support they give to science in this country. We’d also like to acknowledge the OECD⁷, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, for the funding of our work, that we’re going to talk about this morning.

So science education fit for purpose. That’s what we’re here for, to talk about and to address this question, we need to think about two things. What is our purpose and how can we fit science education into that particular purpose?

So we first have to ask, what is the purpose of education? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Every day, right? As an educator, I do. What am I here for?

Is it simply to fill our students with knowledge? Well, it might be, of course. We like to have a bit of knowledge to throw around; it makes us look good as experts and all those sorts of things. Is it to reproduce society as it is now? Is that the sort of society we want? Has science led us there? Not necessarily, but science is a contributor. So we can think that we’re not really in the right space where we want to be. So therefore, do we need to develop citizens who can transform our world, for the better for all, forever? And in order to transform, we need to know where we’re going. We need a vision for what we want to try and achieve. So I want to share with you a little bit about what should our vision be?

Who are we educating for? Who are the people that we’re actually aiming our education at? Here’s a picture of a personal story. This is my father, who turns 90 tomorrow. He’s an educator. Some of you might remember him, those who’re based in the Waikato area. He was a chemistry teacher at Hamilton Boys High School for a very long time. He’s instilled in me, and most of my whānau⁸, a power⁹ of education, and even today, whenever I visit him, he’s always asking me the hard questions. “What are you gonna do about the climate¹⁰, Chris?” he says. Hmm, okay, that’s a bit of an easy one to start with.

But most importantly, on his lap, there’s our newest mokopuna¹¹. And when I think about why I’m doing what I’m doing, it’s entirely for her and others like her. If we don’t think about those people, our future generations, we are completely missing the point of what we are actually doing.

But, that’s an anthropocentric view. This is a view of a wider sphere. We’re also educating for these two taonga¹². On the left hand side, the rock wren. Most of us have never seen one. I haven’t and I do a lot of tramping. But I’ve never seen one, but I know it’s there because other people tell me it is and it’s really, really important to us in our Alpine¹³ environments.

On the right hand side, of course, the tuatara. Most of us will have probably seen one of those. Two hundred million years old and counting. This is an incredible species¹⁴ that will probably die out if climate change changes the temperature¹⁵ of the burrows where they lay their eggs. It’s a significant issue. So we need to think about not just ourselves as people, but our wider whānau.

I want to share with this this whakataukī¹⁶ [Ka mua, ka muri] which you probably know well now because it’s being used a lot. It comes from te ao Māori¹⁷ of course. And it indicates an idea about where we are going is influenced by where we’ve come from. In other words, the notion of time is interconnected, that what has ever happened in the past is really reflecting what is happening in the future.

When we think about this, let’s take an example of transport. This is how we used to get around. Pretty simple, fairly easily fueled up, not too damaging to the environment maybe, but not very quick either. Then we move to this type of thing and we got a little bit faster. We did things which tended to interrupt the Planet’s balance a little bit more. But we did get around, and were much more efficient.

And now we’re moving in this direction. We’re moving off the ground, if you like, divesting ourselves from wheels. We’re not divesting ourselves from fossil fuels¹⁸, but we are taking a different way of movement. So you can see that science has allowed us to move in directions which are really positive, but also create some challenges.

When we also think about walking backwards into the future, we acknowledge the people who’ve come before us. The people like Ernest Rutherford, who split the atom¹⁹, who was highly capable in science and brought that capability to the world. We also acknowledge Joan Wiffen. Know about Joan? Palaeontologist²⁰ from the Hawkes Bay. To quote what Te Ara says about her, she said about herself, “I’m just a rank amateur, a Hawkes Bay housewife who in fact has no scientific training, just a great deal of curiosity.”

Fantastic traits to get us to where we are in terms of our scientific progress. And finally, to Sir Peter Beck, lately knighted for his work in aerospace. Peter has no university training, but that didn’t stop him. He was just an incredible inveterate experimenter. He was building rockets when he was at school, and now he’s building rockets that go into space. So it’s an example of someone who can push the boundaries no matter what they come from.

So this leads, finally, to thinking about looking backwards, going forwards about our education system and in science particular. This is how we used to do it. Well, we in the broadest terms. Wānanga tohunga²¹ standing before groups of people learning as they go about the real world as it happen.

Then we moved into this: industrialised classrooms. Some of us apparently are thinking we should go back to this way. Schools in rows are a good idea, with the teacher at the front. The demagogue or the pedagogue, whatever you want to call them, the person with all the knowledge at the front dictating it to everyone else. Then perhaps we progressed a little bit further into the idea of inquiry, and we experimented and we had models, and we used those to actually engage our students.

And I also want to recognise the fact that we do a lot of learning outside the classroom these days to understand much more about the world that we’re engaged in.

So with that as an introduction, I’m now going to pass to Peta and she will talk a little bit now about our work with PISA and Agency in the Anthropocene.

Peta White

I’d like to talk to four points today. I’m going to tell you a little bit about the PISA opportunity to leverage curriculum development. Agency in the Anthropocene, which was the outcome of our work in in the PISA 2025 science framework, we’re going to explain what it means. We’re going to talk about why it’s important and how we might do it, agency in the Anthropocene. And then we’re going to talk about climate education policy and I’ll give you an example in Australia.

So the PISA opportunity and the idea of leveraging curriculum development. First, a story of who and what. The OECD PISA Expert Working Group for each of reading, mathematics and science meets several years before the assessment is undertaken by the 15-year-olds internationally to revise the framework. And the framework is then forwarded to the contractors who develop the test for actioning. So the OECD determined that a stronger environmental science focus was necessary for the 2025 science PISA, and the decision to establish this was then focused to develop a second focused expert group. And I’ll introduce them to you in a moment. And this came from the dual recognition that in our Polycrisis, so multiple colliding crises generated from human impacts on earth systems, that young people must know about it and make responsible decisions and actions.

Additionally, the data²² was drawn from several reports and from PISA, previous PISA data. So I want to share those with you a little bit today too.

So I’d like to introduce to you the Environmental Science Expert Working Group: myself and Chris, along with our colleagues Martha and Nicole.

The reports that were used along the way were this one that was developed by Oxford University Press, The Evolution of Science Education. I recommend it to you, but let me show you a couple of the key questions that came from there. They asked about the current science curriculum, and 66% of the people who responded to this global survey suggested that people will become scientifically literate with such a curriculum. However, 31% reported that the current science education process is fit for the future. And when asked what is needed, what are the big challenges that students must face, a large number of people, reported that climate change and the natural environment were the thing they were greatly concerned about.

Another key research that I think is important for us all to take into consideration is this one led by our colleague Jonathan Osborne, and with his large team from Stanford, Science Education In an Age of Misinformation. And of course, we all know that our young people are different to how they were five years ago. They’re now more politically active, more politically savvy, and they’re interested in engaging directly with what’s going on in the greater context of their world, thinking specifically about their futures and what that might mean.

And I’ve reflected in the context of Australia about our curriculum. We’ve just released a new version of our curriculum and in that, as well as these other countries, we surfaced that climate change might be mentioned, but the approaches that curriculum use vary from country to country. And often the positioning of the language of climate is not so direct, in that it may not be actually part of the mandated curriculum, as is the case in Australia.

And we have to think carefully about whether we’re teaching about the impacts of climate or whether we’re teaching about the understanding of how we have climate change, human- induced climate change, and what we might do about it. And that’s key, that little piece there.

Now the OECD have developed The Learning Compass 2030, and you’ll see some of the key things standing out there are co-agency with peers, student agency and well-being, really important things to think about. This tool is designed for curriculum developers and designers to use as they step forward, considering the PISA outcomes.

So a little bit about PISA. I’ve mentioned that there are three cognitive tests. There are a number of other tests that are also co-designed and co-offered, and usually it’s every three years that one of these tests is offered in sequence. It was, of course COVID disrupted.

So we built on the data from Green at Fifteen? a report written from the PISA science data in 2006 and the data that came out of here showed that environmental science and geoscience was on students’ radar. They knew a little bit about it, they were quite competently managing the science. But then when we came to look at the data again out of the 2015 PISA assessment, we were pleasantly surprised, I suppose, that those who are environmentally enthusiastic students averaged 80 points higher in the assessment, with some caveats in place. And then we came to the PISA 2028 Global Competence Assessment, where we really learned that there was a misalignment between students understanding sustainability but not really knowing what to do about it.

And that’s where we picked up. So, with all of those reports and that information, we got to think about what are we going to do with this? What are we actually going to offer to the Science Expert Group?

And so, we decided to define agency in the Anthropocene, and we did this because we intentionally wanted to push on from sustainability. I find that there’s some fraughtness in the theory²³ and the practice of the ideas around sustainability, and that’s from a deep, very entrenched background in environmental education.

We can show that that students, young people, know about the word sustainability. They understand a bit of the practice, but not necessarily what to do about it, and certainly not with the concept of working in community. And that’s what led us to wanting to theorise with agency.

Also, we wanted to strongly position the polycrises²⁴ as the context that we’re all living in. This is so important in science education, that we take note of what’s going on outside our classrooms. And so that’s where we wanted to infuse the ideas of the Anthropocene.

We also wanted to position the responsibility for the polycrisis with humans. This is human-induced climate change that we’re talking about. So hence we talk a lot about socio-scientific²⁵ challenges as opposed to environmental issues. It was quite a lot of effort to get this agreed to and believed in by the science expert group. But once they understood our theorising and what we wanted to achieve by using these terms, they came on very well.

So this is the definition of agency in the Anthropocene, and it’s quite long, but I’m going to work through it with you a little bit, but just acknowledging, can we take a look at these keywords? So remember this is in the science framework for PISA 2025. I’m going to surface now from the definition some of the things that are included in the science framework.

So agency in the Anthropocene requires understanding that human impacts already have significantly altered earth systems, and they continue to do so. We look here for actions that will be appreciated, approved and effective. We want to think about ways of being and acting in the world, that people are a part of rather than separate from ecosystems²⁶. And that societies have created injustices. So we also want to focus on young people who can demonstrate hope, resilience and efficacy²⁷ in the face of crises, and that these crises are both social and ecological, hence socio-ecological.

So we’re working to respect and evaluate, multiple perspectives and diverse knowledge systems, and demonstrate the ability to engage with other young people and adults across the generations.

And of course, that we’re working in, at scale, so individually and with others from local to global and that these are complex challenges that all beings in our communities face. So this is in science education and I think that’s really, really very exciting.

If you would like to read more about how we designed it and why, this document is available. You could also access the science framework document. And here you can access the science competencies as well as the environmental science competencies. But here they are a bit more clearly. So the three competencies are to explain the impact of human interactions with Earth systems; make informed decisions to act based on evaluation of diverse sources of evidence²⁸ and application of creative and systems thinking²⁹ to regenerate and sustain the environment. And that’s another keyword, the regenerating part of sustaining.

And thirdly, to demonstrate, hope and respect for diverse perspectives in seeking solutions to socio-ecological crises. So why is it important, and how do we do it? I’ve already mentioned these keywords. I just want to surface them and hold them in this space a little bit longer. Socio-ecological is the correct positioning for what’s going on in our world today. We need to think about the challenges from a human-inducing perspective, that’s our Anthropocene context. And so keeping that context in the solution is key. And to find out how do we use PISA as a tool for curriculum design to think about the science framework as a global statement that enables us to bring into and enliven our curriculum and think about areas for opportunity.

And this is a nice framing of the science framework and the agency, and the Anthropocene fits tightly down the bottom, but still predominantly there. So if you’re looking for a really nice, overarching capture of what’s in the framework, this is a nice representation.

And again, just to draw back those key ideas that it’s the bolded bits that are really beautifully positioned in science now that enable us to appreciate science in society. And again, the three key competencies that sit alongside the science competencies.

So what would we consider for science education? These are some ideas that I think we could talk about today to ensure that we are developing a critical social science perspective around environmental and sustainability education and practice, and expanding the frame of science knowledge and practice. So we want to think about those interrelationships of Earth systems and how some human societies impact these systems.

Of course we need to support our young people to understand models, to read communications about the climate science; they don’t have to be climate scientists to appreciate what’s going on at the moment. But they do have to be able to judge the accuracy³⁰ and reliability of the information that’s constantly being put in front of them, and that means managing misinformation. And there is a whole skill set in both of those things: the judgement as well as the management. So we want to enable citizens to manage this information, to read the climate models³¹, to feel informed about local practices and policies. And that idea of bringing it back to local I think is key, in order to make responsible decisions. I don’t think we’re educating the future scientists of the world. I think we’re educating the future citizens.

That idea of needing to make responsible decisions is key, and that’s what our science education has to do with our young people. So I suggest maybe we reduce the focus on climate impacts and the urgency of the situation, and we learn about the climate science and what we’re going to do in these situations.

So we need to support our teachers to have agency as well. We talk about young people’s agency, but teachers need to have agency and that’s really difficult when you’ve got a curriculum that doesn’t support you to do that; when you’ve got an education system that also doesn’t support you to do that.

So maybe we also need to encourage our schools and our school leaders, and in fact our school communities, to take action to reduce climate change in various ways; to work intergenerationally, to collaborate, to do all the things that we typically talk about in sustainability, but to focus on climate responsibility. And to participate in the political and the social systems that enable hope and responsible action.

We’ve got a project right now in Australia called Enacting Climate Change Education. And we’ve got a great team in Australia, but also working with some colleagues from Finland, Maija Aksela, and Taiwan, Ying-Shao Hsu, and we’re really trying to engage with schools and our young people from Years 5 to 10 to work out what is it going to take to get great science into our classrooms. We work with scientists and then we codesign with our teachers and young people and then we use, or invite our young people to share with us thoughts about, so how was that?

And then we’re going to work with our pre-service teachers to bring on a future generation of teachers who know how to do this important work. We know from a decade of this experience of work in this area that working with scientists is hard. Scientists don’t have the solutions for education. Education academics focus on that. And we can do a lot of work to support that little in0between bit to actually happen and to happen well.

I’ve just got a little bit of time to tell you about my last thing today, the climate change education policy in Australia, where we’re enacting an Australian climate education summit this year. So the process is to invite people, stakeholders from across Australia, to have a voice about, what are they already doing about climate change education? What do they want to do and what do they need to be able to do it?

Once we’ve got that voice from our stakeholders, which we are reading really broadly, so unlike the UK Summit, which really focused on classroom work, this year in Australia we’re paying attention to educators from early learning, primary, secondary, tertiary, our TAFE or technical system, as well as our community and our parents as educators.

So once we’ve got that voice, we’ll design an action plan that will then take back to our stakeholders. Along the way from designing that action plan, we want to build relationships with our policy makers. We want them to understand what we, as education experts, think about what our curriculum should be.

We want greater voice in the policy that’s going to enable Australia to move forward. And that’s not just curriculum policy. We need policy around curriculum to enable teachers and schools to do better work with their communities that’s more focused on the local challenges that we’re facing.

Of course, the IPCC is the place that we go to get our current up-to-date information about what’s happening in the state of the world. And yes, there’s a lot to read and they’re really tricky to read, some of these reports. But fortunately they pull together a synthesis³² report, and they also put together a wonderful press release.

And this is the warning that came with the 2023 March 6th Synthesis Report: That the pace and scale of climate action are insufficient to tackle climate change. And that needs to be our wake-up call. Thanks.

Chris Eames

Thanks Peta, that was a lot of stuff wasn’t it? I mean, it is a lot of stuff and it’s a really important piece of work and what I’d like to stress to you, I guess, about the PISA work is it’s not only about the politics. We’re not doing this to influence the world. We’re doing this to influence our students and our science teaching. That’s the most important thing. And we’re bringing to bear the knowledge and experience and understanding of a whole group of, a community of people across the world to try and do this.

We don’t necessarily agree with all the things that PISA does. If you’ve had any experience of looking at the data, there are problems with them. We’ve just written for that for a journal article which is under review. So it’s a challenging space. But if we don’t engage in this type of space, then we’re missing out. So I’m going to finish by just thinking about:

• What does this mean for science education here in this country?
• Where should we be going?
• What should we be thinking about?

And I know that some of you will be sitting here thinking, “I’ve been seeing science education for a long time. I’ve been science teaching for a long time, like my dad, and I don’t want to change because I think the fundamentals are right.” And you’re probably right. But there are some other things that we need to think about.

One of the things we need to think about, I guess, is what are we actually preparing our young people for?

Really, we’re looking to create citizens who can understand science, use science and actually create a better world for us. And we think that being hopeful, informed and decision-making active citizens is a really important thing. So we want to see more of this. Young people taking action, being informed, thinking about the plants that they’re planting, why they’re doing it, actually doing it. Because those are the things that concretely will change the trajectory that we’re currently on.

Of course, and Cathy alluded to this in her opening, there are diverse views about how this can be achieved. One of the things that we do need to think about is that science knowledge and concepts remain absolutely key.

For instance, if we look at a few examples here, we can see that when we’re dealing with climate change as an example, physics and Earth science can help us to understand radiation³³, how that radiation and heat³⁴ transfer moves around the planet³⁵, and if we don’t understand that from a fundamental basis, it’s really hard to make any decisions about what’s going on.

On the left-hand side there, we can see the molecules³⁶ of carbon dioxide and methane³⁷, and the resonance³⁸ that occurs between the atoms and those molecules is fundamental for the absorption of the heat in climate change. Now, we need to understand that because that helps us to understand how global warming is occurring.

And then finally, from a biological point of view, we’ve got a bunch of cells. Everything is based on cells, apart from a few viruses, let’s not argue. But really it’s a cellular way of life. And so when we’re thinking about cells, how does the way that something like climate change is impacting on cellular basis of life becomes important. So biology³⁹ is a really fundamental piece of understanding.

But we also need to think about systems. It’s not just about biology, physics, chemistry and Earth science, or planet Earth and beyond if you like. Systems are absolutely fundamental to our understanding of how things operate. In this very complex diagram by some very able people, basically on the left-hand side in the green, this is all the natural systems, and here’s the anthroposphere; that’s our systems. That’s how we’re engaging with those natural systems and creating challenges and influences in those systems.

You put that up against your Year 10 students and they’ll go, “Woah, crikey, I’m out of here. It’s scary.” But until you understand the complexity or start to think about the complexity of what’s going on, we can’t just deal with one part of the equation. We have to understand how that works. And that becomes really important.

And as Peta alluded to, it’s not just the sciences, it’s the social sciences. Because if you look at the anthroposphere, cultures, values and beliefs, institutions, political economy, production and consumption – they’re all social science-based materials.

You might still bring them into your science classrooms, and I really hope you do. But you might also need to partner with your social science colleagues to get some information to understand how those two systems do operate together. Because that becomes an important thing, to give that holistic⁴⁰ idea.

So then what does this mean further for science education? Well, the nature of science⁴¹ becomes absolutely fundamental. Peta alluded to this a little bit in her presentation. We need students to be able to look at the graph like this and go, “Yep, I can see what’s going on here. That’s the rise of carbon dioxide emissions levels. But there’s variability.” And you know, the one thing that people say about climate change? “Oh, but it’s cold today. How can you say there’s global warming happening?”

You know, OK, it doesn’t always happen in this linear trajectory. It goes up and down. And we want students to be able to have the nous, the understanding, to look at the diagram like that and go, “Oh, I can understand what that looks like. I can interpret the data.” That’s fundamental.

We also need to, as Peta said, tackle this idea of misinformation. We need our young people to have trust in science and in scientists. If the population doesn’t and continues to degrade the work and the thinking of scientists, then we’re in real strife.

And then finally, we also need to think about the balance between environmental protection and economic developments. And this particular picture of Archie’s Frog, which Shane Jones says wants to say goodbye to – a clear lack of understanding about biodiversity⁴² and what every species means to us as people on this planet. So we’ve got to be able to deal with that.

Obviously, bringing science together with other learning areas is crucial. Kahu talked about Matariki⁴³. I attended a Matariki celebration, a hautapu ceremony, on Friday morning. It was lovely to be there with a Māori-led ceremony, thinking spiritually about a scientific aspect. We looked at the stars, we talked about the aspects of that, and I think it’s a really important element to be thinking about diverse knowledge systems and how they can contribute – not replace or even integrate with – but contribute to our thinking in science.

And there are lots of diverse ways of thinking about teaching and learning in this space. So we know we already do those sorts of things, but we need to embrace them more.

So finally then, how might this shape our curriculum? As we transition from this curriculum, with science categorised into four strands, the physical world, the living world, material world and planet Earth and beyond, we need to ask, is this structure fit for purpose?

There’s no denying the importance of knowledge and skills, but should we foreground the strands and risk obscuring the interconnected nature of the social ecological challenges which science education must contribute to for decision-making and action? Or do we foreground integrated contexts which are at the heart of our daily lives and concerns, but within which fundamentally sit the concepts of the strands that inform the decision-making and action?

Te Mātaiaho shows us one way that this could be done. And last year’s draft science curriculum was a bold attempt to do so. We need to decide what is fit for purpose.

So what is our vision then, finally, for science education in Aotearoa⁴⁴ New Zealand? Yes, we must look back on where we’ve come from and acknowledge and celebrate the achievements that we’ve made. But we also need to keep our eyes firmly on the future. Science is for all and forever.

So what might this look like? We leave you with our thoughts, informed by our thinking about Agency in the Anthropocene.

• Our young people have hope that science can contribute positively to their future.
• Our young people gain knowledge and skills to participate as citizens.
• And finally, our young people use their science knowledge and skills to make informed decisions and to act for a better world.

How might we achieve this vision? We need a dynamic⁴⁵ and evidence-based curriculum which responds to this vision. We need pedagogy which is learner-centered and addresses the real. Matter⁴⁶ does matter! We’re not completely constructivist. Matter does matter and energy flows. It happens. It’s real.

Science teaching, which is collaborative across learning areas and supported by appropriate resources and professional learning – well, we could talk about that forever.

And finally, an engaged science community who are willing to participate in fulfilling this vision and preparing our young people for the world. We look forward to doing this with you.

And now we welcome your questions.

Question on screen: Rather than incorporating Indigenous Knowledge Systems, should we be prioritising them?

We’re on a journey, I think, in this country and in many countries of the world, around Indigenous⁴⁷ knowledges in particular, and how they integrate or connect with or contribute to … I personally would totally agree with you about prioritisation. I think that we’re still trying to figure out what that might look like.

We can see by the challenges that occurred around Te Mātaiaho and the way that that’s been received in certain sectors of our population. We can see from our current government and their views around what might be called Indigenous knowledges and involving those, that this is maybe not a great time to make forward progress in that space. But I totally agree. Absolutely. I think that’s important.

I invite Peta to respond to that question on the basis of what’s happening in Australia.

Peta White

In Australia we are, I don’t know, we always love coming to New Zealand conferences because we feel like we’re shown a little bit better about how to respect our culture⁴⁸ and certainly after the [The Voice] referendum last year, not many Australians are feeling very positive about this space, certainly those who voted yes.

So we have some great leaders in, in Australia who are trying to show us the way; we’ve had some work done by the Australian Curriculum Council to embed Indigenous knowledges and practices in our cross curriculum priority. But that is a priority that is not reported on or graded in a school system. And so it’s there, it theorises, it supports; but in practice there’s no requirement to take it up.

So again, great to have the inclusion, it just doesn’t hit the land – hit the ground and land in a way that we would like it to. A lot of work to do in this space, but some great leaders in our country who are very engaged in doing that work with us.

Question on screen: What are some different ways we might organize the knowledge in the curriculum, instead of separating different subjects into ‘buckets’ of learning?

I wonder if maybe we could work through the buckets for a while and pay attention to bringing in that respect for science embedded in society across all the buckets; and then with that in place, are we then in a better position to work out that chemistry informs physics, that it informs biology, that it all actually works together?

So a really important question, but I wonder if we can work around as we actually change how we really want to take up science education, to pay attention to the embeddedness of science in our society, the deep intersections between where we’re at as a global species and where we might want to go and how we might want to get there. So I guess over to you, your thoughts.

Chris Eames

Well, here’s the real answer. I don’t know. No, no, it’s a really tough question, right? And you know, it is something to ponder about for a very long time about the nature of subjects and the nature of how those subjects work together. It’s the nature of knowledge.

I’ve worked with some colleagues to integrate papers at the university, for instance, and we sit down and we say, well, what’s the nature of your subject? And it’s quite interesting to hear the conversation. “Well, I don’t quite know. I haven’t really thought about it.” And then it’s a long time to actually get that out.

So if we were going to scrap the buckets, as it were, if I’m understanding you right, then the notion is then, well, there will be nothing like chemistry anymore. There’ll be nothing like physics, potentially or, but there’ll be some fundamental knowledge and ideas still. Or do we go, what’s the nature of chemistry and what’s the nature of physics and how do we blur that boundary? I’m not sure if that’s going to be the way that we can go forward. It’s a really difficult thing, isn’t it? It’s very easy to sit up here, stand up here and go, “This isn’t right,” but it’s a lot harder to say “This is what we should do instead.”

Peta White

Can I have another go? I’ve been doing some work with the South Australian government who have taken our version 9 of the curriculum and decided to do it a little bit differently and they have retained the buckets but called them something else. I think similar to the way that you’ve organised your curriculum. It’s the same kind of concepts, biology, chemistry, etcetera. Biology is always first. That’s my bias⁴⁹.

But they are not just stating what it is. They’re also asking, Why is it important? And that’s what I think I was trying to say during my presentation. It’s the “Why is it important?” the context within which we’re learning that really matters. So why is learning about biology important? Well, because it connects in all these different ways to the bigger picture.

And then I also want to speak to the complexity that I think Chris demonstrated beautifully in his presentation. Too often in school education, we reduce the complexity to make it manageable when in actual fact we make it impossible. Because without it all hanging together, it’s very hard to appreciate why one little piece matters. So let’s not take the complexity away. Let’s support all of our people to appreciate that things fit in within systems.

Question on screen: What’s the place for play and practical skill-building within science education?

Chris Eames

I think in terms of understanding the nature of science isn’t just about looking at the way that people appreciate and use science, but also investigating and actually employing the skills, I guess, that are there. I mean, for those of you who are chemistry teachers, you’re probably very much aware of the fact of the demise of practical work and experiments and things like that because of health and safety issues. And I think we’ve lost a lot of that, that opportunity for students just to play, to be able to do that.

Peter Beck wouldn’t have got to where he was today if he hadn’t been able to play and figure out things for himself. So I think they’re fundamental to actually getting where we want to go. Absolutely.

I was thinking, trying to think of an analogy⁵⁰ when you were talking about, you know, thinking about an Earth science student or someone looking at the, you know, planet Earth and beyond. You know, to grasp soil in your fingers and to rub it between your thumbs and to figure out whether it’s a silt⁵¹ or a clay⁵² or a sand. I mean that is fundamental to understanding the strata upon which we’re standing, which is why we’re probably not going to get an earthquake here, we hope, because we’ve got solid strata under this building. But you know, if we don’t have our engineers understanding those sorts of things, as well as the appreciation of how that soil ended up being here, because of the socio-ecological processes that have been undertaken, then we’re not going to be in a good position.

Peta White

If I could just add to that too, I spoke about the need to be able to support our young people to read models in science and to appreciate the role of simulations in understanding the complexity.

And I think it also is incumbent on our scientists to think about their communication strategies as well. Science communication is a well respected field and practice and some of our science colleagues do it really well. We can use their communication tools in a classroom setting quite easily.

And in fact, that’s a large part of what we’re doing in our project is even taking academic articles and working with teachers to work out which are the bits that we can draw into our classroom practice. An abstract can be worked through. The figures can be included. The conclusions can be unpacked.

So we can build that capability in our young people, for appreciating the tools that the scientists are working to generate for us. At Deakin, we’re really fortunate we have some landscape ecologists who are incredible science communicators, to the extent that they even produce stop motions to enable us to understand aspects of ecology⁵³, landscape ecology. It’s brilliant. And also very humorous treks to the Alps to tell us and show us the devastation that the ponies are doing in our Alpine ecosystems.

So it’s about understanding the models and the simulations to – and the communications. Because we’re not generating – well, maybe we are generating future climate scientists – but we don’t all need to understand how to do climate science. We just need to know how to read it and to respect the people who do know how to do it.

Acknowledgements
Associate Professor Chris Eames, University of Waikato
Associate Professor Peta White, Deakin University
Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao and Royal Society Te Apārangi