The focus for the research described in this chapter is on teacher learning and curriculum change. We were interested in factors associated with teachers making changes in their classrooms and institutionalizing those changes. The program of research has been in progress since 1984 and continues today (e.g., Tobin 1990a, Tobin and Espinet 1989; Tobin and Fraser 1987; Tobin and Gallagher 1987; Tobin et al. 1990; Tobin and Ulerick 1989). Throughout the entire research program, we have focused on the teacher and the rationale for teaching practices. Our research questions have involved teacher beliefs and other cognitive factors such as metaphors. It is now clear that a prerequisite to understanding the change process is to understand the culture in which teaching and learning are embedded.

Excerpt: The remainder of this chapter consists of four sections in which sociocultural perspectives are used to illuminate issues associated with the teaching and learning of science. Examples from my professional history are used to illustrate the role of theory in making sense of experience, learning from concrete experiences, the significance of coparticipation in learning science, and science as a form of symbolic violence for students. Implications for the practice of science education are presented in a conclusion that acknowledges that the perspectives I have employed in this chapter are useful in bringing certain issues into the foreground but, in so doing, push other issues into a background of obscurity.

This article reviews the significance of the contributions of Ernst von Glasersfeld to research in science education, especially through his theoretical contribu-tions on radical constructivism. As a field shaper, Glasersfeld’s subversive ideas catalyzed debate in the science education community and fuelled transformation of many facets including research methods, ways of thinking about teaching and learning, curriculum, and science teacher education. Perturbations emanating from the debates on constructivism forged new pathways that led to the development and use of many of the sociocultural frameworks employed by authors in Cultural Studies of Science Education.

Key words: Radical constructivism, epistemology, realism, transforming science education, history.

Excerpt: A look at the literature published in high impact journals identifies more than three thousand publications that used the keywords constructivism or constructivist from the mid 1970s to the present. In the database the first reference to constructivism is in 1967, increasing to 12 sources by 1976. From 1993 onwards the trajectory increased to more than 100 sources a year and then, since 1999 more than 200 sources a year refer to constructivism. Of course this is the tip of an iceberg since the vast majority of the literature is not included in the Web of Science database and many articles probably address constructivism without including the term either in the title, abstract or keywords. Nonetheless, the trend provides insights into a revolution involving constructivism. Perhaps it is too soon to judge whether this revolution made a difference and possibly I am like the fish that is unable to know about the water in which it lives – I used constructivism to improve science education and had a stake in it being successful. From where I stand as an urban science educator, changes occurred because constructivism is a subversive process that got people thinking about the purposes of education and the nature of teaching and learning. Although there are times when it seems as if nothing has changed at all in education research, the wheels of change still turn and do not seem to be easily reversed. Furthermore, from my experience, constructivism itself was not immune from the change process because it too changed and then was subsumed in a new wave of sociocultural theory that is just as subversive as constructivism.

What does it mean to use constructivism as a referent? Tobin and Tippins consider constuctivism as a set of beliefs about knowing and knowledge that can be used to analyze the learning potential of any situation. In this way, it becomes a tool for critical reflection, a referent for deciding whether teacher and learner roles are likely to be more productive in given situations. Constructivism provides a different way of thinking about education. In science education, for example, it makes no sense to think solely about the disciplines of science in the absence of learners if all knowledge must be individually constructed. Likewise, the debate over whether to emphasize concepts or process has little meaning because, from a constructivist point of view, making sense of science is a dialectical process involving both content and process. The authors provide numerous examples from research studies to enliven the presentation of their position. They extend the discussion to include use of constructivism as a referent for educational research, proposing that the metaphor of researcher as truth seeker be replaced with one of researcher as learner. They conclude with the observation that constructivism is not a unitary construct nor is it the only referent for educational actions. However, it is an important one.