Teachers’ Perception of Implementing New Courses and STS Education in Secondary School

Abstract

Since April 1994, new courses have started under the new syllabus in Japanese secon dary schools, including “Sougou-Rika” and “IAs” in which STS Education can to operate. These new courses are said to be established for low-achievers, even though STS Education is intended for all learners. Teachers’ perception of the context about “science” (CAS), including history of science, sociology of science, its application in daily-life, etc., is focused as they are practitioners in classroom.

There have been some papers on teachers’ perception especially on STS issues and its ideas. Meanwhile, the perception of the community of teachers is often quite different from individual teachers’ and is hard to investigate by them in Japan. This paper adopted a technique asking both teachers’ opinions and the views of their community simultaneously in order to clarify their differences.

The results of this research are as follows:

・The CAS has educational value for individual teachers who want to treat them scientifically. They judge CAS to be suitable for learners’ abilities and interests but also worry that CAS is not organized as a knowledge base.

・Teachers inferred that the new courses would be actually accepted to low achievers.

・Teachers’ background such as major degree and age is related to ther opinions of CAS. Teachers of biology or who graduated agriculture tend not to resist new courses or CAS.

・Each teacher inferred that the view of their community toward CAS is much less than their own opinion. It is interpreted that authorized or institutionalized teacher education course would obtain less result. Teacher education should be formed not by force but to meet their demand toward CAS.