2017 Volume 41 Issue 2 Pages 246-257
The school subject known as ‘chigaku’ (earth science) was established as one of the new scientific subjects in upper secondary schools in 1948. Since then, the numbers of students who took earth science has been lower than the other three scientific subjects, and that has been regarded as a serious issue for its value in science learning at every revision of the course of study. In this research, the author first investigates the arguments on the value of earth science education from the 1950s to the 1960s. Second, referring to the Osborne’s notion of the aims and objectives of science education, the author examines the aims and objectives of earth science education. Finally, the author argues to add ‘the pedagogical argument’ to the four arguments which Osborne proposed: utilitarian, cultural, economic, and democratic. The cultural, democratic, and pedagogical values of learning earth science should be emphasized for rethinking the aims and objective of earth science education.
