Content area
Purpose of the study. The major purpose of this study was to identify and classify objectives for teaching science in secondary schools in the United States during the period 1970–1992. These objectives were identified by objective statements in articles from selected professional periodicals.
Procedure. The 1970–1992 period was divided into two subperiods on the basis of major historical events. Selected professional periodicals were searched for statements of objectives of secondary school science teaching. These statements were catalogued into Knowledge, Process, Attitude and Interest, or Cultural Awareness categories. The resulting data were classified within and across the two subperiods according to frequency of occurrence, category, authorship, and year.
Findings. The major findings of this investigation included the following: (1) Authors in Higher Education produced the most articles, both research-oriented and nonresearch-oriented, and the most statements in each subperiod. Miscellaneous authors produced the least articles and statements. (2) Statements in the Process category were most frequent in the two subperiods. (3) The “most important” objectives for secondary school science teaching were Philosophical, sociological, and political aspects (from the Cultural Awareness category), Processes, skills, and techniques (from the Process category), and Major facts, principles, or fundamentals (from the Knowledge category). (4) Attitude and Interest objectives were consistently ranked as least important throughout the study. (5) The ranking of “most important” objectives in research-oriented articles generally agreed with the ranking in articles as a whole.
Conclusions. Based on the findings of this investigation, the following conclusions were made: (1) The objectives for teaching secondary school science were influenced by historical events, especially the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the AIDS pandemic, and the publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. (2) Authors in Higher Education wrote more articles about the objectives for the teaching of secondary school science than those in the other categories. This was probably a reflection of the “publish or perish” environment in many colleges and universities. (3) The most important objectives for secondary school science teaching were Philosophical, sociological, and political aspects, Processes, skills, and techniques, and Major facts, principles, or fundamentals. The preponderance of these objectives is most likely a result of cultural and social unrest during this period. (4) The number of research-oriented articles, as a percentage of all articles, doubled from the first subperiod to the second subperiod. There appears to be a trend during the second subperiod toward more data-based articles.