Abstract
The dominance of “academicism” in science education can be shown over the last century. However in the period of this study, when access to a universal secondary education was the main thrust of social reconstruction in Britain and Australia, a key struggle was for a socially-centred general science. The struggle, concerned the terms on which “the spirit of Science alive in the world”, could enter and transform education in schools to meet human needs. The epistemological arguments of the reformers were pragmatic. This study, set initially in an earlier period of depressive capitalism, is an account of how curriculum and cultural change was mediated by educational actors, employing pragmatic arguments for reform which drew on the metaphoric power of a scientific achievements which emanated from their society, to pursue democratic agendas within their workplace and locality.
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Fawns, R. The democratic argument for science curriculum reform in Britain and Australia: 1935–1945. Research in Science Education 28, 281–299 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02461564
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02461564