Learning perspectives: Implications for pedagogy in science education

Abstract

How we understand learning has implications for the learning outcomes we value and how we seek to achieve them particularly when we want to do something about learning. In this paper I outline, albeit briefly, the implications for the relations between teaching and learning, for teacher roles and responsibilities, and for the goals of education and curriculum-making of the cognitive-constructivist and situated-social views of learning. The proposal here is not that either of the views is right or better but rather that each foregrounds different aspects of the teaching-learning process and supports particular ways of acting and interacting and hence learning and teaching.