Learning science means learning to talk science... Talking science means observing, describing, comparing, classifying, analysing, discussing, hypoth… - Jay Lemke

If you ask most teachers of science what their main goal is, they will probably say: for my students to understand the basic concepts of physics, chemistry, biology, or whatever other field is being studied. The critical words here are ‘understand’ and ‘concept’, and both of these terms assume a fundamentally psychological approach to learning... If we see the goals of science education in terms of what students will be able to do, and how they will be able to make sense of the world, rather than in terms of our speculations about what may be going on in their brains, then we need to see scientific learning as the acquisition of cultural tools and practices, as learning to participate in very specific and often specialized forms of human activity

It is dangerous to society to have students leave school believing that science is a perfect means to absolute, objective truths, discovered by people of superhuman intelligence. Apart form the danger that scientific “findings” could be used to justify wrong social polices, an impersonal, inhuman view of science alienates many students from the subject. If we are to encourage students of all kinds to take in interest in science, and use it for their own purposes, we need to show it as it really is.

The language others speak to us, from childhood, shapes the attitudes and beliefs that ground how we use all our powers of action.