CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN SCIENCE LEARNING      2000w

Theorists have looked at learning and learners from various perspectives (Murphy et al., 2009). Since theorizing is not done in a vacuum, the various theories of learning were and are influenced by the thinking in various fields and the accepted views in the social and political spheres.

Views of learning in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries were influenced by behaviourism. Similarly to the concept of behaviour as a response to stimuli, learning is viewed as responding to the stimuli, in the form of transmitted knowledge from teacher to learners. According to this view of learning, knowledge travels and arrives intact from the mind of the teacher to the mind of the learner. The student is reduced to merely a passive receiver of information. In the transmission model of learning the teacher is more of a trainer, presenting knowledge to students and showing them how to apply it (Murphy et al., 2009). According to this view knowledge is objective, the only way of representing an objective reality, which holds whatever the social and environmental context. Good students are expected to passively accept what is being transmitted to them.

From my experience as a teacher, this model of learning is still followed in schools, especially in the last 3 years of secondary school, leading to Secondary Education Certificate examinations (the Maltese equivalent of British GSCE O-levels). Using a transmission mode of teaching, in order to make sure that the material laid out in the syllabus is covered in the time available is deemed, it seems, the easiest and safest way forward. A teacher is expected by the school, parents and students themselves to help them get good grades and to coach students to do well in exams.

Another issue which leads to this mode of teaching is that, for example, the chemistry sy