The Theory And Practice Study Of Informal Science Curriculum And Its Development

Since the21st century, many countries taking in Australia and the United States, haveannounced their new version of science curriculum including comprehensive anddepartmental which caused a new round of science curriculum information. Meanwhile, asthe concept of life-long education enjoys popular support, the creation of learning societyrequires school from close to open, and science curriculum life-world is rebuilding. In fact,school-based curriculum development has provide possibility for increasing teachers'empowerment, popularizing science and technology museum and opening schools. When theschool science curriculum enters into family life, social life and nature, visit and socialpractice become an important content of science curriculum. In view of these courses is thevital content and form of outside school formal science curriculum, we define them asInformal Science Curriculum.The Informal Science Curriculum has more than one hundred years of history, throughchampioning by John Dewey, it had been gradually identified and developed after the1970s.It belongs to the category of school-based curriculum, which mainly refers to the sum of aseries of subject science curriculum text or activity outside school formal curriculum, such asthe extracurricular activities of science and technology, class theme meeting related toscience, wall newspaper of science and technology, science report, etc. And the InformalScience Curriculum has some features like thematic, potential, nonlinearity, diversity,openness, generative, interactivity and life-oriented. Meanwhile, The Informal ScienceCurriculum can not only arouse students' interests in learning science, scientific activitiesand science career, consolidate and expand students' science knowledge, improve students'science capacity and understanding of science, strengthen students' identity to scienceactivities and science career; but also expand science teachers' curriculum view, improvescience teachers' understanding and development of scientific resources outside school,creativity, and promote relevant personnel's participating in school science curriculum inorder to facilitate the use of curriculum resources of society and natural science. However,the development of Informal Science Curriculum is affected by region and school culture,region and school science curriculum resource, teachers' curriculum quality, students'science foundation, interests and cognition. Therefore, the Informal Science Curriculumshould adhere to the student-based principle, and grasp the practical, autonomy, difference,openness and dependency, and pay attention to the construction of curriculum community, so as to take outside personnel in, and encourage teachers, students and relevant personneloutside make curriculum review together to establish the value orientation of informalscience curriculum, organizing clues and development mode.The author took high school X in city C as the practice base, cooperated with teacher L,used eight students form one of grade one classes as research objects, and employed thecurriculum idea of teaching through lively activities, facing to life and constructingindependently to design and implemented the informal science curriculum with the theme ofCar-Science-Life. During the process, the eight students were divided into two groups, whichtaking students choose topics and course content, and organized three informal sciencecurriculum activities as The History of Car, The Design and Manufacture of the Car, Car andEnvironmental Protection. In this process, we organized students' reading extracurricularbooks, searching relevant information, visiting the Automobile Works' Pavilion Y and autoproduction line and talking with research and development personnel form China FirstAutomobile Works. In this way, students had self-learning, autonomous exploration anddiscussion under the guidance of teachers and relevant personnel, and we also held themeclass meeting. Generally speaking, all of the eight students not only showed a great interestin activities and very high engagement, but also took in-depth thinking on some problems,and acquired some knowledge about the history of the Automobile Works Y' development,design and manufacture of the car, Cars' effect to Environment and strategies for dealingwith. It is helpful for improving students' ability of searching information and askingquestion. However, because of course work and poor study habits, some studentsparticipating enthusiasm in the activities was not high. In most cases, they need the guidance,planning and supervision from teachers. Furthermore, the survey also found that theseactivities produced little influence to students' interests in formal science curriculum,planning for future career and indentifying to science activities and science career.All in all, informal science curriculum can enhance the students'cognition on scientificactivities and concerns over social issues,influences the students' study habit to some extentand promote teacher professional development. However, the senior high school has toomany examinations, unhealthy study habits, low availability of the out-of-school curriculum,sealed school and insufficient experience ability of developers. All these factors restrict thesuccess or failure and the quality of developing “informal science curriculum”. Therefore, inthe author's opinion, the country should introduce relevant policies to promote the effectiveuse of outside resources of informal science curriculum, which is because that schools withgood foundation of curriculum development and with great openness are good to reduce theresistance and difficulty. That's to say, developers ought to choose the subjects and topicswhich are similar to formal courses or existing school activities during the developing process of informal science curriculum. More attentions should be paid to teaching throughlively activities and a good degree should be held at the same time of strengthening theguidance to the students.