Abstract:

Natural science education aims at developing a variety of abilities and skills, including low level cognitive skills (such as memorize and later reproduce classifications, laws and formulas or solving problems applying standardized methods), manipulative abilities (how to handle scientific equipment) and high level abilities (open problem solving or experiment design). In the last few years, the emphasis is being put on those skills that cannot be acquired by rote memorization and by traditional teaching methods.
In order to have technologically advanced societies, scientific education has to produce citizens that are scientifically literate so as to have informed opinions in fundamental scientific issues and participate in social debate about scientific questions of general interest. This implies not only a basic working knowledge of scientific concepts and technological issues, but also clear ideas about the nature of science and its limits, and an ability to present technical arguments and make scientific reasoning. In the last twenty years, some science curricula have started the adaptation to fulfill this view.
It is important to set priorities and to define what aspects of teaching and learning should be improved if the above objectives are to be fulfilled. The science teaching community is looking for ways to increase the pleasure of learning in science students, as well as their motivation, while they achieve all the planned competences with minimum effort. In this paper, some suggestions are given about how to update curricula in natural science, taking into account applicable research results.

Keywords:

Updating natural science curricula, research based curricula.