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1、I N N O D AT A M O N O G R A P H S 2THESCIENCE OFTHINKING,ANDSCIENCE FORTHINKING: ADESCRIPTION OF COGNITIVEACCELERATIONTHROUGHSCIENCEEDUCATION (CASE)Philip AdeyINTERNATIONAL BUREAU OF EDUCATIONContentsIntroduction, page 4The underlying psychology, page 5Risks, page 8Planning and implementation, page
2、 9Trials and evaluation, page 16CASE and the professional development of teachers, page 25Policy and publicity issues, page 33Conclusion, page 36Contacts and references, page 39Authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this publication and for the opinions ex-
3、 pressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO:IBE and do not commit the Organization. The designations em- ployed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expres- sion of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO:IBE concerning the legal sta- tus of
4、any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimi- tation of its frontiers or boundaries.Published in 1999 by the International Bureau of Education, P.O. Box 199, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland.Printed in Switzerland by PCL. UNESCO:IBE 1999About the author Philip S. A
5、dey (United Kingdom and Barbados)Ph.D. (London). Reader in Science Education, Kings College, University of London School of Education. Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Thinking. Consultant on in-service teacher training, textbooks, integrated sci- ence, cognitive acceleration, and proje
6、ct appraisal and evaluation in Barbados, Botswana, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Lesotho, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Norway, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland and Trinidad. Author of some twenty-five journal articles, ten confer- ence papers, ten textbooks and four books, the most recent of which is (wit
7、h M. Shayer): Really raising standards: cog- nitive intervention and educational achievement (1994).3ForewordCognitive Acceleration through Science Education (CASE) is an innovative teaching approach elaborated out of research into cognitive development based largely on the work of Piaget and also i
8、ncorporating fundamental tenets of Vygotskys theories of learning. The programme aims to improve childrens thinking processes by accelerating progress towards higher-order thinking skills or what Piaget termed formal operations. CASE focuses on enhancing pupils capabilities in understanding science
9、concepts, science being an area in the curriculum that has always presented particular difficulties for the ma- jority of pupils. Rather than being intended as an alternative science curricu- lum, CASE is designed to be an intervention programme in the existing cur- riculum, and originally targeted
10、pupils between the ages of 11 and 14 years. To date in the United Kingdom, the programme has proved highly success- ful in increasing pupils capacities for understanding science and in develop- ing their general thought processes, and is now widely applied in schools throughout the country. Similar
11、programmes are being developed with differ- ent age groups and in other subject areasmathematics and Englishand the programme is being experimented with in some other countries.IntroductionCASE is designed as an intervention in the science curriculum of students aged about 11 to 14 years. It had its
12、 origins in work done in the 1970s at Chelsea College in London, which showed that many of the concepts in- cluded in science curricula in the United Kingdom (and throughout the world) actually made demands beyond the current intellectual capability of the stu- dents. In the United Kingdom, this pro
13、blem was highlighted with the end of the selective school system, when for the first time teachers in grammar schools, which had selected only the top 20% of the ability range, encoun- tered the full range of students in the population. In the United States the problem showed up as the revelation th
14、at many college freshmen had a very uncertain grasp of fundamental concepts in science which supposedly had been part of their high school curricula (Renner et al., 1976). In perhaps the majority of countries in the world, where secondary education was available only to a minority, the difficulty of
15、 science concepts tended to be masked by the rote learning of definitions, which avoided the problems of trying to teach for real understanding. The team at Chelsea College, led by Professor Michael Shayer, took a sci- entific approach to the problem of difficulty in science. On the one hand, we nee
16、ded an accurate description of the intellectual profile of the school popu- lation, and on the other hand, we needed a way of measuring and describing the level of difficulty of science concepts. The theory of cognitive develop- ment which had been elaborated by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget pro- vided us with just the sort of description we needed. Drawing on the Genevans descriptions of types of thinking available at different stages, we (1) developed an instrum
