[School] Science, the Learner and the Twenty-First Century: What Science? What Learning?

The learning that is valued in [school] science is, in terms of what science , remarkably and sadly constant. Curriculum documents today are frequently disturbingly similar to those in place in the days of my own schooling (well over half a century ago). Yet today we are living through major shifts in the forms of science that are researched and taught post-school - emerging sciences, new sciences that are new integrations, futures science , the consequences of a lessening [perhaps even removal] in some fields of a focus on the fundamental renaissance assumptions of reductionism. Hence there is an increase in the complexity and multidisciplinarity of the science; and these shifts have been clear and happening for half a century. This paper considers these changes and the impacts these need to make on the science we value in schools, from the perspectives of (a) traditional science disciplines, (b) more fundamental aspects of the nature of science and society in this century, and (c) how we should educate future scientists. Closely related, and therefore also discussed, are (a) the on-going and critical problem of engaging students with science, (b) the forms of learning that will be valued and rewarded as shifts begin to occur in the ways the contexts of science are seen as significant components of what is to be learned, and (c) what I argue to be the most significant (but as yet too little considered) real impact of ICT on science learning and teaching.