The biological effects of ultraviolet radiation: a model for contemporary science education?

Abstract

Science education needs to include more examples of contemporary science if it is to transcend its narrow focus on ‘what we know’. This paper argues that school needs to place more emphasis on ‘how’, ‘when’, and ‘if’ scientific knowledge can be trusted. This can only be achieved by providing the opportunity to explore the complex relationship between science, scientists, and society. Using the example of the biological effects of ultraviolet radiation, we seek to show that it is possible to include such aspects within the current National Curriculum. As well as covering aspects of the science curriculum, the effects of ultraviolet on the skin introduce some contemporary science. Such examples provide an opportunity to explore aspects of the nature of scientific knowledge that are often omitted from science education — in this case, the role of correlational studies and the interrelationship between observation and theory. In addition, such examples show that scientific knowledge is a social product and that its results are often strongly contested. Possibly more significant is that introducing such aspects of science brings some much needed relevance to a curriculum where many children feel that there is as much chance of finding any contemporary science, of application to their lives, as there is of finding water in a desert.