The Nature of Science in the Learning Goals of the Successive Curricular Reforms in Spain: An Analysis from the STS Tradition

Abstract

This article analyzes the educational weight of the understanding of nature of science (NOS) in the successive curricular reforms for basic science education in Spain. The analysis is limited to the four educational provisions of the last 30 years in this country. Through a qualitative content analysis method, and taking as a theoretical reference the understanding of NOS from the science-technology-society (STS) tradition, the official curricular proposals for the areas or subjects of school science corresponding to Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE, 12-16 years old) are analyzed. The results of the analysis show that, although overall there has been some evolution in the attention paid to NOS, in the proposals of assessable learnings for school science, this is quite discreet and with a very small weight if compared with other content of the curriculum. The positive data is that the Spanish curricular prescriptions, within that scarcity, give more weight to the non-epistemic than to the epistemic features of NOS. As a conclusion, NOS has been (and is) conceived as a second-order content with little educational importance in the official prescriptions for basic science education in Spain.