ONLINE ASSIGENT-Broad Aims Of Natural Science.

INTRODUCTION

To  acquire knowledge, conceptual understanding, and skills to solve problems and make informed decisions in scientific contexts. to develop skills of scientific inquiry to design and carry out scientific investigations and evaluate scientific evidence to draw conclusions.

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, evolution, distribution, identification and taxonomy. 

Biology literally means "the study of life". Biology is such a broad field, covering the minute

workings of chemical machines inside our cells, to broad scale concepts of ecosystems and global

climate change. Biologists study intimate details of the human brain, the composition of our genes,

and even the functioning of our reproductive system.

Human’s exploratory activities have resulted in the accumulation of vast source of knowledge

called Biology. In Biology, we study about nature which means the entire universe. The knowledge is

now organised in several disciplines for the convenience of study. This knowledge is based on inquiry, observations and logical extensions, and is testable by experiment or has logically convincing

explanation.

It is this organised knowledge with inquiry, logical reasoning and experimentation as its central themes that we call science. Science may rightly be said to be a domain of inquiry. 

The science which deals with the study of living objects is called Biology. Thus the subject 

involves the studies of all kinds of micro-organisms, plants and animals. Biology is related to 

mankind ever since the origin of man, therefore this branch of science stands first in order of studies 

as compared to other branches of science. Ever since the origin of life man is eager to know about 

various phenomenon of life processes such as health and disease, birth, growth and death. However, 

man depends on plants and animals for food, shelter and clothing which are immediate needs of life, 

come from Biology. Perhaps it was the elementary need of man to know about the living beings, so 

that maximum benefits can be drawn out of them. Though biology involves study of life, but now a 

days it is mostly centralised with the study of agriculture, animal husbandry, health and microbiology

and related branches. Today study of any branch of science is not possible in isolation as it also 

involves principles of physics, chemistry and various other branches. 

BROAD AIMS OF TEACHING NATURAL SCIENCE

One of the important aims of education is to help students to become responsible democratic 

citizens of the country. The responsibility of science teachers is not only to teach facts, 

principles and processes of science, but also to facilitate students to discharge their social 

responsibilities and preserve democracy as well. They should appreciate how science and 

technology have developed and are affected by many diverse individuals, cultures and societies. 

They need to be encouraged to appreciate and participate in the responsible use of science and 

technology for the benefit of society, to visualize future of our nation and to become sensitive and 

responsible citizens. It is important to develop critical thinking in them about interconnectivity of 

science, technology and society in order to maintain a healthy and sustainable society. Students 

should be encouraged to develop a scientific vision about different issues, about acquiring and 

processing information, about scientific and technological developments and their relevance to 

everyday life and long-term implications to society. 

Science education aims to make students develop scientific attitude, so that in later life they 

can help society make rational choices when confronted with various possibilities and challenges. 

Humans’ inquisitiveness and usefulness of the knowledge of science are the two main factors 

which have led them to continuously strive to understand the behaviour of nature and use the 

knowledge of science to make their life more comfortable. In doing so humans systematised 

knowledge by classifying it into various fields of their activities, built concepts to understand the 

behaviour of nature and found various ways to exploit it. All these endeavours of the humankinds 

resulted in a new discipline known as science. Science has influenced and benefited us so immensely 

that it has become indispensable. At the same time, the society has also helped science to grow. 

Science enhances the quality of our life and it is visible in all walks of life. Since science has 

been developed by people who are part of a group, society or a country, it is expected that their social, 

psychological, political, economic perceptions could change the course of development of science.

The science education is aimed for the learner to

know the facts and principles of science and its applications, consistent with the stage of 

cognitive development;

acquire the skills and understand the methods of processes that lead to generation and 

validation of scientific knowledge;

develop a historical and developmental perspective of science and to enable her to view 

science as a continuing social enterprise;

relate science education to environment (natural environment, artefact’s and people), local as 

well as global and appreciate the issues at the interface of science, technology and society;

 

acquire the requisite theoretical knowledge and practical technological skills to enter the 

world of work;

nurture the natural curiosity, aesthetic sense and creativity in science and technology;

imbibe the values of honesty, integrity, cooperation, concern for life and preservation of environment

cultivate scientific temper- objectivity, scepticism, critical thinking and freedom from 

fear and prejudice.

ACQUISITION KNOWLEDGE AND  UNDERSTANDING

An important trait of humans is to wonder, observe and interact with the surroundings and

look for the meaningful patterns and relations by making and using new tools and build conceptual

models to understand this universe. This humans’ endeavour has led to modern science which took

thousands of years to get crystallised. So one can say that science leads to generation of ideas helping to make sense of observed facts that get accepted if they fit observations, but may be refuted until tested through evidence. These ideas represent a broad view and are generalised as the scientific principles that are true universally.

It is important for children to acquire the knowledge of science content, i.e., concepts and

underlying principles as they provide a sound base to explore the unknown and build further

knowledge, yet these cannot be passed to children directly. In addition, their understanding cannot

be developed by rote learning. It can be done by providing children relevant and age appropriate

learning opportunities that allow them to undergo experiential learning through exploration and

interaction with their environment and construct their knowledge. Creation of knowledge is crucial to children’s learning. Their previous experiences are very important for it, as the experiences lead them to develop new ideas. Teachers need to collect such experiences of children to build further knowledge on their previous knowledge. For this they may engage the children in meaningful discussions through questioning and listening. Even children’s drawings, concept maps also serve as good tools to acquire such information.

DEVELOPMENT OF SKILLS

Science is about asking questions and finding answers to them through scientific method and 

inquiry. The processes that scientists use in it are science process skills. Science is important to all 

young people for not only to acquire the knowledge associated with it, but also to imbibe its inquiry 

and process skills. These skills enable them to develop into adults who are able to take informed and responsible action while engaging and reflecting upon different ideas, opinions, beliefs or values. 

These are long lasting ;thus, tend to be useful throughout each area of our lives. These skills involve

the use of all the sense organs providing hands-on experiences for enjoyable and effective learning. 

Doing experiments require certain skills, which are called laboratory skills. In order to do experiments, 

students have to handle apparatus carefully, set up the apparatus to perform the 

experiment and make correct observations. These are the skills which come under laboratory skills. 

Some simple apparatus can be prepared by the students which also require some skill. When they do experiments in laboratory they have to mover with other students cooperatively sharing the 

responsibilities. This develops feeling in the students. This is called general skill. They also need to develop drawing skill. These skills are necessary for the students to develop when they study biology.

All these basic skills are important individually as well as when they are integrated.

DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDE 

Scientific attitude is a composite of a number of mental processes or tendencies to react 

consistently in certain ways to a novel or problematic situation. These include accuracy, intellectual

honesty, open-mindedness, respect for evidence, scepticism, suspended judgement, critical thinking, perseverance and looking at true cause and effect relationship. Scientists, because of their thirst for knowledge become perpetual learners. They are constantly curious and continually seeking knowledge by inquiring. This in turn nurtures the trait of scientific attitude. 

Student who study science are curious. So students of biology are also curious. They are also 

open-minded to hear anything from anybody. They receive information and come to a conclusion or judgement only based on facts. At the same time they are ready to test and verify their judgements. 

This makes them believe that nothing is final in biology. They are truthful in doing experiments, 

making observations, recording and reporting. They also have faith in cause and effect relationship. 

The students of biology possess all these qualities and also develop these qualities while studying 

biology. These qualities are called as scientific attitude. 

Science attitude can be nurtured over a period of time through the process relevant learning 

situations that require creating an open classroom environment encouraging children to perform 

activities and experiments and reading scientific literature, freely interacting with their surroundings and asking questions. A science teacher needs to provide children experiences of a number of scientific activities as base for a thorough understanding of science and developing scientific attitude and temper. 

DEVELOPMENT OF THINKING ABILITY

In science, critical thinking increases science learning potentials. It requires deliberate review 

of the way in which activities are carried out, the ideas emerges and the way these can be improved. 

It is the ability to analyse information and experiences in an objective manner. Reflecting on the 

processes of thinking does not come readily to young children as it involves abstract thinking as 

well. Teachers can facilitate this by engaging the children in discussions through activities. 

The process of linkage of the past experiences in terms of cause and effect relationship on a 

model of set rules, i.e. thinking with reasoning is known as logical thinking. Children should be helped to reason out consistently before arriving at conclusion. Scientific temper is the refined logical thinking.

NURTURING CURIOSITY

Thus curiosity led to questions in her mind like why, what and how. When students ask such 

questions, the teacher should not discourage them. She should facilitate them to find answer using 

scientific principles. Science is nothing but all that happens around us. Students come across many 

questions out of curiosity. Curiosity leads to inculcation of learning to learn aspect of education. 

Curiosity can be generated in the learners by taking them to science centres; providing opportunities to 

work on science projects and to read scientific literature; facilitating interaction with persons 

having scientific attitude; encouraging to participate in science exhibition and science quiz, etc. 

Science activities can be designed to encompass several factors making up curiosity. Curiosity gets 

aroused as a result of doubt, perplexity, contradiction, cognitive conflict, ambiguity, lack of clarity, 

etc. A teacher needs to create suitable learning situations for this.

NURTURING CREATIVITY 

Creative thinking is a novel or innovative way of seeing or doing things. Creative thinking 

enables a learner to explore available alternatives and consequences of actions or non-actions and 

contributes to decision-making and problem solving.

Creativity has been defined in different ways. It is the production of relevant and novel product and 

process. Also, it involves classification and assessment of different components of the problem or 

delineation, manipulation and linkage of ideas in a novel manner to solve a problem, or to deal with 

an idea or to confirm a conclusion. Creativity is doing or seeing the things differently. It cannot be

taught, but developed in children by using planned strategies and techniques.  

The teacher plays an important role for nurturing creativity in learners. From pedagogical 

perspective of physical science, inquiry and activity oriented, process based teaching-learning can 

facilitate in nurturing creativity. Therefore, the role of the teacher should be to–

assist students in developing models of inquiry and discovery; 

guide students in the use of multidisciplinary approach; 

recognise and appreciate creative ideas and products of students; 

provide rich variety of learning experiences to students;

encourage students to frame questions and browse variety of reading materials;

express to the students that their ideas have value

A creative child thinks differently, expresses unending curiosity and possesses divergent 

thinking ability. She wonders what makes things work. She is always a keen observer who ponders 

over the outcome of an event of phenomena and seeks information. She has original, divergent, 

independent, fearless and intuitive thinking and welcomes new ideas. She likes to ask thought-provoking questions rather than fact seeking or memory type questions. Teachers should identify 

these traits and provide a variety of learning experiences of inquiry and discovery of science to 

nurture creativity. 

NURTURING AESTHETIC SENSE

Aesthetics deals with the creation and appreciation of beauty that gives us happiness. 

Harmony, order and pattern are some of the criteria which define beauty. A learner of science is also 

concerned with them. She gets motivated to see some patterns in the properties of substances and other

things in her surroundings. She appreciates her creation and derives joy when finds that a particular 

toy or a gadget works on same scientific principle that she has already learnt.

For nurturing aesthetic sense through science teaching learning, the teacher may encourage 

students to consider the following steps:

Observe keenly while doing any work. For example, observing the flowers while 

walking in the garden one can appreciate their colour and wonders why the flower is of 

that particular colour. Observe, analyse and reject what is not scientific. 

One should be conscious of one’s inner being. 

Learn to be generous. One should develop the sense of sacrifice and self-righteousness.

DEVELOPMENT OF PROBLEM SOLVING SKILL

Problem solving means that an individual has learned the skills and acquired relevant 

information necessary to solve problems that are not only curricular, but also related to everyday life.

Various skills required for problem solving can be enhanced by providing opportunities to 

students to ask questions, think aloud, look for alternative explanations and procedures, isolate and 

control variables, keep record, apply reasoning and analogy, make models, and apply process skills in teaching-learning of science. Students can explore such potentiality while working on the 

problem. They feel a sense of achievement on getting success and develop self-confidence. 

In order to provide opportunities of problem solving we need to inculcate the following 

abilities among the learners:

Flexible and divergent thinking; 

Decision-making and generating self-confidence; 

Accepting/rejecting hypothesis; 

Correlating between various quantities/phenomena; 

Checking the validity of results; 

Expressing the task in terms of goals;

Searching for innovative practices;

Creating new challenges for life; and 

Developing positive and cooperative attitude.

To solve problems in science, students must acquire what cognitive psychologists call 

declarative knowledge which consists of the body of knowledge and facts needed to work in science. 

.Simply acquiring knowledge of science is not sufficient. One must organise this knowledge in such a 

way that can be retrieved easily to solve problems. Simultaneously, with acquiring and organising 

declarative knowledge, one must also acquire procedural knowledge (knowledge of processes) which 

are procedures and heuristics that can be applied to solve problems.

CONCLUSION

Biology teaching seen in this way can be developed to contribute to linguistic, 

mathematical, scientific, personal, aesthetic and physical development, rather than at times 

actually inhibit or even conflict with some of these development aims an effective science 

education will be one that is placed in a values context and contributes to the education of the 

whole individual. Science and in particular biology teaching has affective aims which are 

essential contexts for the cognitive aims. Science teaching in a whole curriculum perspective 

can be effectively organised and lead to a useful rethinking of the purpose of science 

programmes for individuals especially at the Upper Secondary level where, increasingly, the 

number of students who will go on to professional or technical level careers in science, 

technology or related fields is limited (Unesco,1980)

REFERENCES

Venugopal, K and Nagarajan, K. (2013). Teaching of Biological Science. Chennai: Ram 

Publications. 

http://www.unesco.org/education/ 

www.ncert.in 

http://www.academia.edu/ 

https://books.google.co.in/