Science education in the last few decades tended to change in terms of broad theories and ways of

understanding of the learning process. The theories of science learning have developed gradually
from behavioural views to constructivism around the mid previous century.
Behavioral views of learning and the teaching methods derived from them are easy to be learnt by
teachers. however, science teachers are faced with the problem of misconceptions where students
have their own ideas about certain topic or another. Those ideas may or may not be correct or
accepted as constant scientific knowledge. So, the science teacher must work toward eliminating the
students misconceptions as an essential task of the process of teaching science. Strategies of
constructivists are useful in this task. Constructivism is based on building a correct understanding
and knowledge by active participation of the students.
Constructivist science classroom has many advantages. The weaker students can not hide. They are
forced to participate by other class members. The more the student become involved the more he
enjoys the lessons and the more he learns. The student metacognition is enhanced. Communication
skills developed as the students are encouraged to articulate ideas to peers. Team work skills are
improved. In a constructivist classroom, students who are absent have a group that assists them to
catch up. Another advantage is developing inquiring minds for the students. They are encouraged to
find out and justify their answers for themselves or for the group. In a constructivist classroom the
discussions are lively. More students become involved. For the teachers, their interest in teaching is
always renewed.
However, constructivism has some disadvantages for science education. Students' extended absence
due to the nature of the lessons and less note-taking may result in some students miss some of the
concepts to be understood. Another point is that the teacher must be prepared to adjust the flow of
the lessons to allow students more freedom and to keep integrity in the same time. Teacher must
also be aware that the constructivist process is very time-consuming and the class can be very noisy.
In addition, teachers have to 'think on their feet' and can modify the pathways of the lesson's ideas
suddenly as required. The teacher must invent methods to discover initial conceptions of the
students before instructing them. That is sometimes quite daunting.
It is useful here to mention an argument about student centered versus teacher controlled learning
process. Because one may claim that constructivism can result in teacher losing control of the class.
According to Hand B. and Prain V., The student centered learning should be in a form which
requires strong teacher control. Such teacher control allows for flexibility to engage students rather
than a teacher control that covers content without regard for learning quality.
Some publications show behavioural learning theories in the context of science education. An
interesting research done in the Department of Psychology of the University of California at Santa
Barbara, USA. In three groups, students read a text introduces the scientific explanation of
lightning. While the groups were reading the text. Two of them (integrated groups) viewed
illustrations of the formation stages of lightning that were placed adjacent to corresponding text
paragraphs. Another integrated group had the illustration containing annotations repeating the
verbal cause-and-effect information of the text. The third group (separated group) viewed the same
illustrations on a separate page and without annotations. after they had finished reading the text, all
students were undertaking problem solving tests. The integrated group generated approximately
50% more creative solutions on problems than the separated group. The students who lacked
experience in meteorology showed stronger pattern results than the high-experience students.
Results were interpreted that meaningful learning requires constructing connections between visual
and verbal representations of a system.
The above experiment can be a demonstration of how the behavioural views of learning can impact
on constructivism. Because the analysis of the students performance in the test and the processing
of the resulting data can be considered as an evaluation of a student behavioural response to certain
complex stimulus. That is the text and the illustration. While the process is constructivist as it is
based on the prior knowledge and experience levels of these students. Reading the text, the
illustration and the problem solving test involves participation in the learning process.
In conclusion, the behaviourism may have a strong impact on constructive cognition. Although the
constructivist learning is a very well established educational method behavioural views of learning
process still have significant influence at least in science learning.