152 Journal of Baltic Science Education, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2014 ISSN 1648–3898 A CONTEXT-BASED APPROACH TO SCIENCE TEACHING Jack Holbrook University of Tartu, Estonia It has been traditional to educate students in school, especially secondary schools, through subject domains and within lessons named according to the domain. Today in most countries, science lessons are ofered in the curriculum, specifed as science, or one of its sub-components e.g. biology, chemistry, physics, or perhaps a combi- nation of these e.g. physical science. It does not have to be this way, of course, as can be amplifed by the concept of an integrated day, implemented at the primary level in a number of countries. So what is intended in science lessons? A traditional view is that they are about information and concepts so as to provide an intellectual background for further subject learning at a higher level. This especially came about when education was selective and not all students were able to successfully compete for the opportunity to prog- ress to the higher levels of learning. But even today, in systems where education is intended for all (and usually compulsory up to 15/16 years of age), content knowledge and conceptual understanding seems to prevail. One look at the standard science textbook will show chapter headings dominated by the subject and with heavy use of scientifc terminology. Today, however, we are very aware of two major shortcomings associated with such an approach: The science content keeps increasing and increasing at a greater and greater pace (sometimes describe a) as exponential). School science has both an obligation to the subject and also to the need for education within a modern b) society, where increasingly technology provides the visible face of science and issues associated with technology within the society bring science into both an interdisciplinary focus and into playing a role in the decision-making processes within society. Clearly to tackle the frst, we are forced to pick and choose. Do we need to study classifcation systems in biology? Is the periodic table really a basis for studying chemistry when organic chemicals dominate the modern technological advances in the material world? Do we need to promote mathematical approaches to phenomena when, in today’s world, the computer has overtaken such needs. But is simply picking and choosing topics to include too arbitrary and not the approach we should adopt? Is there a need to pause and refect on the role of science teaching in the modern world? In fact, is it not the second shortcoming where teachers and science educators need to turn their attention in order to deal with the frst aspect? Students go to school to be educated. And by that I presume we mean educated for the world of today and tomorrow. Surely we don’t mean educating students for yesterday’s world, when steel was made using the open hearth method, or bond lengths were calculated in terms of Angstrom units, or navigational processes ignored GPS. And by the same token, surely we don’t mean learning abstract science without any recourse to the related technology, or even the issues or uncertainties faced by the modern world, e.g. global warming, the use of geneti- cally modifed foodstufs, or spectroscopic ways of analysis. In fact, science in schools cannot be taken to be the learning of content in isolation of the context in which it appears. That context needs to be the society. This means the teaching in science lessons needs to encompass the skills, attitudes and values that enable the scientifc conceptual links to be relevant for today’s world. Good- bye content-only science teaching. That is yesterday’s world. Today, science teaching needs to be context driven, providing relevance to science conceptual learning and ensuring the scientifc ideas are interrelated to society factors, whether these are collaborative working, adaptability to the situation, or making decisions based on fac- tors that can culturally vary. So what is the bottom line? Science education, the teaching in school under the science curriculum label, is not scientist’s science. Actually it never was. But in the heydays of yesteryears, when science occupations were being