ABSTRACT

Scientific and mathematical education has expanded in most education systems in the twentieth century, especially in the second half when there emerged the perception among policy-makers that science and technology were essential to a flourishing economy and to individual opportunity. Scotland provides a useful case study of the expansion, for two reasons. One is that it has included natural science in its emerging secondary-school curriculum at an early period by international standards, well before the middle of the century. That inclusion was carried over into the new curricula at the mid-secondary level, which aimed to cater for all students when the public sector of secondary schooling became non-selective after the 1960s. So Scotland is a test case of whether a gradually democratising system of secondary schooling could widen access to science and mathematics, and of whether and how changes at the school level contributed to the expansion of school-leaver entry to science in higher education. The other reason why the Scottish case is potentially revealing is a unique series of surveys of school students that cover the whole of the second half of the century.

摘要

科学和数学教育在 20 世纪的大多数教育系统中都得到了扩展，尤其是在下半叶，政策制定者认为科学和技术对于繁荣的经济和个人机会至关重要。苏格兰提供了一个有用的扩张案例研究，原因有二。一是按照国际标准，早在本世纪中叶之前，它就已将自然科学纳入其新兴的中学课程。这种包容性被延续到中学中学阶段的新课程中，旨在在 1960 年代之后公立中学教育变得非选择性时满足所有学生的需求。因此，苏格兰是一个检验案例，检验逐步民主化的中学教育体系是否可以扩大科学和数学的获取范围，以及学校层面的变化是否以及如何促进了离校生进入高等教育的科学领域。苏格兰案例可能揭示的另一个原因是对整个世纪下半叶的学生进行的一系列独特调查。