Perspectives: Developing and Defining Both Science and Science Education as Disciplines

The six domains have been identified as features for the doing of science. These six are: Concept, Process, Creativity, Attitude, Application, and Worldview. They are offered to affect teaching, student learning, as well as a new way of defining science. Concepts and Processes often are the only two typically used to define school and college science content; Creativity and Positive Attitudes are added as two enabling domains; a fifth Domain is offered as a focus on the Application of typical concepts and process skills. It is the Domain where and how most people live and operate! The sixth Domain is the Worldview which includes on-lookers of the whole science process. This Domain focuses on the philosophy, history, sociology, economics, and psychology of science! Figure 1 is a display of the interactions of these Six Domains of science for needed reform efforts for teaching and assessing student learning - all are important for addressing the meaning of STEM for current reforms efforts. Recent studies indicate that only 0.00004% of all humans across the world are actually practicing scientists, adding to the understandings of the current content and use of process skills (Yager and McCormack, 1989). Unfortunately, most science teachers have never experienced real science themselves - especially with respect to the domains other than Concepts identified by teachers and books. Following is an elaboration of each of these Six Domains indicates the major changes which are needed for reforms of typical K-16 teachin