A design of a social constructivist science curriculum dedicated to a Confucian heritage culture

The application of a social constructivist perspective in primary school science in a country that has been deeply influenced by a Confucian heritage culture is challenging and problematic. In a previous study (Ngo-Vu-Thu-Hang et al., 2011), it was found that the Confucian heritage culture provided both hindering and fostering factors that need to be taken into account in order to avoid a false universalism (Nguyen-Phuong-Mai et al., 2009) when a social constructivist perspective was applied in the design of science education. Employing a design-based approach, this theoretical paper describes a social constructivism-based design of science curriculum which should be dedicated to a Confucian heritage culture. The design encompasses learning aims, a design framework - including learning phases, their functions, learning activities, educational expectations, and exemplary lessons. Learning aims are about comprehensively developing scientific knowledge, skills, and attitudes for primary students. Four learning phases are determined and respectively labeled as Engagement, Experience, Exchange, and Follow-up, which are argued to highlight social constructivist key features. Authentic contexts along with scientific activities such as observing, hypothesizing, experimenting, arguing, cooperating, presenting, discussing, and applying, are provided and organized in a spiral learning structure that should support cooperative inquiry learning in practice. Confucian cultural resources are concerned and embedded into learning phases, including the appreciation to learning motivation, traditions of learning together, learning by experiencing, questionning-based learning, the method of individual-oriented instructing, and the emphasis on cognitive flexibility-driven learning. The design framework and the general description of teaching and learning activities build on arguments of how to address the previously analyzed problems and to improve the primary school science in Vietnam, a country influenced during a long time by a Confucian heritage culture.