Abstract

This thesis describes a study undertaken at the Centre for Science and Mathematics Education at Utrecht University during the 1990s. The study deals with the teaching and learning of decision making on the waste issue as an example of a science/technology-related social issue in the physical science curriculum at the junior secondary level. A first motive for undertaking this study can be found in the introduction of decision making in the attainment targets for this type of education in the early 1990s – a ‘new’ attainment target that was considered to be in need of operationalisation in extension of my personal involvement in the centre’s two preceding curriculum development projects in the 1980s (the PLON project and the NME-VO project) in which decision making by students was intuitively developed but barely researched. A second motive concerned the centre’s emerging programme of developmental research about ‘didactical structures’ reflecting a problem-posing approach to teaching specific science topics – a programme that could be ‘enriched’ with an example of such an approach for the interrelated teaching/learning of (waste issue) knowledge and (decision-making) skill.