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The National Curriculum for England spells out how the teaching of science
can contribute to learning across the curriculum.
Teachers are encouraged
to make sure they are "promoting pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development through
science"
For example, science provides opportunities to promote:
- spiritual development, through pupils
sensing the natural, material,
physical world they live in, reflecting on their part in it, and
exploring
questions such as "when does life start?" and "where does life come from?"
- moral development, through helping pupils see the need to draw conclusions
using observation and evidence rather than preconception or prejudice, and
through discussion of the implications of the uses of scientific knowledge,
including the recognition that such uses can have both beneficial and harmful
effects
- social development, through helping pupils recognise how the formation
of opinion and the justification of decisions can be informed by experimental evidence, and drawing attention to how different interpretations of
scientific evidence can be used in discussing social issues
- cultural development,
through helping pupils recognise how scientific discoveries and ideas have
affected the way people think, feel, create, behave and live, and drawing
attention to how cultural differences can influence the extent to which
scientific ideas are accepted, used and valued
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