Would it be viable to offer science as an optional subject? What would happen to enrollment in science if it were an optional course? Would students sign up for such a course? How could the course be structured to interest students in wanting to take the course?

In this post, I am going to feature a school that has moved in the direction of making science optional for its students. In November I received an email from Ingvar Stål, PhD in didactics of Physics, and a science teacher of physics and chemistry in the Botby Högstadieskolas (Junior High School), near Helsinki, Finland. Through our correspondence, Dr. Stål informed me that the idea of offering science as an optional subject was launched in 2005 with only 10 students, with voluntary club lessons twice a week. Now, the science program is a three-year curriculum (grades 7, 8 & 9), and includes 47 students, which according to the Botbyscience.com website, is 1/6 of the school population.

This is a screen shot of the Botbyscience.com site, Botby, Finland

I’ve visited the Botbyscience.com website, and there you will find details of the curriculum, and images of the students and the project work that engages them. The program is based on an inquiry-oriented approach to science teaching in which students are involved in making investigations into questions about various topics in science.

The curriculum of the Botby science program is detailed at their website—a valuable resource for other science teachers. You can follow this link to read about the day-by-day activities organized by weeks. According to the website, the students are engaged in activities such as these:

• We organize a scientific event for the whole school (in September) “Up to the top”.
• Science students (Sc1) were preparing to the TekNatur contest (Science Fair Project).
• Science students (SC2) prepared presentations on Charles Darwin and introduced them in different teachers’ classes (if they wanted it). Everything was culminated on a morning meeting of the whole school.
• This year we are preparing (SC2) students’ astronomy presentations (the year 2009 is an astronomy year).
• We organize (SC2 students) Science days for primary school students.

There are many images at the Botbyscience website that show students actively involved in science investigations, and show how project-based science teaching is attractive to students, and teachers alike, and can result in a robust science program.

Botby is community in Finland near Helsinki, as shown in the map below. I think you will find this program, and the science website intriguing, and model of humanistic and inquiry-oriented science teaching that has been explored in detail at this weblog. You can follow this link to the Botby school website.

Location of Botby, Finland