Yet another paradigm shift?: From minds-on to hearts-on

Since science began to be first taught in schools maybe during the 18th century, school science education has experienced many substantial changes in its goals and nature over the period. The historical changes are usually referred by some key terms, like, mechanics' institutes, object lessons, heuristics, general science, inquiry, STS, misconceptions. To characterize these changes, science educators frequently use some slogan-like analogies referring parts of human body to indicate the movement of science education during a particular period of time: for example, 'Hands-On' for inquiry movement during 1960s-70s, 'Minds-On' for constructivist movement during 1980s-90s. In this paper, I briefly summarize the overall historical development of science education, then further expand the analogies to cover the overall process, that is, Ears-On -> Eyes-On -> Hands-On -> Minds-On. In addition, to illustrate new directions of the 21st century, I propose a new analogy, 'Hearts-On' science education, and also discuss the meanings and implications of 'Hearts-On' analogy by illustrating how this analogy can be applied to reflect various current trends in science education.