Such agreement could lead to a bland, uncontroversial section, but instead the implications of these chapters are revolutionary for practice. Desautels and Larochelle call for fundamental revision of the way that teachers think about science. The main need, they point out, is for teachers to appreciate that science is a human construction. Until teachers do that, they can see no point in taking students' beliefs into account in their teaching, which inevitably will be transmissive with their students docile receivers of established dogma. This is bad enough for science, physics included, but worse when it transfers to students' attitudes to all learning and to their relation to authority.
Education has to be a matter of balance.
Of course each generation has to acquire the knowledge of the past, but it is tragic if they take that knowledge as settled, final, and the only way of perceiving the world. It would be just as tragic, though in a different way, if they reject the knowledge as sterile, and so throw away all the understanding that their forebears have created. Barros and Elia discuss how teachers might acquire an appreciation of the nature of science that will foster more effective teaching and learning. They list nine competencies, all of which would be helpful. The ninth is particularly challenging.