What are the Merits and Demerits of Scientific Method of Teaching Science?

Merits and Demerits of Scientific Method of Teaching Science as are follows:

Merits of Scientific Method:

By making use of this method, various specific kinds of merits are being obtained by teacher as well as students, mention of which are as follows:

a. An ability to propose and structure various kinds of problems get developed among the students.

b. They become self-dependent as role of teacher got reduced only as a guide.

c. As students have to collect various kinds of information from different sources, they learn to explore different sources independently.

d. Students become able to formulate hypothesis on their own. Not only this, they learn to test the hypothesis by collecting and evaluating data on their own by which hypothesis can be accepted or rejected.

e. As students learn to do different functions independently, they become able to solve various kinds of problems getting arise in their life on their own.

f. Level of self confidence gets developed among the students as a result of which they become able to perform efficiently in different spheres of the life.

g. As students have to perform the complex functions of identifying the problem, conducting the experiment, recording observations and drawing conclusions, thus various kinds of skills get developed among them as a result of which they become more confident and mature in their perspective.

Demerits of Scientific Method:

Although number of merits gets pursued by making use of scientific method, but still it is not free from demerits, some of which are as follows:

a. This method can only be used by the teacher when he has enough time for teaching purpose. However, this is not the case in most of the schools, because of which extent to which this method is used is limited.

b. Only intelligent and brilliant students can solve out the problem on their own, but mental capacities of all the students getting education in the same class differ as a result of which this method cannot be used by teacher to impart education to different students.

c. This method can only be used in schools or institutions where there is provision of well-equipped laboratories, however, majority of schools in our nation do not possess such kind of facilities.

d. For this method, it is necessary to make provision of reference and other kind of materials, which is not very easy for the teachers especially in our nation where there is shortage of such sources.

When to Use:

From the above discussion it is clear that although this method is a very reliable kind technique as under it students collect various kinds of information and data before drawing any conclusion, but still this method should be used by the teacher in condition when number of students in the class are less and they are more or less of same mental capacities.

Not only this, if there is proper provision of facilities like laboratory and science library in the school, only then this method can prove to be successful, otherwise, at the end, teachers will find themselves in a helpless situation as they will fail to attain the set objectives.