Overview

last updated:December 2004

Why is the issue important?
Raising students’ achievement in science is a key challenge for educational systems the world over. In England the science curriculum has undergone a number of changes since the late 1980s. But many science education practitioners believe the main focus of the changes has been the structure of the science curriculum and to some extent it’s content, at the expense of teaching and learning processes in science classrooms and laboratories.  Others, too, raise questions about what we teach and why we teach it; questions that are being tackled in the development of new issues-based science curricula, such as Twenty First Century Science, and in the ongoing debate among the Qualifications and Assessment Authority, government and science subject associations.

What did the research show?
Teaching strategies which recognised and built on students’ everyday science knowledge and understanding helped them become more scientific in their thinking and improved their learning. Other students made learning gains even when the new strategies were implemented by teachers who had not taken part in designing them. The research highlighted the core role of the teacher in helping to increase the quality of classroom talk (teacher-student and student-student) that helped improve students’ understanding of science ideas.

How was this achieved?
Researchers and teachers worked together to produce tools that helped teachers to present the content in a way which addressed known learning difficulties for students.  Specifically they focused on students’ learning difficulties with some core science topics, including photosynthesis and current electricity. They also explored students’ understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge, the procedures of scientific enquiry and the forms of reasoning used by scientists in interpreting evidence and proposing conclusions. 

How was the research designed to be trustworthy?
Altogether the research involved over ninety teachers and their classes in more than twenty schools in a network of related research projects. Data about teacher and student learning were collected using multiple complementary sources, including:

• student test data
• classroom observation
• interviews with teachers
• questionnaires and focus groups.

The researchers undertook activities with groups of science teachers and other education practitioners, to design 'diagnostic probes’ and to develop, implement and evaluate new teaching schemes based on research about students’ understanding and common misconceptions in science. All data relating to students’ test results included comparison data from similar classes in which the new strategies were not used.

What are the implications?
The research shows the importance of:

• teachers building on students’ common alternative conceptions of science phenomena
• classroom talk that probed and extended students’ thinking
• engaging teachers in doing research rather than simply using it
• lesson planning that includes open-ended activities in which students can take more ownership
• creating and sustaining a professional learning culture for schools that engaged with research evidence about science teaching and learning.

What do the case studies illustrate?
The case studies show:

• how teachers used concept maps as diagnostic tools to inform them about their students’ understanding of science concepts
• how teachers created and used diagnostic probes to assist them in their planning and teaching
• the development of students’ thinking in response to questioning by their teachers
• how systematic rules for discussion helped to improve classroom discussion
• the effect of giving students more ownership of science activities.