Practical work: Its effectiveness in primary and secondary schools in England

Abstract

We report here on the first of two evaluations of a national project (Getting Practical: Improving Practical Work in Science-IPWiS) designed to improve the effectiveness of practical work in both primary and secondary schools in England. This first baseline evaluation of the effectiveness of practical work is based on a study of a diverse range of 30 practical lessons undertaken in non-selective primary (n = 10) and secondary (n = 20) schools prior to the teachers undertaking a training intervention designed to improve their effective use of practical work. A multi-site case study approach employing a condensed fieldwork strategy was used in which data were collected, using audiotape-recorded discussions, interviews and observational field notes. The analysis, based on work by Millar et al. and Tiberghien, considers what students do and think relative to what their teacher intended them to do and think. In both primary and secondary schools the widespread use of highly structured 'recipe' style tasks meant that practical work was highly effective in enabling students (n = 857) to do what the teacher intended. Whilst tasks in primary schools tended to be shorter than in secondary schools, with more time devoted to helping students understand the meaning of new scientific words, neither primary nor secondary teachers' lesson plans incorporated explicit strategies to assist students in making links between their observations and scientific ideas. As such, tasks were less effective in enabling students to use the intended scientific ideas to understand their actions and reflect upon the data they collected. These findings suggest that practical work might be made more effective, in terms of developing students' conceptual understanding-an aim of the IPWiS project-if teachers adopted a more 'hands-on' and 'minds-on' approach and explicitly planned how students were to link these two essential components of practical work.

Effectiveness of Student Learning during Experimental Work in Primary School

“…Experimental work is generally considered the main method of teaching in science education; 3 therefore, it is an important building block of science education. 8,9 Unfortunately, the teachers often use the experimental work in teaching chemistry mainly because it is required in the (national) chemistry curriculum.…”

“…Experimental work has a central role in chemistry curricula at all educational levels; [1][2][3][4][5] consequently, the planning and implementation of experimental work in the teaching process need to facilitate achieving the stated learning objectives. It was found that teachers sometimes interpret the purposes and aims for learning with experimental work differently than specified in the chemistry curriculum.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Experimental work is essential in the teaching and learning of chemistry as it brings together several activities with different objectives, but its implementation is also a cost burden for the school. Therefore, the planning of its implementation needs to be based upon the effectiveness of the envisaged performance for achieving the learning objectives.…”

Investigating the Longer-Term Impact of the CREST Inquiry-Based Learning Programme on Student Self-regulated Processes and Related Motivations: Views of Students and Teachers

“…Research support is rapidly growing for implementing inquiry-based learning opportunities in science classrooms, particularly in the laboratory context. However, while the use of laboratory activities in science classrooms is growing, documented by research reviews of the topic, there appears to be a lack of 'true' investigations (Abrahams and Reiss 2012;Lazarowitz and Tamir 1994;Tobin et al 1994).…”

Objects prompt authentic scientific activities among learners in a museum programme

“…Different scientific disciplines have different ways of conducting practical work, ranging from the controlled laboratory interventions typical of the experimental sciences to the descriptive specimen studies and fieldwork typical of the historical sciences (Cleland, 2011;Gray, 2014); however, common to these approaches is that they are ways of gaining knowledge about the world by connecting the domain of objects, materials, and phenomena with the domain of ideas and the abstract. For this reason, practical work is commonly regarded as being central not only to science but to science education as well (Abrahams & Reiss, 2012). This relationship is reflected in the widespread use of practical work in school science (Abrahams & Millar, 2008), but out-of-school science education providers such as museums may also have an important role to play.…”