Does Practical Work Really Work? A study of the effectiveness of practical work as a teaching and learning method in school science

Many within the science education community and beyond see practical work carried out by students as an essential feature of science education. Questions have, however, been raised by some science educators about its effectiveness as a teaching and learning strategy. This study explored the effectiveness of practical work by analysing a sample of 25 ‘typical’ science lessons involving practical work in English secondary schools. Data took the form of observational field notes and tape‐recorded interviews with teachers and students. The analysis used a model of effectiveness based on the work of Millar et al. and Tiberghien. The teachers’ focus in these lessons was predominantly on developing students’ substantive scientific knowledge, rather than on developing understanding of scientific enquiry procedures. Practical work was generally effective in getting students to do what is intended with physical objects, but much less effective in getting them to use the intended scientific ideas to guide their actions and reflect upon the data they collect. There was little evidence that the cognitive challenge of linking observables to ideas is recognized by those who design practical activities for science lessons. Tasks rarely incorporated explicit strategies to help students to make such links, or were presented in class in ways that reflected the size of the learning demand. The analytical framework used in this study offers a means of assessing the learning demand of practical tasks, and identifying those that require specific support for students’ thinking and learning in order to be effective.     

Training the Mind: Continuity and Change in the Rhetoric of School Science

This paper identifies, depicts and sets out to interpret the common ground between the Australian radical education movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the present pre‐occupation with competency‐based reform in school education, the ‘new vocationalism’. The paper contends that both of these developments should be understood as historically novel, Janus‐faced radical movements. The helpfulness of the political‐economic concept of settlement for dealing with the nature and consequences of this congruence is explored. It is argued that the Janus‐faced radicalism of both movements locates them at the interface of modernity and postmodernity, and a particular interpretive response based on this perspective is proposed.     

Surveying Adolescent Worries: Development of the ‘Things I Worry About’ Scale

Steve Decker, Anglia Polytechnic University, Death and Loss: Compassionate Approaches in the Classroom, Oliver Leaman. London: Cassell, 1995. 160pp. hb ISBN 0 304 33087 6, pb ISBN 0 304 33089 2, price not available

Alan Dodds, The Ferrers School, Rushden, Northamptonshire, Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do, Dan Olweus. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. 140pp. pb ISBN 0 631 19241 7

Richard Smith, Elliott School, London, Combating Truancy in Schools, Edith Le Riche. London: David Fulton/ The Roehampton Institute, 1995. 112pp. ISBN 1 85346 337, £11.95

Ron Best, Roehampton Institute, London, Psychology in the Classroom: Reconstructing Teachers and Learners, Phillida Salmon. London: Cassell, 1995. 98pp. hb ISBN 0 304 33254 2, £40.00, pb ISBN 0 204 33256 9, £12.99

David Lambourn, NAPCE Base, Warwick, Primary Teachers at Work, R. J. Campbell and S. R. St.J. Neill. London: Routledge, 1994. 252pp. pb ISBN 0 415 08863 1, £14.99     

The Role of an Early Intervention on Enhancing the Quality of Mother-Infant Interaction

The study examines an intervention designed to influence mothers' sensitive responsiveness toward their infant by presenting information about the newborn's competence to interact and promoting affectionate handling and interaction with the infant. Thirty-six primiparous mothers and their newborn infants participated in the study. On day 2/3 after delivery, mother-infant dyads were assigned to either: (1) an experimental group that received an intervention program designed to enhance mother-infant interaction; or (2) a control group that was presented with an intervention that emphasized basic caregiving skills. One month later an observation was undertaken in the home to assess mother-infant synchronous and asynchronous co-occurrences during free-play and infant bathing. The enhancement group showed a reliably greater frequency of co-occurrences involving vocal exchanges, looking to the partner, and physical contact. There also were differences in mothers' responsiveness to infant crying and involuntary responses. The findings show that even a modest videotaped early intervention can enhance mothers' sensitive responsiveness to the infant.     

The transition to college: Diverse students,diverse stories

While much is known about the role of student involvement in various dimensions of student change and development, considerably less is known abouthow students become involved as they make the transition from work or high school to college. This paper describes the results of a series of focus-group interviews with 132 diverse, new students entering a community college; a liberal arts college; an urban, commuter, comprehensive university; and a large research university. The study identifies the people, experiences, and themes in the processes through which students become (or fail to become) members of the academic and social communities on their campus. The research reported here was conducted under the auspices of the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment. NCTLA is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), under Grant No. R117G10037. The opinions herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policies of OERI, and no official endorsement should be inferred. Presented at the 1993 AIR Forum, Chicago, May 1993.     

Reasoning from data: How students collect and interpret data in science investigations

This study explored the understandings of data and measurement that school students draw upon, and the ways that they reason from data, when carrying out a practical science inquiry task. The two practical tasks used in the study each involved investigations of the relationships between two independent variables (IVs) and a dependent variable (DV); in both tasks, one IV covaried with the DV, whereas the other did not. Each was undertaken by 10 students, aged 10, 12, and 14 years (total n = 60 students), working individually. Their actions were video‐recorded for analysis. In a subsequent interview, each student was asked to discuss and interpret data collected by two other students, undertaking a similar (but different) practical task, shown on a video‐recording. An analysis of the sample students' performance on the practical tasks and their interview responses showed few differences across task contexts, or with age, in students' reasoning, but significant differences in performance when investigating situations of covariation and non‐covariation. Few students in the sample displayed sufficient understanding of measurement error to deal effectively with the latter. Investigations of non‐covariation cases revealed, much more clearly than investigations of covariation cases, the students' ideas about data and measurement, and their ways of reasoning from data. Such investigations therefore provide particularly valuable contexts for teaching and research. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 41: 748–769, 2004     

Students' Understandings of Gravity in an Orbiting Space-Ship

We report on an investigation of students' ideas about gravity after a semester of instruction in physics at university. There are two aspects to the study which was concerned with students' answers to a carefully designed qualitative examination question on gravity. The first aspect is a classification of the answers and a comparative study of the ways the problem was tackled by two large groups of students who had different backgrounds in physics and were exposed to different teaching styles. The second aspect is to investigate how students link concepts to solve the problem. We used a phenomenographic analysis of student responses to extract patterns of reasoning and alternative conceptions behind the solutions. We found no differences between the classes of answers given by students in the two courses. Our analysis also identifies a hierarchy in the complexity of the hypothetical reasoning pathways, which we interpret as reflecting the ways in which students may link concepts and resolve conflicts as they solve the problem. The hypothetical reasoning pathways may help educators to develop instructional material or lecture room dialogue in order to tease out key issues. An unexpected finding is that there is a discrepancy between our conclusion that the two groups of answers are similar and the distribution of marks awarded by the examiner – which implies that the quality of the answers is different for the two groups.