• Teachers pose questions that require children to hypothesise, predict and suggest answers. • Teachers engage children in thinking about and discussing how to test their predictions and see if their ideas ‘work’. • Children are clear about what they are finding out and what they are learning by doing so. • Children consider the evidence they collect in relation to initial ideas and predictions. • Children reflect and report on how and on what they have learned. This series of events, orchestrated by the teacher, is described as inquiry-based science education. Not all learning in science involves inquiry. There are some things, such as conventions, names and the basic skills of using equipment, that are more efficiently learned by direct instruction, as and when they are needed, but it is important to ensure that inquiry is used where it is appropriate. Managing inquiry during a lesson is only part of what the teacher is doing. The teacher’s work must start before the lesson, when he or she decides the ideas and skills to be developed and the activities likely to help this development. Then throughout the lesson the teacher is listening and watching, gathering information about the children’s ideas and inquiry skills and how they are responding. The teacher uses this information to decide what help is needed either at the time or later. The teacher also ensures that children know what they are trying to learn and have some idea of how well they are doing it, so that they can identify for themselves what they need to do to improve or move forward. This is assessment used to help learning, sometime called formative assessment or assessment for learning. Three views of how to foster learning are embedded in the vision of pedagogy (Harlen, in press) that enables primary science to meet its aims: • Social constructivism – a view that recognises that children are all the time trying to make sense of the world around them and that these ideas have to be taken seriously as the starting-point for further development, and which recognises the impact of others’ ideas on the way learners make sense of things (Bransford et al., 1999). • Inquiry – a view of learning in which children develop understanding through gathering and using evidence from first- or second-hand sources and through argument, dialogue and discussion (National Science Foundation, 1997). • The formative use of assessment – a pedagogical approach that focuses on ensuring progress in learning and regulation of teaching and learning activities to ensure achievement of particular goals (Harlen, 2006). All three views have application across the curriculum and it is therefore important to recognise what is special about using them to develop scientific understanding. For example most of the inquiry skills – observation, posing questions, developing hypotheses, making predictions, planning investigations, gathering evidence, interpreting evidence, considering alternative explanations, communicating results and conclusions, critical reflection and review – are generic skills that can be used in other domains, particularly history, geography and social subjects. But the subject matter in these domains does not lend itself to the kind of thinking and manipulation that can be conducted in relation to the subject matter of science. The difference between generic and scientific inquiry lies in the kind of reasoning about evidence that is possible. Thus it requires teachers who themselves understand ‘how science works’, and ensure that children experience it at an appropriate level through their investigations, and ‘fair testing’, as they manipulate and explore their world.
Conclusions School science education as a whole is now recognised as serving two important purposes. First, to educate all children so that they can engage with science-related issues – such as the impact of global warming – that increasingly affect everyday life. The second is to provide a foundation for the education of future scientists, technologists and engineers. The first of these is seen as a priority, certainly in countries of the European Union (Osborne and Dillon, 2008), and it is this purpose that primary science serves. Nevertheless the enjoyment and understanding of science in the primary school is surely a motivation for continuing its study throughout secondary education and beyond.
Science as a key component of the primary curriculum: a rationale with policy implications
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