Untangling what teachers mean by the motivational value of practical work (original) (raw)

A Study of Teachers’ Views on Practical Work in Secondary Schools in England and Wales

International Journal of Science Education, 2009

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

2012

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.

Listening to Learners’ Views About the Value of Practical Work in Natural Sciences

PONTE International Scientific Researchs Journal, 2017

Teaching and learning by engaging learners in practical work in science is regarded as useful in linking theory to practice. Practical work is linked to inquiry based learning, and is seen as a route to learning how to apply the scientific method. Within the South African context, where learner performance in Science and Mathematics has been dismal based on international and national evaluative tests, the importance of practical work has received greater attention. A large amount of the work that has been done about practical work in science classrooms focusses on practicing or pre-service teachers. Little attention has been directed to what learners say about practical work. We address this paucity by exploring learners' views about practical work, through the following question: "What are learners' views about the effectiveness of practical work in Natural Sciences classrooms? Why do learners hold these views?" In order to respond to these questions we designed a qualitative study within an interpretivist paradigm. We purposively selected grade nine Natural Sciences learners who participated in individual and focus group interviews. Our findings reveal that all the participants valued practical work for four reasons. First, practical work enabled learning of science process skills; second, it deepened conceptual understanding; third, it made science fun and enjoyable and finally, it enabled them to relate classroom science to activities in daily life. These findings are significant to science teachers and policy makers who determine the scope of practical work.

Exploring grade 11 physical sciences teachers' perceptions of practical work

2018

The new curriculum introduced in the Further Education and Training phase has had a great impact on the teaching and learning of Physical Sciences in the classrooms. The policy documents for Physical Sciences emphasis that practical work to be integrated with the teaching of Science. However, much remains desired on how teachers use their Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) to conduct practical work in their classrooms. This study explored teachers' perceptions of practical work in the context of the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement. PCK was used as the theoretical framelens to understand teachers' perceptions of practical work. Data in the study were collected through interviews and observations from four Grade 11 teachers. It was also collected by scrutinising teachers' portfolios. Observations were used to discover the teachers' actual classroom conduct of practical work. The sample of the study was drawn from Mankweng Circuit, in the Limpopo province. The findings TABLE OF CONTENTS

“Practical Work as It Says Practical is Something Students do by Themselves…”

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2014

The aim of the study was to investigate teachers' classroom practices by focusing on how their ideas and views shape how they conduct practical work in a science classroom. Two physical science teachers were involved in the study. The study showed that one teacher had ideas about the nature and purpose of practical work within the framework of the investigation movement. The second teacher had ideas about the nature and purpose of practical work within the process and investigation movements respectively. However, both teachers conducted practical work tasks within the explanation model. Hence teachers' ideas of practical work do not necessarily shape how they conduct practical work. Possible reasons for the teachers conducting practical work tasks within the framework in ways different to those suggested by their ideas and their implications are discussed.

Teachers’ Purposes and Practices in Implementing Practical Work at the Lower Secondary School Level

This study investigated teachers’ purposes and practices in conducting practical work at the lower secondary school level. Six science teachers from a state in Malaysia were interviewed. The findings suggest that teachers’ aims in terms of practical work can be classified into: conceptual, procedural and affective domains. Implemented practical work was highly structured in the sense that every detail about how to conduct the practical task, what to observe and what the expected results would be, was given to the students. Students’ experience of practical work as implemented could lead to a surface approach to learning rather than deeper learning for understanding.

Exploring Grade 7 Science Teachers’ Perceptions Regarding Practical Work in Limpopo, South Africa

Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2014

The purpose of this study was to explore grade 7 Natural Science teachers' perceptions regarding the role of practical work and match them with available evidence from teachers' portfolios. The sample comprised 10 Grade 7 Natural Science teachers, randomly sampled from 27 schools. Questionnaires and teachers' portfolios were used to collect data. The results show that while teachers' perceptions regarding the purpose of practical work in Science is adequate; their perceptions regarding its application in science classrooms is inadequate. Hence, there was a mismatch between teachers' perceptions and what was taking place in the science classroom. The study may inform educational practitioners, policy makers and researchers on ways of improving teaching methods and performance of learners in science. It is recommended that assessment of practical work should be given attention, as most of the teachers do not record marks regularly for practical work.