The Scottish Government

« Previous | Contents | Next »

Listen

Teachers' and pupils' reports on school science

Both teachers and pupils were invited to complete questionnaires about their in-school science experiences. We start with the pupils, and their views.

Pupils' reports

One section of the pupil questionnaire offered pupils a list of topics - different lists at P5 and P7 - and asked them to indicate whether they had studied the topic at school, and, if so, whether they found it interesting and also whether they found it easy. Unfortunately, translation errors in the response options (yes/no) apparently invalidated the questions about interest-value and accessibility for the Gaelic-medium pupils. We can, though, report the proportions of pupils who claimed to have studied each of the topics in school. Table 7 presents the details.

Table 7
Science topics studied in school*
(% pupils agreeing to have studied the topic: 218 P5, 165 P7)

* which could have been in the current school year or earlier; topics are ordered here in terms of their reported study frequencies

According to the P5 pupils, almost half had studied 'Sound and vibration' and 'Extinct animals' in school, probably that year but possibly earlier. A quarter to a third had studied 'Batteries and circuits', 'Solids, liquids and gases', 'Friction', 'Reptiles, mammals, birds and beasties' and 'Breathing, eating and blood'. Fewer than a quarter reported having studied 'Flowers, roots and seeds', 'Light and shadow' and 'The solar system' in school. With the exception of 'Sound and vibration' and 'Extinct animals', for which the proportions claiming to have studied the topics were similar nationally, in every case proportionally fewer Gaelic-medium pupils had studied the topics in school than had their English-medium peers in Scotland as a whole ⁴.

At P7, half or more of the pupils agreed that they had studied most of the listed topics in school, which could have been in P7 or earlier. The least studied topics, with an average of 30% agreements, were 'Reproduction', 'Different kinds of musical instruments' and 'Seeing through lenses'. Again, with the exceptions of 'Teeth, stomach and intestines', 'Aeroplanes and cars' and 'Seeing through lenses', the topics were studied by proportionally fewer Gaelic-medium pupils than their English-medium peers nationally.

These, then, were some of the topics being studied in science by the Gaelic-medium pupils at some point in their current or prior schooling. But what about the kinds of activities that pupils were engaging in during their science lessons, as they learned about the topics? To explore this, pupils were presented with a relatively long list of 21 different activities, and were asked to indicate how frequent each activity was in their science lessons: 'during most lessons', 'most weeks', 'once or twice a term' and 'once a year or less'. Figure 3 illustrates the general picture.

Figure 3
Lesson activities in science
( % pupils reporting the activity 'during most lessons': 218 P5, 165 P7)

As nationally, the most frequently occurring activities in science lessons, according to the pupils, were being taught as a class, copying down information about science, working with a partner or group, carrying out investigations, making things to do with science, completing worksheets, and writing in their own words about science. The general picture resembles that already reported for the country as a whole ⁵, except that making things to do with science and writing in own words about science were more commonly occurring in the Gaelic-medium classrooms, on the pupils' own reports.

Among the various activities, P7 pupils were more frequently engaged than the P5 pupils in being taught as a class, copying down information about science, completing worksheets, making things to do with science, writing about science in their own words and making or using tables and charts (with the exception of completing worksheets and writing in their own words about science, the stage differences reached statistical significance).

A third section in the questionnaire listed 37 different statements about science lessons (What are science lessons like?) and essentially asked pupils to rate each one for its relevance to them. Table 8 offers selected findings, starting with pupils' responses to statements essentially exploring support and structure in their science lessons .

Table 8
Support and structure in science lessons
(% pupils giving indicated response: 217 P5 pupils, 164 P7)

On the evidence of the pupils' reports, science learning at P5 and P7 in the Gaelic-medium classrooms was well-scaffolded and supported. According to at least half of the pupils, teachers began lessons by outlining intended learning sequences and goals, they expected hard work, provided help when needed, and encouraged reflective learning through discussion. However, in most classes pupils did not always settle down quickly at the start of lessons, there was little dialogue among them about their progress in science, and homework in science was rare.

Some interesting, perhaps expected, differences between P5 and P7 emerged in favour of P5 for 'I get extra help when I need it' (54% P5 versus 44% P7 responding 'very often'), 'Our corrected work shows where we have gone wrong' (55% versus 44%) and 'My teacher helps me understand how I can do better' (65% versus 54%). Having opportunities to discuss their own ideas, on the other hand, was more common at P7 than P5, with 60% of P7s compared with 40% of P5s answering 'very often'.

Table 9 presents results for those statements that can loosely be grouped under the heading 'factual learning, investigations and problem solving'. Given the inherently content-based nature of the subject, it might be expected that a large proportion of pupils would report learning a lot of facts in their science lessons, and indeed more than 60% in each stage responded 'very often' to this statement. Around half agreed that they 'very often' had the chance to say what they thought in their science lessons, and 40% or so claimed that they 'very often' solved problems, reported their investigation findings to one another, found answers to their own questions about science, and used a school computer in their science work. Around 20% agreed that they 'very often' carried out science experiments or investigations, that they planned these themselves, and that they could say what might happen in them. There were no statistically significant stage differences for any aspect.

Table 9
Factual learning, investigations and problem solving
(% pupils giving indicated response: 217 P5, 164 P7)

Nine of the 37 statements can loosely be grouped under the heading 'interest, enjoyment and learning motivation'. The findings for these statements are presented in Table 10. The evidence is that the pupils were very interested in science and highly motivated: over 60% claimed 'very often' to enjoy science, and 85% claimed 'very often' to want to do well in the subject. Around 40% 'very often' finished their work on time, and found it easy to concentrate and work hard in lessons. There were statistically significant differences in favour of P5 for two statements: 'we get interesting topics to find out about' (41% P5 versus 28% P7 answering 'very often') and 'I enjoy books about science' (41% versus 25%, respectively). There were equally two statements with significant differences in favour of P7: 'I usually finish my work on time' (53% 'very often' for P7 versus 28% for P5) and 'we talk about the everyday uses of science' (31% versus 17%).

Table 10
Science interest, enjoyment and learning motivation
(% pupils giving indicated response: 217 P5, 163 P7)

Finally, five statements directly explored pupils' confidence when doing or talking about science. Table 11 provides the outcome. Around 40% of the pupils claimed 'very often' to be confident when conducting experiments and learning about science, and also when talking about science with their own teacher. Interestingly, around half the pupils claimed to be this confident when talking about science in small pupil groups, but a lower 30% or thereabouts felt the same when talking about science in front of the whole class or with an adult other than the class teacher.

Table 11
Confidence when doing or talking about science
(% pupils giving indicated response: 217 P5, 163 P7)

The picture resembles that nationally ⁶, other than for slightly lower levels of confidence among the Gaelic-medium pupils when conducting experiments and learning about science, and talking about science with adults other than the class teacher.

Teachers' reports

Over half of the 72 teachers who responded to the teachers' questionnaire had received some professional development in science during the previous four years, on one or more occasions; over 40% had received no professional development in science during that period. Overall, around one in five of the teachers was satisfied with the professional development opportunities made available to them. As far as confidence when teaching science is concerned, the situation for these teachers mirrors that for the country as a whole ⁷: the teachers were generally very much more confident teaching topics with a biology theme then they were teaching topics with a chemistry or physics theme (Table 12). Even for biology topics the proportion of teachers claiming to be 'very confident' was low, at one in five, with 15% 'not very confident'. For chemistry topics more than one in three teachers admitted to lacking confidence, checking 'not very confident' or 'not at all confident', while for physics the proportion rose to more than one in two.

Table 12
Teachers' confidence when teaching science
(% giving each response: 39 P5 and 33 P7 teachers)

The teacher questionnaire contained the same enquiry about frequency of lesson activities as did the pupil questionnaire. According to the teachers (Table 13), in around half the classrooms pupils spent some time in every lesson being taught as a class and also working with a partner or group on a shared task: counting also those teachers who responded 'most weeks' for these activities brings the proportions up to over 80%. In a quarter of the classrooms pupils spent some time during every lesson talking one-to-one with the teacher, and in a fifth of the classrooms some time was spent every lesson completing worksheets. Talking to a visitor about science and visiting science centres or other places outside school were rare activities.

Table 13
Frequency of activities in science lessons
(% teachers giving indicated responses: 39 P5 and 33 P7 teachers)

Figure 4 compares the outcomes of pupils' and teachers' reports for 'during most lessons', and shows some interesting agreements and some equally interesting anomalies. Pupils and teachers agreed in roughly similar, and relatively high, proportions that whole-class teaching, partner or group work, and pupils talking one-to-one with the teacher, were activities that occurred in most lessons. But for other activities pupils and teachers offered very different pictures, the pupils reporting much more frequent occurrence for many activities than the teachers did. This is particularly the case for writing activities: copying down information about science, completing worksheets, writing in pupils' own words about science. Other activities reported as being markedly more frequent by the pupils than by the teachers were carrying out investigations, making things to do with science, reading, and working quietly alone. Clearly, the impressions of activity frequencies on the part of those engaged in those activities often differed from the impressions of those organising, managing and observing the activities.

Figure 4
Lesson activities in science: teachers' and pupils' reports
(% reporting the activity 'during most lessons': 218 P5, 165 P7, 72 teachers)

Table 14 records the teachers' responses to an enquiry about the resources they were using in their science teaching. The 5-14 national Guidelines and local authority 5-14 science materials were being regularly used by teachers, around one-third of them using these during most lessons. Commercial textbooks and resource packs were being used this frequently in around a quarter of the Gaelic-medium science classrooms. In line with the findings from the lesson activities enquiry, visiting science specialists were a very rarely used resource.

Table 14
Resource use in Gaelic-medium science lessons
(% teachers giving indicated responses: 39 P5 teachers, 33 P7 teachers)

When asked how often they made use of formative assessment approaches in their classrooms, 77% of the teachers agreed that they did this 'very often' (against 76% nationally), with the rest indicating 'sometimes'. Assessment can take many forms in the classroom, as Table 15 confirms. Formal written testing was the least favoured form, with under 20% of the teachers agreeing that they 'often' assessed their pupils' work this way, compared with 75% for oral testing and assessment through class discussion. Again mirroring the situation nationally, personal learning planning was not particularly well-established in Gaelic-medium science classrooms, according to the teachers. Under 20% agreed that they 'very often' used this with their pupils, just half 'sometimes' used it, and around 30% admitted to never using it.

Table 15
Use of different assessment strategies in Gaelic-medium science
(% teachers giving indicated response: 39 P5 teachers, 33 P7 teachers)

Finally, teachers were invited to give their opinions about their pupils' lesson attendance, class behaviour and learning motivation, using a 4-point scale from 'very good' to 'very poor'. As Table 16 shows, in these Gaelic-medium science classrooms few teachers had any complaints about their pupils.

Table 16
Teachers' views about their pupils' class behaviour and motivation
(% teachers giving each response: 39 P5 teachers, 33 P7 teachers)

For all three aspects, half or more of the teachers rated their pupils 'very good', the rest rating them 'good'. One single teacher among the 72 respondents gave a 'poor' rating to pupils, for behaviour in class and motivation to learn. This general picture is markedly more positive than that reported in the main survey report for the situation nationally, in part explained by the extremely low proportion of pupils (7%) in the Gaelic-medium group drawn from deprived areas ⁸.

« Previous | Contents | Next »