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Conclusion
Although the intention behind this survey was to assess the science attainment levels of pupils in P5 and P7 who were learning science through the medium of Gaelic, not all the pupils assessed were in fact learning their science exclusively through this language medium. But all were studying science at least partially through the medium of Gaelic, most commonly talking and listening in this language, less often reading and writing in it. Both teachers' reports on language use and pupils' choices of test booklet language confirm this picture of mixed language use in many classrooms.
The teachers themselves resembled their colleagues in the country at large in their demographics, in their reported views about their science teaching and pupil learning, and in the judgments they made about their pupils' 5-14 levels of attainment in science. They were mainly female, the majority had been teaching for more than five years, and almost all taught science to their own pupils. The 5-14 Curriculum Guidelines and local authority 5-14 science materials were used frequently - most weeks - by the majority of the teachers. While more than half had experienced some professional development in science during the previous four years, a large proportion in both stages remained dissatisfied with the professional development opportunities made available to them in this curriculum area. Their confidence when teaching science was higher when teaching topics with a biology theme as opposed to topics with a chemistry or physics theme. On their own reports, most used formative assessment approaches in their science teaching, and they used a variety of different forms of assessment when coming to level judgements. Personal learning planning, on the other hand, was not well-established in the Gaelic-medium classrooms. One important difference between the views of these teachers and their colleagues nationally concerns their more positive evaluations of their pupils' behaviour in class and motivation to learn.
An overwhelming majority of the pupils wanted to do well in science, and around two-thirds claimed to enjoy science. Confidence in doing and talking about science was quite high, and lessons considered generally interesting, with good teacher support. According to both pupils and teachers, whole-class teaching was quite common, as was working with partners or small groups. For other rated activities, however, pupils tended to give higher frequencies of occurrence than the teachers. This was especially the case for writing activities: completing worksheets, copying down information about science, writing about science in their own words. But it also applied to investigations. On the pupils' reports, the range of topics taught in science classes was relatively restricted compared with the national picture.
As teachers do nationally, the Gaelic-medium teachers in this survey tended to judge their pupils' attainment to be at the levels expected for the stage concerned. In science, however the teachers defined this for the purpose of making level judgements, 60% of the P5 pupils were judged to be at Level C and almost 70% of the P7 pupils at Level D. The test-based results show a much less positive picture for science 'knowledge and understanding', again generally mirroring the national situation. The tests put almost half the P5 pupils at Level A and more than half the P7 pupils at Level B.
It was not possible to compare the Gaelic-medium pupils' science test performances with those of their peers nationally in any direct way. This is because the Gaelic-medium pupils attempted a restricted set of the assessment materials used in the main survey: only one of the six pairs of test booklets used at each of P5 and P7 nationally was translated for use in the Gaelic-medium survey. Instead, a comparator group of English-medium pupils was selected, that resembled at each stage the Gaelic-medium group in terms of gender and deprivation make-up, and whose pupils had taken the same test booklets. The evidence is that there was a slight performance advantage in favour of the Gaelic-medium pupils at each stage (attributable to large differences on particular tasks within the tests).
However, it has to be remembered that whenever assessment materials are translated from the original language of development into another language there might be subtle effects on pupil attainment as a result. It also should be noted that the completed test booklets furnished by the Gaelic-medium pupils were processed differently from those completed by the English-medium pupils. In the latter case the booklets were simply 300- 400 among many thousands that were processed in a response transcription session lasting several weeks, with temporary agency staff undertaking the coding under supervision. In the former case the 300-400 booklets were the only ones evaluated in a transcription session in which the coders were practising Gaelic-medium primary teachers. Even though the Gaelic-medium transcription exercise benefited from the presence of a science educator who had also taken part in the very much larger English medium transcription, and the same general coding guidelines were used, it is nevertheless possible that the processing differences could have impacted on the apparent attainment results. Transcribing the selected English-medium booklets in the same session as the Gaelic-medium booklets would have been a better strategy, which would have alleviated any doubt about the validity of the attainment comparisons. Even given this caveat, we can say that there is no evidence from the comparator study that teaching science partially or wholly through the medium of Gaelic has any detrimental effect on pupils' science learning; the evidence is rather that it has little effect. In this content-based subject, a more important influence is exposure to the topics that feature in the assessment materials.
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