Practical Work in Secondary Science: A Minds-On Approach

Abstract

The book has two broad themes. The first relates to the general effective-ness of practical work as used in biology, chemistry and physics lessons across the compulsory phase of secondary education (Key Stages 3 and 4). This is because, as a science teacher, it seems both reasonable and highly relevant to ask (and want to know the answer to) whether, given its disproportionately high cost and the relatively large proportion of the teaching time that it occu-pies, practical work is an effective use of both teaching time and available resources. The second theme relates to the issue of whether practical work has an affective value (in addition to any cognitive value) and, if so, in what sense this manifests itself. From a science teacher’s perspective there is, I would argue, one extremely relevant measure of the affective value of practical work and that is whether pupils choose to pursue science beyond the end of Key Stage 4 and, if so, which of the sciences they prefer to study and why.