The nature of science and its subject application

Another more sophisticated use of ICT would be in helping students to design experiments for practicals, coursework or science projects such as the engineering challenge Eckington School presented its students "to improve cross-curricular links between science, mathematics, geography and design and technology. " according to the National Curriculum, Inspired Engineering (March 2009) article. Working in groups of four, the students were asked to design and make their own solar buggy taking into account the wheel size, drag and mass to make it travel faster.

They then made PowerPoint presentations to present their models. I believe this is a typical example of where ICT experiment simulation websites can be used to their fullest advantage for calculations and to avoid waste of limited resources. It also gives students an idea of how ICT may be used by scientists in the real world, further inspiring their imagination towards the subject. Furthermore, ICT is of great advantage when demonstrating highly dangerous experiments such as the explosive reaction between Caesium and water.

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Thus, despite its shortcomings, ICT is still an invaluable tool in science and the earlier its uses are demonstrated to students, the better. Deducing from the ideas and criticisms presented in this section, I realise I tend to support the idea of constructivism more than cognitivism. Leach and Moon (2008) define constructivism as a process whereby "Learners need to be enabled to construct their own knowledge by testing ideas and approaches based on their prior knowledge and experience, by applying these to a new situation, and then by integrating the new knowledge gained with pre-existing intellectual constructs.

" In contrast, cognitivist principles demand for teachers to set high-order tasks to ensure fully functional knowledge, believing that high-order skills can be taught rather than come from natural talent and use the model of Bloom's taxonomy (the principles of Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation) as a set ladder of steps to follow which can be climbed (Petty 2004).

Petty (2004) argues that the problem with cognitive learning is that students may not grasp the concept of a topic fully as they learn by 'rote' - the author argues that this leads to 'surface learning' where there is no connection between new and existing learning.

This is in contrast to the line of thought Monk and Dillon (1995) adapted where the authors claim that cognitive development can be helpful to students if the idea of "cognitive conflict" is involved whereby students are presented "with an experience which they find surprising, or difficult to understand, which does not fit with their previous understanding and which demands a different way of thinking.

The writers give the example of giving students an investigation activity on rate of reaction: one experiment to predict the relationship between temperature, concentration of hydrochloric acid and the same volume of marble chips and another measuring the rate at which carbon dioxide is produced from the fermentation of yeast at different temperatures. In the first experiment, students were able to come up with the right answer, however, when they used their existing knowledge to try and predict what happens to the rate of carbon dioxide production at higher temperatures, their predictions failed.

They then had to reassess the relationship and come up with a new explanation for the results. While this is a good strategy to make bright students think, it may be disheartening to some students who have a hard time grasping the concepts of science and need more in-depth study and explanations. I believe this is why so many students were put off science in the first instance - they have some knowledge, but they do not know how the knowledge is to be applied to specific problems. The latter argument is supported by Bransford et al.

(2000) where the researchers were trying to find the correlation between understanding and problem solving. In the study, both adults and children were asked the question: "There are 26 sheep and 10 goats on a ship. How old is the captain? " While most adults rightly found the question absurd and unsolvable, the children struggled to find a numerical answer and up to 75% came up with one. The children questioned which arithmetic method they should use rather than whether it was a 'trick question' or a problem that made sense.

One child's logic was "Well, you need to add or subtract or multiply in problems like this, and this one seemed to work best if I add". This example conveys the fact that cognitive learning is not always in the best interest for the students as they are 'programmed' to pass exams by knowing how to work out the right answer. While teachers may assume that their students can work problems out for themselves, the way children would see it is that there is no iota of evidence that they are encouraged to use their own deductive reasoning to solve problems.

Hence, this is why I am inclined to support constructivism and in some cases, would argue that a mixture of both constructive and cognitive methods must be used as a typical class contains students of varying abilities who learn differently. To illustrate this point, there are three main types of learners: the ones who learn best with visual aids are visual learners, the ones that learn by listening are auditory learners and the ones that learn best by doing activities are kinaesthetic learners. (DfES 2004b)

To conclude, National Curriculum Science at Key Stage 4 has grown and developed over the past 50 years, with the evolvement of ICT facilitating as well as complicating the way teachers and students view science. Thus, the particular focus study of this essay is: - What do students taking GCSE science think of the subject? Part 3 - School science This study aims to investigate how science is generally taught in schools at KS4 and how students perceive it in light of the government changes to the National Curriculum that occurred during this decade.

However, due to time constraints and word limit, I cannot delve too deeply into how GCSE science is taught in all schools in the UK or my regional area for that matter. Therefore, I will use the method of literature and data comparison techniques including Internet-based research, journals and books. To minimise bias, I will check the reliability of the websites I find, by evaluating their authenticity (Cohen et al. 2009) and critically evaluate literature. Methodology In order to assess students' perception of GCSE science, my sampling frame is The Student Room forum, which is the largest student community website in the UK.

I have chosen this method as I can examine student views quite anonymously and ethically, provided I do not provide identifiable details of individuals. The drawbacks of using this sampling frame may be that the subjects may not always be honest when writing on forums and the data is mainly qualitative, thus making it more difficult to analyse. I also intend to run a simple survey asking students the question "How much do you like GCSE Science? " with five possible answers: "Love it", "Like it", "It's OK", "Don't like it" and "Hate it". I would also welcome students to leave a detailed opinion if they so wish.

This opinion poll would be open for 30 days - drawing from my previous experience, this is enough time to gather a range of useful answers. By using this informal method, more students would be encouraged to participate and I can add a more quantitative approach to my analysis as well as including the qualitative element of what students currently think about GCSE Science. My particular focus for this assignment is to find out the views of students who are doing GCSE science. I think student opinion should be taken into account while they are studying the subject concerned.

Their critical views on the subject will help teachers to understand their needs and help them to design teaching and learning methods that may suit them. The advantages of these methods are easy access to obtain opinions via Internet, without intermediating the students, giving them the freedom to express themselves without fear or prejudice; less time consuming, easy to design questionnaires and get quick and instant replies. Many students would be encouraged to take part as it is a source of information in the wider community.

The data collected via the forum can be easily analysed and put into practice. However, having said that, there are disadvantages too. The question of ethics comes in, so opinions would have to be kept anonymous. Students may not always say the truth. They may exaggerate their opinions and views. Analysing the results and data obtained from The Student Room Forum, I can classify them into five groups as shown: Fig 1 and 2. Fig. 1 The above graph shows the answers students gave who responded to my poll on The Student Room Forum (there were a total of 46). The majority seem to love the subject.

Fig. 2 Since these are only quantitative answers, not all students may be included in this poll who actually left an opinion on the forum. Thus, I have categorised the opinions into particular reasons why they like or dislike the Sciences at GCSE. The group Love it (14) expresses their opinions and views of why they love science. They love it because Science is stimulating, inspiring and encourages students to learn. They have got high expectations and they have great teachers to deliver three different branches of science: Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

The good teachers play a great role in motivating them to learn science. The next group "Like it (6)" expresses that the subjects are interesting, however, they complain there is a fault in teaching style and poor class management. The "OK Group (13)" are neutral. They may be a bit sceptical of learning science. Some complain it is too easy while others say it is difficult. There are hopeful students who wish it gets better at A-Level. The Don't like group (3) find science unsparing, unmotivating and boring. Teachers are seen as incompetent and having poor knowledge of the subject.

Finally, the Hate it group (10) believe that it is a waste of time and resources. Limitations to my research Following this, there are various factors that limit pupil's progress at KS4, mainly due to the transition from KS3. The DfeS (2004c) identified these as: * A limited range of pedagogical approaches, often described by pupils as 'boring', frequently with extensive working from textbooks (especially in mathematics and science). * Insufficient differentiation to meet the needs of different groups. * Too few opportunities for pupils to develop independence and take responsibility for their own learning.

* Poor management of coursework, including limited feedback to pupils, with few opportunities to improve and insufficient chasing of incomplete work. As for inclusion and differentiation at KS4, Brooks et al. (2007) specifically draws reference to the gender difference and exam results as picked up on by national press during the past few years. This view is upheld by a recent Times article (dated 22nd March 2009) in which several girls who went to a single sex institution, were retrospectively interviewed about their experiences in single sex and mixed schools.

All the subjects noted a drop in their grades at A-Level. However, my argument to this view would be that there is a major difference between GCSEs and A-Levels where both genders tend to struggle due to the standards expected. Moreover, the performance of students depends mostly on their behaviour as another Times article (dated 9th March 2009) on the poor performance of boys in schools depicts. This leads on to some common views Brooks et al. (2007) identified between boys and girls, which in my opinion, look like stereotypes and generalisations of students' behaviour as observed in the classroom over many years.

I would disagree to believing any one of them to be the absolute truth, since for example, if girls do not perform well under pressure of timed exams, why do an increasing number of girls achieve the highest grades at GCSE? This can lead on to an argument that GCSE exams are getting easier, but that is another debate. As Eton's headmaster, Tony Little pointed out in the Times article of 22nd March 2009, the gender difference does not matter as much as the school, whether it is run well and has roughly the same proportion of boys and girls.

This is quite a tall order for most schools to take in, but I believe if schools aimed for this, the science curriculum would be much easier to implement and more students would enjoy the subject. Part 4 - Summary In conclusion, this essay set out to investigate how science is currently viewed by students in schools at GCSE level (14-16) and how it is perceived by the students. Naturally, the scope of this study is too broad to undertake in one essay, thus it is not exhaustive. Further studies may include research on a national level relating to the impact of the new National Curriculum on GCSE science as well as teachers and future students.

A more in-depth and accessible study of how science is taught at GCSE level within a 'typical' school would be useful. The comparison of lesson plans of different teachers on the same science topic can give an indication of how science at GCSE is taught in Years 10 and 11. A sample of students from this group can then be asked definitive questions on what they think of the way science is presented and how they think it would help them in future. In addition, the role of ICT and health & safety in the laboratory would be another possible study of great interest.

Students can be split according to their abilities and given different projects to execute - some using ICT, others laboratory experiments and the rest using a mixture of the two. This would give rise to further debate about inclusion and differentiation as well as what makes a student perform at their best. Another thought I have had is that perhaps having mixed groups of SEN and gifted students may not be such a bad idea if they are grouped into the types of learners that they are (auditory, visual or kinaesthetic) rather than at random.

This would be based on the hypothesis that people like other people similar to themselves in some aspects. This may break down the prejudices and barriers some students may hold against others as well as lead to more productive collaborative study. The only dilemma I see here is whether the less able students would be inclined to cheat and copy the work of brighter students. This is also a question open to investigation. The question of ethics also arises in such a study. For this purpose, no particular institutions were named and whether they perform well or badly.

Likewise, no reference is given to any specific teacher or student for the sake of anonymity. As well as a blessing, this can also have drawbacks, since the focus does not hint on gender, the previous science study experiences of the student, any learning difficulties and similar. Also, the use of a forum to gain students' opinions on the topic, while having the advantage to collect many votes on polls to a closed question such as "How much do you like GCSE Science? " has the disadvantage that anyone can answer the poll, not just current GCSE students.

Also, some students may have separate accounts and answer multiple times or their little sister 'helped' them vote without their consent and the like. Regardless of what methods are used to create an accurate investigation, there is always going to be bias to some extent, especially where qualitative research is undertaken. The bias incurred in this essay is the stance the authors took in the literature used. For example, newspaper articles tend to have a skew towards capturing the public's attention and imagination, thus may exclude important facts.

Moreover, authors of books and journals would have their own frame of reference, particularly if they are teachers, lecturers or someone in the educational sector themselves and would state aspects from their own knowledge and experience. It is therefore up to the individual teachers to draw from that knowledge and decide what works best in their classroom. This knowledge can help to endorse good habits of classroom management and enhance classroom experience. Quantitative data often also has its own biases since it is collated from surveys and questionnaires.

For this cause, it can only at best give a snapshot of the behaviours and/or opinions of the people within the specified sampling frame. This study has helped me to evaluate my previous knowledge of the science National Curriculum at GCSE level and updated my understanding of the new government prerequisites. It also made me think of current affairs on the topic of education in a different light. For example, there is currently a debate on the use of league tables to judge schools. However, this study has made me think that these tables help teachers and people in education to benchmark with other institutions.

If such data can be misused and cause stereotypes on a public level, maybe it should be classified and limited to those only in the education sector. Nevertheless, people do indeed have a right to know about the performance of the school to which they intend to send their children. I would take the knowledge derived from this essay and implement it within my science classes. If I am to take on a class at a lower Key Stage, I would be better equipped to help manage the pupils' learning of science and prepare them for what is expected at GCSE. Bibliography

AQA (2005) GCSE Sciences for September 2006 Start, Manchester: The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance Bransford, J. D. , Brown, A. L. , Cocking, R. R. (2000) How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School (Expanded Edition) National Academic Press Bright pupils 'agonising' over simple questions, says Eton head, Bright schoolchildren are struggling in exams after being asked to "wrestle with questions of crippling simplicity", according to the headmaster of Eton College Tony Little. By Graeme Paton, Education Editor Last Updated: 5:24PM GMT 04 Mar 2009 Brooks, V. , Abbott, I. and Bills, L.

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