The Science and Learning Expert Group’s report, “Science and Mathematics Secondary Education for the 21st Century”, was published on 25 February 2010. You can view the full document on-screen by scrolling down. PDF copies of the executive summary, the report and the annexes are also available below. Discuss the report here by posting a comment at the bottom of this page.
Science and Learning Expert Group Report – Executive Summary [PDF, 526KB]
Science and Learning Expert Group – Full Report (Volume 1, including Annexes A-D) [PDF, 1.8MB]
Science and Learning Expert Group – Volume 2 Annexes E-M [PDF 1.2MB]
As with many worthy documents about education, this sounds wonderful. However, it does not address the central issue in science and maths teaching: “Why do they find it hard?”.
This report implies that the problems could be largely solved if pupils could see the job prospects and if the teachers had good science knowledge.
The evidence suggests otherwise: chiuldren (and adults) find science hard because
a) the concepts are abstract and require good abstract thinking skills
b) the learner has to “construct” their learning in a step-by-step fashion.
The KS3 science curriculum contains almost nothing which directly improves abstract thinking skills and the KS3-4 curriculum has been revised so many times that the logical order for constructing science understandning has been scrambled.
Good science teaching is not necesarily done by experts – it is best done by people who “know their stuff”, but are aware of the reasons why learners find it difficult and have been trained in, and practiced, effective methods.
What is needed is a “science of science teaching”: using the available evidence to develop an effective course and then training teachers in the methods. Unfortunately the education profession seems more interested in ” authorititive reports” than the hard work of gathering evidence and applying it.
[...] You can download the report from here [...]
Yes I agree with Mike Bell
I had a Dr In physics try to teach me Science way back in the 70s.
Brilliant as he was technically, his inability to communicate the materials and keep the class in order must surely have had a detrimental effect on some students. Thank goodness we were rescued by a sensible teacher in the 5th year.
The point being, with this government’s desire to have an all Master degree teaching profession, it isn’t the highest qualified teacher who can teach the best, it is the ones who can make it interesting and accessible to the students.
The next thorny issue is the kind of science being delivered; surely we can all see it is much easier now then when we were at school. It is all about Science for living and not about academic science.
Why is there now a huge hole in the numbers of scientists & engineers in UK PLC?
Get it right at the junior school end, get people in the junior schools to teach science in an interesting way, then let us in the senior school move that interest on further.
What did the Jesuits say about a getting a child at the age of 7?