Pupils' perceptions of practical science in primary and secondary school: implications for improving progression and continuity of learning

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Pupils' perceptions of practical sciencein primary and secondary school:implications for improving progressionand continuity of learningMartin Braund & Mike Drivera University of York , York, UKb Department of Educational Studies , University of York , York,YO10 5DD, UK E-mail:Published online: 17 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Martin Braund & Mike Driver (2005) Pupils' perceptions of practical science inprimary and secondary school: implications for improving progression and continuity of learning,Educational Research, 47:1, 77-91, DOI: 10.1080/0013188042000337578

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Pupils’ perceptions of practical science in

primary and secondary school: implications

for improving progression and continuity of

learning

Martin Braund* and Mike DriverUniversity of York, York, UK

In spite of the introduction of a National Curriculum in UK schools and the improved progression

and continuity that it promised, pupils still have problems with learning when they transfer from

primary to secondary school. These problems are particularly acute in science. One approach is to

provide a programme of ‘bridging work’, focused on practical science, that is started in the primary

school and continued in the secondary school. The research reported here explored pupils’

perceptions and experiences of science practical work before and after transfer to secondary school.

The implications of the findings for the design of bridging work in science are discussed.

Keywords: Continuity; Practical work; Progression; Science; Transfer

Introduction

Continuity and progression are buzz-words in education, essential tenets of the

school curriculum. Progression describes pupils’ personal journeys through educa-

tion and the various ways in which they acquire, hone, apply and develop their skills,

knowledge and understanding in increasingly challenging situations. Continuity is

concerned with the ways in which the educational system facilitates and structures

experience to provide sufficient challenge and progress for pupils in a recognizable

curricular landscape. The introduction of a National Curriculum in the UK, in 1989,

was an opportunity to provide such a landscape, with its spiral structure of age-related

programmes of study, each providing continuity and progression in demand through

consistent and recognizable areas of experience (initially called ‘attainment targets’).

Unfortunately, pupils’ personal journeys through education are often more disjointed

and discontinuous than this curriculum model assumes or can assure. There are

major points of disjunction when pupils transfer from one programme of instruction

to another, and particularly when this transfer involves a change of school. The

*Corresponding author. Department of Educational Studies, University of York, York YO10 5DD,

UK. Email: [email protected]

Educational Research, Vol. 47, No. 1, March 2005, pp. 77 – 91

ISSN 0013-1881 (print)/ISSN 1469-5847 (online)/05/010077-15

# 2005 NFER

DOI: 10.1080/0013188042000337578

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problems are particularly acute following the transfer from primary to secondary

school, often resulting in significant and sustained regression in learning (Lee et al.,

1995; Galton et al., 1999; Nicholls & Gardner, 1999). The findings reported here on

pupils’ perspectives of practical science in primary and secondary school are derived

from the first year of a three-year research and curriculum development project that

addressed such transition issues through setting up and evaluating bridging work in

science. (A description of the project, which took place in one LEA in the north of

England, and summaries of some of its outcomes, can be found on the website: http://

www.york.ac.uk/depts/educ/projs/STAY/STAYNov2004.) The literature on primary/

secondary transition suggests four main factors accounting for post-transfer

regression:

1. Pupils repeat work done at primary school, often without sufficient advance in

challenge and sometimes in the same context, using identical procedures (SSCR,

1987; House of Commons Education Committee, 1995; Galton et al., 1999).

2. Teaching environments and styles and teachers’ language are very different in

secondary schools compared with primary schools. They represent a change in

learning culture that pupils find hard to adjust to (Pointon, 2000; Hargreaves &

Galton, 2002).

3. Teachers in secondary schools fail to make use of, or refer to, pupils’ previous

learning experiences. Transferred information on pupils’ previous attainments is

rarely used effectively to plan curriculum experiences (Doyle & Hetherington,

1998; Nicholls & Gardner, 1999; Schagen & Kerr, 1999).

4. Teachers in secondary schools distrust the levels that pupils in primary schools

have been assessed at, claiming, for example, that these levels have been

artificially inflated by intensive revision for statutory assessment at the end of the

primary phase (Bunyan, 1998; Schagen & Kerr, 1999). This may be used by

teachers as justification for ‘starting from scratch’ when planning new learning

(Nott & Wellington, 1999).

These factors are not unique to the UK. Studies elsewhere have identified similar

problems—e.g. in the USA (Anderson et al., 2000), Australia (Scharf & Schibeci,

1990) and Finland (Pietarinen, 2000).

In the UK, post-transfer regression seems to be worst in science. There is evidence

that two-fifths of pupils fail to make the expected grade in tests at the end of key stage

3 (age 14) that performance at the end of key stage 2 (age 11) predicted. This is worse

than the situation in either English or mathematics (Galton et al., 1999). Recent

research by Galton in secondary classrooms suggests that pupils’ concentration

declines more in science than it does in either English or mathematics (Hargreaves &

Galton, 2002). There is research suggesting that teachers of secondary science use

terminology in classrooms without being aware that pupils have already encountered,

and are conversant with, many of the terms used (Peacock, 1999). Coupled with

these findings is a view that primary science has been one of the successes of recent

curriculum change, while the quality of secondary science teaching remains in

question (Ofsted, 1999).

78 M. Braund and M. Driver

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Part of the UK government’s response to these issues and to the lack of progress

through early secondary schooling has been to introduce a National Strategy to

improve teaching in key stage 3 (DfES, 2002). The science strand of this strategy pays

great heed to improving progression and continuity and was piloted in 17 local

education authorities (LEAs) in England and Wales during 2001/02, before being

implemented in all secondary schools in September 2002. The research reported here

was carried out in one pilot LEA in the north of England to inform the development

of teaching approaches aimed at improving transfer for pupils in science. Reviews of

previous attempts by schools to improve primary/secondary transfer (Galton &

Willcocks, 1983; Galton et al., 1999; Schagen & Kerr, 1999) show that most effort

has been made on administrative and bureaucratic liaison, tackling mainly pastoral

aspects of transfer. Much less has been done, however, to address curriculum

continuity and progression between the two phases or to explore the varying

pedagogy of primary and secondary teachers and how this impacts on pupils’

learning. If we are serious about improving the post-transfer experience of learning

for pupils in secondary schools, these are areas that, as Galton agrees, require most

attention (Galton, 2002).

One way of reinforcing continuity and harmonizing pedagogy is to provide

curriculum experiences that begin in the primary classroom and are continued,

extended and progressed after pupils transfer to their secondary schools. We refer to

this work as ‘bridging’. It has been established in English and mathematics as part of

the key stage 3 strategy and has gained popularity in these subjects with schools and

LEAs, but has been slower to emerge in science. One of the challenges in designing

effective bridging work in science is to find topic areas that primary and secondary

schools agree to teach containing tasks that do not repeat content or processes

resulting in under-challenging experiences for pupils following transfer. Since the

‘scientific enquiry’ (or practical work) strand of the National Curriculum for science

constitutes such a significant aspect of the curriculum experience at both key stages 2

and 3, it seems sensible to seat bridging work in this strand and to provide

experiences that better progress, challenge and develop pupils’ process skills of

scientific enquiry, as Harlen calls them (Harlen, 1996). If pupils are to use and apply

process skills effectively either side of transfer, it is important to know something

about their perceptions of practical work (scientific enquiry) in Year 6 (the last year in

primary school) and in Year 7 (the first year in secondary school), so that teaching can

improve both continuity and progression. This is the focus of the research reported.

The research study

At the start of the project, a group of 13 experienced teachers of science (eight from

primary schools and five from secondary schools) were assembled from a group of

volunteers by the authors and the key stage 3 consultant for science working for the

LEA. While the schools (and teachers) involved were volunteers chosen on the basis

of their interest in developing teaching to improve primary/secondary transfer in

science, rather than to represent types of schools in the LEA, it was recognized (by the

LEA consultant) that they were broadly representative of the types, sizes and intake

Practical science and primary/secondary transfer 79

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characteristics of schools in the LEA. In the early months of the project, these

teachers were invited to explore their pupils’ perceptions of practical work using

questionnaires designed by researchers based at the university where the project was

based. The involvement of these teachers in the collection of data contributed to their

professional development and was part of their training on transition and teaching

scientific enquiry. This training included activities designed to improve teachers’

understanding of the types and purposes of practical work in science as this has been

found to be an area of difference and inconsistency between key stages 2 and 3 (Gott

& Duggan, 1995).

A questionnaire was designed that included six open-response type questions. The

first three questions were designed to probe pupils’ opinions about the purposes of

practical work in school science and how this might/did compare with work carried

out in primary or secondary school. The wording of these questions was adjusted to

allow for prediction of what practical work might be like in secondary school for the

sample of pupils in primary schools and for reflection on what the differences were

now seen to be for pupils in the secondary sample. Otherwise, the questions used for

each age of pupils were identical. The last three questions probed pupils’ views on

what the purposes of practical science carried out by ‘professionals’ as part of their job

might be and how these compare with the purposes of school practical work. This

paper addresses findings and implications associated with responses to the first three

questions.

The questionnaire was piloted by the authors with 16 pupils in a Year 6 class (aged

10 or 11) in a primary school in the LEA in which the study was based but that was

not included in the final research. The pilot in the secondary school was with 23 Year

7 pupils (aged 11 or 12) in a comprehensive school in a neighbouring LEA, also not

involved in the final study. Half of the pupils in each sample were given the

questionnaire, along with a set of black-and-white photographs showing pupils doing

practical work and people carrying out a variety of practical science activities as part of

their jobs, laboratory and computer work and field study. The photographs were

drawn from publications previously used to help primary school pupils discuss their

ideas about scientists and the jobs they do (Parvin, 1999; Jarvis & Rennie, 2000). The

other half of the pilot sample was given the questionnaire to fill in without the aid of

these photographs. Responses from the pilot were analysed to see if the photographs

helped or hindered, and to test the questions for any ambiguities. Photographs were

found to have made little difference to most pupils’ responses but there was evidence

that they distracted some pupils, particularly those with language difficulties. There

was evidence that pupils tended to merely describe the apparatus and equipment used

by people in the pictures, rather than engaging in thinking about differences and

similarities in what they might do in school science lessons. When responses from

each half of the pilot sample were coded and compared, there was less variety in

responses from pupils who had been given photographs. In view of these findings and

in discussion with the project teachers who collected data, it was decided therefore

not to use the photographs in the final study.

The questionnaires were given to the project teachers in the third of four training

sessions based at the university. Teachers were invited to comment on the


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questionnaire design and were trained in how they might collect data from pupils in

their schools. For example, teachers were advised to use the questionnaire in a non-

threatening way, to help pupils express their thoughts and to help pupils with

language difficulty by transcribing their oral responses on to the questionnaire.

Project teachers were invited to collect data from at least one class (of

approximately 25 pupils) in each of their schools. It should be noted, at this point,

that data in this study were collected at the same point in time but from different

pupils in Year 6 and Year 7 classes. As a result of pressures in schools, one of the eight

primary schools and two of the five secondary schools did not return questionnaires.

In one of the secondary schools the project teacher used the questionnaire with three

different Year 7 classes. This resulted in approximately equal numbers of returns

from pupils in Years 6 and 7 (just over 100 from each sample). There was a marked

imbalance of gender in the primary sample. Almost twice as many girls as boys took

part. This effect was not confined to just one or two schools, but spread across the

whole sample of primary pupils. To explore this further, data on the composition of

Years 6 and 7 groups in all schools were requested from the statistics department of

the LEA. Analysis of these data revealed gender imbalances in two-thirds of schools.

Half of these cases of imbalance were in favour of boys and half in favour of girls, so

overall demographic balance within the LEA was maintained. It happened by chance

that five of the eight primary schools and two of the three secondary schools returning

data had gender imbalances in favour of girls in their classes.

The questionnaire was used with pupils towards the end of November 2001. This

was thought to be an ideal time as pupils would have had at least 10 weeks in their

class at their new secondary school to become established and be able to make valid

and useful comments on science learning and the nature of the practical work

experienced. This is consistent with the timing used in other studies of key stages 2

and 3 transfer (Jarman, 1993, 1995; Schagen & Kerr, 1999; Galton et al., 1999).

A sample of 30 scripts, chosen at random from each of the Year 6 and Year 7 sets of

questionnaires, was independently analysed by the authors and coding categorization

for each question compared. Inter-rater reliability was found to be high, at 0.85.

Where discrepancies in coding were found, agreement was reached after reading

further scripts. Some coding categories were combined where they reflected similar

ranges and types of opinion. The combining of categories was constructed to avoid

aspects of pupils’ responses being lost where numbers of responses were low but

opinions were deemed to be of interest or revealed a unique area of pupils’ thinking.

In a study carried out later in the project the same questions were used in five semi-

structured interviews with groups of four to six pupils (Braund, 2004). These

interviews were carried out with the same age groups of pupils and in the same

schools, though not necessarily with the same individuals. These responses were

coded using the same framework as that for the questionnaires. The agreement in

response categories with the questionnaire responses was found to be at 75%. Most of

the differences between the two modes of data collection could be attributed to

frames of response prompted by previous lines of questioning that pupils were

exposed to in the group interviews. These findings are seen, at least in part, as

validation for the types of responses analysed from data gathered for this study.


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Findings

Response categories for each pupil were entered onto SPSS for analysis. A

statistical test (chi-squared) was used to measure the significance of differences,

e.g. between frequencies of responses from Years 6 and 7 pupils, or between boys

and girls within primary or secondary samples where it was felt this would be

helpful.

The percentages of pupils responding in the major categories for each question

are shown in Tables 1 – 3. Percentages rather than frequencies have been used to

make comparisons easier, as proportions of boys compared with girls in the Year

6 and Year 7 samples differed markedly. A discussion of the findings

accompanies each of the tables of results. The implications of these findings

for work on key stages 2 and 3 transfer in science are addressed in the final

section.

Pupils’ views on the reasons for doing practical work in school science

A large proportion of both primary and secondary pupils thought that practical work

would contribute positively to their general learning in science. Significantly more

girls (47/52) than boys (32/53) in Year 7 offered this response (w2 = 12.69; df = 1;

p5 0.001). However, there were no statistically significant gender differences for this

response in Year 6. A noticeable proportion of those who claimed this (about one-

fifth) also believed that practical work provided a useful independent experience that

supports learning. The following response was typical:

I think that pupils do practical science at school because they can find things out for

themselves rather than the teacher telling them. It’s more fun than just the teacher

showing them. (Year 6 pupil)

Table 1. Analysis of Years 6 and 7 pupils’ responses to Q1: Why do pupils do practical science

(tests, investigations, experiments) at school?

Y6 pupils Y7 pupils

Total (%) Girls (%) Boys (%) Total (%) Girls (%) Boys (%)

Response category (n=117) (n=76) (n=41) (n=105) (n=52) (n=53)

To find out or learn more 63 58 73 75 90 60

For a job/to be a scientist 25 24 27 1 0 2

Fun, enjoyable, interesting,

motivating and/or better than

learning by other means

21 23 20 18 24 14

Helps in our future learning

and/or study

15 12 20 5 10 0

To use or apply skills or learn

to carry out practical science

9 5 15 1 2 0


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Similar proportions (around 20%) of Years 6 and 7 pupils stated that practical work

made studying science fun, enjoyable or motivating. Some responses were qualified

by pupils who added that at least practical work was preferable to learning science by

other means—e.g. through reading or written work:

Table 2. Analysis of Years 6 and 7 pupils’ responses to Q2: What might be/is the same about

practical science in primary and secondary schools?

Y6 pupils Y7 pupils



Same basic approach,

both do

‘experiments’

38 33 47 7 6 8

Nothing much is/will

be the same

0 0 0 23 25 21

Both investigate and/

or test things

12 13 10 9 4 14

Content/topics will be/

are the same

11 8 17 12 23 0

They do the same

experiments and/or

practical work

11 12 10 1 1 0

Both write up practical

work

9 8 10 13 17 10

Table 3. Analysis of Years 6 and 7 pupils’ responses to Q3: What might be/is different about

practical science in primary and secondary schools?

Y6 pupils Y7 pupils



Use different/better/

more equipment

35 35 32 23 25 21

Work is/will be harder

or more advanced

40 41 39 11 17 6

Do more (some)

experiments

5 5 5 29 33 25

Do more dangerous

work (use more

dangerous

chemicals)

29 25 34 22 37 8

Work in a laboratory

or specialist area

14 14 12 1 1 0


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[We do practical work in science] because it helps you better if you do science yourself

rather than read it from a book. (Year 6 pupil)

Although the numbers were small (only 11 pupils in the whole survey), some pupils

expressed the view that practical work is done for its own sake; in other words,

useful in learning to use and apply practical skills themselves. However, this type of

response was made by only one pupil in Year 7. This utilitarian view supports a

notion of practical work as learning to ‘do’ science, rather than for learning about

the facts and theories of science. Although this type of response was not the most

frequent to this question, we think this is an interesting point, and we return to it in

the final section.

The most noticeable difference in responses from the two groups of pupils

concerned their perceptions of what future benefits practical science might bring.

Surprisingly, Year 6 pupils were much more likely than their Year 7 counterparts to

see practical science as useful in improving job prospects; 29 pupils in Year 6 claimed

this, yet only one pupil in Year 7 classes did so. Year 6 pupils were also surer that

practical science might help further study:

If you want to be a scientist or work as a doctor you have to be good at science. (Year 6

pupil)

I think pupils at school do practical science so they can begin to decide if they like science

and if they want to do a job that has science as part of their job. (Year 6 pupil)

When we do investigations it’s to learn, and if you get a job and you do chemistry, or you

might get a test on it in secondary school. (Year 6 pupil)

Such positive, career-oriented opinions of school science have been found among

older pupils (e.g. at age 16), but rarely at this age (Osborne & Collins, 2001).

Although numbers were small—just six pupils in the Year 7 sample—a few pupils

were aware that practical work might be important to future examination success:

[We do practical work in science] because it helps us learn and it works us up to our

GCSEs. (Year 7 pupil)

Such opinions might reflect covert messages given by teachers, especially if that

teacher’s view of practical work is dominated by assessment. Research into

teacher’s opinions on the National Curriculum for science and how it has

influenced their use of practical work (Jenkins, 2000; Donnelly, 2000) suggests

that some science teachers regard curriculum requirements for practical work as

a straitjacket, focused mainly on practical work (fair-test type investigations)

whose main purpose is to help pupils gain good grades in examinations. Though

numbers of pupils who explicitly referred to practical work in this way were few

in this study, the message ‘Being good at practical work will stand you in good

stead for future success’ may already be part of the classroom culture in Year 7

classes.


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Similarities between school practical work in Years 6 and 7

Similar but small numbers of pupils in both Years 6 and 7 thought that practical work

in each phase would be about carrying out tests or investigating. Some also expected

to carry it out in similar topics and to produce written records. Interestingly, this

recognition of continuity or similarity in work was expressed by Year 7 girls only. This

could mean that girls are more likely to accept repetition of work, or that they are just

better disposed to and able to accept it as part of teaching for continuity. If the

dominant experience in Year 7 is really one of repetition of work without additional

demand, as some research suggests (Jarman, 1993; Morrison, 2000), then we might

consider this in another way. Girls may be more likely to accept repetition of primary

work in key stage 3 because they are more motivated and focused on wanting to

please the teacher, while boys are less likely to tolerate it. There is certainly evidence,

at both ends of the secondary age range, that girls are more likely than boys to see

repetition as a chance to learn science in more depth (Jarman, 1993; Osborne &

Collins, 2000). The work of Murphy (1994), summarizing findings on gender

differences in practical work, showed that girls’ experience with equipment and their

consequent performance on practical tasks involving measurement was behind that of

boys at 11 and 13. It may well be that repetition of tasks is one way in which girls can

gain the experience they previously lacked. Gender differences in terms of pupils’

attitudes, ways of working in the classroom and experience of practical work are

important factors in science education, particularly for teachers who wish to move to

a more conducive and inclusive environment for learning (Murphy, 1994; Solomon,

1997). We think that this gender difference would warrant more thorough exploration

in a wider range of contexts as it may have consequences for the ways in which

teachers tackle this issue in the classroom.

A striking feature of responses to this question was that a substantial number of

pupils in Year 6 expected the nature and approach of practical tasks to be the same in

Year 7 as it was in Year 6. Once in the secondary school, pupils seemed to think that

it was now very different. While this might seem an obvious result of a new situation

characterized by different equipment, a laboratory and different teaching styles,

responses indicated that there may have been other factors operating. Most Year 7

pupils who stated that nothing much was now the same about practical work claimed

this was because very little or no practical science featured in their Year 6 work. The

following responses support this observation:

At primary school we didn’t do experiments, just sheets, and we had no equipment.

(Year 7 pupil)

In secondary school we do practicals and in primary schools we don’t. (Year 7 pupil)

As pupils from one secondary school made up more than half of the Year 7 sample,

there is a tendency for this school to have a significant impact on results for the whole

Year 7 sample. Careful inspection of the data, however, showed that this school bias

was no more likely in this category than in others for this question. We know from


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verbal comments made by project teachers, that one of the largest primary schools

feeding this secondary school (providing one-third of its Year 7 intake) did not

provide much practical work for Year 6 pupils and so this has obviously had an effect.

However, since the response also featured among Year 7 pupils drawn from the

school’s other three feeder schools and in responses seen from the other two

secondary schools, it is highly likely that pupils from other primary schools also lacked

experience of practical work in Year 6.

Our current work evaluating the pilot of bridging work in 47 primary schools in the

LEA featured in this study adds weight to the lack of practical science experienced by

these Year 6 pupils. Interviews with teachers of the same year group as in this research

showed that many provided little or no practical experience for their Year 6 pupils

and admitted this was due to the pressures of revision for end-of-key-stage tests

(Braund et al., 2003). Recent surveys of practice in primary schools in England

confirm this trend (ASE, 1999; Sutton, 2001).

Differences between school practical work in Years 6 and 7

Unsurprisingly, primary pupils expected to use more sophisticated equipment and

dangerous chemicals in secondary school science, confirming the findings of other

studies (Jarman, 1993; Griffiths & Jones, 1994). Responses from Year 7 pupils

confirmed that these expectations had been met. Surprisingly, perhaps, girls in Year 7

(19/52) were more likely than boys (4/53) to recognize that more dangerous work now

featured. Girls’ oral responses in three of the five group interviews in our later study

(Braund, 2004) showed they were more likely than boys to express concern about

practical procedure—often claiming, for example, that they were worried about

making mistakes now that they were required to handle a wider range of more

sophisticated equipment.

One comment, made by a significantly greater number of pupils in Year 7 (30/105)

than in Year 6 (6/117), was that they were now doing more practical work in science

than in primary school (w2 = 22.4; df = 1; p5 0.001). This is the corollary of

responses for the question discussed previously. However, pupils’ changing

expectations and experience may have coloured their views as to what they now

perceive as ‘practical work’. It may be that pupils are now less inclined, after three

months in a Year 7 class, to accept teacher demonstrations and short-term tasks as

‘proper’ practical work. There were a few instances where pupils explicitly compared

the nature of the practical work that they experienced in Year 7 with that at Year 6.

The following comment made by one Year 7 pupil illustrates this point:

Nothing is the same [about practical science in Years 6 and 7], because in primary school

all you do is mini-experiments and in secondary school you do really good experiments,

which are big. (Year 7 pupil)

At first sight, it is tempting to see this statement as support for the notion that pupils

are likely to have changed their view as to what practical work is, or should be, in Year

7. It is not clear, however, what the pupils’ concept of ‘big’ is here. Do they mean


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longer-term investigative work or spectacular events? We do not have enough

evidence in this study to generalize about this, but the whole issue of what concepts

pupils build of practical science and how these expectations change with age and

experience as they progress through school science, and whether this affects

performance, warrants further investigation.

An interesting category of response to this question concerned pupils’ perceptions

of the level of difficulty of practical work. Many pupils in Year 6 (47/117) expected,

not surprisingly, that practical science would progress in terms of difficulty and

approach. Yet, in Year 7, pupils were much less likely (12/105) to recognize that this

was now so (w2 = 25; df = 1; p5 0.001). This result suggests that Year 7 pupils might

find that practical work does not represent the increased levels of demand and

challenge they expected. The implications of this are discussed in the following

section.

Discussion and implications for the improvement of transfer in science

The research reported here was devised to inform the development, design and

implementation of strategies (bridging work) to improve transfer from key stage 2 to

key stage 3 in science. The findings can be seen as broadly supportive for those

wishing to pursue this path. There are, however, some points of caution. We discuss

these in the hope that they will be of use in guiding and shaping practice in this area of

teaching and curriculum design.

On the positive side, findings show that pupils enjoy practical science at primary

school, value it as a method of learning science and look forward to doing more of it

with bigger and better equipment when they arrive at secondary school. Findings

from analysis of the last three questions on the questionnaire are reported elsewhere

(Braund & Driver, forthcoming) and show that pupils value practical science in the

world of work and recognize that people who use it enjoy science and are strongly

motivated.

Research on pupils’ attitudes to school science, as reported in reviews of the

literature (Bennett, 2003), paints a largely positive picture of pupils’ attitudes to

science in Years 6 and 7, but a noticeable decline after this. The link between

pupils’ attitudes to science and their enjoyment of practical work is shown in a

recent survey by Pell and Jarvis (2001). They found a strong correlation among

Year 6 pupils between positive attitudes to science as a whole and their preference

for independent investigation and the study of science in social contexts. Galton,

however, has detected noticeable dips in pupils’ attitudes to science in Year 3 and

again in Year 6 (Galton, 2002). Galton suggests that this decline in liking for

science in Year 6 is connected to the fact that fewer independent investigations are

being carried out. The findings of this study support this decline as many Year 7

pupils admitted that one of the main differences between practical work carried out

in secondary school compared with that in primary school, was that at least they

were now doing some!

In our later work, we interviewed Year 6 teachers and pupils after the completion of

bridging units. Results show that pupils and teachers are often relieved to be doing


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something practical after so much revision of theory work for SATs (Braund et al.,

2003).

There seems little doubt that pupils’ expectations for science on entering secondary

school are high and that practical experiences are a major part of this. Pupils expect

science to be a practical subject. There are some, however, who challenge how far

practical science can go in bringing about concept change, claiming that little of it

goes beyond helping pupils learn the routines and purposes of experimental science

(see e.g. the critiques of practical work by Hodson, 1990, 1996; Clackson & Wright,

1992). If we accept these controversial, yet none the less important, challenges to the

quality of the learning experience that practical work offers and the premise that its

principal purpose should be to learn to ‘do’ science rather than to gain knowledge and

understanding of concepts, there remains the issue of repetition of basic experimental

skills without sufficient challenge in Year 7 and how demotivating this must be for

pupils who are otherwise keen to learn.

In this study we found that Year 6 pupils expected practical science to get harder

in Year 7, yet once they had established themselves, they were significantly less

likely to make such comments. These pupils may have already realized that Year 7

work is not as hard or challenging as they had thought it might be. If this is the

case, it confirms suspicions that many of the experiences offered at the beginning of

secondary school fail to recognize the previous levels of competence and experience

that pupils transferring to secondary schools bring with them. In many schools

pupils start science work from scratch and are trained in the use of basic laboratory

skills they have already mastered, as if their previous six years’ learning and doing

science was all for nought. A common response by pupils in this study was to see

practical work in Year 7 as merely a repeat of primary experience with different or

better equipment:

You are always experimenting, testing and investigating about the same things [as in

primary schools], only in secondary schools you just have better equipment. (Year 7

pupil)

You just do the same experiments all the time, but you may do it with different

equipment or because your primary school didn’t have the stuff to do it properly. (Year 7

pupil)

Teachers in Year 7 often start their courses with introductory topics, such as ‘Being a

scientist’, which attempt to instil in pupils the structure and language of scientific

investigation even though these have been a feature of most pupils’ experience for the

last four years (Reiss, 2000). Our findings support teaching in Year 7 based on sets of

progressive and continuous experiences, framed around investigative tasks, that

recognize and build on the skills and competences that pupils arrive with. This would

be in sympathy with the approach suggested by Jarman (1995) in which links with

previous experiences are made transparent to pupils and are seen to be valued by

teachers. Our current work in a different LEA is developing this idea further. We have

produced pairs of tasks constituting practical work, designed to be taught in Years 5

or 6 with complementary tasks on the same topic—e.g. exploring elastic materials—


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designed to be taught in key stage 3 but that clearly show how the similar work can be

progressed in terms of concepts taught and procedures and skills applied.

One problem, however, in pupils continuing with a set of practical experiences and

in a similar context following transfer is that they might reject this because it smacks

of something that they did in primary school. Perhaps pupils look forward to leaving

behind the work they have done before in the move up to the ‘big school’. In this way,

pupils expect a certain amount of what has been called ‘curriculum discontinuity’

(Tickle, 1985; Gorwood, 1994). We think that the trick is to plan work that is

sufficiently different from the primary experience yet forms a valid experience for

Year 7 pupils and is capable of recognizing the level of practical skills and concept

learning that have occurred before and moves pupils on from this. This is a crucial

part of our thinking in the design of bridging units. The next phases of our research

will examine to what extent we have been successful in these endeavours.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the AstraZeneca Science

Teaching Trust in providing funds to support the project to develop and evaluate the

teaching of bridging units in science. We should also like to thank the 13 project

teachers who administered the questionnaires with their pupils and our colleague, Dr

Rosemary Webb, for her comments on previous drafts of this paper.

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Documents

Pupils' perceptions of practical science in primary and secondary school: implications for improving progression and continuity of learning