The Teaching of Primary Science

Policy and Practice

Colin Richards, Derek Holford, Colin Richards, Derek Holford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138319066
• eBook ISBN: 9780429844706
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1983. This book provides the first overview of developments in primary science prior to and following the national survey of primary schools in 1978. Key issues central to contemporary policy and practice are identified, set in context and interrelated for teachers, students, tutors and policymakers. Contributors to the book include most of the leading figures in contemporary primary science at the time.

PART I

Introduction

1 The Primary Curriculum and Primary Science

Colin Richards

Context and Contest

Primary, as opposed to elementary, education is a comparatively recent development within the educational system of England and Wales. As a stage of education, it was formally established by the 1944 Education Act, though it had been government policy since 1928 to establish schools specifically for children of this age-group. During its short history, primary education has had to contend with a number of formidable problems: the legacy of the elementary school tradition with its relatively narrow, instrumental approach focussing on the three Rs; the selective role assigned to primary schools and symbolized by the 11+ examination; the vast expansion followed by spectacular contraction’ in the number of children of primary school age; and the inability of the sector to attract resources on a scale comparable to secondary and higher education. Despite these difficulties in the way of realizing a genuine primary education, it has established itself as a distinct, and in some ways distinctive, sector and has influenced both the development of middle schools and, to a lesser extent, the early years of secondary education. Partly because of its comparatively recent origin and its frenetic development, overall appreciations of its achievements and shortcomings have not been plentiful. The Plowden Report (1967) provided one such appreciation; the HMI Primary Survey (1978) another. In part, this book attempts a further appreciation but one which focusses on science, only one facet of the primary curriculum.

As far as this chapter is concerned, the curriculum can be regarded as comprising those patterns of educational experience or courses of study provided or nurtured by teachers in primary schools. The curriculum is a major (though not the only) means through which children are introduced to valued skills, interests, attitudes, concepts and knowledge. However, within our society and its teaching profession there is disagreement over what is to be ‘valued’, and the curriculum inevitably reflects that conflict. As Blyth (1978) remarks, ‘Everybody agrees that curriculum matters. That is probably the extent of agreement about curriculum’ (p. 25). The ‘contested’ nature of the primary curriculum needs to be emphasized. In this country there is no one universally held view as to what constitutes an appropriate curriculum for primary children; there is no one set of meanings which all interested parties believe should be conveyed as .the primary curriculum. There are disagreements about the range of the primary curriculum, about the bases on which it should be planned and implemented, and about its appropriateness and effectiveness. As far as science is concerned, its place within the primary curriculum is also ‘contested’, as is the nature of primary science itself. This chapter seeks to outline the nature of some of the contestations surrounding the primary curriculum in general and primary science in particular through discussing a number of issues of current concern. The issues themselves are discussed in greater depth in relation to primary science by other contributors to this book.

Range

The range of the curriculum has been an important and controversial issue ever since the introduction of schooling. ‘How wide should the curriculum be?’ is an especially pertinent question at the present time when falling rolls, cuts in educational expenditure and the consequent loss of staff and material resources threaten the preservation of the existing curriculum in some primary schools and even more so in some middle schools.

It is possible to argue that the curriculum is too wide and could profitably be narrowed. Columnists in certain daily newspapers and other Black Paper sympathizers want a concentration on the ‘basics’ (reading, writing and cyphering). Others with less extreme views query whether science or physical education or religious education need to be provided as part of the formal curriculum for all pupils in maintained primary schools. It is, of course, possible to argue the reverse – that the present curriculum is often too narrowly conceived, and its range should be extended. From this perspective, extension might take one of three forms. Firstly, new subjects or areas could be incorporated into the existing curriculum: a period of health education a week for junior children? A time each week when every class is taught science? Secondly, new strands could be added to existing work: a topic a year with a science bias for all children? The provision for children to make things that work (simple technology) in addition to their normal craft activities? Thirdly, the primary curriculum could be infused by more general perspectives: the application of science or micro-electronics in a variety of curricular areas?

It is important to note that arguments for increasing or decreasing curriculum range are advanced on shaky evidence. Chapter six of the HMI Primary Survey does provide some evidence on the extent to which certain activities appeared in the classes inspected, but no overall description or analysis of the range of the primary curriculum is available. Whatever the actual range, a recent statement of government guidance on the curriculum (The School Curriculum, 1981) does argue that science should have a place in every child’s primary education:

all pupils should be involved in practical as well as theoretical work in elementary science…. Primary schools should provide more effective science teaching. Children should be given more opportunities for work which progressively develops their knowledge; it is equally important to introduce them to the skills and processes of science, including observation, experiment and prediction (p. 11).

This viewpoint is reinforced by the consultative document, Science Education in Schools, issued in June 1982, and the recently published discussion paper Science in Primary Schools (DES, 1983).

The range of primary science itself and the relative emphasis to be placed on particular aspects of work have also been ‘contested’. Here, as elsewhere in the primary curriculum, there have been attempts to widen the scope of the work and thereby to increase the demands on schools and teachers (see Chapter 2). The study of living things in the form of nature study has long been a component of the curriculum for children below the age of 12; the Hadow Report (1931) stressed its importance along with the first-hand study of some elements of simple astronomy and ‘a rudimentary study of some outstanding physical facts, such as the working of the mariner’s compass’ (p. 100). In the thirty years following Hadow there was increasing advocacy for the inclusion of elements of physical science, though the claims of astronomy (and the mariner’s compass!) tended to be overlooked. By the early sixties, attempts were being made by some teachers to broaden the scope of ‘nature study’, as illustrated in Chapter 2. Recently, the claims of technology have been advanced as an element to complement science (as in The School Curriculum, 1981) or, less often, as an area in its own right, perhaps even replacing ‘pure science’ (Chapter 19). Though there has been increasing advocacy of physical science, the evidence presented in Chapter 4 suggests that work on the characteristics of living things is still by far and away the most important component of the science taught in primary classes. How far recent initiatives will increase the range of primary science remains problematic.

Structure

A second important general issue relates to the bases on which the primary curriculum and its component areas should be planned and implemented. What kind of ‘structure’ should it have? From what principles should this ‘structure’ be derived? During the last decade, there has been concern over the problem of ‘structure’, though compared with complaints about its absence, there have been far fewer attempts to spell out what this ‘structure’ should be.

Here, three senses of the term are distinguished and then related to primary science. In the first sense, the structure of the curriculum refers to the underlying bases used to select what it is that children should learn. Such bases may be one or more of the following: important general ideas or concepts, skills, processes, generalizations, areas of experience, children’s interests, or items of valued subject matter. It is in relation to such bases that particular themes or activities are planned and particular experiences provided. The second sense of structure relates to the psychological principles which underlie the realization of the curriculum in the classroom, especially the view taken as to how children learn most effectively. Different views of learning have markedly different implications for the way children’s work is sequenced and fostered by teachers. The third sense of structure relates to the way schools or classrooms are organized and managed as environments for teaching and learning. Here, the curriculum is structured if activities proceed smoothly, resources are readily available and space is adequately utilized.

Within primary science, bases for the choice of topics and activities have been fiercely debated during the last twenty years. Discussion has centred on a number of issues including the place of children’s interests in the selection of themes and enquiries, but the most contentious has been concerned with the relative importance of process or content criteria in planning the work (see Chapter 7). One school of thought which has dominated discussion of primary science and which is represented in this book by contributors such as Wastnedge, Squires and Richards has stressed that work should be pursued primarily (but not exclusively) with scientific processes and attitudes in mind so that children can develop the abilities to observe, raise questions, propose enquiries to answer questions, experiment or investigate, find patterns in observations, reason systematically and logically, communicate findings and apply learning. An alternative viewpoint represented here by Redman, McClelland and Black and discussed elsewhere by Booth (1971, 1980) argues that activities should be planned primarily (but not exclusively) with major scientific ideas or concepts in mind so that children are able to use these conceptual tools (for example, ‘energy’, ‘structure’, ‘adaptation’) to make sense of many aspects of the world around them. Recently, partly through the work of the Assessment of Performance Unit (Chapter 9), generalizations have been advocated as criteria, along with others, to be used in the selection of topics or themes for science work (see Chapter 7). It is argued that generalizations such as ‘Living things depend on each other in various ways’ provide a framework for selecting activities and content but can be achieved in a Variety of ways and with a range of subject matter.

In recent years, a consensus appears to be developing, illustrated, for example, in the work of the Learning through Science Project (Chapter 15), the HMI Science Committee (DES, 1983), the Assessment of Performance Unit (Chapter 9) and the Scottish Committee on Environmental Studies in the Primary School (Chapter 23). On this view, processes, generalizations and concepts are all seen as important criteria for the selection of activities; general areas from which scientific activities are to be selected include the study of living things, the immediate environment, energy, and the nature of materials; children’s interests are seen as very important but not absolutely paramount in the development of the work. Within this overall stance, process criteria are still pre-eminent but not nearly to the same degree as in the orthodoxy of ten years ago. Advocacy of the importance of concepts and generalizations is gaining ground. Perhaps, as Parker-Jelly suggests (Chapter 14), future work in primary science ‘will have a greater concern for concepts than that shown by Science 5–13 and the two projects (Progress in Learning Science and Learning through Science) it has generated’ (p. 153). Future concern may relate both to the underlying concepts which activities aim to develop and, as Kerr and Engel’s contribution (Chapter 5) argues, to children’s own understandings and ways of thinking about scientific concepts.

In contrast to the controversy over process and content in planning primary science, there has been near unanimity amongst English educationists regarding the psychological principles which underlie the learning of primary science. The basic Piagetian view of children’s learning and development has been generally accepted, though some writers such as Isaacs (Chapter 10) have reinterpreted this to some extent in the light of observations of children engaged in concrete problem-solving situations arising directly from their own experiences and interests. Piaget’s view of learning is concisely summarized in paragraph 521 of the Plowden Report:

One of its most important conclusions is that the great majority of primary school children can only learn efficiently from concrete situations as lived or described. From these situations, children acquire concepts in every area of the curriculum. According to Piaget, all learning calls for organization of material or of behaviour on the part of the learner, and the learner has to adapt himself and is altered in the process. Learning takes place through a continuous process of interaction between the learner and his environment which results in the building up of consistent and stable patterns of behaviour, physical and mental. Each new experience reorganizes, however slightly, the structure of the mind and contributes to the child’s world picture.

From the psychological principles produced by Piaget and elaborated by Isaacs and others have been derived principles for primary science teaching centring on (i) the provision of a wide range of practical experience, (ii) the encouragement of children’s problem-solving related directly to the world around them, and (iii) the importance of questions and enquiries generated by the ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editors’ Preface: Colin Richards and Derek Holford
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword: Norman Thomas
• Part I. Introduction
• Part II. ‘Locating’ Primary Science: Three Overviews
• Part III. Key Questions
• Part IV. Theories of Children’s Learning
• Part V. Approaches to Curriculum Development
• Part VI. Practice
• Part VII. Recent Developments in In-Service Education
• The Teaching of Primary Science: An Introductory Annotated Bibliography: Robert England
• Contributors
• Index