Understanding Science project
The Understanding Science project was part of the wider ECLIPSE project. The project was possible because of the generous co-operation and hospitality of a partner secondary school that kindly allowed me to visit over a number of years – and the participants who generously gave up some of their free time to answer my questions
The Understanding Science project involved me interviewing secondary age (including 'sixth form') students either during the school lunch time or at the end of the school day.
The work was in the tradition of much work in the 'alternative conceptions' or 'constructivist' research programme where researchers ask students about their understanding of particular science concepts or topic areas. In these types of studies researchers commonly identify a focal concept ('force') or topic area ('acids and alkalis'), and a year group (i.e. grade level), and then interview a sample of students about that focus.
Features of the Understanding Science project
The understanding science project wad several features that made it unusual:
The main unusual feature what that I did not identify a particular topic or topics for the interviews. rather, I would start an interview by asking the participants what they were (or had recently been) studying in science. This meant the learning was recent, and also potentially that interviews gave students a chance to rehearse recent learning (which is considered to often be quite labile unless and until consolidated) which was likely to be of some benefit for their studies.
Another feature was that I invited participation from across school years (grade levels), and this was related to how…
…I also sought to invite the same participants back for further interviews so that I could look for areas of consistency and for changes over time.
I was hoping to develop an approach that would give some insights into conceptual integration (across topics) and conceptual development over time.
I drew on the data collected in this work extensively in preparing the book Student Thinking and Learning in Science: Perspectives on the nature and development of learners’ ideas.
