The next meet­ing will take place on Tues­day 7th May at 7:30pm and will be mod­er­ated by @teachingofsci.

Grime, R (2012) A School’s Expe­ri­ence of the Dis­crete Teach­ing of Sci­en­tific Skills at Early Sec­ondary Level, SSR 346 (.pdf)

Abstract: Stu­dents at age 11 or 12 took a course where sci­en­tific skills were taught dis­cretely rather than in an inte­grated approach along­side sci­en­tific knowl­edge and under­stand­ing. There is evi­dence that this may be a more ben­e­fi­cial approach for devel­op­ing sci­en­tific skills.

Dis­cus­sion points

1. How would the expe­ri­ences in this case study inform your per­sonal class­room prac­tice? Given the oppor­tu­nity, would you rec­om­mend a sim­i­lar approach in KS3 across your department?
2. With changes to con­trolled assess­ment at GCSE there is an assump­tion that many schools are teach­ing sci­en­tific skills in iso­la­tion, often with a strong empha­sis on the con­text of the ISA/EMPA/etc. Does the paper sup­port this approach? How could it best be man­aged for bet­ter learn­ing as well as sup­port­ing stu­dents to achieve good results?
3. The paper shows how action research at a school level can pro­vide evi­dence in sup­port of changes. What lessons could you learn from this when con­sid­er­ing pol­icy changes in your department?
4. With the recent atten­tion paid to the use of RCTs to inform edu­ca­tion pol­icy, how could the results of tri­als such as this one be used to inform the design of larger-scale stud­ies? Would it be pos­si­ble to avoid the out­come mea­sure being used to judge schools rather than interventions?

With thanks to the ASE, who were happy to make the arti­cle open-access so we could dis­cuss it. If you are inter­ested in peer-led research — and not already a mem­ber — you may be inter­ested in their mem­ber­ship options. These include sub­scrip­tions to School Sci­ence Review, the source of this article.

 

The next meet­ing will take place on 16th April at 7:30pm and will be mod­er­ated by @AlomShaha.

Met­zler, Johannes & Woess­mann, Ludger (2010) The Impact of Teacher Sub­ject Knowl­edge on Stu­dent Achieve­ment: Evi­dence from Within-Teacher Within-Student Vari­a­tion IZA DP No. 4999 [PDF]

Abstract:

Teach­ers dif­fer greatly in how much they teach their stu­dents, but lit­tle is known about which teacher attrib­utes account for this. We esti­mate the causal effect of teacher sub­ject knowl­edge on stu­dent achieve­ment using within-teacher within-student vari­a­tion, exploit­ing a unique Peru­vian 6th-grade dataset that tested both stu­dents and their teach­ers in two sub­jects. We cir­cum­vent omitted-variable and selec­tion biases using stu­dent and teacher fixed effects and observ­ing teach­ers teach­ing both sub­jects in one-classroom-per-grade schools. After measurement-error cor­rec­tion, one stan­dard devi­a­tion in subject-specific teacher achieve­ment increases stu­dent achieve­ment by about 10 per­cent of a stan­dard deviation.

Dis­cus­sion Points

The ques­tions SciTeachJC will focus on for this chat are:

• “The results sug­gest that teacher sub­ject knowl­edge should be clearly on the agenda of edu­ca­tional admin­is­tra­tors and policy-makers”. If sub­ject knowl­edge is demon­stra­bly crit­i­cal for teacher qual­ity, should reg­u­lar sub­ject knowl­edge CPD be compulsory?
• What efforts have you made since start­ing teach­ing to improve your sub­ject knowledge?
• Sci­ence teach­ers often teach sub­jects other than their own (as do many other teach­ers). Do you think you do a bet­ter job in your own specialism?
• “While there is clear evi­dence that teacher qual­ity is a key deter­mi­nant of stu­dent learn­ing, lit­tle is known about which spe­cific observ­able char­ac­ter­is­tics of teach­ers can account for this impact” — What char­ac­ter­is­tics do you think are most impor­tant in a teacher?

@AlomShaha will be mod­er­at­ing the discussion.

Reiss, Michael (2008) The use of eth­i­cal frame­works by stu­dents fol­low­ing a new sci­ence
course for 16–18 year-olds. Sci­ence & Edu­ca­tion, 17 (8–9). pp. 889–902. ISSN 0926 7220 [PDF]

Abstract:

There has been a move in recent years towards the greater inclu­sion of social and eth­i­cal issues within sci­ence courses. This paper exam­ines a new context-based course for 16–18 year-olds (Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biol­ogy) who are study­ing biol­ogy in Eng­land and Wales. The course is taught through con­texts and has an empha­sis on social issues and the devel­op­ment of eth­i­cal rea­son­ing. Exam­i­na­tion of a sam­ple of reports writ­ten by stu­dents in 2005 as part of the course‟s sum­ma­tive assess­ment shows that util­i­tar­ian eth­i­cal rea­son­ing is used widely and that the other eth­i­cal frame­works to which stu­dents are intro­duced in the course – rights and duties, auton­omy and virtue ethics – are used sub­stan­tially less often. In addi­tion, stu­dents mostly argue anthro­pocen­tri­cally though many of them argue eco­cen­tri­cally and/or bio­cen­tri­cally too.

In this paper I dis­cuss the devel­op­ment, imple­men­ta­tion and assess­ment of a way of teach­ing about social and eth­i­cal issues within a context-based course for 16–18 year-olds study­ing biol­ogy in Eng­land and Wales, focus­ing on the eth­i­cal frame­works used by a sam­ple of the stu­dents on the course in some of their exter­nally assessed exam­i­na­tion mate­r­ial. The course in ques­tion (Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biol­ogy) was piloted from Sep­tem­ber 2002 and launched nation­ally in Sep­tem­ber 2005 as a result of approval from the national body charged with mak­ing such deci­sions (the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions and Cur­ricu­lum Author­ity). The course is taught through con­texts and has a strong empha­sis on social aspects of biol­ogy and the eth­i­cal analy­sis of bio­log­i­cal issues.

Dis­cus­sion Points

Sci­ence does not exist in a vac­uum, we can­not teach it as a set of facts, figures, processes and ideas with­out brin­ing in some con­text of where it fits in to the real world. Real-life appli­ca­tions are used in lessons to help explain what is being learned as well as to pro­vide stim­u­lus mate­r­ial as to the rea­son why we are learn­ing about this. As sci­en­tific ideas become more involved in how we lead out every­day lives the area of ethics becomes more rel­e­vant. Is what sci­ence can do right?

Yeah, yeah, but your sci­en­tists were so pre­oc­cu­pied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. — Dr. Ian Mal­colm (Juras­sic Park)

The eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of sci­ence is part of the KeyStage4 Cur­ricu­lum and A Level specifi­ca­tions, but do we teach it well in all aspects of sci­ence. The area of Bioethics is great for Biol­ogy top­ics but are there oppor­tu­ni­ties in Physics and Chem­istry lessons. In Michael Riess’ paper he out­lines the Eth­i­cal Frame­work that is used in the Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biol­ogy (SNAB) course which is now inte­grated into the Edex­cel A Level post 2009.

To con­struct an eth­i­cal argu­ment one of four pos­si­ble areas could be used to jus­tify your position

• Rights and Duties
• Max­imis­ing the amount of good in the world
• Mak­ing deci­sions for yourself
• Lead­ing a vir­tu­ous life

Could this frame­work be extended to be used in all the sci­ence disciplines?

The ques­tions SciTeachJC will focus on for this chat are:

• What top­ics out­side of biol­ogy do you use to dis­cuss ethics in science?
• Do you think the SNAB Eth­i­cal Frame­work is good enough to be used in all science/ethics lessons?
• How do you get stu­dents to think about other people’s opin­ions and view­points in class?

@Bio_Joe will be mod­er­at­ing the discussion.

Use­ful Links

Bioethics Edu­ca­tion Project

Physics & Ethics Edu­ca­tion Project

The Sim­ple­tons, a KS4 Sci­ence Upd8 activ­ity intro­duc­ing the eth­i­cal framework

Firstly, thanks for all those who took part in #sciteachjc last Tues­day. It was a great start to the year and got quite a bit of atten­tion build­ing up to the meet­ing not least from one of the paper’s authors:

Sec­ondly, Alom doesn’t think peo­ple read to the bot­tom of blog posts , so I’ll post up the date of the next meet­ing at the top. The next meet­ing will be held 12th Feb­ru­ary and @teachingofsci will be your host. The topic is yet to be con­firmed, how­ever we’re aim­ing to do some­thing that is able to have an imme­di­ate impact on your teach­ing the next day in the classroom.

A sum­mary of the dis­cus­sion on RCTs: (we had 222 tweets dur­ing the hour we were discussing)

@DrRacheal opened with the ele­phant in the room:

In real­ity, RCTs are used in edu­ca­tional research. How­ever it was inter­est­ing to con­sider whether teach­ers could run them within school.

The responses to the first ques­tion: Would you con­sider run­ning or tak­ing part in a ran­domised con­trol trial in your school?

@alomshaha raised the con­cerns of a few peo­ple involved in the dis­cus­sion:

@ryansecondarysc responded with a sim­i­lar point to that made in the Radio 4 doc­u­men­tary:

This was also backed up by @teachingofsci

and @bio_joe

Both @teachingofsci and @miss_mcinerney sug­gested that RCTs might not be appro­pri­ate to run within school due to prac­ti­cal­i­ties.

This was con­curred by oth­ers in the dis­cus­sion. The gen­eral feel­ing so far is that imple­ment­ing an RCT within a school is prob­lem­atic.
The idea raised by @bio_joe

sug­gested that the dif­fer­ent classes assigned to teach­ers might be suit­able as sam­ples, but in gen­eral it was felt the sam­ple size would be too small, and that the sam­ples wouldn’t be ran­domly picked. Indeed @miss_mcinerney made this point:

and DrRacheal this:

What about between schools?

There were some great ideas about the design of RCTs, mainly between @miss_mcinerney and @teachingofsci e.g.

I asked:

but @ryansecondarysc and @miss_mcinerney pointed out that this would no longer be an RCT.


and @tom_hartley added

We focused again on the ethics with ques­tion two What con­cerns do you have with the eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions of using RCTs in edu­ca­tional research?

@oldandrewuk was con­cerned about whether teach­ers would be happy to take part in an RCT:

@dfalc agreed:

@Bio_joe pointed out that :

and I added:

@miss_mcinerney made the point that

to which I coined a new phrase (we think)

@alomshaha asked

I high­lighted some that I’d seen, but hadn’t had a chance to read fully:

and @teachingofsci said:

@bio_joe asked

Final ques­tion: Which edu­ca­tional inter­ven­tion would you like to see more evi­dence for, in the form of RCTs (or other methodology)?

@alomshaha sug­gested his favourite topic:

and @Bio_Joe

but we descended (no thanks to me) into a dis­cus­sion on ensur­ing that teach­ers were aware of any research that had been done and the lack of open avail­abil­ity to research.

Here is a selec­tion of the links posted by @teachingofsci dur­ing the discussion

• Effect sizes: http://www.teacherstoolbox.co.uk/T_effect_sizes.html
• What works: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/
• Dis­cus­sion on RCTs in US: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20090049/section_2.asp
• Petty: http://www.geoffpetty.com/research.html
• doceo: http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/what_works.htm

There are loads of other valid points that were made, and @bio_joe, @oldandrewuk and @ryansecondarysc car­ried on the dis­cus­sion after­wards. In all a good start to the year, and remem­ber the next meet­ing on the 12th Feb­ru­ary. (Did you get to the bot­tom of the post?)

Here is a full Storify archive com­piled by @eyebeams (thanks):
http://storify.com/eyebeams/rct-discussion-on-sciteachjc

Happy New Year!

It’s been 6 months since our last meet­ing. Both @Alby and @AlomShaha have been unavail­able to run the club over the lat­ter half of 2012 and the autumn school term is tra­di­tion­ally a long and stress­ful term so, despite a few false starts, we’ve not been able to get things up and run­ning again. Until now.

The first meet­ing of 2013 (15th Jan­u­ary at 7:30pm) is inspired by the doc­u­men­tary on Radio 4 last week, where Ben Goldacre dis­cusses using evi­dence to inform pol­icy, con­cen­trat­ing on how suit­able ran­domised con­trolled tri­als (RCTs) might be when used in as evi­dence for social poli­cies in areas such as crime and edu­ca­tion. This pro­gramme can be down­loaded before Fri­day 11th Jan­u­ary from here http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r4choice. It’s not pos­si­ble for us to dis­trib­ute this pod­cast after this time as it con­tra­venes BBC pol­icy so down­load it as soon as possible.

There are some use­ful papers we could dis­cuss how­ever we suf­fer from the usual prob­lems  i.e.: a lack of open access to research papers. So for this meet­ing, we will look at the paper writ­ten for the Cab­i­net Office by Dr Ben Goldacre, Pro­fes­sor David Torg­er­son et al:

Test, Learn, Adapt: Devel­op­ing Pub­lic Pol­icy with Ran­domised Con­trolled Trials.

Haynes L., Ser­vice, O., Goldacre, B., Torg­er­son D. (2012). Test, Learn, Adapt: Devel­op­ing Pub­lic Pol­icy with Ran­domised Con­trolled Tri­als. Cab­i­net Office Behav­ioural
Insights Team
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/test-learn-adapt-developing-public-policy-randomised-controlled-trials [down­load .pdf]

The paper doesn’t con­cen­trate exclu­sively on RCTs in edu­ca­tional research, but there are some exam­ples within that do sug­gest that RCTs should be used to form edu­ca­tion policy.

To com­ple­ment the paper here are some other open ref­er­ence mate­ri­als that are available:

• Intro­duc­tion to research: http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/management/external/els/pdf/introductiontoresearch.pdf (from @Bio_Joe)
• A guide to RCTs in Edu­ca­tion Research : http://www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/publications/RCT01/RCT01.pdf (from @Bio_Joe)
• A Sys­tem­atic Phon­ics Review: https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/RB711.pdf
• A series of pub­li­ca­tions of in Edu­ca­tion research using RCTs by Pro­fes­sor Paul Con­nolly (@ProfConnolly, http://www.paulconnolly.net/) and the Cen­tre for Effec­tive Edu­ca­tion at Queen’s Uni­ver­sity Belfast in North­ern Ire­land: http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/CentreforEffectiveEducation/PUBLICATIONS/
• The Edu­ca­tion Endow­ment Foun­da­tion men­tioned on Ben’s radio pro­gramme. http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects/success-for-all
• Two Edu­ca­tional RCTs in Kenya : http://ipl.econ.duke.edu/bread/papers/0809conf/Dupas.pdf http://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/impact-distributing-school-uniforms-childrens-education-kenya

Ques­tions to dis­cuss dur­ing the meet­ing are :

1. How well would the meth­ods described in the paper work in your school? Would you con­sider run­ning or tak­ing part in a ran­domised con­trol trial in your school? Why or why not?
2. What con­cerns do you have with the eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions of using RCTs in edu­ca­tional research?
3. Do you agree with Ben’s asser­tion (in the doc­u­men­tary) that RCTs pro­vide bet­ter evi­dence (“the gold stan­dard”) than other meth­ods of research for social sci­ences.
4. Which edu­ca­tional inter­ven­tion would you like to see more evi­dence for, in the form of RCTs (or other methodology)?

The meet­ing is Tues­day, 15th Jan­u­ary 2013 at 7:30pm UTC, to be mod­er­ated by @A_Weatherall. Remem­ber to use the hash­tag #sciteachjc dur­ing the discussion.

The title is not a typo; we will not be dis­cussing sci­en­tific lit­er­acy, a theme we have dis­cussed sev­eral times (but if you want more, I strongly rec­om­mend Alice Bell’s refresh­ing sug­ges­tion that this one isn’t just for teach­ers to worry about.)

Rather than an aca­d­e­mic paper, these two arti­cles dis­cuss the effec­tive use of lit­er­acy skills in sci­ence class­rooms. Based on research and expe­ri­ence with young Amer­i­can stu­dents in the equiv­a­lent of Key Stage 2 and early Key Stage 3, the authors empha­size the need for much greater delib­er­ate teach­ing of sci­en­tific vocab­u­lary. Between the two short arti­cles, sug­ges­tions are made for teach­ing both con­tent knowl­edge and the ways in which we jus­tify our knowl­edge, highly rel­e­vant for sci­en­tific method work.

Ross, D., Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2009). The art of argu­men­ta­tion. Sci­ence and Chil­dren, 47(3), 28–31. Down­load .pdf

Grant, M., Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2009). Sci­ence lit­er­acy is > strate­gies. Clear­ing House, 82(4), 183–186. Down­load .pdf

1. These papers are focused on younger stu­dents. How do the ideas apply to the age groups you teach?
2. Do you already pro­vide writ­ing frames or tem­plates to pro­mote dis­cus­sion of sci­en­tific meth­ods and the use of rea­soned argu­ment? If not, how would you adapt the exam­ples given for dis­tri­b­u­tion to stu­dents or as dis­plays in your lab?
3. Do you use any spe­cific texts or sources when pro­vid­ing wider read­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to stu­dents? How do they respond to this? How do you assess their progress?
4. Do we take too much for granted in terms of stu­dents’ lit­er­acy devel­op­ment? How can this be addressed at a class­room, depart­ment and school level?

Tues­day 17th July at 7.30, to be mod­er­ated by @teachingofsci.

Jonathan Osborne, Shirley Simon & Sue Collins (2003): Atti­tudes towards sci­ence: A review of the lit­er­a­ture and its impli­ca­tions, Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion, 25:9, 1049–1079 [down­load .pdf  234kb]

Abstract:

This arti­cle offers a review of the major lit­er­a­ture about atti­tudes to sci­ence and its impli­ca­tions over the past 20 years. It argues that the con­tin­u­ing decline in num­bers choos­ing to study sci­ence at the point of choice requires a research focus on stu­dents’ atti­tudes to sci­ence if the nature of the prob­lem is to be under­stood and reme­di­ated. Start­ing from a con­sid­er­a­tion of what is meant by atti­tudes to sci­ence, it con­sid­ers the prob­lems inher­ent to their mea­sure­ment, what is known about stu­dents’ atti­tudes towards sci­ence and the many fac­tors of influ­ence such as gen­der, teach­ers, cur­ric­ula, cul­tural and other vari­ables. The lit­er­a­ture itself points to the cru­cial impor­tance of gen­der and the qual­ity of teach­ing. Given the impor­tance of the lat­ter we argue that there is a greater need for research to iden­tify those aspects of sci­ence teach­ing that make school sci­ence engag­ing for pupils. In par­tic­u­lar, a grow­ing body of research on moti­va­tion offers impor­tant point­ers to the kind of class­room envi­ron­ment and activ­i­ties that might raise pupils’ inter­est in study­ing school sci­ence and a focus for future research.

This paper is still the most read and most cited paper from the IJSE and was in the top 10 most cited papers in Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Research accord­ing to Min‐Hsien Lee, Ying‐Tien Wu & Chin‐Chung Tsai, 2009 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500690802314876).

Key Con­clu­sions:

• Stu­dents are alien­ated by school sci­ence a sub­ject that has an increas­ing sig­nif­i­cance in per­sonal and soci­etal life.
• Research has iden­ti­fied this alien­ation as a prob­lem but has lit­tle to say about a solution.
• Research sug­gests that good teach­ing and sit­u­a­tional inter­est will improve stu­dent motivation
• Stu­dents desire oppor­tu­ni­ties for more prac­ti­cal work, extended inves­ti­ga­tion and discussion
• A bet­ter under­stand­ing of what sci­ence class­room activ­i­ties that enhance stu­dent moti­va­tion is needed; the paper sug­gests that tasks need inter­est, impor­tance and utility.

Dis­cus­sion Points:

• This paper is influ­en­tial but quite out of date now, how rel­e­vant are the find­ings and con­clu­sions today?
• Is there any­thing miss­ing from this paper that should be exam­ined to under­stand stu­dent atti­tudes towards science?
• Are there any issues that we now have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of?
• Stu­dent inter­est in sci­ence lessons declines when they start sec­ondary school, how can we as teach­ers stop that from happening?
• p1067 lists com­mon aspects of teach­ing that are per­ceived to be effec­tive, do you agree with that list? Is there any­thing you would add?
• “Sci­ence is a superb and daz­zling hall, but one which may be reached only by pass­ing though a long and ghastly kitchen” How can we as teach­ers make the kitchen less ghastly?

Thanks to Pro­fes­sor Jonathan Osborne for input on these dis­cus­sion points. You may also wish to read this update paper (Atti­tudes Toward Sci­ence (Update) Osborne,Simon & Tytler) sent to me by Pro­fes­sor Osborne, the major ele­ment of it has been a focus on iden­tity to try and explain the para­dox of a soci­ety which is so depen­dent on STEM but which fails to engage many young people.

Ali­son Booth and Patrick Nolen, “Choos­ing to Com­pete: How Dif­fer­ent Are Girls and Boys?”, IZA Dis­cus­sion Paper No. 4027. [Down­load .PDF, 288 kB]

Abstract: Using a con­trolled exper­i­ment, we exam­ine the role of nur­ture in explain­ing the styl­ized fact that women shy away from com­pe­ti­tion. Our sub­jects (stu­dents just under 15 years of age) attend publicly-funded single-sex and coed­u­ca­tional schools. We find robust dif­fer­ences between the com­pet­i­tive choices of girls from single-sex and coed schools. More­over, girls from single-sex schools behave more like boys even when ran­domly assigned to mixed-sex exper­i­men­tal groups. Thus it is untrue that the aver­age female avoids com­pet­i­tive behav­iour more than the aver­age male. This sug­gests that observed gen­der dif­fer­ences might reflect social learn­ing rather than inher­ent gen­der traits.

This paper is rather long, but a great deal of it refers to the design of the exper­i­ment. Pages 22–37 con­tain the paper’s ref­er­ences and deal with exper­i­men­tal design and sta­tis­ti­cal results and are sec­ondary to the paper’s con­clu­sions. The key sec­tion of the paper is “Sec­tion V — Choos­ing to Compete”.

Key Con­clu­sions:

• Sin­gle sex school­girls scored higher in the piece-rate round than coed school­girls. In the manda­tory round there was no dif­fer­ence between sin­gle sex and coed schoolgirls.
• A girl who attends a single-sex school is 42 per­cent­age points more likely to choose to enter the tour­na­ment than a girl from a coed school and “it would seem that a single-sex edu­ca­tional back­ground has the poten­tial to change the way women view tournaments.”
• A sig­nif­i­cant gen­der gap exists only between stu­dents from coed schools. Boys and girls from single-sex schools choose to com­pete equally fre­quently. Girls from coed schools at 71 per­cent­age points less likely to enter the tour­na­ment than boys from coed schools but girls from single-sex schools enter as often as boys from coed schools: “there is no signi…cant dif­fer­ence in the prob­a­bilty of a single-sex girl and a coed boy chos­ing to enter the tournament.”
• A girl from either a single-sex or coed school ran­domly assigned to an all-female group is 16 per­cent­age points more likely to choose to enter the tour­na­ment than a girl ran­domly assigned to a coed group, “sug­gest­ing that the envi­ron­ment in which a girl is placed affects whether or not she chooses to compete.”

Dis­cus­sion Points:

• Should we encour­age the adop­tion of single-sex groups for com­pet­i­tive work in coed­u­ca­tional schools?
• How can we encour­age girls in coed­u­ca­tional schools to be more com­pet­i­tive? And should we encour­age these girls to be more competitive.
• To what extent does the sex of their teacher impact upon girls’ deci­sions to com­pete or to take a sub­ject at A Level?

Please sug­gest fur­ther dis­cus­sion points in the com­ments below.