Classroom Research in Science

Written by Dawn Heeley-King

The Sciencewrite Program was literacy intervention set up in order to enable students to better access Science by improving their literacy skills, this was carried out over a period of six weeks, by Dawn Heeley-King, this involved one class of students at Acklam Grange School. The aim of this project was to discover if teaching literacy implicitly in Science lessons could raise the level of understanding in students.  For the majority of students in this group this seemed to be the case. However, she found one interesting point, which was that the students this helped the most were generally the ones who appeared to have greater understanding of Science before the start of this project. This could be down to the fact that confidence grows as students make progress, which enables them to improve their motivation and therefore their performance (Hattie, 2012, p.51).

From carrying out this piece of research, Dawn was also intrigued to find that those who had gained most benefit from this project were generally boys.  This may have been down to the fact that boys benefit from having clear objectives to work towards, or that concept-mapping skills were used, along with group discussion. It could be argued that this was due to boys having a relatively short attention span, hence enjoying short term tasks where they were able to engage with other members of the group (Bleach, 2000, p.34).  It may also have been due to most of them working in mixed gender groups when involved in discussion work, as this enables students to broaden their thinking and become more tolerant of others’ views (Bleach, 2000, p.117).

This caused Dawn to think about why boys appeared to gain a better understanding of scientific concepts during the research period and therefore achieved higher marks in the July test. She also thought that it was down to the way she taught, but on studying further research on this subject, she has learned that it was down to the specific techniques used in the delivery of the Sciencewrite program and the consistent use of strategies used in English lessons in the school

From carrying out this research Dawn has learned, that boys learn best when given clear objectives to work towards.  Therefore, having literacy objectives given at the start of the lesson had helped the boys focus on attaining this goal, which in turn had an impact on the engagement of the group.  However, she also learned that engagement did not prove that learning was taking place (Hattie, 2009, p.49).  Next time she will request that a member of the working party attend the group and observe to ensure that learning is taking place.

Dawn also felt that the girls had also benefitted from utilising the same strategies that were used in English and having transparent objectives at the start of the lesson, hence the slightly significant effect size shown in their results (Hattie, 2012, p.51).

From both the focus group and data she learned that the main strategy which enabled all students to learn during the Sciencewrite program was the learning wall as it enabled students to gather their thoughts, display knowledge in both words and pictures and show progression throughout the topic. This could have been due to the fact that students learn best from a combination of words and pictures according to (Hattie & Yates, 2014, p.115).

It has also taught her that not only are boys and girls biologically different, they also need teaching methods which suit them, in order for them to learn. Girls are more focused and conscientious about their work, whereas boys have an air of confidence about them which at times is overstated. Boys think that they are bright but use confidence to cover for their weaknesses.  If boys have poor results they put it down to having made mistakes (Bleach, 2000, p.12).

Dawn also learned that mixed ability and mixed gender work best during class discussion, as there is evidence to show that these groups improve the learning of those involved in them (Bleach, 2000, p.117). So these will be adopted in future lessons, in order to develop interpersonal skills and build respect for the opposite sex.

Dawn has also learned not to take data at face value, but to delve deeper into the reasons why some candidates produce losses rather than gains. It was an important part of this research that it was first broken down into gender groups, otherwise she may never have realised the impact of the Sciencewrite program on the boys in the group.  When analysing the data further she noticed patterns had occurred as five students had not answered questions labelled level 6 onwards, which led to anomalies occurring in the results. Hence, she was able to remove the anomalous results from the final data set.  From now on she will ensure that all tests do not have questions specifically labelled with levels, so that students are not discouraged from answering them.

As this was such a small scale study the findings of this research project could not be generalised, as its findings were only applicable to this group. However, it did highlight methods which the Science department have now taken on board for use with students at Key Stage Three.

As a result of this research, she has learned that teaching literacy explicitly in Science lessons has had an overall positive impact on the designated group.  This, the students in the focus group felt, was due to the fact that they were taught the meanings of subject specific words or were taught how to access definitions or pertinent background information independently. They felt that this better enabled them to understand the terminology used by the teacher and made science more accessible.

Written by Dawn Heeley-King