Trust Projects

Primary Science In the New Curriculum - Queen's University and St Mary's University College, Belfast (Innovative Project)

Trust Projects - The Graduate School of Education, Queen's University of Belfast and St Mary's University College, Belfast.

Supporting the implementation of science within the revised Northern Ireland primary curriculum through professional development

The unique feature of this project is that e-conferencing will be used to support student/classroom teacher teams in geographically distant schools as they implement the revised primary curriculum for science in Northern Ireland. The teams will focus on the development of children's expertise in scientific investigation, particularly their thinking skills.

The project will facilitate science professional development during the pilot phase of the introduction of the new curriculum (2003-4). The current nine-subject curriculum will be collapsed into five areas. Science and technology will be combined with geography and history in an area called The World Around Us . There is reduced prescription for teachers to cover content and teachers are given new flexibility in what they teach.

The project will offer an intensive professional development workshop programme for teachers and science specialist student teachers. This will be supported by follow-up work in schools by each teacher-student team who will trial and evaluate resources they have produced during the workshops The follow up phase will take place during the students' school placement. Since students are normally placed in their home towns, they will be geographically widespread. The project ensures that participant schools will have the opportunity to collaborate via computer conferencing. Teachers, students and children will be able to share experiences, ideas and resources using this facility. This work will be facilitated via e-conferencing between teachers, students and children. The final phase of the project will take place after the student placements and will involve whole school development to address the teaching of science in the revised primary curriculum. Formative and summative evaluation of the immediate and longer-term impacts of the programme including the use of specific evaluation/research methodologies such as; classroom observations, teacher and student teacher personal reflection and interviews of relevant personnel will take place.

Aims

The aims of the proposed project are to:

  • Enable teachers, students and children to use ICT to enhance their science communication skills
  • Improve and student confidence in teaching science and their knowledge of science and science pedagogy in relation to the curriculum changes
  • Improve pupils' achievement, experience and enjoyment of science.

To address these aims the objectives for the project are to:

  • Facilitate e-conferencing between teachers, students and children so that they can use ICT to enhance their science communication skills.
  • Enable collaboration between primary teachers and student teachers in addressing the issues arising out of the proposed changes to the primary curriculum.
  • Develop exemplars of content that might be covered in KS 1 & KS 2 which will support the teaching of science in the new curriculum.
  • Promote personal and interpersonal skills through science teaching.
  • Promote thinking skills and creativity through science teaching.
  • Provide evaluative reports on the short and longer-term impacts of the programme

Programme

The project will be carried out over a period of 12 months from September 2003 to August 2004.

It will involve the following personnel:

  • Primary teachers from 12 schools throughout Northern Ireland
  • Science specialist student teachers (BEd year 3)
  • Science teacher educators (university and university college)
  • Science advisers (education and library boards, ELBs)
  • Council for Curriculum Examinations and Assessment (CEA)
  • Education Officers from voluntary sector organisations

Workshops

Workshop Series 1:

Using ICT in primary science and technology

  • E-conferencing and how it can be used to support primary science
  • Pixie - a control technology tool which can be used to enhance children's science learning throughout the primary school
  • Black Cat - this is the software that is available in all Northern Ireland primary schools to support learning in various areas. Participants will have the opportunity to learn more about the potential of using Black Cat in their science teaching. They will explore the software in groups in relation to a variety of science activities.
  • The Fight Experience - an interactive CD-ROM produced by Bombardier, also available in all primary schools which demonstrates how ingenious applications of technology over the past 100 years have allowed people to design, build and fly aircraft.

Technology and Tools

  • Safe use of materials and equipment e.g. sawing and glue gun skills
  • Simple safe procedures to help children/encourage them to develop thinking skills solve problems
  • The importance of instructions and having all materials and equipment prepared and ready
  • How to simply make a propelled car using different materials
  • Bridge making, encouraging more ideas to construct something rather than step by step instructions
  • Rigid structures -building spaghetti and marshmallow tower
  • Using technology in the area of movement and mechanisms ( cow jumped over the moon activity)
  • Use of syringes in pneumatics
  • Planning, design drawing, questioning, Evaluation of skills
  • Lego Technic

Additional

E-conferencing

This is a new and innovative aspect of the project which is being introduced because the schools involved are widely spread geographically and students and teachers need to be able to continue collaborating after the workshops and during their school placement.

Following an introduction, demonstration and hands-on activity session on the use of e-conferencing for science on Workshop Series 1, participant teachers will collaboratively, using e-conferencing, plan and carry out the 'Hands Up for Science' activity, which has been developed by the project team. For this, children (or the teacher) enter either 'R' or 'L' into a prepared database to indicate which hand they used for the following tasks: writing their name and throwing a tennis ball into a box (for 'handedness); kicking a tennis ball and hopping on one leg (for 'footedness'); identifying a quiet sound in a box ('earedness') and looking at a friend through a cardboard tube ('eyedness'). Children can obtain immediate feedback as to how their data fed into the total set and an update on the analysis.

This activity will be evaluated during Workshop Series 2 On the strength of what has been learned from this evaluation, participants will assist in designing and carrying out further 'e-science' activities between Workshop Series 2 and 4.

Evaluation Strategy

The work will be evaluated formatively and summatively. Evaluation methodology will include:

  • Surveys of children, primary teachers and student teachers
  • Focus group discussions and interviews
  • Participant observation during placements
  • Workshop evaluations
  • School development programme reports

Contact

Project leader: Dr Collette Murphy

Head of External Relations and Publicity, Graduate School of Education, Queen's University, Belfast

Update

June 2002 The SSIPS Project started in September 2001 and aims to improve primary confidence and expertise in teaching science and technology.

The project comprised three phases:

Phase 1 - student placements in schools for science and technology teaching (half a day per week for ten weeks)

Phase 2 - focussed science workshops

Phase 3 - school development

Phases 1 and 2 are now complete and phase 3 is underway. We have collected evidence from confidence audits, teacher and student journals, individual interviews and participant observation.

So far we can report the following:

  • participant teachers have gained a lot more confidence in carrying out science and technology investigations. They have worked with students in the planning and teaching of a range of investigations
  • some teachers, as a result of their increased confidence, have been successful in obtaining Science Year grants for their schools
  • the students have gained a wealth of valuable experience in teaching science and technology. They have greatly enhanced their classroom management skills with the support of the classroom teachers
  • students commented on their increased level of confidence as they embarked on their full-time school experience placement as a result of their participation in the project
  • children enjoyed the investigative approach to science which was promoted by both participant teachers and students
  • children enjoyed more individual attention in science lessons because of the extra 'teacher' in class
  • one head teacher has changed the school approach to student placements as a result of participation in this project. She has seen the value of encouraging more joint planning by students and classroom teachers both before and during the placement
  • one school, which is a recent amalgamation of a boys' and a girls' school, has developed a 'culture of science' since the project started. The participant teachers have produced schemes of work for the year groups involved. Next year the whole school science scheme will be completed.

Teachers working with us on the project realised the value of a team teaching approach, especially for investigative science. They felt that it allowed more quality time working with small groups of children. Team teaching also made it easier to assess what the children had learned through individual questioning. One teacher stated, "This is the way forward to teach science".

Non-participant schools can benefit from this project in many ways, for example:

  • we will be producing subject video material showing examples of good investigative primary science teaching in practice
  • we will also produce video material illustrating team teaching between classroom and student teachers to enhance the children's science experience
  • subject materials from the science teacher workshops will be made available on the AZSTT Website. These will include ideas for investigative science teaching with both KS1 and KS2 children in the following areas:
  • Light
  • Sound
  • Living things
  • Forces
  • Technology

There is also advice on using ICT in science teaching and whole-school planning for science.

We will publish guidelines for all schools and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) who may wish to adopt this approach to initial teacher education. The approach involves specialist science student teachers carrying out a science-focused placement in school (in our project the placement is ½ day per week for about 10 weeks) working alongside a classroom teacher in the planning and teaching of investigative science as part of their methods course. Our results show that this scheme has provided enormous benefits for schools, students and children, as well as enhancing the links and partnerships between schools and HEIs.