Transition

from Primary to Secondary Education: Are kids loosing their enthusiasm for Science?
Middle Years case study
Rebecca Crook

Describe

Background A teacher at my placement school proposed my Applied curriculum project (ACP). We work with a primary teacher from a local Primary School who feels that a gap in the primary curriculum could be more easily filled by working with us at a high school to developed a mini-curriculum. The teacher in this instance specifically wished us to work on the following 2 AusVELs areas Electrical circuits provide a means of transferring and transforming electricity (ACSSU097) and Energy from a variety of sources can be used to generate electricity (ACSSU219) (Anon n.d.) The 4 lessons were then based around this mini unit. These moved from the students working with magnets, using magnets to generate electricity, to eventually using a variety of renewable sources to generate electricity. The case At the beginning of the 4 lessons the 20 students were divided into 4 groups, which were their groups for the whole block. They had to think of a team name and work collaboratively to complete the tasks. Each group of 5 is then assigned to a Pre Service teacher whom is the scientist helping them with the experiments each week. My group was made up of 4 girls and 1 boy all of whom expressed excitement at being at a High School for the 4 weeks. My group is very inquisitive and are always trying things and are willing to ask questions, make predictions, and take a risk. In the first lesson when they were learning about static electricity one student noticed that the charge could be passed between people and asked the question How many people do we think it will pass through? Without missing a beat another student answered with Why dont we all line up and experiment? They guided the whole process and worked out between themselves the best way to conduct the experiment. I felt I was a facilitator of learning rather than a gatekeeper of knowledge. In the last lesson the students had to bring in homework from home. They had to find materials from home and use these to make blades of a turbine. All 5 of my students had brought something in with them and when questioned about why they had brought what they had they all had a good reason for the choice. These included things like plastic spoons I thought they would catch the wind but were light (Student A 2013) and thin bits of plastic The shape reminded me of the blades we used the other week (Student B). The Primary and secondary students I taught seem to have a very different attitude to science lessons. They seem much more reluctant to take risk and question themselves. For the Who shot Mr Burns Practical one of the first questions before doing the experiment was Who do you think committed the crime? Most of the class struggled to put something down. I had to reassure them that what you think at the beginning of the experiment with no other evidence couldnt be wrong. During the experiment they needed guiding more than the primary students did and were constantly asking if what they doing was right.

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Inform

What does this mean? There are several layers to this case; and each one could involve deeper investigation. Though studies show gender has some effect on Science education. The students at GGC are all female, but also a majority of the teachers of maths and science are also female. Interestingly the majority of students who came from Kingsville were female so gender does not seem to be a major factor in enthusiasm for science in this case. Also another factor I have chosen not to investigate further is the difference between doing science elsewhere and doing it at school. These differences I expect to be significant but as I only observed the year 7s in the classroom I have no direct comparison. Another factor that could be a cause is that Primary uses the International Baccalaureate Primary years Program (IBPYP) to encourage their students to become inquiring learners. This IBPYP does not divide subject up into the traditional subjects like English, Art and Maths but uses a more holistic approach. The work these students are doing with us at GGC fits into the theme of How the world works (IBPYP 2013). The year 7 has started working on an IB curriculum but from my time at the school I saw little evidence that it was implemented, and from talking to my mentor I have been discouraged from attempting to use the IB framework in my next round of teaching. The main factor I believe in this case effects the enthusiasm and desire to participate in science is linked to the transition between Primary and Secondary schooling.

Confront

Why do you think things are they way they are? The transition from Primary to Secondary school has been shown to have many effects on students in the middle years. These effects have been shown to have a greater effect in females than males (Archer et al. 2010). Gender difference in science subjects is not intrinsic in the education system. At the primary school age students interest in science has been shown to be high with no significant difference between the genders (Murphy & Beggs 2005) but this then changes when they reach Secondary education. Several studies have looked at why this change comes about and several have shown that though many students are looking forward to doing science at high school the style of teaching often is not engaging them in the subject. Science at the primary level is often taught in a wide variety of ways. Students have reported they get to play at being a scientist (Anderson 2011) but this play element quickly gets lost in the transition to secondary education. When I discussed using more play based activities in my next round such as more virtual activates, and using gaming strategies I was told that some students would not be able to keep up and that they would

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easily get lost. My mentor does not feel comfortable exploring the more novel ways of enabling students to be scientists. Another key difference between primary and secondary is the implementation of the curriculum. Primary schools often are project based and especially in the IB system interdisciplinary. This enables students to draw on a wide range of skills to complete science-based tasks. While Secondary education strives to be like this often if fails, if a student is not good at note taking and logical tasks often they can feel they get left behind. The use of ICT can change some of the skills needed but it was no well implemented in the school I was placed in. My mentor favours the more traditional chalk and talk method of teaching so the year 7s may be reluctant to try other things as the expectation of a science class is sitting and writing with the odd practical that you then have to write up (which seems to involve little more than copying the method sheet and writing the results) This all puts a lot of power on the shoulders of science teachers in the middle years. A survey by the Royal Society (OPM 2004) shows that 63% of Scientist and Engineers had decided to pursue that career path by the age of 14, with 28% deciding before the age of 11. This means the engagement of primary and secondary students in vital as once these middle years are over engagement becomes much more difficult. Reconstruct What might I do differently? In an ideal world I would like science to be seen as a more interdisciplinary subject, with the content more student driven and the curriculum at year 7 used as a framework but not a strict tick box. I would like students to undergo short projects in areas which cover several disciplines, i.e. Use the AusVELS topic Science understanding influences the development of practices in areas of human activity such as industry, agriculture and marine and terrestrial resource management (Anon n.d.) This could cover the Humanities with maps draw of local industrial sites; English where you produce a range of persuasive writing around your topic and Maths where the student looks at areas of land use or statistics of water use. If I was unable to perform these larger scale projects, just enabling the students to guide their own learning more, and work against the expectation that there is one right answer. Open-ended projects where there is no right answer and the student is working to inform many people not just themselves may be beneficial. I would also use examples in my teaching of young people who have worked on these open ended questions and have discovered something real. A good example of this is Eesha Khare, who invented a super capacitor that could be used to quickly recharge mobile phones in 20 seconds (Khare 2013)

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I would like to continue the work I am currently doing with Primary Schools once I am working within a school. I believe these days teacher high school teachers a lot about how we can teach science and what expectations we should/shouldnt have of young people.

References Anderson, L., 2011. FROM PRIMARY TO SECONDARY. Mathematics teaching, 221(March), pp.1316. Anon, AusVELS - Science - Curriculum. Available at: http://ausvels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Science/Curriculum/F-10#level=6 [Accessed May 24, 2013]. Archer, L. et al., 2010. Doing science versus being a scientist: Examining 10/11-year-old schoolchildrens constructions of science through the lens of identity. Science Education, 94(4), pp.617639. Available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/sce.20399 [Accessed May 22, 2013]. Khare, E., 2013. Design and Synthesis of Hydrogenated TiO2-Polyaniline Nanorods for Flexible High-Performance Supercapacitors, Murphy, C. & Beggs, J., 2005. Primary science in the UK: A scoping study, Available at: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@msh_ped a/documents/web_document/wtx026636.pdf [Accessed May 25, 2013]. OPM, 2004. Taking a Leading Role Scientists survey,

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