Interesting Chris. Practical work being used as a way of managing behaviour, is an interesting use of practical work. I have always had the view that there is disciplinary knowledge linked to AO3, which requires pupils to have a set of skills which answer these types of questions. Secondly, there is a link I have attached on slow practical's which may be useful:
Thanks Darren, and I think ‘interesting’ is right. The study cited showed that some teachers used it as a reward or a ‘carrot’. And, of course, there are times practical is limited by a class’s behaviour. All worrying, given that we think practical work is an entitlement of students’ science education.
On AO3: there’s certainly disciplinary knowledge sitting behind those questions. The issue? It’s the only bit we count. We used to assess practical skills directly and it fed into grades; now it doesn’t. And what we stop assessing directly has a tendency to stop being prioritised. You can get full marks on a question about a method you couldn’t do in practice.
Thanks for the link – I’ve used Adam’s slow practical myself this year. As a way of getting some classes through a complex practical, it’s great. My worry is when to withdraw the scaffold. When I find myself doing it with A Level groups, I begin to think, ‘is this the best prep for a university lab?’
Completely on board with all of this Chris, great to read a piece delving into your subject expertise as well.
I found it quite striking how steady the absolute engagement declines alongside the relative engagement increasing as the school years progress. I wonder if this phenomenon would be observed in other subjects as well? Perhaps this trend is telling of any active hands-on practice that children get the opportunity to partake in; I wonder if this graph suggests a decline in children's subject interest overtime generally speaking as well, although I'm cautious about overgeneralising based on the one data set, as you mentioned.
Glad you cited Young in this discussion, I'm finding his work more and more relevant lately and a lot of it ties in nicely with your thinking here. I can see how the apparent 'out of reach' applicability of certain school knowledge can be demotivating for some children, but I believe this is precisely what Young is a big advocate of; the exposure to knowledge that their local experiences may not necessarily provide. But like you say, if the children understand the purpose behind these scientific facts and if they know why they matter, that makes the knowledge a lot less out of reach and a lot more motivating.
Thanks Sam, it’s always great to get your take, given your experience of the range of practice out there.
For the Abrahams comparison of ‘absolute’ versus ‘relative’ liking, he split all responses from each year group into either pile. Most students did say they liked practical work – what changed was the split of responses. Relative liking didn’t so much rise as become a larger share of the responses as absolute liking fell.
My gut feeling is that the change probably does mirror both what’s going on in other subjects, and a general interest decline. I’m most familiar with the data for science, where other sources corroborate the interest decline, e.g. https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/science-education-tracker/science-education-tracker-2023.pdf, but the decline shows up in English too, so some of it looks general rather than science-specific.
Young’s writing is fascinating – he started out from a critical perspective, writing about the curriculum as a form of social control, before switching to the powerful knowledge perspective. I agree school should expose children to the knowledge they wouldn’t otherwise meet – my question is how effective the current system is for a lot of students.
Yes, I would suspect the trend is fairly general as well. It would be surprising if the declining interest was unique to science, particularly given how popular the subject remains overall and the number of students who still pursue it in further and higher education. Thanks for correcting my understanding of Abraham's distinction between absolute and relative liking too. I think it was more accurate to describe it as a proportional increase relative to the absolute responses.
I've been interested in looking into Young's perspective shift that you're describing, and I share your question about how effectively the current system actually delivers that promise to all students. James Mannion has had some very insightful discussions with Young on precisely this topic that I'm always keen to revisit.
I agree about interest trends across subjects, and I suspect those of science are mirrored elsewhere. Uptake of science is high at A level and university, although I think some of this is driven by perceived utility over e.g. arts and humanities subjects too.
Both ‘early’ and ‘late’ Michael Young are interesting, and I think both contain a degree of truth. I suppose his early work aims to be descriptive and explain what schools actually do (from a particular perspective) and the later normative (i.e. what they should be for). I’ll be interested in reading what James Mannion wrote on this, thanks Sam!
Thanks for this – too often we assume students can see that curriculum knowledge maps neatly onto the real world. Unless we make that link explicit, though, it stays abstract to them.
Interesting Chris. Practical work being used as a way of managing behaviour, is an interesting use of practical work. I have always had the view that there is disciplinary knowledge linked to AO3, which requires pupils to have a set of skills which answer these types of questions. Secondly, there is a link I have attached on slow practical's which may be useful:
https://achemicalorthodoxy.co.uk/2018/12/06/the-slow-practical/
Thanks Darren, and I think ‘interesting’ is right. The study cited showed that some teachers used it as a reward or a ‘carrot’. And, of course, there are times practical is limited by a class’s behaviour. All worrying, given that we think practical work is an entitlement of students’ science education.
On AO3: there’s certainly disciplinary knowledge sitting behind those questions. The issue? It’s the only bit we count. We used to assess practical skills directly and it fed into grades; now it doesn’t. And what we stop assessing directly has a tendency to stop being prioritised. You can get full marks on a question about a method you couldn’t do in practice.
Thanks for the link – I’ve used Adam’s slow practical myself this year. As a way of getting some classes through a complex practical, it’s great. My worry is when to withdraw the scaffold. When I find myself doing it with A Level groups, I begin to think, ‘is this the best prep for a university lab?’
Completely on board with all of this Chris, great to read a piece delving into your subject expertise as well.
I found it quite striking how steady the absolute engagement declines alongside the relative engagement increasing as the school years progress. I wonder if this phenomenon would be observed in other subjects as well? Perhaps this trend is telling of any active hands-on practice that children get the opportunity to partake in; I wonder if this graph suggests a decline in children's subject interest overtime generally speaking as well, although I'm cautious about overgeneralising based on the one data set, as you mentioned.
Glad you cited Young in this discussion, I'm finding his work more and more relevant lately and a lot of it ties in nicely with your thinking here. I can see how the apparent 'out of reach' applicability of certain school knowledge can be demotivating for some children, but I believe this is precisely what Young is a big advocate of; the exposure to knowledge that their local experiences may not necessarily provide. But like you say, if the children understand the purpose behind these scientific facts and if they know why they matter, that makes the knowledge a lot less out of reach and a lot more motivating.
Thanks Sam, it’s always great to get your take, given your experience of the range of practice out there.
For the Abrahams comparison of ‘absolute’ versus ‘relative’ liking, he split all responses from each year group into either pile. Most students did say they liked practical work – what changed was the split of responses. Relative liking didn’t so much rise as become a larger share of the responses as absolute liking fell.
My gut feeling is that the change probably does mirror both what’s going on in other subjects, and a general interest decline. I’m most familiar with the data for science, where other sources corroborate the interest decline, e.g. https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/science-education-tracker/science-education-tracker-2023.pdf, but the decline shows up in English too, so some of it looks general rather than science-specific.
Young’s writing is fascinating – he started out from a critical perspective, writing about the curriculum as a form of social control, before switching to the powerful knowledge perspective. I agree school should expose children to the knowledge they wouldn’t otherwise meet – my question is how effective the current system is for a lot of students.
Yes, I would suspect the trend is fairly general as well. It would be surprising if the declining interest was unique to science, particularly given how popular the subject remains overall and the number of students who still pursue it in further and higher education. Thanks for correcting my understanding of Abraham's distinction between absolute and relative liking too. I think it was more accurate to describe it as a proportional increase relative to the absolute responses.
I've been interested in looking into Young's perspective shift that you're describing, and I share your question about how effectively the current system actually delivers that promise to all students. James Mannion has had some very insightful discussions with Young on precisely this topic that I'm always keen to revisit.
I agree about interest trends across subjects, and I suspect those of science are mirrored elsewhere. Uptake of science is high at A level and university, although I think some of this is driven by perceived utility over e.g. arts and humanities subjects too.
Both ‘early’ and ‘late’ Michael Young are interesting, and I think both contain a degree of truth. I suppose his early work aims to be descriptive and explain what schools actually do (from a particular perspective) and the later normative (i.e. what they should be for). I’ll be interested in reading what James Mannion wrote on this, thanks Sam!
Your comment on ability to use info to accurately predict a decent gauge for true learning stood out to me.
Thanks for this – too often we assume students can see that curriculum knowledge maps neatly onto the real world. Unless we make that link explicit, though, it stays abstract to them.
Your comment on ability to use info to accurately predict as a decent gauge for true learning stood out to me.