What practical assessment?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a high stakes accountability system will tend to prevent accurate teacher assessment.  Or at least, that is what Ofqual and the exam boards would like us believe.

Having talked to many teachers about controlled assessment (and having been involved in supervising coursework) I think that actually Ofqual and the exams boards are probably correct.  Current controlled assessment measures very little of a student's ability to skillfully carry out practical work, and is overly focussed on one (or at most two) practical experiences.  The time taken to ensure that the whole class completes the appropriate work, with the appropriate supervision eats into the time that could be used to teach content, or do other practical work.  (And involves numerous catch-up sessions after school and during holidays if my child's experience of year 11 science coursework is anything to go by). 

So Ofqual have, at one fell swoop, removed teacher assessed practical work from A-levels from 2015.  Instead, students will be expected to develop 12 practical skill sets through carrying out a minimum of 12 named practicals.  The skills are the same for all exam boards, but they are free to choose their own practicals.  The skills are given in appendix 5c of the subject criteria, but until the draft specifications are published (towards the end of June) we won't know what the practicals are.

Helen Rogerson published a blog outlining her view on the loss of practical assessment and I think that she makes a very good point. 

But...

What if the removal of examined practical assessment means that teachers will stop doing practical work?  If we don't assess practical work, then even though teachers think that it is educationally desirable, they might stop doing it.  Senior leaders might decide that if practical work isn't assessed then why spend large part amounts of money on science equipment and consumables?

This appears to be the view of the Wellcome trust, various university academics and SCORE.  

Again, I can see why they are worried.  It may be that practical science becomes limited to the 12 named practicals in the specs - much like the teaching of English literature appears to be limited to the books named in the new GCSE specs.  Teachers will plan for, and teach, only the practicals that they have to provide evidence of the students carrying out.  On the other hand, anecdotal evidence from teachers who have switched from GCSE sciences to iGCSE sciences have said that the removal of controlled assessment work has led to an increase in the amount of practical work that they do.

Before we can start to discuss the effect of the changes to practical work it would be helpful to know what practical work A-level students currently do.  Michael Gove and Ofqual have referred to reports of Universities complaining that A-levels don’t prepare students well enough for university.  It may be that, in some schools, practical work has already reduced to only that required to complete the controlled assessment part of the course.

In schools like that, it may be that having to do 12 practicals over the space of 2 years might actually be an improvement.

Without data though, we just don’t know.

To that end, I am intending to carry out some preliminary research into what practical work in science (and particularly physics) is currently planned and carried out at A-level in a number of local educational establishments.  I’m hoping that I will be able to revisit the schools as the changes to A-levels are made and see how they are responding to the new structure.

Watch this space!

Working Scientifically

Recently I've been talking with secondary school teachers about the quality of science enquiry that can take place in primary classrooms. I've become more aware of what goes on in primary classrooms because I've been working on a course for primary science specialists.  I have developed sessions on physics subject knowledge (up to KS3), and with colleagues have linked this to activities that take place in the primary classroom.

In the previous national curriculum, science enquiry became a strong focal point in primary classrooms, with a lot of good practice being developed.  The Primary Science Quality Mark (PSQM) and also the Primary Science Teaching Trust have highlighted what good primary science can look like. 

In the new National curriculum, scientific enquiry has been subsumed into 'working scientifically'.

‘Working scientifically’ specifies the understanding of the nature, processes and methods of science for each year group. It should not be taught as a separate strand. These types of scientific enquiry should include: observing over time; pattern seeking; identifying, classifying and grouping; comparative and fair testing (controlled investigations); and researching using secondary sources. Pupils should seek answers to questions through collecting, analysing and presenting data.

pg 3, Science Programme of Study, 2014

I know that a lot of work was done by the primary science community, including the ASE, to ensure that the definition of science enquiry in the new NC was not limited to 'fair tests', but included a range of different ways of doing science.  If you are interested in looking at these ideas in more detail then the ASE publish a book called 'It's not fair...or is it' which is worth a read.

Looking further through the programmes of study, working scientifically is defined in more details for each of the key stages.  So in lower KS2 (years 3 and 4) we find that children  "... should draw simple conclusions and use some scientific language, first, to talk about and, later, to write about what they have found out."  In upper KS2 (years 5 and 6) children "... should select the most appropriate ways to answer science questions using different types of scientific enquiry… Pupils should draw conclusions based on their data and observations, use evidence to justify their ideas, and use their scientific knowledge and understanding to explain their findings."

In good primary science lessons this happens.  Children choosing their own equipment, devising a method, thinking about controlling variables, taking measurements and drawing conclusions from their experiments. 

If you haven't had chance to visit a primary science lesson recently (or at all), I would recommend that you try to do so - especially if you have a PSQM primary school near you.  You might be surprised by what you see.

And then the children enter secondary school, and often this level of independence disappears.

Looking at the statement about what children should be doing in years 5 and 6, many secondary teachers that I have been working with have been struck by the similarity in description between the new primary national curriculum and the marking descriptors for controlled assessment.  

That set me wondering if there were some interesting ideas for enquiries that could also be used as part of the preparation, or even as investigations, for controlled assessment.

A few years ago (when it was still coursework) I was involved in moderating for an exam board.  At the moderation training, we were told to expect to see a wide variety of different investigations.  In reality, I saw a very narrow range of experiments: resistance of a wire, osmosis using potato chips, and the thiosulfate cross.

On one of my courses (small advert!), I do a session on physics enquiry, where we look at different investigations that students could carry out and I thought that perhaps this could be developed further to reflect the changes to the national curriculum from 'How science works' to 'Working scientifically'.  I also wanted to incorporate some of the skills that I'd seen in primary science.

It's a physics course, so I asked my physics minded twitter followers if they had any good examples of experiments used for controlled assessment tasks or investigations that went beyond the ubiquitous resistance of a wire.  

I wanted examples where students would have more freedom about what they might investigate, where the science was perhaps not straightforward. 

Some of the suggestions were of quite straightforward experiments, but I could see that it might be possible for students to design their own method, choose suitable equipment and take data that could be interpreted using their GCSE science knowledge (with perhaps a bit of stretch).

Suggestions given included:

• Ray box and several thermometers with bulbs painted different colours to investigate heat absorption
• Rolling ballbearings down curtain tracks to measure efficiency
• Hookes Law with springs or plastic bags (or use strawberry laces to examine creep)
• Different ways to measure g
• Dropping cupcake cases or parachutes
• 2 beakers of hot water wrapped in paper towels and one is kept wet to investigate evaporation (video of a similar experiment but with bottles and a towel)
• Looking at how power changes with time, doing step-ups on and off benches
• Voltaic piles
• Conduction rods
• Windmills -
• Solar panels

These last two were from the Gatsby SEP Innovations in Practical work series.  They produced a series of booklets on a variety of different topics which included a lot of practical work and also worked with Mindsets online to develop equipment that can be used in science investigations.  The booklets are all available as downloadable PDFs .

With the eventual demise of controlled assessment, I hope that teachers will be able to include a wider variety of practical work.  But as you can see, there is quite a lot of practical work that can be done which will fit into the controlled assessment model - especially if that includes an investigation.