Yesterday saw the launch of the The Sciences 3-18 Curriculum Area Impact Project report in a lively and challenging session at SLF 2012. We were delighted to welcome to the session practitioners, partners, young people and parents as we shared the key messages from the report, and our strategies for taking this forward. Delegates were enthusiastic in joining the debate around the key strengths and aspects for development, talking together and reflecting on the extent to which
- these were concordant with their expectations
- there were any surprises in these
- these apply in their local context.
Delegates were challenged to address the question:
What can you do in your role to
- address the aspects for development
- share the message with the report
- engage with the debate
and to plan next steps.
We have posted the shared outcomes of the discussions at SLF2012, in the comments, which we hope will inspire you to blog and comment too!
Abdullah Ahmed, a young person who attends a Glasgow secondary school, attended the session with his sister Maryam, and his parents, and got the ball rolling on our feedback from children and young people.
Abdullah commented positively on the use of Glow to support some of his subjects. He felt that the ability to access learning, including his own work, at home and in the classroom was really helpful to him. He said this wasn’t something that happened in science subjects at the moment.
Abdullah finds online resources like the Maths Message board where you can post maths challenges and get possible solutions really helpful and would like to be able to use something similar in chemistry and biology.
Abdullah is really keen on STEM subjects and would really like there to be a STEM club at his school. At SLF, he had been talking to the SCDI in the Exhibition about starting up a club and the free kit available to do this, and had information to take back to school to perhaps get this started.
As a family, they were concerned that although the Scottish Government said that young people in the whole of Scotland should receive a broad general education until the end of S3, and were asking why this was not happening in all authorities.
One discussion group talked together about how this report could be used to take forward sciences 3-18. They recognised the need and opportunity to build capacity among professionals to avoid a single person or small number of people in a primary school being “the science specialist”. The group discussed different models for this building capacity from their own contexts. They also discussions the importance of progression of both skills and concepts in sciences – highlighted in the report – along with making science relevant to current issues and developments in society, and tied this in with the discussion around models for building capacity among the profession.
A variety of next steps were suggested and the “key strengths and aspects for development” was seen as a useful tool for starting those discussions in schools.
Sian Neil, EY Development Officer at Education Scotland, intends to look for opportunities to share good early years and early level practice and highlight opportunities for high quality professional learning to the early years community.
Some thought-provoking questions and points were raised by one of the discussion groups at SLF 2012.
What are others’ thoughts?
Primary Science: Should schools be teaching science as a discrete subject or as part of interdisciplinary learning, or both?
Advice is needed on assessing progress and setting standards.
Thanks to all those who participated in the discussion and submitted comments for inclusion on the blog.
In comment 4, you’ll see that a question was raised “Primary Science: should schools be teaching science as a discrete subject or as part of interdisplinary learning, or both?”.
There’s discussion of this issue within the report on pages 16/17. Interdisciplinary learning is one of the four aspects which should be taking into account when planning and designing the curriculum (p4). We focus on positive outcomes for children and young people, and as we have seen such positive outcomes in school using interdisciplinary, discrete or a blended approach, we don’t feel it is appropriate to prescribe how this should be done. Any approach needs to be carefully planned to ensure that there is progression of knowledge and skills. We would like to hear from others about their thoughts on this. Practitioners – how is sciences planned in your local context? Children and young people – how are you learning in the sciences?
Thanks also for the comment re advice on assessing progress and setting standards. Education Scotland is aware of this need, and is currently putting together groups of practitioners and Education Scotland staff to work on this, for all curriculum areas. The first phase of work is underway, with an intention to publish in December 2012. We have various other ways to support practitioners in understand standards, for example STEM Central materials (http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/stemcentral/index.asp) can be used as the basis for discussion to reach a shared understanding of standards. Practitioners can also access NAR for support. What are other practitioners’ thoughts on this? What models are you using within your pre-school centres, schools, clusters, or networks to progress this?