Abstract

This project looks at the ability of young adolescents at lower secondary level torecognise experiments as ways of asking questions in scientific investigations. Manyscience curricula emphasise the need for pupils to develop skills necessary forexperimenting, like planning and designing experiments for investigations, deciding onwhich variables to manipulate during the experiment, recognising a critical piece ofinformation which could be used to plan and design a critical experiment. A number ofquestions based on the available literature and theoretical evidence were raised. Thesequestions formed the basis for the study:(1) Do pupils at lower secondary level appreciate the inclusion of experiments inscience learning?(2) Can these pupils identify a critical piece of information necessary forproviding a credible solution to a problem?(3) Do lower secondary level pupils have the ability to conceptualise or seeexperiments as ways of asking critical questions in scientific investigations?( 4) Can the development of the experimenting skill in those pupils at lowersecondary level who have not yet developed it be accelerated throughappropriate teaching?(5) Can lower secondary pupils from completely different teaching and culturalbackgrounds demonstrate similar performances in terms of seeing theexperiment as a way of asking critical questions in scientific investigations?To answer these questions a three stage investigation was used. Each stage was called anexperiment. For the entire investigation, a total of 1964 pupils were used from Botswana[junior (lower) secondary schools] and Scotland [lower secondary schools]. A card gamecalled Eloosis, questionnaires/tests, teaching units and interviews were employed atdifferent stages of the investigations. The teaching units and Eloosis were used to helppupils accelerate the development of the ability to recognise critical pieces of informationfor critical experiments in scientific investigations where possible. Thequestionnaires/tests were designed to examine evidence of the development of this abilityskills. Interviews were meant to solicit more information from pupils regarding the abilityof the pupils to conceptualise the place and nature of experimentation in scientificenquiry. However, Scotland pupils and one sample of the Botswana pupils did notparticipate in the use of teaching units. The data collect from the Scotland pupils wasprimarily used to establish the wider acceptance of the results obtained from theBotswana group.From the results obtained from this study, it was clear that pupils from differenteducational and cultural settings equally appreciated the inclusion of experimental work intheir science activities. However, their perceptions of its place and purpose differed fromthose of the curriculum planners. The evidence from the data analysis suggested that theability to see experiments as ways of asking questions in scientific investigations issignificantly developmental and cannot be homogeneously accelerated. The result appearsto be true for all pupils at this age range regardless of their educational and culturalbackground. There was also a general lack of the ability to identify a critical piece ofinformation which, in the opinion of this project is related to the ability to recognisecritical experiments for working out solutions to scientific problems. However, it was notpossible to gain much insight into the extent to which the teaching units and Eloosis,when used over a longer period of time, could impact on the development of theexperimental skills. The reason for this lies within the restrictions on time and theWillingness of the schools to allow such a prolonged access to their pupils.It also emerged from the interview results that most pupils, in their responses, confusedexperimenting with practical work. This finding explains why a significantly highernumber of the pupils indicated that what they liked most about their science lessons wereexperiments.