Children's questions: their place in primary science education

Abstract

This study addressed four problems identified in primary science education in New Zealand. (i) Most primary teachers lacked confidence in science and therefore avoided teaching the subject as much as possible. (ii) Primary science teaching that took place tended to be superficial, and inconsistent with the processes of scientific endeavour. (iii) Children seldom appreciated the purposes of the experiences and tasks in which teachers engaged them. (iv) Children frequently constructed ideas that were unintended and unrecognised by their teachers. The study consisted of a series of relatively small-scale, action research investigations carried out in selected primary schools and classrooms in two regions of New Zealand. These explored the possibility of developing a viable alternative approach to primary science education that might overcome the difficulties identified. Recent advances in both the philosophy of science, and the psychology of learning (for example constructivist learning theory), suggested that children’s own questions might provide a suitable basis for such an alternative. The study therefore built upon (i) three former primary science programmes that had children’s questions as a central focus, namely Nuffield Junior Science, Science 5/13 and Elementary School Science, and (ii) the experimental study by Symington (1980) in Melbourne which tested several assumptions relating to the use of children’s questions in primary science programmes. There were four main phases to the study: (i) determining whether questions could be elicited readily from New Zealand primary school children in science classrooms, (ii) constructing a viable alternative teaching approach incorporating children’s questions, (iii) investigating the ability of a small but representative sample of teachers to adopt the alternative approach as intended by the developers, and (iv) exploring the views of children and teachers who had experienced the alternative teaching approach. Teaching and observations in classrooms, together with both formal and informal interviews of teachers and children, constituted the main methodology used. The major outcomes of the study were: (i) A sample of New Zealand primary school children were found to be able to generate a wealth of questions in school about natural and technological phenomena if given the opportunity and encouragement. (ii) With judicious selection, their questions could be incorporated into a viable, structured, but flexible alternative teaching approach that largely overcame the problems identified. This approach was termed an ‘interactive’ teaching approach to emphasise the interactive and transactional nature of the learning and teaching that occurred in primary science classrooms when the approach was used. (iii) Since the approach differed markedly in its perspective on science, learning, and teaching from that held by most teachers, few could adopt it as intended by the developers without the experience of a special inservice programme designed to be congruent with the principles of the interactive approach. (iv) When children experienced the interactive approach they were found to have far greater ownership of the learning involved than previously, while their teachers experienced considerable relief in feeling they no longer had to be ‘experts’ in science themselves, together with a sense of fascination with the world of children’s ideas and skills which was opened up to them.