THE SKILLS LEARNERS NEED TO LEARN SCIENCE : PROCESS SKILLS

Hellen Ward

DEVELOPING LEARNERS’ PROCESS SKILLS

Learners’ process skills are limited and unsystematic and are characterized by trial and error exploration.

 The simpler skills involve observing, identifying, classifying , questioning and performing simple
test , but are fundamental to the development of more advanced skills such as planning,
predicting and data interpretation.

Gott and Duggan characterise procedural understanding as ‘the thinking behind the doing’. This
thinking is the building block for understanding the notion of evidence.

 Science is built on the idea of cause and effect. This process begins in the Early Years with a focus
on how things are either the same or different as a result of carrying out simple tests.

Millar and driver (1987) maintain that the process approach should be seen as the means by which
science concepts are learned, and not that they are a buy-product of learning science; and Klahr and
Simon (1999) encouraged the specific teaching of process skills to primary-aged learners.

Observation is a basic skill that links many of the other identified processes, often leading into and
enhancing the quality of other process skills.

QUESTIONING AND QUESTION-RAISING

It is widely accepted that learners bring previous knowledge to a new situation and this form the basis
upon which to extend their understanding (Driver et. Al., 1985).

Questioning, observation and simple testing are key aspects in developing learners’ understanding of
the world .

Ways to encourage learners to question

1. Question box –this method help show the learners’ that their questions are important and
valued and that they can be effectively linked into classroom work.
2. Problem corner allows learner to pursue questions in their free time.
3. Question board – Strategy that encourages the involvement of learners.
4. The KWHL Grid (K- what I know?, W- what I want to know, H- how I will find out, L – what I have
learned) – It facilitates learners raising question at the start of a unit of work.

 The maintaining curiosity report indicates that curriculum approaches that focus on questions
set up:
“ a climate of inquiry at start of the topic by asking pupils what they want to find out. That approach
particularly effective for science, because it allows teacher to set up practical investigations to answer
questions that pupil have raised, providing a motivating purpose and context for learning (HMI,
2013 :44)”

 Time for science in the primary curriculum has become squeezed in the recent years and
Tomorrow’s world ( CBI, 2015) suggested that ‘unless science is exciting, interesting and
challenging in primary school, the pipeline will clog long before secondary level’, and that 53% of
the primary teachers they questioned thought that science was less of a priority in the primary
school curriculum over the last 5 years.

GLOBAL QUESTIONS

Teachers can help to scaffold learning related to investigative work by providing a “global questions” at
the starting point. This enables learner to begin to identify variables and offers a way whereby they can
generate a range of appropriate questions within an investigative work.

 Modelling allows learner to develop their skills further than if they were unaided; however, the
degree of support should be reduced over time.
 Learners should be provided with opportunities to practice their newly developed skills, i.e.
given the opportunity to generate new questions using the same global questions but with
different variables.

VARIABLE IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTION

Variables are also called ‘factors’. Those that can be changed termed the independent variables while
those that can be observed and or measured are called dependent variables.

 Highlighting the different variables for changing and measuring using different colored ‘post-it’
notes, one color for the variables that can be changes and another color for those that can be
measured, help the learner to identify and recognize these different features.

PREDICTING

Prediction is commonly practiced in most primary classrooms. In fact, this could be seen as one of the
key outcomes of the national curriculums impact on practice at key stages 1 and 2.

 Many lessons started with the question “what do you think will happen?”, before any
equipment is used or any activity that is undertaken.
 While prediction is important skill, perhaps this emphasis or overemphasis should be evaluated.
 Franchesca Happe, one of the acclaim scientists, when asked what she would do if her
experiment is not worked, she stated “think about why it didn’t work, every finding tells you
something if you can think about it laterally. It is important here to note that science develops
 through things that do not work as much as through those that do and that this is true also of
how learners’ understanding of science develops.

EQUIPMENT SELECTION AND USE

In the early years of primary education, learners are often expected to use equipment provided for them
by their teacher and only later are they required to select their own. Learners need to be shown
particular pieces of equipment and need to be taught explicitly how to use them.

 While it is common practice in mathematics for time to be spent on teaching learners how to use
equipment by employing a range of approaches, in science, equipment is often introduced
within as part of an activity.
 It is better for scientific equipment to be introduced to the learners and that this should be the
focus of the learning intention within an illustrative activity. This approach will not only lead to
learners making informed choices about the equipment to use in an activity, but will enable
them to use the equipment correctly and make more accurate measurements.
 It is crucial that before learners are asked to make and record any measurements, they have
been introduced to the relevant equipment in this way, otherwise their results will not be
accurate, and therefore not reliable, and they will not be able to explain their findings.