El Ejército y la Artillería Real

A large majority of students (as seen from the Level 1 responses in table 5.1) claimed they learnt from practical work but there was not a consensus (seen from the Level 2 responses) as to whether they believed that in order to learn science they needed to do practical work. Indeed, during the focus groups and observations, students spoke about being able to learn from practical work but rarely spoke of a need to do practical work to learn. The students below exemplify (Lynne from the focus group and Nigel from the observation) that they felt that they needed practical work to learn science but they understood that they need the written work too:

Lynne 9C: Yeah, I think that to be able to learn something you should do it because otherwise you won’t understand it properly.

Nigel 10P: I think it helps us, like we are able to learn from it because we can see it

Whilst these comments encapsulate the idea that by doing practical work they are able to understand science, results supported by Abrahams (2009), Toplis and Allen (2012) argue that this does not necessarily mean that they are actually able to understand the

scientific theory behind the activity. However in this study, students did claim that science lessons needed both practical work and non-practical work and this was echoed throughout the Level 2 responses in the questionnaires. Indeed the point was substantiated further when students were asked during observations how they would distribute practical work in a week, as the following comment encapsulates:

Nicola 10P: Well we would need half and half cause they go together… like we do at the moment, we’ll do practical if we’ve got the writing part done. They make sure that we’ve done the writing and the notes on it though before we do practical.

The claim the student is making above, that practical work and theory support each other, is similar to findings by Cerini et al. (2003), Osborne and Collins (2001) and Toplis (2012).

Indeed, a large majority of students (78% seen in table 5.1) expressed the view that they were able to learn from practical work in science lessons, because (according to the Level 2 data) they felt they could see for themselves how everything worked rather than just being told what happens. Such reasons were also made clear by students during the observations as the following comments exemplify:

Lucy 9C: Instead of talking about it we’re actually looking at it ourselves Yvette 7B: When you see things and you do it yourself you remember, but

when you just write it down you forget. So like you learn more when you’re actually doing stuff.

This high degree of student support seen in these comments for the idea that they are able to learn from practical work supports previous claims made by teachers as to why they incorporated it into their science lessons (Wellington, 1998). Indeed, Wellington (1998) found that teachers saw the main reasons for doing practical work were that it

could not only improve students’ understanding of science but provided the means to “illustrate, verify or affirm ‘theory work’” (p. 7). This reason teachers gave was also a reason for why a large majority of students (71% as seen in table 5.1) felt practical work helped them to understand science: because it gave them the ability to verify and affirm the theory. Students felt they could see what happens themselves during practical work. Whereas, students claimed (within their Level 2 responses) that when a teacher told them what would happen or they read it out of a book, they felt they were not able to understand science as much as through practical work. According to Woodley (2009), practical work can help students to understand scientific concepts and, students in this study did express such views. Indeed, the example below, made by a student during a lesson observation, illustrates how they felt practical work helped them to understand science:

Lacy 9C: I think that we see experiments in textbooks and when Miss says we can do them that means we can understand about what happened, why it happened, how it happened. And it’s better because you can actually relate with what it’s saying in the book and you don’t really have to like try and think about what it was, you just have to remember.

Certainly in this study, many students claimed (seen in the Level 2 data) that practical work was ‘first-hand’ so they would be able to learn more because they could see it for themselves, whereas, they saw book and theory work as secondary learning. The view below during the observations support their claims that practical work is seen as ‘first- hand’ learning:

Natasha 10P: Well we get first hand experience doing practical work, which is good for learning because we remember unlike learning it from the text book.

Whist the findings in this study are similar to those reported by Wellington (2005) in which students “expressed the importance of “seeing things happening” and felt that it helped you to remember things and perhaps understand them” (p. 102), there were a small minority of students (22% as seen in table 5.1) that believed they were not able to learn from practical work. Of this minority, only 5% of students from the Level 2 data felt they only learnt from the teacher, and 6% (again from the Level 2 data) felt that not every practical lesson taught them something new. Whilst the percentage of students selecting these options was low in this study, these views were echoed in the observations where students discussed that learning from practical work was difficult at times:

Neil 10P: If it is something new and different then I might learn from it but normally we do the same sort of stuff so we can’t learn much from that.

The statement by Neil is illustrative of others made by students in this study and suggests that by carrying out practical work that is in some sense novel – such as practical work that may excite them or provide a ‘gore’ factor – students feel they will learn from it. However, the fact that the student as in the example spoke of the normal routine practical work being of little educational value is similar to those comments made by Woolnough (1998). In contrast Toplis (2012) found students felt that they did learn science concepts and that this learning was a reason for seeing practical work as important.