Making Meaning in Chemistry Lessons
This paper reports on a collaborative classroom intervention involving a university science education lecturer, a classroom practitioner and 30 students aged 12 -13 years in a city comprehensive school in the UK. The intervention used socio cultural theories of learning to inform medium term planning and staged increased opportunities for discursive activities within a sequence of chemistry lessons. The impact of the intervention was monitored using student test scores, written outcomes and qualitative interview data. Results from this science classroom intervention show that it is possible to ensure coverage of the same scientific content as the commercial scheme within the same amount of curriculum time. The main difference was that students in the intervention group experienced a more cognitively challenging curriculum.
