An Evaluation of Practical Work in Chemistry at the Higher Grade of the S.C.E

Wood, Colin A (1975) An Evaluation of Practical Work in Chemistry at the Higher Grade of the S.C.E. MSc(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

In the early 1960's, a new syllabus in Chemistry which embodied recent thinking in chemical education was introduced into Scottish schools. This was revised in 1969, and is used unchanged at the present time (1975). The syllabus consists of three parts, the first part covering the first two years of secondary education, the second two further years to 'O' grade, and the final part one year to 'H' grade. The present work was concerned with the practical content of 'H' grade. The research programme was begun by evaluating this practical work by surveying schools to find out what practical work was being done, how it was being done and how useful teachers found it. This allowed identification of areas of the syllabus where practical work was unsatisfactory. An attempt was then made to produce experiments which could be used at these unsatisfactory points in the syllabus; eleven experiments were produced. Details of these experiments were circulated to schools, and these were evaluated by both teachers and pupils. The evaluation was done using a set of course objectives for practical work drawn up by the author and ranked by a representative sample of experienced teachers. The evaluation was done by making two different sets of comparisons - (a) The objectives achieved by each experiment as seen by the teachers were compared with those as seen by their pupils, to find out if the teachers were able to communicate their objectives to their pupils. In general they were, and this was thought to validate the set of objectives and the approach used. (b) The objectives achieved by all eleven experiments taken together (as seen by the teachers) were compared with the teacher course objectives previously developed. There was reasonable agreement. However, the main point here is that this is the basis of a potentially useful tool for the evaluation and development of syllabus practical work. Practical work need not be chosen to "fit the content" alone, but can be selected to meet a specification for course practical work drawn up in terms of objectives.

• Item Type: Thesis (MSc(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: Science education, Curriculum development
• Date of Award: 1975
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1975-78685
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 30 Jan 2020 15:02
• Last Modified: 30 Jan 2020 15:02
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/78685