Science teaching in the middle years: An approach through task analysis

This article reports an attempt to make progress towards answering a question of considerable importance for both teachers and teacher trainers: How can classroom tasks be analysed so as to yield a measure, or at least produce an indication, of the variety and quality of pupils’ thinking and learning? Since the question is one of fundamental methodology, it is perhaps preferable to begin with some remarks about task analysis and its inherent difficulties. This will be followed by an account of two attempts to produce methodologies for analysing and describing the nature of classroom tasks set by teachers, one in a primary and one in a secondary setting.

In undertaking this enterprise a major purpose has been to continue the search for objective measures of teacher performance exemplified in Flanders’ pioneer work on teacher talk, in anthologies of observation schedules (Simon and Boyer 1967, Galton 1979, Cohen 1976), and in the work of development projects into teaching skills such as the des Teacher Education Project (1976‐1981) directed by Professor E. C. Wragg and Dr Clive Sutton.