Enhancing high school students’ achievement in chemistry through a thinking skills approach

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental study designed to look at the application of a thinking skills programme‐Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment‐to the teaching of chemistry to 14‐year‐olds. A class of 21 students in a London comprehensive school was divided into two groups, a control group of 10 students, and an experimental group of 11 students. The students were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the science section of an NFER cognitive abilities test which they all took at the beginning of the year. The ability and gender composition of the two groups was similar. One group, the experimental group, was taught a chemistry module designed to compensate for cognitive deficiencies revealed at interview; the other group was taught the usual chemistry module by the head of science in the school. Significant differences were revealed between the scores of the experimental and control group on the post‐test.