Using out‐of‐school experience in science lessons: reality or rhetoric?

Abstract

In recent years science curriculum developers (e.g. Salter's in the UK) have sought to emphasise relevance to students. Many curriculum packages clearly attempt to relate to the everyday experience of pupils through topics such as food, drinks and health care. In reality, to what extent and in what ways are teachers and pupils making use of out‐of‐school experiences during normal science teaching? This paper reports a classroom‐based participant observation study of 103 science lessons in British comprehensive schools which focused on the use of out‐of‐school experience by both teachers and pupils. The researcher acted as a classroom assistant in order that observations might be as naturalistic as possible. A total of 215 ‘episodes’ of out‐of‐school experience were noted and analysed. Qualitative treatment of the data identified twelve major themes. The paper seeks, through this data, to challenge assumptions about the role of out‐of‐school experience in science lessons. The paper also highlights practical and methodological issues of educational research relating to access negotiation, the classroom role of the observer and the observational methods adopted.