‘Bridging work’ and its role in improving progression and continuity: an example from science education

Abstract

Science in English primary schools has been judged a success, yet few pupils make the progress in secondary schools that their performance at the end of primary school suggested. Projects where pupils start science work at the end of the primary school and complete it at the start of secondary school—known as bridging units—have been suggested as one solution. This article reports an evaluation of bridging work in science in the north‐east of England. Pupils' and teachers' views of bridging lessons were collected and data on pupils' performance before and after bridging lessons compared. Claims that pupils find this type of work repetitive and that their teachers would rather teach something else either side of transfer are challenged. Findings highlight areas that are still problematic, including the use made of transferred assessments and progression in pupils' abilities, to comment on relationships between variables and patterns in data. The future for bridging work is discussed.

Notes

1. Additional statistics were provided by the Senior Adviser for Science in LEA B. These were used in conjunction with nationally available statistics to refine the selection of a ‘control’ school (school Y) to match to the experimental school (school X).

2. Planning posters are a series of three, large‐format writing frames used by the teacher in front of the whole class to help pupils identify and select experimental variables so as to help them plan an investigation of an open‐ended question such as ‘what makes drinks fizzy?’ Variables such as the temperature and make or type of drink are written onto self‐adhesive labels which can then be moved around the three poster frames as the plan develops. An interactive version of the posters illustrating the process is available on the website of the AstraZeneca Science Teaching Trust (AZSTT) at: http://www.azteachscience.co.uk/code/development/stay.htm