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Abstract
In the 1991 National Curriculum for England and Wales, one of the prescribed assessment categories in science was ‘scientific investigation’. The subject was a novel one for both teachers and students; the policy represented a considerable exercise in curriculum development. The research upon ,which this paper is based was concerned with issues surrounding the policy in the secondary phase of education.
The inclusion of scientific investigation in the National Curriculum represented a development of the tradition of teaching students through the use of laboratory work which is supposed to mimic the practice of professional scientists. The philosophical and pedagogical problems associated with such work are outlined here. The form in which this policy was realized proved to be a particularly problematic one for both teachers and students.
This paper is concerned with the origins of the policy. It is argued that scientific investigation was introduced as part of an attempt to simplify the assessment procedures of the previous version of the science National Curriculum. The research upon which the model was based was minimal, the new version was not trialled and teachers received little training in its use. It was the combination of these factors which made the policy a failure. This version of scientific investigation has since been replaced by a more flexible one, as part of a review of the whole National Curriculum.
The paper concludes that centralized policy‐making should not concern itself with curriculum development, which is more properly left to teachers themselves, and that the essentially social nature of scientific activity makes it likely that any formalized attempt to assess individuals’ investigative skills must distort significantly the very activity under examination.