A critical look at practical work in school science

not applicable — argumentative essay

School science practical work, UK/international; ages ~11-18.

Argumentative essay in School Science Review 71(256), 33-40. Not obtainable: School Science Review issues from 1990 are not digitised in any open archive located, the ASE site paywalls its back catalogue, and no institutional repository copy was found. Everything recorded here comes from secondary citation, so no numbers are extracted and the paper is left unresolved rather than fabricated. The related and better-indexed Hodson (1993), 'Re-thinking old ways: towards a more critical approach to practical work in school science', Studies in Science Education 22, 85-142, is the successor argument and was also not retrieved.

NOT OBTAINED — recorded so that the gap is visible rather than silent. Hodson 1990 is the earliest widely-cited attack on the claims made for school practical work, and it is where the modern sceptical line in this literature starts: that practical work is ill-conceived, confused and unproductive, that the claims made for it are extravagant relative to the evidence, and that what is needed is a more rigorous, theory-driven approach rather than more of it. Every later critic in this file (Osborne 2015; Abrahams & Millar 2008; Millar) cites Hodson as the origin. Because the text could not be retrieved, no claim in it is treated as evidence here and nothing is quoted.

Not applicable.

Not applicable — an argument, not a finding. Its position is echoed and empirically filled in by Abrahams & Millar 2008 and Osborne 2015, both of which cite it.